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  Lisa Molin Assassin - A Quiet Kill in Interlaken

  by Mike Ward

  Cover photo taken in Jacksonville, Florida by Mike Ward

  Copyright 2016 Mike Ward

  Table of Contents

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  Lisa Molin Assassin - A Quiet Kill in Interlaken

  Lisa Molin walked along Höheweg Street in Interlaken in Switzerland. She was dressed fairly conservatively and there was a reason for that. Normally her target had no idea who she was and no knowledge that his death was literally a few hours away. That was not true in this case. Her target didn’t know her name but he knew when she would be arriving and he also knew that she was going to kill him sometime during the day.

  The man she was meeting had arranged this hit on himself. The hit was paid for and unless something unforeseen happened then it would go ahead and her target would be dead by nightfall. Perhaps that was why he had suggested that they meet at dawn. It had rained during the night and it was still a little misty. The cars parked in front of the Hotel Interlaken were still wet from the rain. Next to the Hotel Interlaken was the Garden of Friendship which was the first Japanese garden in Switzerland. It had been created in 1995 by landscape gardeners from the City of Otsu which was in Shiga Prefecture in Japan. Otsu was next to Biwa Lake not far from Kyoto the old capital of Japan.

  The man Lisa was meeting would be waiting for her in the Japanese garden. At this time she expected there to be only one man in the garden. She walked into the garden and found she was wrong. There was a man in his twenties walking a dog and another older man sitting down. She would be surprised if her target was the man in his twenties so she approached the older man. Her target was Armenian but since he had grown up in Yerevan, the capital of what had then been the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic then she knew he would speak Russian. Lisa was fluent in several languages but the one she used the most apart from her native Swedish was Russian.

  She stopped in front of the man. She did not expect this to be a trap but this was an unusual request so her senses were on high alert. The man had a disarming smile but it did not work in this case. In her head sat four moves which she could carry out in quick succession. If the man sitting in front of her was unable to block those moves then he would lay dead at her feet and the young man walking his dog would be running away pulling his cell phone out as he ran.

  “I am looking for Hovhannes Tamrazyan,” she said in Russian.

  “I am Hovhannes,” the man said. “I presume that Aleksandr Maksimov sent you.”

  Aleksandr Maksimov was the head of the Russian mafia in Zurich and he was the man who had arranged the hit through Anatoly Kazikov in Sweden. “I’m Lisa,” she said. “Maksimov did send me yes.”

  The Armenian looked over at the young man walking his dog. He was now about to exit the park and was out of earshot. “I have heard you have killed over one hundred and twenty men in Europe and that you are an expert with the garrote.”

  To be having this conversation was bizarre. Normally she just killed her target and that was the end of it.

  The Armenian noticed her discomfort and put his hand on hers. She tensed automatically. “Forgive me,” he said. “I am ex-GRU. I know a lot about what goes on in the Russian mafia. I used to work with a lot of these men. I would like to spend the day with you and then I would like a clean and quick death. I would like that death to be as painless as you can make it.”

  She was still uncomfortable. Unless he stopped this his death would be violent and messy and it would happen in the next few minutes.

  “You see a man who looks outwardly healthy but I am dying. I know how I am going to die and I know roughly when I will die because five years ago I watched my brother die. I will not bore you with the details but I am slowly going to waste away. If we were to have this conversation in a year’s time then I would be sitting here in a wheelchair with a nurse attending and I doubt that she would let you kill me. I cannot let things get to that stage.”

  Instantly he had her sympathy. She doubted that he was even fifty years old. She let him leave his hand on hers. She realized she needed to just talk to him about something else. That was what she was good at. This needed to be approached more like a normal hit where she made her target feel at ease and then when she had their trust she would kill them.

  “I heard that you sleep with most of your targets before you kill them,” he said.

  She held her hand up to stop him. “Hovhannes, if I may call you that. Let’s talk about something else for now. Why did you meet me here in a Japanese garden?”

