The Accident Man:A Novel

63

Part of Carver wanted to confront Trench and ask him what had really happened, why he’d acted the way he had. But even if the old bastard told the truth, he wouldn’t say anything Carver couldn’t work out for himself. Whoever had been hiring Carver for the past few years must have already put Trench on the payroll while he was still commanding the Service. It made sense. He was the perfect recruiting officer and Carver had been the perfect candidate for an assassin’s job: capable, well-trained, and sufficiently angry and disillusioned to get his hands dirty for the right price.
There was no point feeling sorry for himself. He’d been bought and paid for. Once he’d outlived his usefulness, Trench had planned to dispose of him, just like any other redundant piece of gear. It wouldn’t be the first time Trench had sent men on suicide missions. Any commanding officer had to be willing to sacrifice lives for the greater good. Carver could moan all he liked about betrayal, he could play the wounded child wondering why Daddy was being so beastly, but Trench hadn’t asked to be his surrogate father even if he’d been happy to exploit the feelings Carver projected onto him.
In any case, Carver concluded, he’d spent his entire working life being paid to kill people. He wasn’t in any position to complain if someone wanted to kill him.
But he didn’t have to let them get away with it.
There was a deep pocket in Carver’s waterproof jacket. It was sealed by a vertical zipper, and it ran right down the left side of his chest. In it were two plastic tubes a little less than a foot long. They were colored red at their base, then lightened via an orange band to a yellow top, decorated with a silhouette of an archer standing on top of a logo that read “Ikaros.” At the bottom of the tube there was a red plastic tag.
Carver took one out and moved to the side of the ladder. He reached up and pulled the hatch open with one hand, letting in a blast of spray-soaked air and the crashing, pounding noise of the storm. Then he lifted up his other hand, holding the tube horizontally, level with the deck outside. He pulled the tag. There was a sudden propulsive “Whoosh!” like a firework being launched, then a man’s shout of alarm, the scrabble of ricochets on the side of the cockpit as the tube shot to and fro, and finally, less than a second later, the explosion of a distress flare.
As thick red smoke roiled through the open hatch, Carver hurled himself up the ladder, through the opening, and into the hellish scarlet fog. Ahead of him he could just make out the outline of a man. He saw his arm being raised, then came the flame of muzzle flashes and the crackle of small-arms fire as Trench fired into the smoke, toward the hatch. Three rounds slammed into the wooden door frame, somehow missing Carver on their way, and then Carver crashed into Trench’s midriff, pushing him backward onto the bench at the back of the cockpit.
Carver drove his right fist as hard as he could into Trench’s groin. His left hand reached out for Trench’s right, driving it against the side of the cockpit in a desperate attempt to knock the pistol from his grasp. The two men were fighting the smoke as much as each other, almost as if they were underwater, unable to breathe, desperate for oxygen, lost in a primal struggle for survival.
At last, Carver felt Trench’s grip slacken on his gun. Ignoring Trench’s desperate attempts to hit him with his free hand, and the swiping of the older man’s legs, he forced his right hand between Trench’s fingers to grab the handle of his gun. He caught hold of one of the loosened fingers and bent it back, making Trench cry out in agony as the lowest joint was dislocated.
The gun fell to the deck and skittered away across the bucking, rain-slick surface.
Carver scrambled to his feet, his chest heaving and eyes streaming with tears. Trench was sitting in front of him, holding his wounded hand, coughing and gasping for breath. The older man tried to get up, but Carver hit him twice, left and right to the face, putting the full power of his shoulders behind each punch. Then he grabbed a handful of Trench’s gray hair and smashed his head against the wooden rim that ran around the top edge of the cockpit’s perimeter, three savage blows that left Trench semiconscious and bleeding.
Carver grabbed the front of Trench’s jacket and hauled him into an upright position on the bench.
“Sit on your hands,” he commanded.
Wincing with pain, Trench forced his hands under his thighs.
The flare was still spewing out smoke, though the relentless gale was now blowing it away in a billowing red plume. For a second, the air around Carver cleared and he was able to drag some pure, clean sea air into his burning lungs.
“Where is she?” he snarled.
Trench looked at him through bleary, unfocused eyes. “Where’s who?”
Carver slapped him once, hard, to the side of the face.
“Alexandra Petrova, that Russian girl of mine you were going on about. Big mistake, that. Gave yourself away. Now, where is she?”
“Christ, her. . . . I haven’t a clue.”
This time Carver caught him with a backhander.
“I mean it,” Trench insisted. “I knew nothing about the Russians. They weren’t my idea.”
