Franco liked to drive a fancy car.
That is, Nancy noted as she put her collar up against the gritty wind dusting the streets, he liked to be driven in a fancy car.
The car stopped exactly where Nancy hoped it would, just out of sight of the main street. It was a quiet part of Istanbul—relatively speaking in a city of twenty million people—and the only passers-by were the type of people who very much minded their own business.
On the other side of the street was a small coffee shop. The owner knew both Nancy and Franco and also minded his own business, only opening his mouth when it was necessary to say something, not because he wanted to.
Franco's driver climbed out and opened the rear door. He would be a tough one in a hand-to-hand tussle, one of those big sort of guys who would just stand there and take a lot of punishment, then pull back and punch hard with every bit of weight behind him. Just that one punch, and all the fancy stuff his opponent had done would be rendered pointless.
Franco emerged, dressed in a dark suit. Both he and the driver looked about them as they crossed to the café and entered. It was only after they had passed inside that Nancy emerged from the shadows she'd been lurking in and approached the building. Light spilled out onto the street, but she kept to the dark places until the last minute.
Inside, the owner was just showing Franco to a table. The driver sat apart, back to the wall, facing the door. More than just a driver, then.
There were no other customers. Nancy knew there wouldn't be. The owner had been paid well for this private booking of his establishment. Even the staff had been given the night off.
As Nancy entered, all three men looked at her.
Franco smiled as she approached.
'How do you know I don't have someone outside with a gun aimed at your back?' he asked, but without threat. Maybe he was just asking out of sheer curiosity.
'Because neither of us is that stupid,' she answered.
The owner's loyalties were clear: the chair he pulled out for Nancy allowed her a view of both of the other men, with the driver on her right side, and Franco up against the wall on her left.
'Rakı,' said Franco to the owner. 'And meze.' He pointed to his driver. 'Nothing for him.'
Wants him to keep a clear head for fighting, thought Nancy. She ordered rakı too, the aniseed-flavoured liquor the Turks loved.
'Why are we here?' Franco asked. 'Not that it isn't a pleasure to see you...no, I revise that. It isn't a pleasure.'
The owner had gone back to the kitchen to fetch their drinks and appetizers, but Nancy touched the silencer on her lapel anyway. The device resembled an ordinary broach, but effectively put up a barrier against the escape of sound around their table. Even the driver could not overhear them now; only someone actually standing within the silencer field would be privy to their conversation.
Franco smiled. 'Such a device is not necessary,' he said, and indicated his man at the other table. 'Eban can be trusted. Besides, he can read lips.'
Nancy turned to look at Eban as if noticing him for the first time. 'Impressive. Can he play the guitar too?'
She touched the lantern on the table and the light dimmed to a dull gloom which would make it hard for Eban to read anything. 'You shouldn't have told me that, you see.'
If Franco regretted his words he didn't show it. 'I repeat, why are we here?'
'Oh don't worry, I'm not asking you for money or anything. Even though you do seem to have done well for yourself. You bake the best bread in Istanbul, I'm told.'
'It's just a cover for a while.'
Nancy chuckled. 'There has been a lot said about the Nuncio's assassination. I've heard...many things, shall we say?'
'I don't see—'
'There have been...implications.'
The man's substantial eyebrows rose. 'True. The investigation was thorough, but there's nothing to worry about, if that's what you mean. If anything, the heat has come from your actions. I didn't ask you to kill Sirians. How many died as a consequence of your over-enthusiasm?'
'I don't know. Actually, I don't care. It was necessary to make the assassination look it was performed by locals. Amateurish.'
'Sirians do not kill Sirians. Not like that, anyway.'
'I'm not talking about those implications.'
The owner arrived with a tray of food, appetizers served in small dishes: grilled eggplant, olives, stuffed vine leaves, small whole fish taken from the Black Sea. Accompanying these and other dishes were two bottles of water, two empty glasses and a bottle of rakı. The owner left as silently as he came and closed the kitchen door behind him.
Franco poured rakı into the glasses and topped them up with water. The clear liquid immediately went a cloudy white. Nancy actually hated the stuff, but knew Franco would want to see how much she could drink and still remain coherent. She didn't want to disappoint him. Grabbing an olive, she popped it into her mouth and took a swig of the rakı.
'Not bad,' she said.
Franco grunted over his own drink. 'The rakı or the situation?'
'You tell me.'
He gazed at her a long time. 'The Nuncio—'
'Xu Chan.'
'Xu Chan. Rix wanted him killed; we killed him. I'm not entirely happy with the way you did it, but it was done. What happened to Jake, by the way?'
'I don't know.'
He took a long drink and chewed on a fish head. Nancy watched him and listened to the crunch of scales and tiny bones.
'The Nuncio was an old friend of Rix's,' said Franco after another slug of his drink. 'Oh, I know his history. I know he found a rogue sub-routine in Zeus. Rix told me when he hired me. Rix and I go back a long way, too.'
If Rix had told Franco about his plans, or even part of them, then Rix was either a fool or Franco wasn't as stupid as she thought. Or both.
'He had outgrown his usefulness. We all do, eventually. Even me. Even you.'
