The Accident Man:A Novel

74

Carver felt as though the film of his life had started to run backward. Five days ago he had flown through mountains in a helicopter and got into a jet. Now here he was, on the other side of the world, flying back through mountains in a helicopter, having just gotten off a jet. Then the sun had been rising; now it was setting. Then he’d been about to kill. Would he soon be killed?
The pilot tapped him on the shoulder and pointed down a lush green valley to a huge white tower rising from the valley floor like a castle keep, complete with pointy-topped turrets at each corner.
“Palace Hotel!” the pilot shouted. “Impressive, huh?”
Carver bobbed his head in agreement. Next to the tower was a great white wall, pierced by the windows of the hotel’s bedrooms and suites. Huge chalets were arrayed in a protective circle around the main building, on the fringes of grounds spotted with the dusty brownish pink of tennis courts and the piercing turquoise of an outdoor pool.
The helicopter landed on the hotel’s own pad. Carver got out. He had a standard deal with the helicopter company: The pilot would wait for an hour and take him back at no extra cost, but at minute sixty-one, he was taking off come what may.
“See ya!” shouted the pilot.
“Hope so!” Carver yelled back. Then he walked toward the looming castle tower.
It was like an old friends’ reunion. There was Kursk with his bogus Swisscom van, and next to him were his three stooges, each decorated with their personalized assortment of stitches, plasters, and bandages. They stood there glowering at Carver, burning up with thoughts of vengeance. Right now they were being restrained by their orders, but the slightest provocation could send them over the edge. He wouldn’t give them any excuse. He did not react as the Smurfs surrounded him, one on either side, the third directly behind him.
“You speak English?” he said to Kursk.
“Little,” the giant Russian grunted.
“Okay, then. I have a meeting with your boss, Mr. Zhukovski. He said be here at seven p.m. I’m here. Let’s go.”
Kursk just looked at him, his eyes as dead as the glass balls in a stuffed moose. “F*ck you,” he snarled.
Carver felt a sharp, excruciating crack at the back of his skull. He felt the computer being ripped from his hands. And then his world went black.
He regained consciousness in the back of the van. His head ached and there was a sharp, throbbing pain just behind his right ear.
Carver knew he was in the van because he could hear the sound of the engine and the road noise and feel the lurching as the van turned right or left. He couldn’t see anything, though, because there was something over his head. It felt close over his face and constricting around his neck, like a drawstring bag that had been pulled over him and then tightened.
He tried to reach up to touch it, but he couldn’t. His wrists were cuffed. His ankles were imprisoned in leg irons. The cuffs and irons had been clamped as tight as possible, pinching his skin and cutting off the blood supply to his hands and feet. They were linked by a short, vertical chain, so he could not raise his hands more than a few degrees above his waist.
There was something tight around his midriff too, like a wide belt. At the back of the belt a hard, square box dug into him when he leaned against the side of the van.
He could feel the metal paneling, hard and cold against his thighs, buttocks, and back. His hands were gloved with padded mittens, like soft boxing gloves, that made it impossible to feel anything, so he couldn’t actually touch his bare skin. But he didn’t have to. He knew perfectly well that he was stark naked.
The van seemed to be driving uphill. But then it turned sharply, slowed down, and started to descend. Carver heard the sound of the exhaust change, echoing as the van was driven indoors before dying away completely. There was a metallic rattling in his right ear and the clatter of an opening door, then Carver felt a sharp tug on the chain by his wrists and he was desperately scrabbling for some kind of purchase as he was dragged right out of the van and dumped with a bone-cracking thump on the floor.
There was another tug on the rope and he was pulled to his feet, the cuffs digging even deeper into his wrists. Then he was led, blind and half-crippled, shuffling across the garage, through a door and down a passage. He heard another door being opened. A few more shuffles, then he got a shove in the back that sent him skimming across the floor until finally he lost his balance and crashed helpless to the ground again. Behind him he heard the slamming of bolts.
So, judgment had been passed down. He had been found guilty. Now it was just a matter of hearing the sentence.



