53
* * *
Wentworth
THE BRITISH PRIME Minister had wanted a television spectacular. To Malachi Zorn’s delight, what he got was a live horror show.
It had all been caught on camera: one helicopter exploding in mid-air; the other in its death-spiral to the ground; the flaming debris raining down upon spectators; the slaughter on the ground; the screams of reporters as they realized that they, too, were as vulnerable as anyone else; the roar of the flames, the volcanic thunder of the explosions, and then the darkness as one by one the TV crews were added to the casualties, their equipment was destroyed and their broadcasts died. For a minute there was nothing but blackness from Rosconway, and panic in the studios of TV channels whose presenters were realizing that they had just witnessed the deaths of old friends and colleagues along with all the other casualties.
Then the lost BBC van arrived, and a single feed from Rosconway supplied footage that was sent around the world – footage that sent global financial markets into a frenzy as traders tried to digest the implications of a major US oil corporation suffering a terrorist attack on supposedly friendly soil. It showed an attack that had killed three members of the British government, an EU minister, a senior US diplomat, Nicholas Orwell, and, if rumours already surfacing on the internet were to be believed, the Director of British Special Forces.
Just as on 9/11, the financial implications were immediate, and felt throughout the global economy. Oil prices spiked. So did gold, as investors sought a safe haven. The pound plummeted. Investors started dumping UK government bonds. The Bank of England had not yet raised interest rates, but it could only be a matter of minutes, and that would add further downward pressure to the UK economy. The FTSE index in London plunged almost eight per cent as energy stocks, already softened by recent comments made by Malachi Zorn, collapsed. Insurance companies were hit as the multi-billion cost of rebuilding the refinery became evident. The shares of airlines, airport operators, hotel corporations and online travel agencies on both sides of the Atlantic fell as the markets decided that US travellers, nervous of threats to their safety, would stay away from Britain. Defence stocks, however, rose. It was reasonable to assume that the British government’s savage defence cuts might now be reversed. And since, as Zorn had also pointed out in his BBC interview, Britain’s energy supplies were dominated by foreign-owned corporations, the knock-on effects were felt on the bourses of Europe. And with the New York Stock Exchange due to open at two thirty in the afternoon, UK time, they would hit Wall Street like a tsunami rolling across the Atlantic.
There was an atmosphere of stunned, speechless despair at 10 Downing Street. There was frenzy in financial institutions. But at Zorn’s hired mansion on the Wentworth estate there was only the exultant laughter of a man for whom Christmas Day has come earlier, and more joyously, than he could have dreamed possible. This was the single biggest financial coup of all time. He had made tens of billions of dollars, pounds, euros, yen and Chinese yuan. Now all he had to do was collect it. If 9/11 was anything to go by, the markets would soon be shut down. He had just a few minutes, maybe less, to get out of all his positions, collecting his winnings on the way. There wasn’t a second to lose.
54
* * *
Kensington Park Gardens
ALIX COULD SEE Dmytryk Azarov’s lips move. She could hear the words he was saying. She knew – because he’d made a point of emphasizing this fact, as if to prove her importance to him – that he’d cancelled an important business meeting to be with her. But he was wasting his breath, because she felt so totally disconnected from him that none of it made any difference. He was as distant from her, and as unimportant, as the reporter on the screen of the television that was on, but ignored, in the far corner of the sitting room.
‘Don’t believe what they say in the papers about these women I was supposed to be seeing,’ Azarov was saying, working himself up into a fever of righteous indignation. ‘These … what do they call them? … party girls, who claim that I slept with them. It is all lies. These women just want money, and journalists are vermin who will spread any slander to sell their filthy rags …’
He felt he had to persuade her, that much was obvious. But Alix didn’t care if he’d slept with one party girl, or ten, or one hundred. Her head was filled with Carver. Her body was still sending reminders that he had been inside her, like pulsing echoes of their lovemaking.
‘All the time I was away, all I thought about was you,’ Azarov went on. ‘You were in my dreams. I missed your body next to mine …’
He didn’t realize that all he was doing was making Alix think of Carver’s body next to her. The memory of his touch was so vivid that it sent a little shiver through her, and made her catch her breath.
Azarov saw that tremor of emotion, and, of course, misinterpreted it. ‘You feel the same way, too! I knew it!’
Alix managed a wan smile as Azarov launched into another declaration of his passion for her. She was wondering how and when she was going to extract herself from Azarov’s life. She couldn’t possibly mention Carver. Irrespective of his own behaviour, Azarov did not take kindly to women who betrayed him, or the men with whom they slept. He would want revenge, and that frightened Alix, not just for Carver’s sake but also Azarov’s. He would not know what he was taking on.