“So who’s idea were they?”
A weary, battered smile appeared on Trench’s face. He was leaning slightly forward, his mouth hanging open, still struggling for breath.
“I taught you everything you know about resisting interrogation. Do you seriously think you’re going to make me talk now?”
Carver looked Trench in the eye. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“So now what are you going to do?”
The question took Carver aback. He realized he did not have an answer. And in that fraction of a second’s indecision, Trench struck, drawing his knees up to his chest and then driving his legs forward into Carver’s body, catapulting him across the deck.
At that moment a wave hit the Tamarisk amidships, spraying the two men with foaming water and bucking the deck upward and sideways. As he staggered backward, Carver lost his footing and fell helplessly to the deck.
His head landed by a small black object lying on the cold, wet wood. As the boat lurched again, he realized that it was Trench’s gun and it was sliding past him, back across the deck, back to the man who wanted to kill him.
Carver’s old commander—his teacher, his role model—picked up the gun with his one good hand and swung his arm around to take his shot. His eyes glittered with fierce, gleeful triumph, then widened in a momentary flicker of shocked surprise as Carver fired the second emergency flare.
The rocket hit Quentin Trench in the face, the plastic tube driving up through his palate into his brain and sending him sliding across the narrow stern deck and over the side of the boat before the flare itself detonated, blowing his skull apart in a starburst of blood, brain, searing light, and bubbling smoke.
And as the flare cast its gory light across the water, illuminating everything in its path, Samuel Carver saw the gigantic bow of the Scandwave Adventurer bearing down on him, an unstoppable wall of black steel, as vast and irresistible as an avalanche.




64

The one-hundred-thousand-ton container ship was no more than two hundred meters away, its hull looming high over the top of Tamarisk ’s mast, its superstructure lost to sight in the teeming rain, far beyond the glow from the flare. The ship was moving as fast as the weather would allow, forcing through the waves as if they were no bigger than ripples on a pond. Carver knew at once that even if the blazing flares had alerted the ship’s crew to the presence of the yacht sailing directly across their path, it was far too late for them to change course or speed.
He had around twenty seconds before the Scandwave Adventurer smashed into the side of the yacht. Carver gathered his senses. It wasn’t too late. If he could start the engine and loosen the sails, he could steer straight into the wind, maintain his speed, and twist away from the onrushing mass. The two boats would end up side by side, the container ship overtaking him like a juggernaut passing a moped. Even a glancing blow from the container ship would still be fatal, but at least there was a chance it might miss.
He dashed to the engine’s starter button. He pressed it. The engine coughed, spluttered, and died. He pressed again. Nothing. Five seconds had elapsed. The boat was still sailing directly toward its gigantic executioner.
Samuel Carver was not a yachtsman. But he was an exmarine. He’d spent years studying, planning, and executing waterborne operations. He’d attended the military sailing courses with which the British armed forces, steeped in the nautical traditions of an island race, were obsessed. Now he prayed he could remember everything he’d ever been taught.
Carver disengaged the auto helm and crouched by Tamarisk’s tiller, the wind in his face, sea spray foaming around him, the rain beating against him so hard he had to screw his eyes into slits to maintain any vision at all. The massive hull was no more than a hundred meters away now, still traveling just as fast, still on course, still oblivious of the yacht’s existence. He could now see flecks of rust on its hull, the white depth markings running down from its Plimsoll line.
He breathed hard and pushed the tiller away from his body, directly toward the Scandwave Adventurer. For a long, endless, agonizing second nothing happened. Then the bow of the yacht turned into the wind, began to swing around, and the boom bearing the mainsail rushed across the boat, over Carver’s head. The jib at the front was jammed tight against the mast. The wind was pushing it over to the far, port side of the boat. But the sail was held back by the taut rope holding it in its previous position to starboard.
Moment by moment, the Tamarisk shifted its course. It slewed anticlockwise in the water, turning three-quarters of the way around the dial, till it was no longer running broadside to the container ship but pointing almost directly at the vast black-painted behemoth. And then the turning stopped and the Tamarisk lay there, dead in the water.
The container ship was now no more than fifty meters away. As the Tamarisk had completed its tack, Carver had frantically worked the rope holding the jib sail, fighting against the tension generated by the wind in the sail.
The line loosened and the jib flapped helplessly in the wind. The boat would not move again until Carver reversed the procedure. He had fewer than five seconds till impact.
