10
* * *
London N1
JACK GRANTHAM WAS having a hard time relaxing. On the surface, everything appeared to be going well. He was sitting in the living room of his Islington flat. He had a glass of Scotch on the table by his side. The TV was on in the background, and he was reading a hardback spy thriller, set in the early eighties, about a KGB sleeper who had penetrated British intelligence. Grantham wasn’t a big fan of spy novels. He spent too many hours dealing with the realities of secret intelligence to bother with the fiction. This, however, was the debut effort by Dame Agatha Bewley, the one-time Head of the Security Service, known as ‘SS’ to Whitehall insiders, and MI5 to the rest of the world. He’d always admired Dame Agatha, despite their regular inter-service disputes, and was now smiling to himself as he enjoyed the characteristically canny ways in which she’d managed to convey a sense of absolute authenticity, while leaving out any unduly revealing insights into how the job was actually done.
It was very nearly an enjoyable experience, spoiled only by the thought that niggled and itched at the back of his mind. The Malachi Zorn investigation was bothering him. By any logical analysis of the threats facing the United Kingdom, Grantham had been right to make it a low priority. Still, that throwaway remark about Zorn bringing down Lehman Brothers Bank as a rehearsal for a far bigger stunt wormed away at him, making it impossible to relax.
Grantham tried to distract himself by looking at the news. A TV production company, working on some kind of Candid Camera-style reality show, had caused a riot at a restaurant on the Greek island of Mykonos by staging a fake attack by a couple of gunmen. By pure chance – in no way connected with the TV people’s desire for global publicity – a passing tourist just happened to have been filming the scene using a high-definition video-camera.
Grantham glanced up at the sound of gunfire and watched as two men appeared, blew the head off a live pelican (the bird’s death, the newsreader solemnly intoned, had caused outrage and controversy around the world), and then appeared to kill a woman in cold blood. Grantham watched the panic that ensued, while the voice-over described how a British tourist had been injured in the melée and was now threatening to sue both the restaurant owner and the TV company. Grantham was just about to switch channels when something caught his eye.
He rewound the scene, then watched it again twice more. On the second time through, he froze the image at a particular point. Several hours earlier he had done exactly the same thing with the feed from Malachi Zorn’s Italian party and spotted Alix. Now here was another face with which Grantham was all-too familiar: her ex-boyfriend Samuel Carver. And however much trouble she brought into Grantham’s life, Carver brought infinitely more.
‘That’s all we need,’ Grantham muttered to himself. He ran through the scene a couple more times, just to make sure that his instinctive reaction to it had been correct. Yes, there was no doubt: Carver had tried to make his escape and been pursued by the gunmen. Grantham couldn’t believe Carver would ever have consented to clown around for the benefit of a TV camera. He was genuinely running for his life.
‘Well, so what?’ Grantham told himself. Carver was no more a concern of his than Malachi Zorn. And yet, like Zorn’s ‘rehearsal’, Carver’s image on that TV screen kept gnawing away at him.
He spent a moment or two wondering what, if anything, he should do, then called the office. A junior officer, assigned to night-duty, picked up the call.
‘This is Grantham,’ his boss informed him. ‘Get me passenger manifests for all flights in and out of Mykonos, Greece, in the past, oh … seventy-two hours. Ferry traffic, too, if you can get it. And CCTV footage. Then cross-ref it with our databases: names and faces. I want to see if anyone we’re interested in has paid a visit there recently.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And if you find anything, call me. I don’t care what time it is. Call anyway.’
Grantham put down the phone. He gazed at the frozen image on his TV screen, then turned off the set. He put the book down on the side-table next to the now-empty whisky glass. Then he hauled himself off up to bed.
11
* * *
Kensington Palace Gardens, London
AS SHE STOOD at her bathroom mirror wiping the make-up from her face, Alix knew that she had just lost the argument that would almost certainly end her relationship. But at least no one could say that the subject-matter had been trivial. She and her current partner, Dmytryk Azarov, had not fought over some insignificant domestic quibble. They’d been debating what to do with a billion dollars.
Azarov intended to borrow the money against the value of his massive agricultural, food-processing and supermarket holdings in Eastern Europe. The exact figure he had in mind was $1.35 billion, all of it intended for Malachi Zorn’s new investment fund. The contracts had been drafted and awaited his signature. His bankers were arranging the transfer of funds. The entire deal would go through within twenty-four hours.
And Alix had done everything she possibly could to stop it.
Two weeks earlier, Azarov had been ecstatic when the invitation to join the fund had been presented to him in person by Zorn’s right-hand man, Nicholas Orwell, the former British Prime Minister. They had met over dinner at the Sommelier’s Table, which sits in a private underground dining room in Mayfair, next to the wine cellars of the Connaught Hotel. Azarov had insisted that Alix should accompany him to the meal; whether to show her off to Orwell or him off to her, she had not been entirely sure.