She wondered where Carver was now. She knew what it meant when he disappeared the way he’d done last night. He was working. And she knew what that led to, too: violence, danger, secrecy and the constant worry of never knowing where he was and when, if ever, he would come home. By making love to him, and making herself so vulnerable to the effect he had on her, she had let that back into her life. She’d broken a vow she’d made to herself and …
Alix realized that Azarov had fallen silent. He was looking past her with an expression of total incredulity on his face. ‘Mother of God,’ he gasped, regaining the power of speech.
Alix turned to follow his staring eyes, and saw the television screen go blank, before the picture cut back to a pair of presenters trying to maintain some semblance of professional self-control.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
Azarov walked across to the remote control that was sitting beside the television, and rewound the picture. Alix watched explosions fall in upon themselves to leave intact metal towers and tanks. One helicopter flew backwards from the ground up into the sky, and another was magically reconstituted in mid-air. Then Azarov pressed play and the action was repeated, this time in the correct direction and at the right speed, ending in that terrible blank, dead screen. And as she watched Alix knew, with an intuitive certainty she could not possibly explain, that Carver was there. That blazing oil refinery had been the destination he had been heading for when he had left her lying in his bed.
He was there. And now, so soon after she had found him, Alix feared she had lost him for ever.
But while she worried about the personal cost of what had happened, Azarov was already working through the financial consequences. ‘This is exactly what Zorn said would happen. It’s almost as if … no, that’s impossible.’ He looked at Alix, talking to her now less as his lover than as another businessperson. ‘Do you think he knew this would happen? Or that he made it happen?’
Whatever Alix’s differences with Azarov, she shared with him the instinctive Russian belief that behind any disaster there was always a conspiracy. ‘That’s possible, of course it is,’ she said, her mind now fully engaged in the question. Carver had talked about Zorn, linking him to the woman she had known as Celina Novak. Now she could see connections starting to form in her mind between a string of previously separate elements: her mistrust of Zorn, her conviction that Carver had been at the refinery, and now the suggestion that Zorn had somehow been the instigator of the disaster there.
‘What will you do if Zorn really did plan all this?’ she asked Azarov. ‘I did warn you that I thought there was something suspicious about his scheme.’
Azarov grinned. ‘And I told you that a man should not pick up the dice unless he has the balls to lose everything on a single roll. I am very happy that I placed my money on Zorn. He has certainly rolled the dice. Surely, too, he will win.’
A picture of Nicholas Orwell appeared on the screen, as a presenter’s voice announced that he was missing, believed dead at the scene.
Now Azarov laughed out loud. ‘So he was willing to let his closest ally die to help his plan succeed. Ha! This Zorn is a man with iron in his soul.’
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Alix insisted. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘And you asked the wrong question, my beautiful darling. It should have been: what are we going to do? And I will tell you. We have been invited to go to the tennis at Wimbledon tomorrow with Malachi Zorn. If he still goes – and he will, I guarantee – then we will go with him. I want to take another close look at this man, and I would like you to do the same. I want to know exactly what he is made of, and a woman’s eye will see what a man’s does not. You know the saying: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I do not yet know whether Malachi Zorn is my greatest friend or my most bitter enemy. But either way, I will stay close.’
Dmytryk Azarov was by no means the only one of Malachi Zorn’s investors to be glued to the TV news. In his suite at Claridge’s, chosen at Charlene’s insistence because it had been designed by Diane von Furstenberg, Mort Lockheimer was cheering every horrific element of the disaster unfolding before his eyes. He had watched Zorn’s BBC interview and been puzzled by the way so much of it had been devoted to the risk of energy terrorism. Now he got it. Zorn had obviously been given some kind of inside information that an attack was imminent – either from the perpetrators or through leaks from the security forces; Lockheimer wasn’t bothered which. Zorn must have set up a bunch of short positions, just like he’d done so many times before. Now he was watching them all pay off in spades. And if Zorn was getting rich, so was Lockheimer.
Lockheimer was at least forty pounds overweight. His entire body was covered in a thick mat of black and grey hair, and the only thing covering it right now was a white towelling bathrobe. ‘What did I tell you!’ he exclaimed, grabbing Charlene in a gleeful bear hug. ‘That little f*cker Zorn just hit the f*ckin’ jackpot. Didn’t I say you should blow him … didn’t I?’
Charlene looked at her husband appraisingly. ‘He made us a lot, huh? Millions?’
‘Tens of millions, baby!’
She reached down and started undoing the knot of the towelling belt that was holding her husband’s robe together. ‘Well, in that case, sweetie, why don’t I just blow you?’
