59
* * *
Paxford, Gloucestershire
ON THE FRINGES of a village on the northern edge of the Cotswolds, where the last boxy little houses of a newly built estate met the first drab fields of farmland, stood a run-down scrap metal site. Its single-page website was dotted with contemporary, eco-friendly buzzwords like recycling and reclamation. But that didn’t alter the reality of a grimy, litter-strewn graveyard for abandoned cars and piles of metallic junk – from shopping-trolleys to radiators and old library shelves – run by three oil-stained, boilersuited men fuelled by PG Tips and nicotine. None of them were present as Uschi Kremer – alias Magda ‘Ginger’ Sternberg, alias Celina Novak – drove up the dusty lane that led beneath the arch of a long-abandoned railway and turned in through the scrapyard gates, ignoring the sign that said the yard was closed. The two black Range Rovers were waiting for her. Braddock was leaning against one of them, smoking. As she drove up, he threw the cigarette on the floor and ground it under his heel. The driver of the other Range Rover got out and walked towards his boss.
‘This is Turner,’ Braddock said as Ginger emerged from her car.
She did not bother to shake their hands or say hello. ‘There’s no one else here?’ she asked.
‘No. Gone to lunch,’ Braddock replied.
‘And when are they coming back?’
‘When they’ve pissed away the five hundred quid I gave them down the bookies and the pub. We’ve got a while.’
‘OK.’ Ginger looked around the yard, noting the CCTV cameras at the gate and by the front door to the Portakabin that served as an office. ‘What about these?’
‘All off. The video-machine’s not working. Something seems to have gone mysteriously wrong with it.’
‘Good. Then let’s get on.’
She opened up one of the rear doors and pulled away the blanket that had been covering the bodies of Gryffud and Smethurst. Braddock turned away in disgust at the stench that emanated from the corpses. Ginger looked at him contemptuously. ‘Their bowels evacuated at the moment of death,’ she said, speaking with a technician’s precision. ‘A man like you should be used to that.’
‘Shit still stinks, however much you’re used to it,’ he said. Then a thought struck him. ‘I’m not having that f*cking smell in my car!’
Ginger looked at him with utter contempt, then gave an impatient sigh. ‘All right, let’s clean it all up.’
There was a standpipe outside the Portakabin, with a bright yellow hose attached to it. Braddock and Turner pulled the two bodies out of Ginger’s BMW, before they and the car’s passenger compartment were drenched with water, rinsing away all the filth. Braddock took a roll of green plastic sheeting out of the back of the Range Rover and cut off a couple of metres of it, which he then laid on the ground. The two men dragged Brynmor Gryffud’s body on to the sheet, then rolled it over twice, so that the body was entirely wrapped in plastic. Braddock used gaffer tape to secure the package, and then he and Ginger hefted the body into the back of one of the Range Rovers.
The process was repeated for Dave Smethurst’s remains.
‘Good thing I’ve got blacked-out windows,’ Braddock said, breathing heavily as he closed the tailgate.
‘If you drive sensibly, there will be no problem,’ said Ginger bluntly, wasting none of her charm on him. ‘You are confident that the bodies will be disposed of securely?’
‘Oh yeah,’ Braddock assured her. ‘This bloke Gryffud was obsessed with the environment, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he’ll love what’s going to happen to the bodies, then …’
‘Just so long as no trace of them is ever found.’
‘It won’t be, trust me.’
‘Huh … So, now we deal with the car. Can you operate a forklift?’
‘I can’t … but he can.’
Turner got behind the controls of the scrapyard’s forklift. There was a compactor on the far side of the yard. It consisted of two massive steel slabs, supported by hydraulic lifts at either end. The forklift picked up the BMW and carried it across to the compactor. The car was slid on to the bottom slab, side-on, then given another couple of prods with the forklift’s two sharp prongs to make sure it was as far in as possible. Braddock pressed the button that operated the compactor, and the whine of the hydraulics combined with the sound of crumpling metal as the top slab descended with grinding inexorability, reducing the BMW to a mechanical sandwich filling. Braddock pushed another button, the two slabs parted again, and the forklift removed the crushed remains of the car and placed them on a pile of other flattened vehicles.
Ginger watched the proceedings from the passenger seat of the second Range Rover while she made a call to Derek Choi.
‘Do you know any more about the project we discussed?’ he asked.
‘No, I’ve been busy on other affairs.’
‘But you still anticipate activity tomorrow?’
‘I’m sure you heard the speech that our mutual friend made. The original schedule is being maintained, with a higher public profile than ever. So my original estimates still hold true.’
‘I agree. And I will proceed on that basis. Incidentally, your friend Samuel had company last night – a woman, Alexandra Petrova Vermulen. I believe you are old friends.’