He dashed to the jib winch on the port side of the boat, frantically turning the handle to tighten the line and heave the jib around the mast to the point where it could once again catch the wind that would power the Tamarisk.
The Adventurer was now so close that Carver could not even see the top of its hull, which loomed over the yacht, twice as high as its mast. Every second brought it another ten yards closer. There was no time left, nothing more he could do. And then, somehow, the jib caught a gust of wind, filled for a moment, and gave the Tamarisk a little push—no more than a few feet of movement, but just enough to bring the boat around a fraction.
Then Carver felt the craft being gripped by a far mightier force. Below the waterline of the container ship, the bow flared out in a great, round, bulbous protrusion, like the head of an oversize whale. It was designed to push water away from the ship in such a way that it minimized the wake left behind it. It was so effective that the Adventurer, like most modern megaships, generated less of a wake than a forty-foot cabin cruiser. The water was displaced in a huge, rolling swell that picked up the Tamarisk and flung it up and away from the container ship.
Now Carver was in the lee of the Adventurer, which put a block of steel as high as a church steeple and as long as a suburban street between the wind and his yacht. It was like sailing into the eye of a hurricane. The air stilled. His sails flapped emptily. He was completely helpless once again, bobbing on the water like a rubber duck in a bathtub. To his left, the huge hull of the container ship went by for ten, twenty, thirty seconds, as if it filled the entire ocean, one vast ship that never seemed to end.
Suddenly the current of the bow wave took hold once again, swinging back toward the ship’s hull and taking the Tamarisk with it. Now the yacht was propelled directly toward the flank of the ship, which came closer and closer, looming higher and higher until Carver could almost stretch out his left arm and touch the cold, wet steel.
Then the current swung again, flinging the yacht back out to sea. The container vessel was passing by, fifty meters away, and Carver could see the giant capital letters that spelled out its name emblazoned on its stern like a giant farewell as it powered into the distance. The words grew smaller and less distinct until the ship was swallowed up by the darkness and the rain.
There was no sign of the flare now, no indication of where Trench’s body was floating.
Carver briefly considered looking for it, but the wind, waves, and current would already have washed the charred corpse away from its original position. He had no searchlights to sweep across the surface of the water, no engine to carry the Tamarisk back and forth. He could waste hours without finding anything. When morning came, the body would be spotted and hauled aboard whatever ship had discovered it. The coastguard would be called, an investigation begun. That would inevitably lead to the Tamarisk and Bobby Faulkner.
So now another clock was ticking. All Carver could do was press on. His back and legs were aching. The sweat was chilling against his skin. Fatigue washed over him like the waves that surrounded the boat.
He was still slumped over the tiller, two hours later, when he heard a coughing sound over the howl of the wind and the beating of the rain. He looked up and saw Bobby Faulkner’s head and shoulders emerge through the hatch.
He looked around, sleepily. “Where’s Quentin? What’s the daft old bugger got up to now?” He paused, and gave Carver a ragged, doped-up smile. “Have I missed all the fun?”



65

It took Bobby Faulkner a couple of minutes to get his drugged head around the fact that Quentin Trench was dead. Then he spent another couple shouting at Carver, his voice slurred, his thoughts disordered, blaming him for what had happened, calling him a murderer. He said his wife had been right. He said he should have stayed at home and gone to work. “Brother-officer my bloody arse!” he ranted. “You’re nothing but bloody trouble. Should’ve left you in France. Let you sort your own sodding problems out, none of my business. Now Quentin’s dead, best commander a man ever had. And it’s all your bloody fault.”
Carver let Faulkner say his piece. He considered his options as the other man ranted. He could either suck it up and say nothing. Or he could rip right back at him.
He thought about going for the strong, silent option. It would probably be the more mature response. But he couldn’t be sure Faulkner wouldn’t try something stupid as long as he saw Carver as a murderer and Trench as the innocent victim. Plus, he was tired and hacked off and he’d taken about as much as he could stand tonight—and the night before, and the ones before that. So he grabbed Faulkner by the neck, hauled him close till his face was just a few inches away. Carver stared into eyes still bleary with chemicals.
“Listen,” he said. “Listen very hard, because I’m only going to say this once. Quentin Trench was a lying, treacherous bastard who tried to kill me and would have killed you next. He stuck something in that hot bloody toddy you guys made, knocked you out. For God’s sake, you’re a big boy, you must know you’ve been drugged. And it couldn’t have been me, could it? I was up on deck, on watch.”
Faulkner shrugged noncommittally, unable to argue but unwilling to agree.