55
* * *
Rosconway
THE CABINET OFFICE staff had arranged for a St John Ambulance crew to be present at the conference, just in case anyone tripped over a pipe, or was taken ill. Somehow they had survived the blast with their vehicle intact. But Carver only had to take one look at the chalk-white skin and dazed eyes of the amateur volunteers to know that they were too traumatized by the overwhelming violence that they had just witnessed to be of any help. It made little difference: he and Schultz knew enough about basic battlefield medicine to tend to Nikki Wilkins’s immediate needs. They climbed up into the ambulance and commandeered the splints, bandages and morphine shots they needed to stabilize her broken leg and head injury, and reduce the pain of the wounds. Then they carried Wilkins, still unconscious, back to the Audi, laid her out along the rear seat, and strapped her in as best they could.
‘Drive,’ said Carver. ‘Head for Pembroke. There’s got to be a hospital there.’
They were less than a mile down the road, still travelling beneath a pall of smoke that was spreading across the sky as far as the eye could see, before Carver had gone online and found both the location of the South Pembrokeshire Hospital and directions for getting there. He was about to offer Schultz his condolences for Tyrrell’s loss – nothing too overwrought, just a simple acknowledgement that a good man had gone – when the phone rang. It was Grantham. His first words were: ‘You’re alive.’
‘Don’t sound so disappointed,’ Carver replied.
‘You know, for once, I might actually be pleased to hear your voice,’ said Grantham. ‘So what the hell just happened?’
‘Someone stuck a dozen home-made mortar barrel tubes in an old Hiace van, loaded them with explosive shells, and blew the shit out of an entire refinery. And I should have stopped them.’
‘How?’
‘I wasn’t at the refinery when the shells hit. I was at the launch site.’
‘What do you mean? Had you found out what was happening?’
‘No, I’d worked out what might happen. I didn’t think there’d actually be anything there.’
‘Well, that’s as clear as mud.’
‘Sorry …’ It struck Carver that he might not be as out of it as that St John Ambulance crew, but his mind was still reeling as it struggled to process what he had just experienced. It was time he pulled himself together.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Here’s how it was done. The van that contained the mortars was parked inside an old barn, at a deserted farmyard about a kilometre from the refinery. The weapon was set to a timer, along with some kind of incendiary device – petrol by the smell of it. The moment the mortars fired, the van was burned out, removing all trace of the people who’d driven it or worked on the weapon. This was a professional job, straight out of the old IRA manual.’
‘Really? You think there were Paddies involved?’
‘Maybe … but it could just as easily have been one of ours. Anyone who served in Ulster during the Troubles, or even did bomb disposal work on this side of the Irish Sea, would have seen things like this.’
‘But how could they have known about the conference today?’
Carver thought for a moment: no, it was out of the question. ‘They couldn’t,’ he said, definitively. ‘Look, this was a totally last-minute event. No one had any warning. That’s why it was such a dog’s breakfast. The organization, the security, the media coverage – it was all a total joke. But this attack was the exact opposite. It was very carefully calculated. Whoever hit the refinery had every single one of those launcher tubes calibrated to the last millimetre, the last bloody fraction of a degree. Each of those things hit a target. And making the launch tubes, the framework to hold them, all the projectiles … getting hold of the explosives … no, there wasn’t anything last-minute about that. I’d say weeks of preparation, even months, went into this.’
‘So what are you saying – that it was just a bloody coincidence? I’m not buying that.’
‘Why not? Stranger things have happened. But even if it was a coincidence that the attack and the conference were planned for the same place at the same time, I don’t think there was anything remotely coincidental about the time and place of the attack itself. Come on … someone blows the crap out of a massive oil refinery the day after Malachi Zorn’s told the whole world that eco-terrorism is the big new threat … What do you think?’
‘I think it’s a bit bloody adjacent, certainly.’
‘Exactly, so what are the markets doing right now? Let me guess: oil price rocketing, stocks crashing, pound through the floor …’
‘All of that and more,’ Grantham agreed. ‘It’s a total nightmare. The economy was weak to begin with. An event like this could send it over the edge.’
‘Meanwhile Zorn’s cashing in. He’s got to be. The whole thing was a set-up.’
‘Except for Orwell … how do you explain that? Are you seriously saying Zorn deliberately sacrificed his own right-hand man?’
‘I don’t know,’ Carver admitted. ‘He could have done. The amount of money he stands to make, my guess is he’d do just about anything. But you’re right … I don’t have any concrete link between this and Zorn.’
‘I might be able to help you with that,’ Grantham said. ‘Early this morning, hours before the refinery was hit, someone went to a farmhouse in the middle of Wales, miles from anywhere, and executed four men and a woman. According to the locals, they’d been staying there for the past few days. The police are searching the place now. They’ve found evidence of a bomb-making factory: a couple of kilos of home-made explosives, plus several discarded gas canisters of various sizes, steel girders, welding equipment—’
‘Exactly what you’d need to make the set-up I saw,’ Carver pointed out.
‘Precisely.’