Ginger caught the taunting edge to Choi’s voice, and was infuriated to realize that he had succeeded in getting to her. Of course, she did not want Carver. She had only seduced him for professional reasons. It wasn’t personal. So why did it annoy her so much to think of that pathetic little bitch Petrova getting her claws into him?
She had not even mustered a reply when Choi said, ‘Please contact me immediately if you receive any further information. Goodbye.’
Ginger used the five minutes between the end of the call and Turner’s return to the car to refresh her make-up, though she only applied her lipgloss and mascara with a fraction of her full concentration: the rest was devoted to Alexandra Petrova and what she would do to her if she ever got the chance. Turner gave her a lift to Moreton-in-Marsh Station, where she took the train back to London. She sat in the first-class compartment in a foul mood. With just a couple of sentences Derek Choi had ruined what should have been a triumphant day. She would not forget or forgive that, either.
An hour later Braddock drove his Range Rover up a broad track, deeply rutted by the tracks of heavy vehicles, that ran like a disfiguring scar across the side of a once picturesque hill. At the top of the hill a massive pit had been dug, a wound to the landscape made worse by the continuous slurry of concrete being poured into it from a line of giant truck-mounted mixers. This despoliation of the countryside was largely subsidized by government funds, despite the blatant flouting of every known planning regulation pertaining to conservation areas and Sites of Special Scientific Interest. (A scattering of rare orchids and several species of butterfly had once added their fragile beauty to the hilltop, only to be obliterated by the first few scoops of the digger’s bucket.) But then, the destruction of the environment didn’t seem to matter if its end result was a gigantic, noisy, bird-shredding wind turbine. That this was made of steel and rooted in concrete – two substances whose manufacture generated vast amounts of CO – was neither here nor there. Nor did anyone seem to care that the turbine, like virtually all others, would be very lucky to operate at more than ten per cent of its full capacity, and would require constant backup from oil- or gas-fired power stations to make up for the times when the wind ceased to blow. Wind turbines were magically going to cut greenhouse gases, keep temperatures down, lower sea levels, and prevent polar bears from falling off melting icebergs. Therefore they were good.
Braddock owned the farm on which the turbine was being erected, and was collecting a substantial subsidy accordingly. It made him laugh, getting paid to wreck the landscape just so a bunch of sandal-wearing, lentil-eating eco-twats could feel better about the environment. The fact that turbines were such obvious cons only made it even funnier. And bunging a couple of dead Greens into the hole, so that they could spend the rest of eternity under thirty feet of concrete, supporting a propellor on stilts, well, that was f*cking hilarious.
As the Range Rover went back down the hill again, minus the bodies that had been in the back, there was a smile all over his face.
60
* * *
Aberystwyth
‘YOU’D BETTER GET someone to put a guard on Deirdre Bull’s bed,’ Carver said to Grantham, making the call as he walked across the hospital car park. ‘And I mean more than just a local plod in a skirt. Because the moment Zorn or Razzaq twig that she’s alive, they’re going to need her silenced.’
‘Really? So she talked?’
‘Oh yeah – we’ve got our connection. The attack was carried out by a bunch of eco-freaks called the Forces of Gaia. Their leader was one Brynmor Gryffud. They were into peaceful protest until a mysterious woman, calling herself Uschi Kremer and pretending to be a Swiss heiress, showed up. She used her powers of seduction to persuade Gryffud that the only way he was going to change anything was through violence. You want to know what this woman looked like?’
‘Let me guess,’ replied Jack Grantham. ‘Redheaded, older than she looks, borderline psychopathic?’
‘Got it in one. Looks like I wasn’t the only one that got Gingered. She works for Razzaq. Razzaq works for Zorn. Zorn needed a terrorist outrage. She got it for him.’
‘Fair enough, I’ll buy that.’
‘Good,’ said Carver. ‘And while you’re at it, there’s a few other things I need you to buy.’
He was within sight of the green space where the helicopter was waiting for him by the time he had finished outlining his plans.
‘And you want me to make this possible?’ Grantham asked.
‘You and whoever else it takes, yes.’
‘You’re not giving me a lot of time. It won’t be easy, getting hold of some of the stuff you want.’
‘Don’t see why not. It’s all available off the shelf. And the modifications I need could be carried out by any half-decent mechanic.’
‘Maybe, but it means going public. I won’t even contemplate something like this unless my arse is not just covered, but armourplated. This has to be signed off all the way to the top.’
‘Does that mean going public about me, too?’
‘As long as you’re the man who’s going to do it, yes. But don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. I’ll emphasize the bits of your record that make you look like an acceptable individual.’
‘And you’ll bury the ones that don’t?’
‘Got it in one.’
‘Good luck with that.’
‘Forget it,’ said Grantham. ‘You’re the one who’s going to need all the luck. You’re taking a hell of a risk with this. If it turns out you were wrong, don’t expect me or anyone else to protect you.’