75

Carver did not know how long he was kept alone in the darkness. He tried to get some idea of the dimensions of his cell by getting to his feet and stumbling in one direction until he hit the nearest wall. Then he made his way around the perimeter of the room. It felt square, maybe twenty of his chained, restricted paces on each side. He ended up huddled in a corner, shivering as the chill from the concrete floor seeped into his bones and stiffened his muscles.
It was pretty uncomfortable, but nothing out of the ordinary. The techniques they’d used so far had been pretty crude: basic sensory deprivation—the room was dead silent, it must have been fully soundproofed—mixed with the physical and sexual degradation of enforced nudity. If this was the best they could do, he could handle it. But given Zhukovski’s KGB training, he suspected it was only the start. They were giving him plenty of time alone to sit and imagine what might be next. His fear would only make their job easier.
Carver told himself to clear his mind of apprehension. Stay positive. Focus on his own agenda.
An age seemed to pass before he heard the bolts being drawn back and the sound of footsteps and harsh Russian voices. He was dragged back to his feet and led by the chain again. They left the room and made their way back down the corridor. Then he felt hands on his shoulders turning him around 180 degrees and he was pulled forward again.
His toes stubbed against something hard, making him cry out in pain and surprise. There was laughter around him. Then Carver received a sharp kick in the backside and he felt his arms being pulled upward. He heard just one word in English: “Stairs.”
He lifted his right foot as high as the leg-irons would allow and was just able to get a grip on the rough concrete corner of the first step. He brought his left leg up to meet it. It was a slow, degrading process, and Carver was sent on his way by regular slaps and kicks, each accompanied by his jailers’ raucous laughs.
Finally he reached the top. Soon the floor was smooth, first with cool stone tiles, then with warmer planking, before he felt the softness of carpeting underfoot. He went down a series of shallow steps, stumbling and almost falling at the bottom before a tug on the chain brought him upright again.
There was another one-word command: “Stop!”
Carver stood still. Someone grabbed his wrists and removed the mitts from his hands. Next came fingers at his throat, a sharp tug, and suddenly the hood was pulled from his head and he was blinking against the light. Gradually his vision cleared.
He was standing in the den area at one end of an openplan living space. He could feel the warmth of flames against his bare back. There was a fire behind him, open on all four sides. The steps down which he had tripped were set beside the stone fireplace. In front of him a rich Persian rug covered the floor. To his left a long chocolate leather settee in the shape of a shallow U was set against the wall, facing a massive wide screen TV on the other wall. Kursk’s stooges were sitting on the couch. One of them, the redhead, held what looked like a basic old-fashioned TV remote control. Kursk himself was standing next to Carver, saying nothing, just watching.
Carver’s eyes were fixed on the figure in the matching leather armchair, sitting directly in his line of sight, wearing a drab formal suit. The man looked him up and down with the detached objectivity of a coroner inspecting a corpse on the mortuary slab. There was something profoundly disturbing about this studied examination. For the first time Carver felt shamed by his nakedness and his captive status. He had to force himself to keep his head up and his gaze steady.
“Good evening,” the man said. “I am Yuri Zhukovski. Let me explain your situation. The first thing you must understand is that you have no hope of escape. Even assuming that you could somehow free yourself like Houdini from your shackles, you can be disabled in an instant.
“You will notice that there is a black nylon belt around your waist. This is a REACT belt, short for Remote Electronically Activated Control Technology. It has a power pack secured at the back, out of your reach, which is capable of sending a fifty-thousand-volt charge through your body—activated, as its name suggests, by a remote-control unit.”
Now Carver knew what the man on the couch was holding.
Zhukovski continued, “This belt is used by American authorities to restrain violent prisoners but has recently been condemned as a torture device by those feeble-minded liberals at Amnesty International. They object to the total physical incapacity induced by such a massive shock, along with agonizing pain, brain trauma, and even incontinence. For my purposes, those all seem like recommendations.”
Carver looked down at the black band that encircled him. “Ouch,” he said, drily. “I’m sure it hurts. But here’s something you should know. I have taken a copy of the computer hard drive, just as you anticipated. I have also recorded a full video confession, admitting to my part in the death of the Princess of Wales. You have a starring role. And if I’m not safe and sound tomorrow morning, every major media outlet in the Western world is going to get copies of both.”
Zhukovski frowned, as if genuinely puzzled by such misguided threats. “And this, you think, will protect you? Please, use your intelligence. How many fake confessions do you suppose have flooded into TV stations and newspapers over the past few days? Every crank in the world wants his moment of glory. As for computer disks and conspiracy theories, there are already hundreds of those. No one will pay any attention. They will simply throw your disk and your video confession into the trash, along with all the rest.
“Okay, we have dealt with that, I think. Now let me introduce you to my staff. They will, I hope, be making your short stay here as uncomfortable as possible. Mr. Kursk, of course, you have met. So now . . .” Like a lead singer introducing his less-important bandmates, Zhukovski pointed to the emaciated figure with the punky red hair. “That is Mr. Titov. I must say, you made a very great mess of his face. He has the control for your belt, as you may have noticed.”
The round-faced man with the sullen lips, his nose now hidden behind bandages, came next. “Mr. Rutsev,” said Zhukovski. “And finally”—he gestured toward a tough looking, short-cropped man whose crude features had not been improved by being head-butted in a Geneva bar—”Mr. Dimitrov.”
The man gave an ironic bow. Carver nodded back.
“Of course,” Zhukovski continued, “I have saved the best till last.”
He looked up at the one person Carver had been trying to will away, the lovely figure perched against the arm of Zhukovski’s chair, running her shiny crimson fingernails through his hair and sighing with satisfaction as he ran his hand down her bare thigh.
Yuri Zhukovski smiled at Samuel Carver and said, “I believe you’ve met my mistress.”