“He shot at me,” Carver continued, “but he missed. Look.” He pointed to the frame of the hatch. “There are the bloody holes. And none of this would have happened if you hadn’t got him on this boat in the first place.”
Carver let Faulkner go and moved across to the tiller, steering the boat north, waiting for the first faint glimmer of dawn.
“Why would Quentin want to kill you?” Faulkner asked. “He loved you like a son. Told me so himself.”
“He sent me on a mission I wasn’t supposed to survive. And when I did, he wanted me dead. Look, I’ve spent the past five years working off-the-books, black ops, jobs that never happened. I never knew who gave me the work. I didn’t think they knew who I was, either. Better that way, for both our sakes. Turns out I was wrong. One of my bosses knew exactly who I was, because he was Quentin. I’ve been working for him all along, I just didn’t know it.”
Faulkner frowned. “Hang on. It was you that called me first about Quentin. That’s why I thought of him when you called again about the boat.”
“That’s right. I thought he could help me. Pretty stupid, right?”
“So how did you find out he was out to get you?”
“Because he made some stupid crack about Alix, the girl I told you about, being a Russian mail-order bride. How did he know she was Russian? I didn’t tell you or him that. He had to be on the inside. All I needed to know then was whether you were in on it too. And I knew you were in the clear once I saw you lying there unconscious.”
Faulkner was trying to work it all out, struggling against the numbed synapses in his brain.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth, Pablo? How do I know you’re not going to kill me too?”
“Because I would have done it already. You’ve been unconscious or incapable for hours. I could have tipped you over the side anytime. Anyway, you know the truth yourself. What was the last thing you remember before you went out?”
Carver watched Faulkner squint up his eyes, trying to create a picture in his head. He took a couple of deep breaths, expelling the air through his nose. He muttered to himself. Then his eyes opened and he shook his head sorrowfully. “You’re right. It must have been him. We were down there. I was sitting down, thinking about getting some rest. He came over. There was a mug of something in his hand. . . . I don’t remember anything after that.”
“He knocked you out. Then he came after me. But he forgot how good I am at my job. So he died.”
Faulkner leaned forward. “What, precisely, is your job, Pablo?”
Carver said nothing.
“Come on,” Faulkner insisted. “You turned my boat into a battlefield. I’ve got a right to know.”
“I told you already,” said Carver. “Black ops, accidents. Like, say, a veteran marine officer with years of experience at sea who runs into a storm on a night crossing of the Channel and gets fatally wounded by a distress flare. It goes off too early while he’s trying to warn an oncoming container ship of his presence and blows him overboard. That kind of thing.”
“So what was this job Trench sent you on, the one where you met this girl? The one you weren’t meant to survive?”
“Don’t ask,” replied Carver. “We’ll both be happier if we drop the subject right now. So, take the tiller for a while. I’m going down to the cabin to check a couple of things out. Do you want a cup of coffee to help you wake up?”
He went below. The ship’s radio was mounted on the wall of the cabin by the chart table a couple of steps away. Carver ripped the radio from its mounting and smashed it against the side of the table.
“What’s going on down there?” Faulkner called down from the cockpit.
“Sorry,” said Carver. “Think I might have knocked something over. Don’t worry. No harm done.”
He made the coffees and took them back up to the cockpit.
Carver stood with his mug in his hand looking at the southern shore of the Isle of Wight, which lay straight ahead of them a few miles off, a black outline against a dark gray sky, the bottoms of the clouds streaked by the first orange rays of the rising sun.
“What was that all about?” asked Faulkner.
“I was putting your radio out of action. When we get to shore you’re going to need a reason why you didn’t radio for help when you discovered your two crewmates were missing.”
“There’s only one lost.”
“I’ll come to that. Here’s what you’re going to do. The moment you get ashore, get the harbormaster to call the coastguard. Then tell the truth. You were drugged. You’ll still have traces in your bloodstream. The mug Trench used will still be rolling around the cabin somewhere.
“When you woke up, you clambered up on deck, and both your crew members, Trench and Jackson, were missing. So was the ship’s dinghy—don’t worry, it will be. Naturally, your first instinct was to call mayday, but the radio was kaput. They’re not going to know when that happened. Now you’re frantic because two of your oldest friends have disappeared overboard and you haven’t got a clue what happened. You certainly haven’t got a clue why there are bullet holes all over your boat. I mean, there’s no gun anywhere, is there? Now, think you can manage that?”
Faulkner considered for a while, then answered, almost reluctantly, “Yes, I suppose so.”