‘I never expect anyone to protect me,’ said Carver. ‘Except me.’
61
* * *
Whitehall
TWO HOURS LATER, just as Carver was coming in to land at Northolt, Jack Grantham was making his presentation to an emergency meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Cameron Young, the prime ministerial representative who had proposed the conference plan barely twenty-four hours earlier with such determined self-confidence, now had an air of desperation as he struggled to find some way of pulling his master from the deep lake of excrement into which he had just been tipped. His present problem was trying to decide whether the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service was a man who could enable some sort of miraculous recovery, or whether the outrageous plan that he had just outlined would only serve to make the Prime Minister’s plunge even deeper.
Dame Judith Spofforth, Head of MI5, was in no mood to accept the kind of risk that was being proposed. ‘I suppose I don’t have to point out that Mr Grantham’s plan …’ She placed particular emphasis on the ‘mister’ as if to emphasize Grantham’s lack of a knighthood. ‘… is not only entirely inappropriate, coming from a department whose responsibility is intelligence-gathering outside the borders of the United Kingdom, but also illegal in more ways than I even care to consider.’
‘We don’t want to tread on our friends’ toes,’ said Grantham. ‘We’re just trying to propose a solution to a problem that affects us all. And, incidentally, we first gathered the intelligence that led us to suspect Mr Zorn’s motives in a number of locations including the United States, Italy and Greece, none of which are exactly domestic. And every single one of the leading suspects in the conspiracy that we believe we have uncovered is a foreign national. So I would argue that we do have reasonable grounds for involvement. As for the legality of the whole thing, this country didn’t have any trouble finding a legal justification for an Iraqi war based on intelligence that many of us knew was, to put it bluntly, absolute bollocks. So how difficult can it be to find a good excuse to do this? Malachi Zorn has waltzed into this country and made complete fools of us all. And he’s done it by killing a great many people, including ones we all knew. I think we have a right to let him know that we won’t stand for that kind of thing.’
‘In the end it all comes down to this man Carver,’ Young interrupted, putting an end to the turf war. ‘You’re asking me to place an enormous amount of faith in the quality of his information, the accuracy of his interpretation of that information, and, above all, his ability to pull off what appears to be little short of a public execution. That’s a very great deal to ask.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had to trust in him,’ Grantham replied. ‘A few years ago he asked me – and Dame Judith’s predecessor, Dame Agatha Bewley, come to that – to believe that there was a threat to the life of President Lincoln Roberts from an assassin called Damon Tyzack. The President, you will recall, was making his first visit to this country, giving an open-air speech in Bristol. Both the US Secret Service and the Metropolitan Police dismissed Carver’s concerns out of hand. Luckily, Dame Agatha and I did not. That is why Damon Tyzack’s remains are currently rotting away at the bottom of the Bristol Channel, whereas President Roberts is still alive and well and sitting in the White House. I’m sure he’ll be happy to give Carver a character reference.’
‘And you believe Carver’s on the right track now?’ Young asked.
Grantham did not answer immediately. His reputation was on the line here, just as much as Carver’s. If the plan worked out, they might, if they were very lucky, get some grudging thanks. If it failed, they would certainly be vilified.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think he is.’
‘In that case,’ said Cameron Young, ‘I can’t see that we have any other option. The Prime Minister needs to turn this situation around fast. Let’s see if Mr Carver can help him do it. You may go ahead with your operation, using whatever resources are required.’
Young looked at Grantham with a sad half-smile, as though he regretted having to utter the next few words. ‘Although you must understand that, in the event of failure, this conversation never happened. Her Majesty’s government cannot possibly be seen to be associated with any activities that do not meet the strictest standards of legality.’
‘Of course,’ said Jack Grantham. ‘I quite understand.’
62
* * *
Chinatown
IN HIS PRIVATE office above the dim sum restaurant, Derek Choi was holding a video-conference with a senior State Security Ministry official in Beijing. Another intelligence officer, a political analyst based at the Chinese embassy in London, was also party to the conversation.
‘Today’s events are highly significant,’ said the ministry man. ‘It is clear that we had greatly underestimated the effect of Mr Zorn’s self-fulfilling prophecy. Based on what your source within the Forces of Gaia told us, Comrade Choi, we predicted that the refinery would suffer severe damage, which would swiftly be made public.’
Choi maintained an impassive expression, though his guts seemed to twist like noodles round chopsticks as he heard the implied criticism of his information.
‘It was, of course, impossible to predict that the actions of these amateur saboteurs would have such a remarkable effect,’ the official continued, easing Choi’s tension with every word he spoke. ‘What is the current position of the British government, in your opinion, Comrade Jian?’