  “There is a district in Kyoto the old capital of Japan which is called Kamishichiken. The word Kamishichiken literally means the Seven Upper Houses and it refers to seven teahouses built from the equipment and material left over from the rebuilding of the Kitano Shrine in Muromachi era. The streets in this area are made up of wooden buildings and are mainly teahouses and geisha houses. Kamishichiken is a quiet area with fewer tourists than other areas of Kyoto and the geisha there are known for being demure and few in number but they are highly accomplished dancers and musicians. When I am in Japan which is not as often as I would like then I go there and I will spend the day in one of the teahouses sometimes in the company of a geisha or geiko as they are known there. I have spent many happy days there and I would like today with you to be like one of those days.”

  “I do not know how to play a shamisen,” Lisa said referring to the traditional instrument used by the geisha.

  “I was told you were intelligent,” Hovhannes Tamrazyan said. “How do you know about the shamisen?”

  Since he already knew all about her there was no point in lying. “I once killed a Japanese businessman in Kyoto,” she said.

  The Armenian raised his eyebrows but said nothing. One thing the West hadn’t planned for when they got rid of communism was the rise of the Russian mafia. Now they were in every capital in Western Europe and if you upset them you were gone. He knew that the girl sitting opposite him was a more specialized kind of assassin. Normally the Russian mafia would send a man to kill you but there were some men who were very heavily guarded. When that happened they sent the woman in front of him. Most rich and powerful men played the field as far as women were concerned even if they were married. If a rich man had screwed one hundred women in the last five years and everything had gone well would he really expect the hundred and first woman to kill him in his sleep. Hovhannes Tamrazyan was well enough informed to know that was how many men had died at the hands of this woman. It might even happen to him tonight because he was going to ask her if she would sleep with him before she killed him. There was a slight risk that she might just toy with him and torture him for sport but he had asked about that and been told that it would not happen. He hoped not. He had a fear of ever being at a woman’s mercy but that was precisely the situation he was going to put himself in before the end of the day. He shivered slightly inside at the thought of it but then he thought of his brother and his resolution became firm. He decided to tell her what he had done.

  “My brother begged me to kill him before he died. It is the hardest thing I have ever done. He looked after me when I was young. Our parents were useless alcoholics. He joined the GRU before I did and when he did that there was more food in the house and my sister and I could eat. He begged me to kill him for three days and on the third day we sat and talked for hours. When he had made his peace with
God I kissed him on the forehead and then I put a pillow over his head.”

  The woman in front of him looked a little shocked which surprised him. He stood up deciding to change the subject and the mood of the conversation. “Please take my hand and walk with me round the garden. The rest of the day should be about joy and relaxation. I am interested to hear about you and I hope you are interested to hear about me. Let us talk about interesting things.”

  Lisa Molin held her hand out and he took it. His grip was firm. She wondered how long he had left before this wasting disease he talked about took hold of him. Then his grip slackened for a few moments before tightening again and she realized that whatever the problem was it was already on him. They walked around the Japanese garden together. The garden was not huge but it was relaxing to be in there. It was still very early in the morning and there was hardly anybody about. They walked along some stone steps with the pink Hotel Interlaken taking up a good part of their field of view. On their left was a beautiful tree with red leaves. Hovhannes pointed to the Shinji pond and told her that it was meant to be a representation of Lake Thun and Lake Brienz which were the two lakes surrounding Interlaken. He told her that the islands in the pond showed a crane and a tortoise and that they represented eternal youth and longevity in Japan.

  They left the Japanese gardens and crossed Höheweg Street walking towards the Hotel Royal St. Georges. Three years ago she had stayed in a hotel near there for three days before killing a businessman from London in another part of Interlaken. His widow had had no idea that like many men on business her husband made a habit of taking women back to his room. She had found out the hard way when her husband had been garroted in his hotel room. The local police had been as tactful as they could but a British paper had not and they had somehow managed to get hold of a copy of the police files on the case plus the photographs taken by the police photographer. The British paper had also made a big point that the condoms found in the British man’s hotel room had been a British brand and not a Swiss brand which meant that he had intended to sleep with other women before he even left on the trip. The hit had been arranged by Aleksei Rogoza who was the head of the Russian mafia in London although she had no idea why the businessman had been hit.