They weren’t far from the English coastline now. Poole lay on the far side of the Solent, northwest of the Isle of Wight, to the left as they were looking. There was just a chance Trench had ordered a welcoming committee to greet them, in case he hadn’t got the job done at sea.
Carver turned his head right, to the northeast, gazing at the horizon. Then he turned back to Faulkner.
“Change course,” he said. “We need another harbor.”



66

Yuri Zhukovski told his people to give Alix breakfast. He’d gone at her for hours. Now he was satisfied that she had nothing more to tell him. He just had to decide what to do with her next. He would use her to get what he needed. It was simply a matter of how.
The servant said nothing as she went into the room, but her presence was enough to wake Alix from a fitful sleep that was really nothing more than a semiconscious doze. She winced as she propped herself up and watched the servant carry the tray toward her. The restraints that had tied her were gone, but the bruises showed up inky blue against the skin on her wrists and ankles. There’d been violence too, and the memories of what he’d done to her were as vivid as the welts on her body.
She looked at the servant, another Russian, as she placed the tray on the table beside the bed. The woman’s face was masked in the mute, dead-eyed blankness that had disguised the true feelings of a thousand generations of serfs. But Alix could still feel the contempt radiating off her.
She collapsed back onto the bed. She knew she had to eat, she just didn’t have enough strength left to lift the food to her mouth. Later, she thought. Later, maybe she’d try again.



67

Jack Grantham met Dame Agatha Bewley for an interagency breakfast in the Coffee Room at the Travellers Club in Pall Mall, London. Housed in Charles Barry’s 1832 pastiche of an Italian renaissance palace, it had long been the traditional London meeting place for diplomats, ambassadors, and visiting dignitaries.
As an MI6 officer, Grantham was, in theory, an employee of the British diplomatic service, the foreign and commonwealth office. His Travellers membership made a useful addition to that cover, but he was not by nature a clubman and he despised the atmosphere of entrenched, inherited privilege that hung over the gentlemen’s clubs of Pall Mall like an old London fog. He had to admit, though, that the place came in handy. He didn’t have to worry about finding restaurants or booking tables. He simply ate at the Travellers. That saved time, avoided waste, and increased efficiency. And those were principles Grantham liked.
“I was sorry to hear about your two people in Geneva,” said Dame Agatha, breaking a piece off her croissant and covering it in thick, dark marmalade. “It’s never easy to lose staff like that, particularly when they’re young. No children involved, I gather. That’s a blessing, at least.”
Grantham stuck his fork into a sausage. He’d gone for the full English breakfast, same as always.
“I suppose so,” he agreed. “Anyway, something good may have come of it all. We’re starting to get names and faces. We’re just not sure how they all fit together.”
Dame Agatha was a fastidious woman. She chewed carefully, swallowed, and then, having made sure her mouth was empty, asked, “Anything you’d like to share with us?”
Grantham had just filled his face with fried egg and bacon. “Mmm,” he managed, with a nod.
Dame Agatha put down her knife and ignored her food. She sat very still, looking at Grantham over the top of her glasses.
“Go on,” she prompted.
“You seem skeptical,” Grantham said. “Don’t be. There’s no hidden agenda here.”
“So what do you have so far?”
“Two names: an English male called Samuel Carver and a Russian female, Alexandra Petrova.”
“Where do these names come from?”
“Let’s just say Percy Wake pulled a few strings, called in some old favors. I asked him, he delivered. At this point, I don’t care how.”
Dame Agatha gave him a look that suggested she’d noted Grantham’s response but had yet to accept it.
“Carver and Petrova—what do we know about them?” she asked.
“Not a lot. Carver has to be an alias. There is no record of any UK passport in his name—not a genuine one, anyway. He has no credit cards, appears on no airline databases, and we can’t find any bank accounts. Petrova used to be a low-ranking KGB agent, Moscow-based. She started work just before the wall came down. They used her for honey traps.”
He took out a brown manila envelope, opened it, and passed a couple of black-and-white pictures across the table.
“Pretty girl, isn’t she?” said Dame Agatha.
“She certainly was when those were taken, seven years ago. She didn’t snare any of our agents, but a couple of businessmen said more than they should have.”
Dame Agatha raised an eyebrow. “Men are such simple creatures.”
“Plenty of women have fallen for that sort of thing,” Grantham retorted. “All it took was some handsome Stasi agent saying, ‘I love you,’ and half the female staff in the West German government were happily passing secrets to the East.”
Dame Agatha sipped her tea, thoughtfully. “I suppose you’re right. Human weaknesses are universal.”