Either way, it was the sort of occasion to which she had become accustomed since she had first arrived in Moscow almost a quarter of a century earlier, a gawky, unsophisticated, acutely shy teenager from the distant city of Perm. In those days she’d been anything but a beauty. She wore shapeless clothes and thick spectacles that failed to disguise the squint for which she had been mocked throughout her childhood and adolescence. Yet one woman, a KGB officer called Olga Zhukovskaya, had spotted Alix’s potential. Thanks to her, she had been transformed by a combination of surgery, diet and arduous training into a professional seductress. By the age of twenty-two she’d been able to converse in English as easily as in Russian; to charm a man into bed; to give him the erotic experience of a lifetime once he was there – and to extract whatever information her masters required from her pathetically grateful target.
Orwell, Alix concluded, was little different from the diplomats, politicians, military attachés and businessmen who had been the victims of the honeytrap operations on which she’d once been sent. For all his stellar political reputation, all his familiarity with the most elevated corridors of global power politics, he was now essentially a salesman. Over dinner he had come out with slick, persuasive patter about the genius of Malachi Zorn and the huge returns to be had from his fund, being careful never actually to say that profits were guaranteed, but making sure that vast returns were clearly implied. He had been well-briefed for the meeting, and displayed his knowledge well. He showed a keen, flattering interest in Azarov’s commercial prowess and took care to compliment Alix not just on her beauty, but also on the success of the Washington DC military and political consulting business she had inherited from her late husband, General Kurt Vermulen, and subsequently run herself.
‘This Nicholas Orwell is a fine man,’ Azarov had reflected, as the chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce took them back to his red-brick Queen-Anne-style mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens, or, as London estate agents liked to call it, ‘Billionaires’ Row’. ‘He understands how the world works. For a socialist, he appreciates the value and power of money.’
‘His was not the kind of socialism that you and I learned when we were growing up,’ Alix remarked.
‘No, but it was the kind our masters practised. Make all the money you can, and let the masses fend for themselves. In any case, he is right about Zorn. That man is a magician. You know they say he cleared over ten billion in a single play against Lehman Brothers?’
Alix had placed her hand on Azarov’s forearm in a gentle gesture of restraint. ‘Are you sure that Zorn will work his magic on your behalf?’
‘Why would he not? The more money I make, the more he makes. Of course, there is bound to be some risk. We are playing for the highest possible stakes and a man should not pick up the dice if he has not got the balls to lose everything on a single roll. But I am confident that Zorn’s scheme will make us all big, big profits. I can feel it in my guts.’
Alix was not so sure about that. So far as she was concerned, Azarov’s guts were filled to the brim with the Connaught’s legendarily fine food and wine. If he was feeling anything, it was mostly likely to be indigestion. As for his brains, Azarov had a Russian’s head for alcohol, but even so, his judgement seemed less piercing than usual. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more Alix concluded that Orwell had not resembled her former targets so much as herself. He had been engaged on a mission of seduction. And it appeared to have been a success.
The following morning she called the Connaught and discovered that the hotel charged one thousand two hundred pounds for the Sommelier’s Table, exclusive of the wines, which must surely have cost far more than usual. Of course, such expenses were minuscule next to the sums Orwell was hoping to secure on Zorn’s behalf. But Alix had never known a rich man who did not keep a very close eye indeed on his spending. Malachi Zorn was not known for being unduly extravagant in his own lifestyle. If he was willing to fund such extravagance for others, then he must have a reason for doing so. And Alix was by no means certain that the reason was as straightforward as Azarov assumed.
Her feelings had only intensified when she and Azarov had met Zorn himself at his Italian villa. All the guests owned their own private planes, yet jets had been laid on to spare them the cost of flying on their own account. The champagne had been served from magnums of 1982 Krug Collection, which retailed for around two thousand dollars each. The quantity of food provided had been far in excess of what could ever have been needed. Zorn’s reputation was surely enough to guarantee his fund all the money it could possibly need. So why was he going to such unnecessary lengths to impress?
When she had got back to London, where Azarov was spending the early summer before departing for the Mediterranean, Alix called her office and put two of her best researchers on to the task of compiling a dossier on Malachi Zorn’s new fund. The results were skimpy. There had been some coverage of Zorn’s plans in the media, especially from publications and websites aimed at financial professionals and wealthy individuals. Yet amidst all the promotional puffery and awestruck descriptions of both Zorn’s financial prowess and his investors’ vast wealth there was very little hard detail about precisely what he planned. She emailed back a terse message. ‘I need more. Want to know about his set-up: offices, staff, overheads, etc. What’s he paying Orwell? Where’s the investors’ money going? More! AV’
Again, the response was disappointing. For all the hype, there was little to be seen of the fund itself. Perhaps that was no surprise. Zorn had spent his entire working life as a one-man band, working his magic from a single desk. Why would it be so different, just because the money he was risking came from a new source? And then one detail caught her eye. Zorn had leased office-space in London and Manhattan. In both cases he had chosen prime properties in exclusive locations. But when Alix looked closely, the offices had something else in common: Zorn had only signed three-month leases, of which more than two months had already expired. She had produced this fact as a trump card earlier in the evening, as she had pleaded with Azarov to reconsider his decision.
‘If this is intended to be such a great new business, why will the leases run out so soon?’ she asked. ‘That does not sound to me like a man who is planning for the long term.’