‘But everyone was killed. What good is that?’
‘Not everyone. One of them got away, a woman, name of Deirdre Bull. She tried to make a run for it. Whoever attacked the farmhouse tracked her, shot her, and left her for dead. But she lived. In fact, she’s lying in the intensive care unit at Bronglais General Hospital, Aberystwyth, right now. Oh, and here’s an interesting titbit: when she was rescued she even told the paramedics they had to stop the attack …’
‘What? She told them about Rosconway?’
‘No such luck. She just mentioned an attack. They thought she meant the one on the farm.’
‘Christ, has she been interviewed yet?’
‘Apparently not. The local coppers have been told she’s not well enough to talk.’
‘Oh, bollocks to that!’
For the first time the hint of a smile entered Grantham’s voice. ‘That’s what I thought, too. Why don’t you get up there, see if you can get in for a word with Ms Bull? Play at being Andy Jenkins, pillar of the MoD, a while longer. I’ll have a word with the local police chief, appeal to his sense of patriotism at a time of national emergency, so you shouldn’t have any trouble from him.’
‘What about the medics?’
‘Oh, just use your natural charm, Carver. How can they resist?’
‘I’d better get going. It’s got to be a two-hour drive to Aberystwyth, minimum.’
‘No need. There’s an airport at Haverfordwest, just the other side of Milford Haven from where you are now. They’ve got a helicopter charter outfit there. Get a chopper, go to the hospital, get Bull to link this to Zorn, and then get back here to London. We need to discuss what to do about Zorn. And speaking of that particular devil, he’s about to make a public statement, live on every TV channel known to mankind. I’d better see what he has to say for himself.’
Carver put away the phone and turned on the car radio, tuning it to Radio 5 Live, and heard the voice of a news reporter saying she was outside the mysterious American billionaire Malachi Zorn’s Surrey mansion, and was expecting him to appear at any moment.
‘Zorn?’ asked Schultz, as they entered the outskirts of Pembroke. ‘Is that the bastard you said was responsible for what just happened?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’d like to tear that f*cker limb from f*cking limb.’
Carver looked at Schultz. He’d planned on doing the Zorn job alone. But there was a lot to be said for having the massive SBS man on his side. He thought about his plans and the specific ways in which Schultz might improve them. Yes, it could certainly work.
‘Suppose I helped you do that?’ he asked.
‘You taking the piss, boss?’
‘Never been more serious. Listen, no one knows whether you’re dead or alive right now …’
‘Nah, suppose not.’
‘And it’s going to be days before they work out the final casualty lists. So you could just disappear off the grid, couldn’t you?’
‘The CO’s not going to like that. I’m a company sergeant major. I’m supposed to set an example, do my duty, not piss off on private jollies.’
‘Don’t worry about that. The man I was just talking to is a very influential individual. If I ask him to square it for you, trust me, there won’t be a problem.’
Schultz pulled up at a red light and gave Carver a long, searching look. ‘What exactly was it you said you did for a living, boss?’
‘I didn’t say.’
‘But we’re going after this Zorn geezer?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you know a bloke who can just call up Poole, get my CO on the line, and tell him what to do?’
‘Yes.’
The light turned green and Schultz drove away. ‘And what exactly do you want from me?’
‘Drop the girl at the hospital and get me to the airport at Haverfordwest. Then head for London. Give me a number and I’ll call you. We’ll be doing the job tomorrow. We’re going to need someone else, too, someone we can trust. And I mean, absolutely. One word of this gets out—’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got the right man. He was in the Service, got out about six months ago. Just about to f*ck off to Iraq with one of them Yank security companies.’
‘And he’s good?’
‘One of the best.’
‘Then that’ll do me.’
‘And we’re going to take this Zorn bastard out?’
‘Well, Snoopy,’ said Carver, ‘just you wait and see.’
On the radio the presenter was saying, ‘And now let’s cross back, live, to Surrey, where we are about to hear an official statement from the man who predicted a tragedy like today’s, and who was a close personal friend of the late Nicholas Orwell. I can see on my monitor that the statement is about to begin. So this is Malachi Zorn …’
56
* * *
Wentworth
MALACHI ZORN’S PR PEOPLE had advised him to wait a few hours before he faced the media. It was worth taking time, they said, for their best writers to craft a statement. He had said no. ‘I don’t want a crafted statement. I just want to go out and speak from the heart.’ The PRs had protested, but at the same time, he had seen their minds working out how to use his determination just to go out and speak his mind on behalf of a departed friend as a story in itself. It was a nice human touch: the media would gobble it up. Of course, he’d had hours to contemplate his reaction to Orwell’s likely demise, and months to think about the refinery’s destruction. So there was very little that was spontaneous or off the cuff about what he was going to say. Nor was it an accident that the few rough notes – ‘NB: VICTIMS most important … Nicholas counsellor, contributor, friend … human not financial tragedy … business as usual,’ and so on – scrawled on the sheet of paper in his hand had been written large enough to be picked up by zoom lenses. Even the hesitation with which he opened had been considered in advance.