  “Do you want to get breakfast?” he said.

  “Yes I do,” she said. On impulse she kissed him. It was still quiet and there was nobody about. He looked at her in surprise and then he kissed her back. There was something about this man and she was enjoying his company. This was totally different from her usual hits. She clamped down fast and hard on that thought. Lisa had an ability to compartmentalize things. That was one of the things that made her so successful as an assassin. Until she opened the compartment in her brain marked “kill” she was to all intents and purposes just an ordinary woman having a good time with a man she had just met. He kissed her again and this time it was a full on kiss. She responded even though to anyone walking past the kiss was not something that should be done at that time and on that street.

  She laughed and held his hand tighter. “I enjoy your company,” she said. At that moment she meant it, a part of her wished that she could spend a week with this man. She could tell by the look on his face that he was thinking the same thing. For a moment she almost put the thought into words but then she held it back.

  “What did you do when you were in the GRU?” she said.

  He laughed. “Ah such fun I had in those days,” he said. “They taught me how to speak Greek and then they sent me after the wives of British and American diplomats. Those women were always suspicious of men who looked Russian but I am Armenian. I could pass for a Greek but never a Russian. I was always a Greek student studying for a postgraduate degree at the University of Berlin or Paris or whatever city I was stationed at. Wives who are turned are far more valuable than mistresses who are turned. A man working in an embassy will tell his wife things he will never tell his mistress. When I suggested we went back to my room they would always come with me. Of course my room was full of concealed cameras. I was taught to be good at oral sex and when we showed those women the films of them lying there with a Greek man’s head between their thighs we knew we had got them.

  “Who was easier? The British wives or the American wives?”

  “The wives of the American diplomats were more cautious. I just got the British women drunk and then they were usually up for sex. We would usually have three sessions before they met with the woman and showed her the film.”

  “Did any of them go to their embassies?”

  “Sometimes they did but usually not. If they did then we passed a copy of the film onto a newspaper back in their local country or we’d send a copy to people they knew. Nowadays there are many more women working as diplomats so now they target the husbands. Interestingly the women and the men we use to target the diplomat’s husbands are more successful with American men than they are with British men so it is the exact opposite of the women.”

  “How long did you do that?”

  “For five years until the British sent a team to shoot me. They almost succeeded. They killed the man in the apartment below mine by mistake.”

  “Holy shit. That was a bad mistake to make,” Lisa said.

  “They hushed it up as they always did. It didn’t make it into the newspapers. The official cause of death was a heart attack even though the man was only forty-two years old.”

  “How did they kill him?” Lisa was always interested to hear how other assassins operated.

  “Four British agents broke into his apartment while he was in the shower. When he came out of the shower they were sitting in his bedroom waiting for him. He managed to break the nose of one of the British agents before they killed him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “A double agent at the British Embassy in Vienna sent us the confidential report on his death. The British report said that it was basically a complete mess. They hadn’t cleared the hit with the Americans either and they got into real trouble over it. The guy who planned the hit was demoted and sent back to Britain. The British said that the only redeeming thing about the hit was that the victim had no family so there was nobody who had to identify the body. The GRU killed two members of the British team involved within three months of it happening. It was important to send a message.”

  “Why did they try to kill you?”

  “I was much more successful than the other Russian agents operating, especially with the British women. Somehow I was able to charm them.”

  He was right. There was something about him. Lisa could see it in him. They walked further down Höheweg Street and then they found somewhere to have breakfast. She asked him to tell her about the most interesting place he had been on Earth and he told her about camping in the high altiplano in the central Andes Mountains in South America. He said that you could camp up there overnight and when you woke all the water in the streams would be frozen but the sun was so powerful that the ice would melt and you could watch the streams start to flow again. She asked him which was his favorite city in South America and he said it was Buenos Aires in Argentina although he liked Montevideo in Uruguay and Santiago in Chile too.