‘Maybe it is a man who thinks he will need more space by then,’ Azarov had countered. ‘Maybe he looks at the way the real estate market is going, and knows that he will soon be able to get a better deal. Or maybe he is just smarter than you, my darling, and is making decisions that you cannot understand.’
‘Maybe he is being too smart for you too, Dmytryk. Have you considered that? Have you asked yourself why this man who already makes billions without a single penny of anyone else’s money suddenly runs to men like you for help?’
‘Because he wants to make even more billions for himself.’
‘Why? How much more does he need?’
Azarov laughed. ‘How much does anyone need? It is not about need. It is about winning. It is about being the best. It’s that way for all of us. The money is just the way we keep score.’
‘Well, I hope you know what you are doing. I think you are making a terrible mistake, and you will live to regret it.’
‘Oh, really?’ sneered Azarov. ‘And how would you prefer that I spend it? On more jewels and pretty dresses for you, my pampered darling? I suppose that’s what you expect, after all. Your services have always come at a price.’
Her slap hit his face like a full stop at the end of the sentence.
‘How dare you?’ Alix hissed. ‘I have never asked you for a penny. I earn my own money and pay my own bills. And what right have you, a petty thief from the gutters of Kiev, to look down on what I have had to do to survive?’
Azarov stepped towards her, raising his fist. The red mark left by her hand was clearly visible on his cheek.
Alix stood her ground. ‘Go on, then,’ she said raising her chin defiantly, presenting it as a target. ‘Hit me. Show me what kind of a man you really are.’
Azarov stood for a moment with his arm raised, then took a step back, his breathing heavy and his lips white with a fury it was taking all his self-control to contain. They seemed to stare at one another for an age before he turned on his heel and strode to a console table on which was a telephone. He picked it up.
‘Tell Connors to pack me an overnight bag. Now,’ he commanded. ‘I want my Ferrari brought to the front door immediately. And book me a suite at the Ritz … Yes, for tonight. Mrs Vermulen will be staying here.’
Azarov slammed the phone down, then turned to face Alix again.
‘Satisfied?’ he said.
Burlington, Ontario, Canada: six months earlier
The shoes were a statement of defiance. Classic black brogues by Luca del Forte, reduced from three hundred and fifty bucks to one-eighty at the Browns store in Mapleview Mall, right off the Queen Elizabeth Way. These were investment shoes, the kind that would never go out of style; shoes a man could treasure for years, feeling the leather mould itself around his foot, getting ever more comfortable as time went by. Kev Lundkvist was forty years old. He should have had decades to get those brogues just the way he liked them.
Kev didn’t want to come home with nothing but presents for himself. He went along to the Swarovski crystal outlet and got his girlfriend, Alyson, a couple of little beagle figurines. They were cheesy as hell, but Kev knew that she would think they were cute. She’d stick them on her special shelf, right by her dressing table, and they’d make her think of him, every time she saw them.
He stopped off for coffee and a double-chocolate muffin. So by the time he left the mall it was dark. When he got outside, the wind off Lake Ontario whipped up the thin snowfall so that it almost stung when it hit his face. Ken had to stop and wipe his glasses clear just to see where he’d left his car, and it was while he was standing there, right in the middle of the parking lot but well off the main driveway, that he was hit by a speeding Nissan Frontier truck.
Kev was knocked right off his feet, and sent crashing into a parked SUV. His body ended up motionless on the ground, with his broken limbs splayed in unnatural angles around him. He was dead on arrival at Joseph Brant Hospital.
As for the Frontier, it slewed after impact and skidded on the slushy tarmac, but the driver managed to regain control and was racing for the exit before any of the other shoppers making their way to or from the mall had worked out what had just happened.
When it was found a couple of hours later on a residential street close to the Tyandaga Municipal Golf Course, the Frontier stank of whisky from the discarded bottle of Crown Royal, whose dregs had seeped into the carpet of the passenger-side footwell. A forensic search yielded no significant fingerprints. Detectives were disappointed, but not surprised, by the negative results. They’d already opened the glove compartment and found a crumpled receipt that indicated the truck had just been cleaned inside and out by a local company. The people there couldn’t remember much about the guy who’d picked up the truck, but they did recall that he was wearing mitts. It was midwinter. Who wasn’t?
The truck belonged to a contractor more than seven hundred kilometres away in Sault Sainte Marie. He’d reported it stolen four days earlier, and was in a bar with four of his men when the hit-and-run occurred. One of the guys had even posted a picture of them all on his Facebook site that same evening.
Someone had got drunk in a stolen truck and committed an act of homicide. But who that person might have been remained a total mystery.
‘Don’t feel too bad about it,’ the pathologist reassured the detective in charge of the investigation when he handed over the post-mortem report. ‘Lundkvist had Stage 3B liver cancer. There were a bunch of tumours in the liver itself, and it had spread into the lymph nodes around the organ as well. He didn’t have too long to live: somewhere between six to nine months would be my guess. Twelve if he was very lucky. A quick end like this, well, I guess you could call it a small mercy.’