‘Squatting with their pants down, fertilizing the paddy fields with their shit,’ the analyst sneered, provoking laughter in the other two men. ‘As the British themselves say, they are running around like chickens without heads. The Prime Minister is in a state of shock. He has suffered a catastrophic loss of face, and neither he, nor his ministers, nor their officials, have any idea what to do to regain it.’
‘This makes the position of Grantham all the more interesting,’ the official in Beijing observed. ‘We regard him as a worthy opponent, one who does not lose his nerve. And he seems to have foreseen the danger posed by Zorn in a manner that other, more gullible fools did not.’
‘In that case,’ Derek Choi observed, ‘will he not be even more keen to use Carver to remove Zorn?’
‘That is a reasonable assumption, yes.’
‘Should we not therefore do our best to prevent that happening, since the effect of Zorn’s actions will now be even more to our financial profit and political gain than we could ever have imagined?’
‘Again, there is merit to that argument. What is your opinion, Jian?’
‘I agree with your assessment of Grantham. He is clear-sighted. He sees things as they really are, not how he would like them to be. And he has the courage to act while others are still weeping and wringing their hands. If he believes it would be advantageous to eliminate Zorn he will not hesitate to do so.’
‘And you still believe that this will happen tomorrow at Wimbledon?’ the official asked Choi.
‘My considered view is that Carver is more likely to attack Zorn close to the tournament site, rather than within the All England Club itself,’ Choi replied. ‘If he were killing by means of stealth, it would be relatively simple to poison Zorn’s food or drink and then be gone before the poison started to take effect. But he has been told that the killing has to be highly visible. This suggests a bomb, perhaps, or a shooting. Of course, Wimbledon is broadcast to more than one hundred and eighty nations, so if Zorn were to die in front of the TV cameras that would certainly provide visibility. But there would also be a high risk of collateral damage from crowds of people being caught by the bomb-blast or an innocent spectator walking into the line of fire. Then he must consider the issues of access and escape. In the panic that would follow such an assassination, the crowd would act unpredictably, posing a danger in itself, and certainly making it difficult to make a swift, un impeded getaway. For all these reasons, I anticipate an attack carried out on the roads leading to or from the tournament. I have already ordered both Carver and Zorn to be placed under observation, and have contingency plans in place should we need to act swiftly. If we do not, then I plan to eliminate Carver while he is watching the tennis.’
‘But Comrade Choi, I thought you said that this was not a suitable place for an assassination,’ Jian said.
‘For the kind of assassination Carver must carry out, yes, that is quite correct. But we can be more subtle. Let us suppose a group of civilized middle-country persons, anonymous amidst a sea of strangers, and lost in their own conversation, bump into an English barbarian. He is jostled for a few seconds. Perhaps there is a brief flash of anger. But then there are polite apologies, tempers cool, everyone goes on their way. The men from the middle country are soon lost in the crowd. It is as if nothing ever happened. Then, a few minutes later, the Englishman is taken ill. By the time he dies, my men and I have left the tournament. By the time an autopsy reveals that the Englishman’s heart attack was caused by poisoning, all the men but me will have long since left the country. I will of course be above suspicion, for why would a brilliant entrepreneur stoop to the murder of a stranger? And should anyone ask, I will have a dozen witnesses confirming my presence at a business meeting that lasted all day.’
‘Very good, Comrade Choi,’ the man from the State Security Ministry said. ‘You will of course send me written details of your plan for examination and comment. But in principle we are agreed. Carver will die tomorrow.’
63
* * *
Kensington Gardens, London
THEY MET ON the path that runs beside the Long Water in Kensington Gardens, just another two lovers snatching a few furtive moments together at the end of a working day.
‘I was so worried about you,’ Alix said. ‘As soon as I saw it all happening on the news, I just knew you were there, and I thought … I’m sorry …’ She rummaged in her handbag for a tissue to wipe away the tears that had caught her by surprise. ‘Dammit,’ she muttered, trying to manage a smile, ‘I was hoping to look pretty for you!’
With the same delicacy of touch that could be so arousing when they were in bed, but now just made her feel loved and comforted, he gently stroked a tear away from her cheek. ‘You always look pretty – much better than pretty,’ he said. Then he took her in his arms and she rested her head against his chest, hearing the strong, steady heartbeat that reassured her more than any words of his could do.
Alix sniffed, cleared her throat and, embarrassed by the weakness that she had just displayed, tried to snap back into a steadier, more professional mindset.
‘So what really happened?’
‘There was a very effective, professional, calculated assault on an oil refinery that just happened to cause a ton more collateral damage than the people who planned it expected.’
‘And who did plan it?’
‘In theory, a group called the Forces of Gaia. In practice, your old friend Celina Novak, calling herself Uschi Kremer, put the idea into their heads.’
Alix frowned. ‘You said she was working for that guy Razzaq …’
‘Yes.’