‘Ahh …’ Zorn grimaced nervously and cleared his throat as he ran his eyes over the crowd of reporters in front of him, hoping to give as many of them as possible the impression that he had looked directly at them. He felt a momentary shock of alarm as the thought struck him that Carver might be out there in the crowd, ready to fire the bullet that would blow his brains out. The image didn’t frighten Zorn. It thrilled him: the shot of physical danger spiced up his financial gamble like a splash of chilli oil. He coughed to hide his excitement, and then began: ‘I want to make a short statement about today’s tragic events at the Rosconway refinery in Wales.’
Zorn looked down at the notes, as if seeing inspiration and reassurance from them, though he knew perfectly well what he was going to say. ‘My first and, ahh, deepest thoughts are for the victims of this terrible atrocity: the dead, the wounded, and all the loved ones who are feeling such loss and anguish at this dark hour. There will be much talk of the political and economic consequences of what has happened, but you know, we must never forget that this is a human tragedy that touches us all.’
He gave another look around his audience, drawing them in, making them complicit in what he said. He saw no sign of Carver, just one or two reporters who actually nodded back at him. Good: they were hooked. Now to gently reel them in.
‘Of course, no one person’s life is of any greater value than another’s. But I hope you will allow me to pay a special tribute to my colleague and dear friend Nicholas Orwell. I got to know Nicholas very well over the past few months, as he and I worked together on the development of the Zorn Global fund. To the British people, he was of course a strong and greatly admired leader …’ Total bullshit, of course: Zorn knew perfectly well the contempt in which Orwell was held by many, if not most of his former electors, but no one wanted to be reminded of that now.
‘But to me, he was a fine man, a wise counsellor and an invaluable contributor to this venture. Above all, he had an incredible gift for relating to other people, and winning their trust and understanding. Nicholas made all our investors feel like true partners in a fund whose purpose is to unite people from different nations, different cultures and different generations in a single enterprise spanning the world we all share. We will all miss you, Nick, but I know that wherever you are, you will be delighted to hear that we will not be defeated or downcast by your tragic loss. Zorn Global is already trading, and its public launch will take place as planned on Friday evening.’
The last sentence had, as Zorn had intended, caught everyone’s attention. After all the obligatory tributes, here was a nugget of hard news: Zorn Global was going ahead whether Orwell was there or not. That he, the host, might also be absent, too, would not occur to anyone.
He continued, ‘Now, as many of you know, I have for many months warned that an event such as today’s might occur. In fact, I discussed it on the BBC World show HARDtalk earlier this week. It is also no secret that my security concerns have influenced the investment decisions I have made, both on my own account and on behalf of Zorn Global and its clients. You know, even within the past hour I’ve already seen speculation on various financial websites suggesting that I may have profited to the tune of tens of billions of dollars from what happened at Rosconway …’
As the phrase ‘tens of billions of dollars’ was jotted down in dozens of notepads, Zorn took on the voice and demeanour of a stern, high-minded headmaster, disappointed by the conduct of a few unruly pupils. ‘I am not prepared to dignify such speculation with any official comment. It is simply not appropriate to consider personal gain at a time like this; people’s lives are far more important than financial profit or loss.’
If it was not proper to consider personal gain, the clear implication was that there had been some … and the words ‘tens of billions’ were already on the record, just waiting to be attached to it. Now Zorn added a political dimension. ‘But I can say that I have already spoken to the British Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and assured them both that, at a time when I am enjoying the hospitality of the United Kingdom, I have no intention of harming its economy. I have therefore divested myself of all my short positions in UK-listed corporations, UK government bonds and sterling.’
Fighting hard to contain his amusement, Zorn contemplated the sheer panic that would be seizing the trading rooms of banks and hedge funds as they digested the news that he’d got out of all his positions. They would be racing to do the same as the market rebounded. The way things were now, if he said he was going long, everyone would want to pile in and do the same. And, of course, he’d already taken the fresh positions that anticipated such a move.
Now it was time to show he wasn’t just about making money. He could give it away, too. ‘I am sure that this great nation will swiftly and completely recover from the blow it has been dealt today, just as it recovered from the Blitz and the bombs of 7/7. And to do my bit in assisting that process, I will be setting up a fund to aid victims and their families, to which I will be making a personal donation of a hundred million dollars.’
There was actually a gasp from the crowd at the size of the donation. Maybe in time they would figure out that it was far less than one per cent of his personal profits. But for now the headline figure would be all that anyone cared about. Zorn caught the eye of a young woman to one side of the crowd. She worked for his PR agency, and she was gazing at him as adoringly as a thirteen-year-old girl worshipping a teen idol. He gave her a flash of his best, most dazzling smile, then returned to his speech.
