Donna gets a message on her phone. It is from Bogdan, watching her at home. She sneaks a peek as the studio count reaches five. His text is three emojis.
A star, a heart, a thumbs-up.
A heart, eh? The camera is just in time to catch Donna’s beam.
45
The photo looks good – very real. Viktor Illyich dead and buried. Well, Viktor Illyich buried, that much was for sure. The Viking is now using it as the lock screen on his phone.
Could it have been faked? Of course it could. Everything could. Scratching his beard, the Viking remembers he was once introduced to Brad Pitt at a party in Silicon Valley. Brad had refused a selfie, saying, ‘It’s a private party, just relax,’ or some such other Hollywood nonsense. So, when he got home, the Viking Photoshopped a picture of Brad and himself, Brad laughing uproariously at a joke he was telling. It’s in his kitchen now, and if anyone were ever to visit him, they wouldn’t know the difference. Meeting people, not meeting people, it’s all the same these days. Reality is for civilians.
As the Viking spies the building up ahead, he realizes that he has to stop being annoyed with Brad Pitt for a moment and concentrate on the matter at hand. He also feels shy, being out and about on the street. People look at him. He was born too big. He can’t wait to get home again.
The killing itself? It certainly sounded real to him, as he sat listening, far away, in his library in Staffordshire. But why had Elizabeth Best thrown her phone away afterwards? It could just have been admirable caution. Or Elizabeth and Viktor could be playing him. Two old spies thinking they can take a newcomer for a ride. Sometimes the Viking lacks confidence in himself. He curses his impostor syndrome.
The Viking looks up and sees the swimming pool, suspended in the sky high above him. If you fired a rocket launcher at it, the whole structure would collapse, and everyone would plunge to their deaths. Though no one is currently in it, so it would be a waste of a rocket. He thinks about firing a rocket launcher at Brad Pitt. ‘It’s a private party, Brad. Just relax.’ Then, kablammo, maybe treat your fans with a bit of respect next time.
But, however tempting it is to kill people, it is also bad. And difficult.
Getting into the building is easy. The Viking has a client, a luxury car thief, on the twelfth floor. The client sends the Viking money, the Viking turns it into Bitcoin, or whichever crypto is riding high that week, then sends it back to the client perfectly washed. It was more complicated than that, of course it was. Otherwise everyone would do what the Viking was doing. But his genius was an algorithm that layered the transactions through the dark web, making his scheme virtually untraceable. In truth it has proved completely untraceable thus far. The Viking says only ‘virtually untraceable’ because he is a Swede, and Swedes never like to show off.
His client base has grown and grown, and, with it, his personal wealth. The Viking gets a cut of every deal, and the bigger and more complicated the deal, the bigger the cut he takes. Ten years ago the Viking was working for an AI pornography start-up in Palo Alto. Today he is worth somewhere north of three billion dollars.
The Viking bypasses the twelfth floor and takes the lift up to the penthouse level, to the former home of Viktor Illyich. Anywhere you asked, Viktor was trusted, revered almost, a straight shooter in a spinning world. When he spoke, criminals listened, and when he gave advice, criminals took it.
Which is why the Viking needed him dead. Viktor always recommended laundering money the old-fashioned way. Through real estate, through casinos, through ‘smurfs’ and ‘mules’ and shell companies. Through gems or gold, or through good bureaux de change, which was very retro. It was all pretty safe, sure, but so time-consuming, and it cost lots of money. Rather than investing in cryptocurrency, which actually made you money.
Viktor is costing the Viking an awful lot of money. Sure, he’s worth three billion, and that was probably enough to be getting on with, but Jeff Bezos is worth two hundred billion, and the Viking doesn’t like being a hundred and ninety-seven billion poorer than anyone. Viktor knows that the Viking exists, and knows his business, but has no idea of his identity.