‘Who works for Zorn … You mean, this was all his idea?’
‘Got it in one. This whole thing was basically a financial scam. Zorn sticks a pile of money into the market, placing it all on bets that will pay off if there’s a disaster. Then he gives the market jitters by saying, “The eco-terrorists are coming!” Then they come. Then he cleans up … only in this case he does even better than he ever dreamed of because half the government is taken out along with the refinery.’
‘So Azarov was right,’ Alix said. ‘As soon as he saw the news – as it was all happening – he said that Zorn must be behind it.’
‘I thought that was over, you and Azarov.’
‘As far as I’m concerned it is. But I said I would do one last thing with him. We’re supposed to be going to Wimbledon tomorrow, as Zorn’s guests …’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it. I have to smile at the guy and act like nothing has happened, when all the time I know what he has done. Anyway, Azarov wanted me to pay close attention to Zorn. He said my woman’s eye might spot something that his male one could not. Why are you smiling?’
‘Because I just had exactly the same idea as Azarov,’ he said. ‘There’s a couple of things I need to know. And you could tell me the answers …’
*
An hour later, and six miles south-east across London, Carver was in a pub off the Walworth Road with Schultz and his oppo, an ex-lance corporal called Kevin Cripps. There were three pints of London Pride on the table, and whisky chasers for Schultz and Cripps. Carver was carrying out an impromptu mission briefing using Google Earth shots of Wimbledon on his phone screen to set the scene, and an assortment of coasters, pepper pots and cigarette packets to represent elements of the action he was describing.
‘Think you can do it?’ he asked them at the end.
‘Can you get all the kit by tomorrow morning?’ Schultz replied.
Carver nodded.
‘Even the Krakatoa?’ Cripps sounded sceptical.
‘Absolutely.’
‘In that case, boss, it’s a piece of piss,’ said Schultz.
64
* * *
Wentworth
THE LAST OF the reporters had long since left Malachi Zorn’s rented mansion. Now he and Razzaq were left in peace to consider their next moves.
‘What are you going to do now that Orwell is dead?’ the Pakistani asked. His religious principles did not permit him to consume alcohol, but he had a fat Cohiba cigar, fresh from Havana, to assist him in his thinking.
‘On Friday night, you mean?’
‘Yes. That was going to be his finest moment. Who is going to take his place now?’
Zorn was drinking red wine. He swirled it in the glass, savouring the bouquet as he thought about his reply. ‘Good question. I need to think this through. My first instinct is to go ahead as planned. We just need another way to get the guests in the room.’
‘Do we? Do you? Isn’t what you already have enough?’
‘Enough is a word I don’t recognize, Ahmad. There’s no such thing as enough.’
‘Sometimes there has to be. There are points when the wisest course is to accept that one cannot have everything one wants. Having enough is better than losing it all.’
‘What makes you think I will lose anything?’
‘It is not so much that I think you will, as that I fear you might. Let us take this from the beginning. You wished to take revenge for the deaths of your parents. Correct?’
‘That was one of the motivations, yes,’ Zorn agreed, pouring himself some more wine. ‘Another was … just victory, I guess. I want to win. That’s the American way.’
‘Indeed it is …’ Razzaq let out a long stream of aromatic smoke. ‘But Americans should know by now that one day’s victory can be the next day’s defeat.’
‘This has nothing to do with defeat,’ Zorn said. ‘There is a class of people that I hate. I want to beat them at their own game. I want to hurt them, to crush them. I want them down on their fat, piggy knees. And since they value money more than anything else, the best way to do this is to take their money, multiply it many times, and then steal it from them so that I am richer than they can ever be. And you’ll be rich, too, Ahmad, don’t forget that.’
Razzaq laughed. ‘I never forget that! But let us look at the way in which you set about achieving your ends. First, you entice investors to give you enormous sums of money. You create a situation in which they are pleading with you for the chance to hand over hundreds of millions – even billions – of dollars. They are like turkeys begging for Christmas.’
Now Zorn’s face was split by a schoolboy grin. ‘I know, aren’t they?’
‘And of course, Orwell was the perfect man to help you do this. He always had the ability to persuade himself that the best possible course of action was whatever he happened to be doing at the time. He fooled himself first, before he fooled anyone else. Tell me, what did he do with the money you gave him?’
‘He gave it right back to me to invest in Zorn Global, of course – his own fee and the charity money!’ Zorn replied gleefully. ‘My bet is he was planning to make a huge profit on all of it, give the charity the original five mill, and keep the rest for himself. I’ve already had messages from his lawyers. Sure as shit they want to know how much money there’ll be for the estate.’
Razzaq nodded. ‘Without any doubt that is what they want. So, Orwell helped you get the money. Then you found a way of multiplying it many times over. And by complete chance this turned out to be more successful than even you could have imagined. I am assuming that today’s events have returned a much bigger profit because of the deaths of Orwell and the rest.’