She looked straight at him when he said the words, and thought there was a gleam of something in them, a quickening perhaps of his breathing, a glance over to his man at the other table.
'You drew a lot of attention to the killing,' he continued, but his voice was quieter than before.
'It was an assassination. In the middle of a crowd. Tell me how I could do it without anyone noticing.'
'I didn't know we were going to blow him up. I thought we'd shoot him, or poison...'
'I like blowing things up.' She leaned in and smiled. 'I like to watch people die. It turns me on.'
Franco stopped chewing and put his glass down on the table. Slowly he poured some more liquor into it, but the bottle of water he poured in after it shook a little in his hand. A few drops hit the slick surface of the table.
'What are Rix's plans? I mean, the sub-routine. What is that all about?'
She laughed at that. 'Oh come on, Franco! You know how it works: you don't scratch my back and I stick a knife in yours.' She leaned forwards, both hands flat on the table. On the other side of the room Eban moved his left hand a microscopic fraction towards his belt, where he no doubt had a weapon.
Left handed, thought Nancy. A clear draw, too. Belt holster, and he'll need to move that hand about another six inches to reach it.
She smiled at Franco. 'But I'll let you off with a warning, since I'm in a good mood. I've heard rumours about you. That you're saying too much about things, about the Nuncio thing and maybe even putting Rix's name around. Maybe my name too. Are you?'
For the first time sweat broke out on the man's face. He swallowed hard, and not because he had a mouthful of rakı. There had been no such rumours, of course, but it was a good policy to keep former colleagues afraid.
'I don't usually work with others, Franco. I'm a loner. I always have been. You see, I don't trust anyone.'
When the Syndicate's weapons division had held her prisoner as a little girl and fucked around with her brain so she became what she was today, she had occasionally been permitted to see films like a normal child. Of course she liked the violent ones, because that's what they trained to like. And the best of all those types of films, the ones that really made her senses tingle, were the old Westerns. Often they had a scene where two men shaped up against each other in the street and which one lived depended on who was the faster draw. How quick was Franco's man?
Her hands moved. On the other side of the room, Eban shifted his hand further towards his belt holster but didn't draw a weapon.
Nancy continued her movement to push her hair back from her face.
Fast, but not too fast. Jumpy, too. Hand on his weapon now, and keeping it there.
'I'm going to tell you something, Franco,' she said.
'Indeed.' He'd stopped eating and drinking now, and stared at her, his eyes only occasionally flicking towards Eban. 'And what's that?'
The bullet struck Eban in the centre of his forehead and emerged out of the back of his skull to strike the wooden wall behind him with a dull thud. The man slumped in his chair, hand still clutched around his gun which remained partly in its holster.
Nancy turned her gun on Franco, but didn't shoot.
'I don't like bodyguards,' she said.
Franco raised his hands to the level of his head. One of them still held his glass of rakı. His eyes rotated to see the body of Eban slide out of its chair. The blood left a nasty mark on the floor; the café owner would have to buy a new rug.
When he returned his gaze back to the table, the barrel of Nancy's gun was so close to Franco's head it almost sent him cross-eyed.
'Are you going to kill me?' he asked.
'Sorry, what was that?'
The gunshot had been louder than normal inside the silencer field.
A lock of blonde hair fell down across the right side of her forehead. With an effort Nancy quietened the beating of her heart, which always raced when she killed someone.
'Are you going to kill me?'
'What a good idea.'
The door of the kitchen opened and the café owner emerged. Nancy caught the movement in the corner of her eye, and dived to one side as bullets smacked into the wall behind her. On the floor, she turned the gun on the new threat, the owner, who was standing in the kitchen door with a plasma gun in his hand.
No time to return fire—just get out of the way. She ducked behind a table, and instantly regretted the decision as another plasma bullet burned through the ridiculously thin piece of furniture and just missed her left shoulder. The heat of its passing scorched the cloth of her jacket.
She leaned out from behind the table and fired at the form of the owner, who was just retreating back into the kitchen. The shot smashed into the door frame, sending splinters onto the carpet.
Before the man could emerge again, she moved from behind the table to duck down next to a metal sideboard. The ornate cloth draped over it stank of tobacco and flowers.
When the barrel of the man's plasma gun emerged she fired. The shot hit the barrel and sent the weapon slamming into the wall. Nancy stepped out until she could see the form of the startled man still holding his weapon and sent three shots into his chest.
The owner's body fell back into the kitchen. Nancy stepped forwards and glanced inside: he had been alone.
So was she. Franco was nowhere to be found.
From outside came the sound of a car accelerating away.
Holstering her gun, she adjusted her jacket and dusted it down, then stepped outside where the gritty wind met her once more and raised her blonde hair off her shoulders. Franco's car was gone.
For a moment he regretted the amount of money she'd paid the café owner. Obviously Franco had paid more. Oh well, such was life.
It would be a long night, she knew, as she walked back to the main street. No more kills, that would be foolish, but maybe find a bar somewhere and drink a lot and flirt with some guy and knock back his advances when he tried to push his luck.
Bright lights attracted her to a particularly cheap-looking bar. It would be full of men looking for an attractive woman. Nancy entered and found a table against the wall.
Franco hadn't escaped for good. No one ever did.