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The Company
Time: Wednesday, July 4, 2012 (late night).
Place: Marseille safe house.
Last Event: Scouting Muhammad Asif's properties.
Upon returning to the safe house, the Agents meet to share the results of the evening's reconnaissance and to plan the assassination of Muhammad Asif. After hearing Klas and Paul's report, nobody doubts that Asif is staying at his villa here in Marseille. Given the visible security level, however, it seems unlikely that he'll wander alone into the city where he could fall victim to "street crime" or an "automobile mishap." That leaves sneaking past his guards and arranging an accident at home. After some discussion, consensus is that "accidental suicide" by autoerotic asphyxiation – complete with nasty pornography left at the scene – would minimize the odds that religious extremists would involve the authorities or investigate the death themselves, and thus that they would discover that it was a killing. Everyone agrees that they should begin preparations soon, before Asif resumes his flight from the British.
On Thursday morning, the group sends Hamid out to acquire the most extreme porno magazines he can get without resorting to black-market sources that the police would be sure to check if brought in to investigate Asif's death. Vinnie goes along to watch Hamid's back, but that proves unnecessary. Hamid buys the smut at a shop where neither staff nor patrons make eye contact with anybody else, and then walks out with the goods in a plain paper bag. As far as Vinnie can tell, Hamid doesn't pick up a shadow on the way back to the safe house.
After Hamid and Vinnie return, the Agents discuss manpower and methods. Everyone agrees that while a lone assassin would be optimal for stealth, armed guards make backup essential. In the end, a two-man hit squad seems best. In view of the neighborhood being well-lit and upscale, the safest approach looks to be insertion by boat; this will let the killers infiltrate via the steep slope behind the villa and enter the building from the rear. After reviewing everyone's experience and training, the decision is to send in Vinnie and Zhang – who are adept at break-and-enter work and violence, respectively – with Anabel to handle the boat and Wen to support Anabel.
With that settled, it's time to make further preparations. Anabel and Wen head off buy materials from which to create camouflage suits optimized for grassy lawns at night. Hamid and Vinnie visit a marina about an hour's boat ride from Asif's villa, to look into renting a small craft suitable for the night's work. And Qoqa obtains first-aid gear at a few local pharmacies, just in case. The shoppers do their best not to arouse suspicions, and everyone is on the lookout for trouble, but all three tasks go smoothly. The whole team is back at the safe house by early afternoon.
Qoqa and Wen spend the afternoon and evening working on camouflage outfits for Vinnie and Zhang. Both have considerable experience with the subject, and with Klas' expert input on light levels and lawn coloration, the result is a pair of shaggy suits that ought to let Zhang and Vinnie belly crawl across the back yard at tens of centimeters per second without being too obvious. Hamid gets the hard job of making the porno look thumbed through without covering it in fingerprints. Everybody else rests.
At around 21:00, Vinnie carefully packs his lockpicking tools, Wen stuffs the camouflage suits into a duffel bag, and Zhang stashes the porno in a poster tube. Then the three of them and Anabel stroll two streets over and catch a cab to within a few blocks of the marina. Things go well at the marina – the staff there seems to think that the four Agents are a couple of couples heading out for a romantic nighttime boat ride. Before long, the squad is motoring down the shore toward Asif's.
The insertion goes flawlessly: Vinnie handles the approach, cutting the motor so that the dinghy drifts noiselessly onto the beach. Then he and Zhang hop out silently, sneak to concealment, and start donning their camouflage, while Anabel and Wen scull back out to sea as quietly as they can. Mere minutes after arrival, Zhang and Vinnie are skulking up the slope behind Asif's villa. Anabel and Wen take up a position a few dozen metres offshore. Stealing a backward glance, neither Vinnie nor Zhang can make out the boat's outline in the darkness.
Vinnie and Zhang move slowly and deliberately, pausing whenever a guard shows his face on the rear balcony. After several minutes of crawling, they're flat against the back wall of the villa. Zhang sneaks a peek through the sliding glass doors to the rear terrace. He sees Asif inside, lounging in a well-appointed great room, watching the news on a big-screen television. A guard stands nearby, looking distinctly bored, with a carbine in plain sight. Zhang gestures "target, one armed guard, no go" to Vinnie, and then points toward the corner of the building.
Remaining flat against the wall and moving stealthily, Zhang and Vinnie make their way from the back yard to the strip of lawn between the villa and the stone carport to one side of it. A short flagstone path leading from the vehicle shelter points the way to a side entrance. Zhang glances in the window and sees that the door leads into a small, unoccupied corridor. Through a flurry of gestures, Vinnie indicates that he can handle the door, and signals for Zhang to ditch the camouflage.