‘Finally, I would like to say that I have absolute faith in the ability of the UK authorities to track down the perpetrators of this appalling crime, and bring them to justice. We all have a duty now to assist in this investigation in any way possible, to do everything we can to support those who have been affected, and to carry on with our lives as normal. Terrorism must not be allowed to win. I will be carrying on with my schedule exactly as I had planned, and I advise everyone else to do the same. Thank you.’
At once there was a clamour of questions from the media, and a forest of hands shooting up, seeking his attention. But Zorn paid no attention to them. He simply gave a couple of brisk nods, turned on his heels and walked back into his rented house.
Another stage of his plan had been triumphantly completed.
57
* * *
Bronglais General Hospital, Aberystwyth
IT WAS 1.15 P.M. when the helicopter landed on a patch of open ground on the western edge of the University of Aberystwyth campus, close to the National Library of Wales complex. The hospital was just a couple of hundred yards away, and Carver was already out of the helicopter and walking across the grass, past groups of startled students, before the pilot had cut the engine. He made his way to the intensive care unit, flashing his ‘Andy Jenkins’ Ministry of Defence pass at the receptionist, and walking straight by. A young, uniformed female PC was stationed outside the room where Deirdre Bull had been taken.
‘My name’s Jenkins,’ Carver said, showing her the pass. ‘I need to speak to Deirdre Bull.’
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘That won’t be possible. No one’s been allowed in there. Not even us.’
‘I understand,’ said Carver. ‘But my boss has spoken to your boss. And I mean your Chief Constable. Go ahead and check.’
The policewoman had a brief conversation on her radio. ‘Well, that seems to be in order,’ she said. ‘But it’s not really a police decision. You’ll have to ask Dr Fenwick. He’s the one who can help you.’
‘I see. And where can I find Dr Fenwick?’
‘Right here,’ said a voice from behind Carver’s back.
Fenwick was a short, black-haired man. He placed himself between Carver and the door to Deirdre Bull’s room, and glared at him like a surly guard dog. ‘I’m not at all happy about you, or anyone else, speaking to Ms Bull,’ Fenwick said. ‘She’s suffered very serious injuries and considerable loss of blood, followed by a lengthy operation. She’s a very sick woman indeed.’
‘Well, I’m very sorry for her,’ said Carver. ‘But this is a matter of national security.’
Fenwick looked at him disdainfully. ‘National security is not my concern. Patient welfare is.’
Carver gritted his teeth. Fenwick was no more than five feet eight inches tall, mildly overweight, and presumably untrained in any form of combat, whether armed or unarmed. The temptation to give him an educational slap was all but over whelming. But Grantham had told him to use his charm, so, fine, he’d try that. Well, up to a point he would, anyway.
‘You’ve heard about what happened at Rosconway this morning?’
Fenwick grimaced impatiently. ‘Yes. What of it?’
‘We believe the woman in that room there may be able to give us vital information about who was responsible. The death toll’s over two hundred, in case you hadn’t heard. Hundreds more injured. So if patient welfare is your concern, perhaps you’d like to tell all the people who are sitting in hospitals all over Wales, waiting to discover if the men and women they love are going to be all right, why this woman is so bloody precious. I was at Rosconway, Dr Fenwick. I saw it happen. So please, do me a favour … don’t talk to me about patient welfare.’
It might have been Carver’s oratorial skills that did the trick, or just the intensely intimidating coldness of the gaze he fixed on Fenwick. But in any event, the doctor briefly relented: ‘All right, but make it quick. Now,’ he went on, regaining a little self-confidence and looking right back at Carver, almost daring him to try something, ‘I’m going to observe you. If you are in any way hostile or threatening to this patient – if you so much as raise your voice – I’m ending it, immediately. And I’m her doctor. So I don’t care who you are, or what you’re really up to. As long as you’re in my hospital what I say goes. Got it?’
‘Absolutely. Let’s do it.’
Fenwick opened the door, and led Carver into the room. Deirdre Bull was lying with an arm and a leg in traction. Her head was bandaged. She had an oxygen mask on her face and a drip attached to her right arm. A monitor beside her bed tracked her pulse, blood pressure, temperature and respiration. She looked at them blearily through heavy, barely open lids, spaced out on painkillers that would be making it almost as hard for her to think straight as to move.
Carver’s spirits sank. The woman was even more wrecked than he had feared. But she was the only surviving member of the terrorist gang that anyone had been able to find, so if he couldn’t get anything out of her, there wasn’t anywhere else to go.