‘That’s a fair assumption, yes.’
‘All right. But it has also caused you a problem which we need to assess. The plan originally called for you to be assassinated prior to the public launch of the fund. Then I would persuade Orwell to host the event in your memory. I say, “persuade” but of course it would have been simple. He would have loved that chance to be the centre of attention.’
‘Oh yes, I can see him now, giving them all his big, fat Nicholas Orwell grin …’ Zorn agreed.
‘And the investors would all come to the Goldsmiths’ Hall pretending that they were doing it in your memory, but in reality because they wanted to know what was going to happen to their money.’
‘Sure … the contracts they signed when they invested their money specified that in the event of my death, they would receive all the money they had invested, plus eighty per cent of any profits. And after Rosconway, they’d all figure that would be eighty per cent of a helluva lot …’
‘So they would come to toast your memory and their even greater good fortune. And we’d kill them all.’ Razzaq stubbed the cigar out in the ashtray by his side, punctuating his words with downward jabs as he said, ‘Every … last … one of them.’ He sat back in his chair and went on, ‘But now Orwell himself is dead. So I ask you, how will any of the investors be persuaded to attend?’
‘Perhaps you could say that you were going to make the big announcement?’ Zorn suggested.
‘Ha! You forget that I know what is going to happen. I am not that foolish a turkey! And that is why I ask you now whether it would not be simpler to cut this whole project short. You already have enough money to last a thousand lifetimes. I assume that you can make sure that your investors never see a penny of it ever again.’
‘Of course. Hell, the damn money doesn’t really exist to begin with. There’s no pile of gold, no giant suitcase of cash. It’s just digits, you know, bits of data that get switched from one server to another. It can vanish into the ether any time.’
‘And so can you,’ said Razzaq. ‘So my advice is, do it now. Disappear. Go. Vanish.’
‘Well, that’s good advice. Don’t get me wrong, Ahmad, I appreciate your concern, and I can see the sense of it.’
‘But …?’
‘But I’m not ready to call it quits. This game has a few more twists and turns just yet. We’re only in the third quarter, and there’s still a lot of time on the clock. I want to see how it plays out.’
Razzaq frowned. ‘So you want to go ahead with our plans? You don’t want me to call Carver off, for example?’
‘No, I don’t. I want him to go ahead and carry out the assassination.’ Zorn emptied his glass, put it down, and then said, ‘Wait till I’m dead. I think the game could look a whole lot better then.’
Wednesday, 29 June
65
* * *
Putney, London SW15
IT WAS PAST 11.00 a.m. before Carver got the call from Grantham. ‘We got everything you asked for. The van’s a white Transit, with “McNulty Brothers Builders” written on the side. It’s parked on the rooftop level of the Putney Exchange multi-storey car park, in the far south-west corner. The door’s unlocked. The keys are in the plastic B&Q bag in the passenger-side footwell. So’s that Krakatoa thing you asked for. The rest of the kit’s in the back of the van. Leave your car as near as you can with the keys in the ignition. We’ll have someone waiting to take it away.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t thank me, Carver. You’re still screwed if this doesn’t work.’
‘What else is new?’
Carver hung up and immediately put in a call to Schultz, telling him to meet by the van in exactly one hour’s time. Then he texted Alix: ‘On my way. Keep me posted.’
A minute later he got her reply: ‘Latest update. Standing in bra and panties, deciding what dress to wear. Want to look my best for you, haha!’
Carver laughed. ‘Dress code update,’ he texted. ‘U will be thrown out of Wim if turn up in bra and knickers. But would not be thrown out of my bed.’
Alix wrote again. ‘Down boy!! Gotta go xxx’
Carver grinned, then closed the window. There was nothing wrong with having a few jokes before you went into action. But it was time for the laughing to stop.
It took forty-eight minutes to make his way in the Audi through heavy South London traffic to the Putney Exchange Shopping Centre. He wound his way up through the multi-storey car park to the open expanse of the rooftop level. The van was exactly where Grantham had promised it would be. Carver found an empty space nearby and left the keys as Grantham had told him to do. He had barely got to the door of the Transit when he heard an engine start up behind him, and seconds later the Audi was driving past on its way to the exit.
He opened the Transit’s passenger door. The B&Q bag was sitting on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Carver reached in, picked the bag up and looked inside. Aside from the keys it contained a couple of plastic garden pegs linked by a short length of green nylon twine; a thin disc of copper about 15 cm in diameter, beaten into a shallow cone; a packet of Polyfilla that had been opened and then resealed with a bright yellow plastic clip; and a series of grey plastic components. These comprised a short, open-ended tube whose diameter was a fraction greater than that of the copper disc; a couple of locking rings, similarly sized; a plastic disc, again as wide as the cylinder, to which a tightly looped length of electrical wire was attached; and four rigid plastic sticks, each about 30 cm in length. Anyone looking into the bag would assume that they all fitted together to form some kind of plumbing device.