After the two quietly slip out of their suits – which Vinnie stashes in a shrubbery – it's time to break in. Vinnie easily opens the high-end lock, skillfully finds and defeats the alarm switch, and lets himself and Zhang into the villa. As soon as they're inside, Vinnie quietly closes the door and goes to lock it behind him . . . and finds the key in the lock, apparently left there to facilitate a hasty escape to the vehicles. Taking note of this for future use, he gives the key a slow, careful turn and then gestures for Zhang to lead on.
Zhang and Vinnie creep to the end of the corridor, where Zhang observes that to slip upstairs and lie in wait – which seems to be the smartest move – the two must cross a small piece of open space where Asif or his guard might spot them. After signaling this to Vinnie, Zhang waits for the television to get especially noisy and distracting. Sure enough, something involving an excited reporter yelling over shooting sounds comes on. Zhang then darts for the staircase and Vinnie follows, and they make it upstairs without difficulty.
From the top of the stairs, Vinnie easily identifies the master bedroom. Zhang peers around the edge of the doorframe and sees that one of the guards is out on the adjacent balcony, perched on the railing and staring idly into the room. Once the man turns, Zhang signals for Vinnie to follow and then enters the room at a low crawl. A few seconds later, the two are concealed under the impressive king-sized bed.
After that, it's time to wait. Asif shows up about 30 minutes later. He orders his guard to monitor the back yard from the balcony in the other room, and then shuts the doors to the balcony and the hallway. Then he gets ready for bed, reads for a while, and finally switches out the light. Vinnie and Zhang wait until they're certain that Asif is asleep – and their eyes are well-adapted to the half-light – and then slip out from under the bed, on opposite sides.
The strike on Asif is swift and intense. Zhang and Vinnie seize him at once but in the process wake him, resulting in a brief struggle. Fortunately for the assassins, Zhang manages to muffle Asif's cries with a pillow, preventing the guards from intervening. Once the killers have their target pinned, they hold the pillow in place until they're certain that their victim has expired. Despite the brutality of the murder, neither Agent hesitates to act – Asif is a man who would bomb a densely populated city just to make a point.
As soon as Asif is dead, Vinnie and Zhang carry him quietly to the attached bathroom and prop him up on the toilet. While Zhang goes about the unpleasant business of posing Asif's body and pulling down his pants, Vinnie searches for and finds a necktie. Vinnie professionally fastens the strip of cloth around Asif's neck with a knot that could pass as a fatal error – one that would tighten rather than come free if pulled on. Meanwhile, Zhang sticks the porno magazine in Asif's hands, gets it thoroughly covered in fingerprints, and then lets it fall where it naturally would. Some strategically applied hand lotion completes the scene.
After a thorough check to deal with anything that might make the situation look like a murder rather than an accident, Zhang and Vinnie sneak out into the hallway, stalk downstairs, and make their way to the side entrance. They encounter no guards; all the security men seem to be outside watching porches and balconies. Vinnie unlocks the door and keeps the alarm from sounding, and then locks up once he and Zhang are outside. Then both men slip back into their camouflage suits.
The exfiltration is as stealthy as the infiltration, with Vinnie and Zhang belly crawling slowly across the half-lit yard in the shadow of the shrubberies, and then disappearing over the steep hill and making their way to the beach. Wen sees Vinnie signaling almost at once, and Anabel steers the boat in every bit as silently as Vinnie did earlier. Zhang and Vinnie quietly board the dinghy, and then the crew paddle away from the shore. Once they're out of the guards' earshot, they motor off into the night.
The Agents in the boat carefully pack everything suspicious into duffel bags while they're underway. When they arrive at the marina, they look like two couples returning from a boat ride, with blankets packed into their bags. Nobody pays them any mind. The return to the safe house goes uneventfully.
Come Friday morning, the only visible signs of the assassination are burned toast and bitter coffee prepared by Vinnie. Apparently, he struggled with nightmares about being suffocated. Qoqa comes to the rescue of breakfast. Unfortunately for Vinnie, everybody notices his state, and Klas and Lev can't resist making a lot of off-color sausage jokes. Qoqa also gets in on the tomfoolery, though her comments are more subtle and insidious.
Wen clears the air by pointing out that the team still hasn't examined the sealed plastic pouch they took from Asif's warehouse the previous night. She drags this out and opens it. Examination reveals the contents to be not plastic explosive, but hashish. This would help explain how Asif was funding some of his operations. Qoqa carefully reseals the packet, wipes it down, and wraps it up, all the time fighting off Jili's decidedly unprofessional interest in the hash. Then Paul and Qoqa walk to the train station, stow the package in a locker, and visit a courier kiosk in order to send Terence West the locker key along with information on where the locker is and what warehouse its contents came from.