“Just as well, or we’d never find out a thing. Anyway, this Petrova woman disappeared off the radar five or six years ago. She still lives in Moscow, so far as we know. But she’s not been up to any espionage activity and she doesn’t have a criminal record.”
“She sounds like a most unlikely assassin,” Dame Agatha observed.
“Either that, or a seriously good one, because she’s stayed out of the limelight.”
“Seems unlikely, though, doesn’t it? One minute she’s sleeping with her targets, the next she’s killing them. I suppose both acts require the same detachment, a callousness toward the other person. But the training required would be quite different. What makes you think she’s involved? Apart from the leak of her name, of course.”
Grantham swallowed a final mouthful of sausage, mushroom, and baked bean.
“Two days ago we received a message from a French intelligence agent, off-the-record. He said he knew where to find the people we were looking for and he’d tell us in return for half a million dollars.”
Dame Agatha laughed. “One really has to admire the French. There’s something majestic about their complete lack of scruples.”
“Yes, that’s what we thought too. We told him to get lost, of course. Then we traced his phone and set a team of agents on him. He was in Geneva.”
“Aaahh.”
“Well, anyway, our people followed the Frenchman. He met a man carrying a briefcase.”
“Containing half a million dollars?”
“I don’t know, the case was never opened. But the Frenchman must have thought the cash was there because he went off with his contact, which was a big mistake. They got into a black BMW registered to a Russian fur-importing business in Milan. There were three other men in the car. They drove to a street in the Old Town. The Frenchman was then killed. To cut a long story short, the Russians hung around the neighborhood till about nine p.m. local time, when all hell broke loose. The first Russian, the one who’d met the Frenchman, kidnapped a woman from a café, killing the owner, a customer, and both our agents in the process.”
“My God . . .” murmured Dame Agatha.
“I know, a total bloodbath. Anyway, we believe Petrova was the woman who was kidnapped. Meanwhile, the other three Russians were getting beaten to a pulp in a pub fight just up the road. Witnesses said they heard the man who whipped all three of them talking at the bar. They said he sounded British.”
“Is this our Mr Carver?”
“That’s what we reckon.”
“So the girl was kidnapped at the same time as this Carver fellow was getting into his fight. That sounds like someone was after them both. Sounds like a cleanup operation.”
“Exactly. But how did all these Russians get involved? Everybody’s assumed the events in Paris were planned by a British organization. I can’t yet make the connection with Moscow.”
“Do we know anything about the kidnapper?”
“Yes. He’s called Grigori Kursk. The Moscow police know him well. He’s been arrested on countless charges of assault, a couple of murders too. But the charges never stick. Citizen Kursk has powerful friends.”
“So Kursk kidnaps Petrova,” said Dame Agatha. “His men go after Carver. But Carver escapes. Where does he go next?”
“Where would you go?”
Dame Agatha smiled. “As far away as possible.”
“That would be logical,” Grantham agreed. “But look at it from Carver’s perspective. He’s spent the best part of two days in the company of a woman whose only known talent is seduction. There’s a chance she’s got her hooks into him pretty deep. What if he wants to get her back?”
“Then he goes after the Russians.”
“Except he doesn’t know who they are. He’s as confused as we are, because he got his orders from London. So if he wants to find out who’s got the girl . . .”
“He has to come back here.”
“Precisely,” said Grantham. “Which is why MI5 may need to get involved.”
Dame Agatha was about to reply when one of the club servants sidled up to Grantham’s chair, coughed discreetly to attract his attention, and whispered something in his ear. Grantham nodded and dismissed the man, then said, “Excuse me, Agatha. I won’t be a moment,” before following the servant out of the room.
He returned fewer than five minutes later. His mood seemed greatly improved as he sat down and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee from a silver pot.
“That was the office,” Grantham said. “We’ve just had some more information from Moscow. One of our people there thought Petrova looked vaguely familiar. So she stopped trawling through police databases and had a look at some newspaper cuttings. It turns out that Grigori Kursk isn’t the only one with powerful friends.”



68

Half a mile from the mouth of Chichester Harbor, on the West Sussex coast, Carver lowered the Tamarisk’s inflatable rubber dinghy. He powered up the out board—that, at least, started on the first try—and made his way to the shore. The harbor was a natural inlet whose four main channels cut miles inland, creating a great expanse of sheltered water that was a yachtsman’s paradise. Sailing clubs and marinas had sprung up at half a dozen villages scattered around the bay. At eight o’clock on a damp September morning, it was no trouble for Carver to find a jetty, tie up his dinghy alongside a dozen others, and stroll ashore without attracting any attention at all.