Carver cast his eye over it all, muttered, ‘Good,’ to himself, then closed the passenger door again and walked around to the back of the van. He opened up the rear cargo-bay doors just enough for him to see inside, without enabling anyone else to glimpse what was there. This time his reaction was a little more effusive: a broad smile and a murmured, ‘Excellent.’
He closed the doors and made his way to the driver’s seat. Two minutes later there was a rap on the window. Schultz and Cripps were standing outside. Carver lowered the window, then handed them the B&Q plastic bag. ‘There you go.’
Schultz looked inside and grinned broadly. ‘Lovely jubbly,’ he said. He and Cripps walked back to their car, an old Mazda 626 saloon. Carver rolled up the van’s window and started the engine. Two minutes later they were all on their way.
Meanwhile, on the crowded approaches to Putney Bridge, the Chinese agents trailing the silver Audi were asking themselves why it was heading north, back over the river towards Central London, in the opposite direction to Wimbledon. It was only when they were on the bridge itself and able to accelerate enough to bring their car alongside the Audi that they realized Carver was no longer at the wheel. The string of obscenities that followed was equalled only by Derek Choi’s fury when the news was relayed to him.
It took Choi several minutes to obtain the latest tracking data for Carver’s phone signal. That, at least, was moving in the right direction. So his destination had not changed, even if his method of transport had. And once he got to Wimbledon, there were only a limited number of gates by which he could enter. Choi calmed himself. Nothing had really changed. Carver was still on course for his death.
66
* * *
Wimbledon
AZAROV’S OTHER CAR was a Rolls-Royce Phantom. It nosed its way into the area of the Wimbledon Park Golf Club that was rented out every year to the All England Club and used for car parking and corporate entertainment marquees, and proceeded with a barely perceptible purr towards the spaces reserved by Malachi Zorn. Zorn was waiting there to greet them. He opened Alix’s door himself, standing to one side as she smoothed down her skirt, then swung her legs together out of the car. Zorn held out his hand and she took it, rising gracefully to her feet till she was standing beside him on the close-cropped grass.
‘Such a gentleman!’ she said, looking up at him from coyly downcast eyes. He laughed and then held her hand to his lips, kissing it with a playfully exaggerated smack, as if to underline that he was an informal American, just kidding around with this ancient European custom.
‘Enchanté, mademoiselle,’ he said.
‘Tu es trop gentil,’ she replied, slipping into French without a second thought. She smiled at Zorn again, much to his delight, and this time the smile was genuine. As she and Azarov walked arm in arm towards the gates of the All England Club, Alix was truly happy. She already knew the answer to the first question Carver had asked her in Kensington Gardens.
Carver saw Alix making her way to her seat half-a-dozen blocks away, and his mind flashed back to another summer’s day, more years ago than he really cared to remember, and the sight of her in another silk summer dress. He only had to close his eyes for a moment, and he was back at that table at the Eden Roc restaurant, looking out across the sun-sparkled waters of Cap d’Antibes. He could see her on the deck of General Kurt Vermulen’s yacht, the wind pressing her dress against her body, outlining every curve. He’d watched as she’d kissed Vermulen, thinking it was just an act, and not knowing until it was too late that she had fallen in love with the general and would soon become his wife. Now Vermulen was dead, another entry on Carver’s personal casualty list, and there was Alix once again, in a summer dress, looking just as beautiful – and with another man.
He watched as she sat down, said something to the thuggishly handsome man to her left, and laughed at his reply. Was that Azarov? Carver wondered. They looked pretty friendly for a couple who’d all but called it a day. Alix reached into her bag and, still half listening to the man, pulled out her phone and started tapping on its screen.
A few seconds later Carver’s phone buzzed. It was a text from her: ‘Re: Zorn. U were right. Ax’
Immediately, Carver tapped out a message to Schultz. ‘Mission is go. Be in position by 16.00. Wait for my signal.’
Then he texted Alix back. ‘Thanks. You look amazing.’ Carver smiled as he saw her glance up and search for him in the crowd. She didn’t find him, but he knew that when she sat back, crossed her legs, tossed her head and ran her hands through her hair she was putting on a show just for him.
He sat back to watch the tennis. Quinton Arana had made it into the quarter-finals. Zorn wasn’t going anywhere while the American kid was on court. As long as he had a great seat on Centre Court, Carver thought he might as well enjoy it.