  They finished breakfast and then they walked round Interlaken. Both of them had been there before and each wanted to show the other one their favorite places. His favorite place was actually the Japanese gardens although he liked Interlaken Castle too. She had never been to the castle before so they toured it and spent some time there. She took him to the Catholic Church near the Hotel Interlaken. She had always had it in her head that when her time came she was going to book the priest in the church for one full day so that he could hear her confession. She didn’t tell Hovhannes that as it would be tactless considering that he would die today.

  They went for lunch and while they sat at the table he handed her a letter and asked her to read it. He told her that the letter gave full instructions for how he would like to die. H
e excused himself and said he was going to the bathroom. He told her that if she didn’t agree with what he had written then she should leave the letter on the table, otherwise she should put it away and not speak of it. She opened the letter as he left the room. In it he explained that he would like her to behave as though they were lovers who met just once a year. He wanted her to make love to him and then to kill him after that. In that way he would take good memories with him to the next world. He suggested that she kill him in the same way he had killed his brother and put a pillow over his head. He even went so far as to suggest that she kiss him on the forehead in the same he had kissed his brother. He would tell her when he was ready but it would very likely be shortly after they had made love. His letter also said that he was sure he would fight her and so she should tie his hands before they made love and would that be a problem? It would not be a problem. She had never tied a man up before killing him, normally that would just not feel right to her but in this case since he knew it was coming she could do it. She put the letter in her handbag just before he returned to his seat. She saw that he noticed that it was not on the table but he did not mention it. In fact, he seemed more relaxed now. To her the rest of the day suddenly became more precious and she could see that he felt the same way too. She played the part he wanted her to play and they strolled along like lovers with their arms around each other. She liked the feel of his arm around her waist.

  The afternoon went far too fast and as dusk fell he led her to an apartment that the Russian mafia from Zurich had rented for the weekend. After she had killed him a doctor in the pay of the mafia would certify that he had died of heart failure. If she used a pillow as he had requested then there would be no ligature marks around his neck although she would keep her garrote close in case she needed to use it. She was surprised to realize that this thought bothered her. In the apartment they sat together by the window and watched the world go by and then when he was ready they went into the bedroom. She was a skilled seductress and she stripped him naked and then took her own clothes off. He told her that they would make love either once or twice depending on how he felt and when he was ready he would tell her. His letter had said that he would lie on his back and she should tie his arms to the bed and then mount him. She tied his arms first and then spent more than an hour on foreplay. By then he was so turned on that he came almost immediately and she lay on top of him body to body and they spent several minutes just kissing each other. Then they lay and talked until he was ready to go again. She mounted him and this time it lasted a long time. When he came he kept his eyes open and he looked into her eyes until his orgasm subsided.

  He told her he was ready and she kissed him once on the forehead and then she was seized by a moment of doubt. The compartment in her head that was marked assassination had failed to open as it normally did. She looked at him and stroked the side of his face with her hand.

  “Are you sure this is what you want,” she said.

  She knew as soon as she said the words that she should not have said them. Perhaps she said them because she had seen doubt in his eyes as they were making love.

  His eyes changed and became hard. “You are an assassin,” he said. “Do your job. Do what I paid you for.”

  Before he had even gotten all the words out the compartment in her head flipped open. The pillow was already in her hands and she pushed it down on his face. He fought her and he bucked and writhed beneath her. He twisted his head from side to side and she had trouble keeping the pillow over his face. She put her full weight onto her hands and moved forward so that her thighs were either side of his chest. She wrestled two or three times a week sometimes with women but usually with men and her thighs were strong from the times when she had to grip her opponent. Once she had her thighs either side of his chest she was able to pretty much stop him moving and she pushed hard down upon the pillow. He stopped moving after two minutes. She kept his airway blocked for her standard twenty minutes and then she lifted the pillow. He looked at peace and she leaned forward and kissed him once on the forehead. As she did this a single tear ran down the side of her face.