He caught a bus into Chichester, where he bought a cup of coffee, a sandwich, and a train ticket to London. In the station café he read a morning paper. The royals were getting it in the neck. Apparently they weren’t displaying a sufficient quantity of grief. Meanwhile people were building little altars outside Kensington Palace, complete with photographs, candles, and flowers.
Carver felt like a foreigner in his own land. The whole place had gone crazy. There was an atmosphere of barely suppressed hysteria in the air, a pent-up frenzy.
He kept reading. Some actor he’d never heard of believed the tabloid press should be held accountable for the death. A politician thought something had to be done to stop the press being so aggressive. A pop diva swore that everyone had blood on their hands.
“No, love, just me,” muttered Carver, under his breath.
He was finding it hard to focus on the words in front of him. He’d been up all night. The night before that he’d got no more than four hours’ sleep. There was a point where the effects of fatigue on the brain were almost indistinguishable from those of alcohol. Reactions were slowed, judgment impaired, temper harder to control. He was getting there fast.
His train pulled in and he got on board. The journey took ten minutes shy of two hours and he crashed all the way, just enough rest to take the edge off his exhaustion without really refreshing him. When he got to the capital it was a little after eleven. By now, Carver reckoned, Faulkner would have talked to the authorities. Even if Trench’s body had not been found, mariners up and down the English Channel would have been alerted to look out for it. So long as Faulkner stuck to the script and did not give him away, there was no reason for Carver to be worried. But his time was running out and so was Alix’s. She’d been in Grigori Kursk’s hands for more than thirty-six hours. Carver didn’t want to think about what that meant.
Leclerc had told him the instructions for his phony bank transfer had come from Lord Malgrave. Under normal circumstances, Carver would have tracked him for days, getting used to his routines before choosing the perfect time and method to make his move. But that wasn’t an option now. He had to confront the banker immediately.
The bank’s head office address was in the London phone book. Carver called and asked for the chairman. He was told that Lord Malgrave would be in meetings all morning. That was all he needed to know.
He took the Underground. It was hot, crowded, and dirty, but faster than a cab. He emerged into the heart of the City of London, a financial district whose global power and importance was equaled only by Wall Street. Soaring glass and steel towers were superimposed over a maze of narrow winding streets, home to institutions dating back more than a thousand years.
The administrative headquarters of Malgrave and Company were located behind a glossy black front door flanked by stone columns and surmounted by a carved family crest. The great stone building exuded confidence and security. Carver guessed it dated back to the early days of the century, the era of global trade and national prosperity that flourished before its illusions of unstoppable progress were shattered in the slaughterhouse of the First World War.
He walked around the block, checking out the service entrance that opened onto an even narrower side street at the back. He thought about going in that way, trying to get up the back stairs to the chairman’s office. But he didn’t know where that office was and he didn’t have time to search for plans or recce the building. There was nothing else for it. He had to walk in through the front door. And that meant looking the part.
He found a barbershop and had a shave. Twenty minutes in a gentleman’s outfitters provided him with a charcoal gray pinstripe suit, double-breasted in the classic City style, a pink-striped Egyptian cotton shirt, gaudier than any New York banker would wear but perfectly acceptable in London, dark blue tie, plain gold cufflinks, and a pair of black lace-up Derby shoes. Next, he bought a Mont Blanc pen and an elegant black briefcase. Into it went his money belt and his gun: He didn’t want to ruin the line of his jacket.
He stopped in a stationery store for a pad of letter-writing paper and a package of envelopes, then drank another coffee while he took out the Mont Blanc and wrote a short note: “Carver is dead. Trench likewise. Circumstances as yet unknown. All communications have been compromised (UK govt suspected)—telephone and e-mail silence essential. Request immediate meeting to relay emergency instructions in person.”
There was just one other thing he’d need: a small, easily portable video camera. He got himself a new Sony digital model that recorded onto a PC-compatible disk.
The shopping was done. The props had been chosen; the script written. The curtain was about to go up.
He passed through the open front door and gave a curt nod to the uniformed commissionaire, who immediately straightened his back and nodded back, instinctively acknowledging an officer’s presence. At the reception desk, Carver flashed a brief, agreeable smile at the immaculately groomed brunette behind the desk and handed her the envelope with the words, “Please have this conveyed at once to Lord Malgrave. It is extremely urgent.”