Arana won in five. Zorn and his guests took time out in the third set to grab a late lunch. Carver did not go with them. He did not want to be spotted in the restaurant. And if for any reason Zorn decided to leave, Alix was on the lookout and would tell him: that had been the second favour he’d asked her. But Zorn wasn’t ready to go just yet, because he and his group returned for the second half of the match, cheering every point Arana won and politely applauding his opponent’s successes. At the end of the match Alix got up, as did the other woman in the party, and made her way out again. Carver was pondering the apparent inability of women ever to go to the ladies’ room without company when he got another message.
‘Need to see you. Meet at deb holders’ entrance. Now! Ax’
Something had gone wrong. Why else would she be texting? Carver rose from his seat and headed for the exit.
67
* * *
A MILE OR so away from the All England Lawn Tennis Club the old Mazda saloon pulled into a parking space on Southside Common, which, as its name suggests, runs along the south side of Wimbledon Common. The space was just beyond the junction with Murray Road, a typically leafy Wimbledon street filled with large suburban homes, where the average property won’t leave change from two million pounds.
‘There you go, boss,’ said Kevin Cripps.
‘Cheers,’ Schultz replied, hefting his massive bulk out of the cramped passenger seat and on to the grass verge that ran beside the road. About ten metres away across the grass was a tarmac path that followed the line of the road. On the far side of the path stood a pair of park benches about twenty metres apart. One of the benches was directly in line with the space where the Mazda had parked. Schultz made for it. He was carrying the B&Q bag that Carver had given him. While Cripps settled himself lower in the driver’s seat, as if about to take a nap, Schultz stood beside the bench and looked around. Yes, this was the place all right.
He got down on his haunches, screwed up his eyes and stared intently past the Mazda to the far side of the road, where a row of trees screened the traffic from the Common. Schultz plotted an imaginary line from his position, through the Mazda, to a tree directly behind it. From the B&Q bag he took the two garden pegs, linked by twine. Just by his feet there was a large clump of dry, wispy grass. Schultz forced one of the pegs down into the earth just behind the clump, placing it at one end of the imaginary line. Then he placed the other peg in the ground, making sure that the twine was good and taut.
Schultz took another look: both pegs, the car and the tree were all perfectly in line.
Now he sat down on the bench and very carefully examined the car and the tree, noting their relative positions when seen from this fractionally different angle. He went back to the pegs and made another sighting from there. Then he checked the view from the bench again. Now he was satisfied.
The first part of the job was done.
68
* * *
DEREK CHOI WAS sitting at a table on the Tea Lawn, not far from the bandstand, which gave him a view of Centre Court debenture holders’ entrance. Two of his restaurant workers, both agents of the State Security Ministry, were with him. A female voice sounded in his ear: the agent he had stationed in the stands of Centre Court. ‘Carver has got up from his seat. He is leaving the stadium.’
Choi switched to another line. ‘Attention! The target is in motion. Prepare to move on my signal.’
On the Aorangi Picnic Terrace, the grassy slope otherwise known as Henman Hill or Murray Mount, a trio of young Chinese adults – two men in jeans, T-shirts and bomber jacket, and a woman wearing a singlet, miniskirt and Converse Hi-Top trainers – calmly got to their feet. All three were registered as students at a language school in Central London. One of the men pointed at the action on the giant screen fixed to the outside of Number One Court, directly opposite the terrace, and said something that made the girl laugh as she brushed a few leaves of grass from her skirt. The sound of her laughter made a man sitting nearby turn around and then fix her with a stare of frank appreciation as he took in her long black hair, prettily smiling face, pert breasts and long bare legs.
She was carrying a squashy leather shoulder-bag, big enough to carry her phone, her make-up, a knitted top in case it got cold, and all the other random items that any young woman needs. It also contained an EpiPen – like the one used by diabetics to inject themselves with insulin, except that this was filled with deadly toxin – and a loaded QSZ-92 9 mm pistol, produced by a Chinese state arms factory. Not so many young women need those.
Choi was wearing dark glasses that hid eyes now entirely focused on the debenture holders’ entrance. He saw Carver emerge from Centre Court. Choi waited for a moment to see where his target was heading, but Carver stood still. He was waiting for something, but what? Choi saw him glance at his watch, betraying his tension. Then another figure appeared in the doorway, a woman. Choi recognized Petrova, the Russian who had been with Carver two nights earlier, and whose name had so infuriated the Sternberg woman. Choi frowned. Had Carver really set up some kind of romantic assignation, right in the middle of an active operation? Or were the two of them working together? It made no difference. Carver was exposed and standing still. He would never be more vulnerable. It was time to move.
Without betraying the slightest suggestion of urgency, Derek Choi rose unhurriedly from his seat. He took a couple of twenty-pound notes out of his wallet and placed them under one of the teacups under his table. ‘Time to go,’ he said to the other two men at the table, who also stood up. Then Choi spoke into his microphone, a single word: ‘Go!’