58
* * *
FENWICK TOOK UP station at the head of Bull’s bed and motioned to Carver to sit in a chair positioned halfway down the mattress. Carver was about to speak, but Fenwick raised a hand to stop him. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said.
Fenwick bent closer to Bull’s head. ‘Hello, Deirdre, there’s a gentleman here who’d like to have a word with you,’ he said, in an unexpectedly gentle voice. ‘You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to. But if you do, don’t worry, I’ll be here all the time to make sure you’re all right.’
Bull tried to focus on Carver. ‘Uh … who are you?’ she asked, sounding as though each word was an effort.
‘My name is Andy Jenkins,’ Carver replied, with what he hoped was an ingratiating smile. ‘I work for the Ministry of Defence. I’m not a policeman. I’m not interested in collecting evidence against you. I just want a quiet, private chat – off the record. Do you understand?’
‘Not sure. Why d’you want to chat?’
‘It’s a matter of national security. You’d be helping us keep people safe. And I’m sure you want to help …’
She looked uncertain. ‘Well, yes, suppose so.’
‘Good. Well, then, when they found you this morning, you told the paramedics, “You’ve got to stop the attack” …’
Bull looked at Fenwick for confirmation. ‘Did I?’
‘I believe so,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Carver underlined, wondering when exactly Fenwick had known about a possible attack, and hoping for his sake that it hadn’t been before ten thirty. ‘So were you talking about the attack on Rosconway refinery – the one that happened today?’
‘Dunno …’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
Bull struggled to formulate the words. ‘I’ve never heard that name … what was it?’
‘Rosconway.’
With more certainty she said: ‘No, I’ve never heard that before.’
‘But you knew there was going to be some kind of attack somewhere?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t know where it was going to be,’ Bull argued, finding it a little easier, now, to talk. ‘All Bryn told us was that the target was a place that was harming Mother Earth.’
‘I see. Who’s Bryn?’
She sounded surprised he didn’t know. ‘Bryn Gryffud, of course. He’s … well, not the leader, because we don’t believe in that kind of hierarchy … but he’s the founder of the Forces of Gaia, our group. It was his farm we were staying at.’
Carver caught Bull’s eye and held it as he said, ‘Did Bryn get you all to fit up a Toyota Hiace camper van with a dozen home-made mortar tubes, firing explosive shells, set on some kind of timer fuse?’
Bull nodded, too ashamed to acknowledge what had happened in actual words, and Carver saw Fenwick frown as he looked at her, the reality of what she’d been involved with starting to sink in.
‘I was there when the mortars went off, Deirdre,’ Carver said. ‘Right there, standing by the van. Couldn’t do anything to stop it. I don’t feel too good about that. Thing is, I saw what those shells did. They killed two hundred people, Deirdre: innocent people, just going about their lives, doing their jobs, loving their families. Did they all die for the sake of the planet?’
She’d been biting her lip as he spoke, trying to retain some self-control. Now her face crumpled, and tears filled her eyes as she sobbed. ‘Oh God … oh God … I worried something bad might happen … I prayed to Gaia because I was worried we were doing the wrong thing. But Bryn sounded so convinced, and I, well, we all, we just believed him, and—’
‘Because he’s a good man. Yeah, I get it.’
‘Where is he? Is he all right?’
Carver shrugged. ‘How should I know? He’s not exactly advertising his whereabouts.’
Bull sniffed, and then muttered, ‘Thanks,’ as Fenwick pulled some tissues from a box by her bed and handed them to her. ‘It’s all that bloody woman’s fault,’ she continued, wide awake now, wiping her face with her working hand. ‘She’s the one who put the idea into Bryn’s head …’
‘What woman?’ asked Carver, frowning.
‘Uschi … Uschi bloody Kremer …’ Bull’s voice rose in intensity, filled with bitterness and pain that had nothing at all to do with her physical wounds. ‘It was so obvious – the men only went along with her because they wanted to get into her knickers.’
The last thing Carver wanted was to be diverted by an angry woman’s sexual jealousy. ‘OK … take it easy. I know you didn’t want anyone to get hurt.’
‘No! I don’t believe in violence! I—’ Her words were cut short by a gasp of pain. ‘My chest hurts so much,’ she whimpered, her eyes filling with tears again as she slumped back against her pillows. ‘Everything hurts …’
Fenwick turned to Carver. ‘I’m sorry, but this isn’t doing her any good at all. If you carry on like this, I’m pulling the plug.’
‘Just give me a minute,’ Carver pleaded. ‘This won’t take long …’ He took a second to gather his wits, then focused on Deirdre Bull once again. ‘I’m sure you’d like a chance to make things better. To try and put things right … as much as they can be put right, obviously.’
She nodded miserably. ‘Yes … please … I never meant to do any harm.’