The receptionist dialed a number and had a brief urgent conversation. A couple of times she glanced back at Carver, trying to judge his authenticity. Then she held her hand over the receiver and spoke to Carver. “I’m very sorry, sir, but Lord Malgrave is in a meeting.”
Carver remained unruffled. “I quite understand,” he said, not sounding offended in the slightest by this rebuff. “I know he’s very busy this morning. Then I’d like to speak directly to his lordship’s personal assistant, please.”
The fine lines of the receptionist’s neatly tweezed eyebrows crumpled into a brief frown. “Of course, sir,” she said, passing him the handset.
“Thank you,” said Carver. He spoke to the chairman’s PA. “My name is Jackson. I have an urgent message for Lord Malgrave. It concerns our transactions in Paris, and I absolutely assure you he will be grateful to read it. If he doesn’t think it’s worth pursuing, I’ll be gone before you know it.” He paused to hear what the PA had to say, uttered a reassuring “Absolutely,” followed by an enthusiastic “Excellent!” Then he handed the phone back to the receptionist.
This time his smile was broad. “Thank you so much for your help. They’re expecting me on the sixth floor. So, where’s the lift?”
Lord Crispin Malgrave did not cut an impressive figure. He wore a double-breasted suit and an old school tie, and he had the oiled salt-and-pepper hair and the ruddy complexion—redolent of hunting fields, shooting parties, and salmon streams—of the British ruling class. But the facade was cracking, the arrogance peeling away to reveal the raw fear beneath.
Carver had been shown into Malgrave’s private office. The chairman’s PA was an elegant woman in her fifties, brisk, efficient, and bossy. The man was running a bank, and still he had a nanny. She watched over Carver until her master arrived, as if worried he might steal a paperweight if left to his own devices.
Malgrave had scurried into the room, sweating panic from every pore. He dropped like a loosely packed sandbag into the leather-backed seat behind his mahogany desk, said, “Thank you, Maureen,” and barely waited till she’d left the room before blurting out, “Trench is dead? Are you sure? How do you know?”
Carver leaned toward the desk and stuck out his right hand.
“Hello,” he said. “My name is Samuel Carver.”
Malgrave did not move. He seemed to need all his energy just to keep his mouth from flapping around like a freshly caught fish. Eventually, he managed to get some words out. “But you told my secretary . . .”
“I lied.”
“What about Trench?”
“He’s dead. That bit was true.”
Malgrave did the math. He worked out who was next. Then he leaned forward in his chair, his eyes pleading, hands held out in supplication. “Oh God, no, please don’t. I’ll do anything!” He thought for a second. “I owe you money. Of course! I’ll pay you in full. Three million dollars. Plus interest!”
Carver let him burble on, his silence only making Malgrave all the more effusive.
“Look at me,” he said, once Malgrave had finally shut up.
The banker looked puzzled.
“Look at me,” Carver repeated. “Just shut up, look at me, and pay attention. I don’t want your blood money. And I’m not going to kill you. I’m a soldier, not a psychopath. I take life when there’s no alternative. You have an alternative. You can tell me about the Russians.”
“What Russians?”
“The ones in Paris. The ones you sent to kill me.”
Malgrave shook his head. “I don’t know anything about them, I swear to you.”
Carver was inclined to believe him. Malgrave didn’t have the nerve to be an accomplished liar. And his ignorance about the Russians tallied with Trench’s.
“Okay,” said Carver, “so what did you know?”
Malgrave wiped a silk handkerchief across his sweaty brow. “The chairman told me that he was planning to . . . you know . . . the princess operation. I mean, I didn’t like it, didn’t approve at all, argued strongly against the whole plan, in fact. But he said it was vital for the preservation of the monarchy, and besides, he’d committed the consortium, that we were being funded externally, millions of pounds from a foreign backer. The money was wired from Zurich, anonymous of course. I had no idea who’d sent it. So you’re saying it was Russians . . .”
Malgrave frowned, his panic subsiding a little as he considered the possibility. “But why would Russians . . . ? I mean, what possible interest could they have in killing her?”
“I don’t know,” said Carver. “When I find them, I’ll be sure to ask. In the meantime, since no one else has a clue who these Russians are, why don’t you call your chairman and arrange a meeting? Now.”
“But that would be impossible.”
Carver opened his case and took out his gun. “Here’s the alternative. So call him. Say you need to see him, in person, immediately. If he asks why, tell him you can’t talk about it on the phone. Make something up. Then tell your chauffeur you need your car. We’re going for a drive. Got that?”
Malgrave nodded.
“Right,” said Carver. “Start dialing.”