Carver glanced across at Fenwick, and was relieved to get a nod of approval. ‘All right …’ he continued. ‘Have you ever heard of a man called Malachi Zorn?’
Bull looked puzzled. ‘No … should I?’
‘I don’t know … He’s an American, works as a financier.’
‘Well, no wonder I’ve not heard of him. He’s obviously the kind of man I despise. I don’t want to know about people like that.’
Carver tried again: ‘Or how about a Pakistani man called Ahmad Razzaq? He’s middle-aged, wears a moustache, quite distinguished-looking. Sometimes calls himself Shafik.’
‘No … I don’t know anyone like that at all.’ She sounded more confident now, as though her ignorance somehow established her innocence.
‘You haven’t even heard their names mentioned by other people … people like Bryn?’
‘No.’
They seemed to have reached a dead end, and Fenwick sensed it, too. ‘Well, that settles it. She can’t help you. I think we should call this a day.’
Carver tried not to let his desperation show. He was sure he was close to a breakthrough, if only he could find the right button to push. Something Bull had said had rung a bell, but he’d missed it, failed to make the right connection. It was there, though, somewhere: he knew it. He fixed an ingratiating smile on his face and spoke to Fenwick and Bull together. ‘Wait, let’s just take it nice and easy … a few simple questions. Nothing to get excited about. Is that all right?’
Fenwick looked at Bull.
She nodded.
He gave Carver a shrug that said, ‘Be my guest.’
‘So … How many of you were there in the group?’ Carver asked.
Bull closed her eyes, picturing her old comrades in her mind. ‘Ahh … six of us at first, then Dave Smethurst and that Swiss bitch joined …’
‘Kremer?’ Carver asked, thinking: ‘Her again.’ Bull nodded. Kremer loomed so large in Bull’s memories of the group. Maybe he should stick with Kremer: see where that took him.
‘So when was that?’
‘About four or five months ago, I suppose. Though even then, she was never really part of it like the rest of us. She was always flitting in and out, leading this disgusting, privileged life …’
‘So she’s rich?’ he asked, a bell just starting to ring, very faintly, in the back of his mind.
‘Her family’s stinking rich. That’s what she said, anyway, and the way she behaved, I believed it.’
‘And you people weren’t violent before she arrived, four or five months ago?’
Bull gave a feeble shake of the head, wincing at the effort. ‘No … I mean, we believed in direct action as a way of making our point. But no one ever got hurt. We were just trying to attract people’s attention to what was being done to the planet.’
‘Then along comes Uschi Kremer and says …?’
‘Well, she never said anything to us women. But she was always whispering with Bryn, or taking him off to dinner … I’m sure he slept with her. She was certainly making it very obvious she was available.’
‘So she’s attractive?’ The bell was ringing louder now.
‘If you like that kind of thing. Personally, I think it’s cheap and vulgar. But you know what men are like …’
‘We fall for that kind of thing …’ Carver said, as it all tumbled into place: the woman who could seduce men at will, who’d always been able to make anyone do anything she wanted. Could it really be her?
‘Describe Uschi Kremer,’ he asked.
Bull gave a little ‘Huh!’ of disapproval. ‘Well, she’s older than she likes to admit, that’s for sure. The way she acts, you’d think she was in her early thirties, maybe even her twenties. But if she’s a day under forty, I’d be surprised. If you really look at her, close up, it’s much more obvious.’
Fenwick was leaning forward a little in his seat now, aware that something had changed. There was a new atmosphere of expectation in the room.
Carver already knew the answers when he asked, ‘Height, weight, eyes, hair colour?’
‘Oh, well … she’s a couple of inches taller than me, I suppose, and I’m five foot six. But she’s very slim. If she weighs much more than nine stone I’d be amazed. She’s less than that, even. She’s a redhead, so she’s got that colouring. You know, blue eyes …’
‘Freckled skin?’
Bull started, surprised. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Quite full lips: you know, pouty … sexy …’
Now she gave a puzzled frown. ‘I suppose so, yes, if that’s what you think is sexy. But how do you …?’
Carver raised a finger to his face. ‘A little groove, on the end of her nose … just here?’
‘Yes … yes, that’s right. Do you know her?’ Now Bull was displaying the anxiety of someone who suspects that they may have been the victim of an elaborate practical joke. Fenwick, too, was looking at Carver as if he was trying to spot the trick he was playing.
Carver got out his phone, put the black and white photo of Celina Novak on screen, and held it up so that Bull could see it. ‘Well, you tell me … is this her?’
‘Yes! That’s Uschi all right, though she looks a lot younger there.’
‘Thank you, Deirdre … thank you very much indeed.’
‘Really … have I helped?’
‘Oh yes. A lot.’ Carver nodded at Fenwick. ‘Thanks, doctor. Couldn’t have done it without you.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ll be on my way,’ he said.