76

He should have been angry. He wished he could be.
Alix looked as though she had been sprayed with money. Her hair had been miraculously restored to a honey blond mane that tumbled around her bare shoulders. Her skin seemed to glow golden brown. Her lips were a liquid red. There were diamonds glittering on her earlobes and in the bangles around her wrists. Her high-heeled black boots clung to her calves as tightly and smoothly as stockings.
The dress she was wearing was little more than a sliver of glittering, semitransparent material, like featherlight chain mail, that hung from her neck and fell to a point between her upper thighs. The firelight sparkled off the shimmering fabric as it stroked her breasts and stomach. It was clear that she had nothing on underneath. When she half-turned to whisper and giggle in Zhukovski’s ear, giving a quick, mocking glance in Carver’s direction as she bent down, her eyes flicking up and down his body like a lion tamer’s whip, he could see that the dress left her back completely bare before flirting with her naked buttocks in a whisper of silver.
So this, at last, was the true Alexandra Petrova, a courtesan, a professional, a valuable possession to be pampered, petted, and then used by her owner exactly as he desired. Carver’s throat tightened as he choked on his humiliation. The last pillar of his faith had been kicked away. There was nothing left now. The love that was supposed to redeem him had been revealed to be nothing at all.
Yes, he should have been angry. Fury would at least give him energy. But as he stood before her, stripped of all dignity, the emotion that filled him was forgiveness. Some last vestige of self-delusion forbade him from blaming Alix. It told him that this was not her fault, that the haughty prostitute who stood before him was not the real woman he had loved, but a false identity. He tried to give himself reasons not to believe the evidence of his own eyes and ears. And as he did so, he understood, for the first time in his life, what it meant to give oneself utterly to another human being, to lose one’s own identity in theirs.
Be that as it may, he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing him grovel. He pulled back his shoulders, lifted his head, and asked Zhukovski, “How’s the land mine trade? Any more business since Sunday?”
Zhukovski nodded. “So you worked it out. Now I have a request to make of you.”
He leaned forward in his chair.
“Apologize, please.”
“Oh yeah?” said Carver. “Why should I do that?”
“You have caused me a great deal of trouble. But we can get to that later. First, I insist that you apologize to Miss Petrova. You forced her to endure your crude attempts at making love. Even worse, you bored her. Now you should say ‘sorry.’” He turned his head to look at Alix. “Don’t you agree, my dear?”
“Absolutely,” she said, then closed her eyes and gave a shiver of disgust that made her dress sparkle with every tremor.
Carver looked at her sadly. “You’re better than that,” he said. “I know you are.”
For a fraction of a second he thought he saw a shadow of remorse—or was it pity?—cloud her eyes. Then she blinked, and when her eyes opened they were stony again, communicating nothing but disdain.
“Make him apologize,” she said. “I would like that very much.”
Carver did not move.
Zhukovski nodded.
Titov smirked at Carver, then pressed a round white button on the black box in his hands.
The shock made every nerve scream in pain, jerking his body like an epileptic marionette, rocking his head from side to side and ripping an animal howl of pain from his throat.
Titov kept his thumb on the button. One second . . . two . . . three.
Unable to maintain his balance or control his limbs, Carver dropped to the floor, his fall barely broken by his tethered hands. He lay there writhing helplessly, his wrists and ankles tugging and scraping against their shackles, drawing blood. He was utterly controlled by the electric commands ripping through his central nervous system. His body was slippery with sweat. His heart was pounding. He was about to black out.
Then, at last, Zhukovski nodded again and Titov lifted his finger from the button. The current stopped flowing and Carver’s body flopped into blissful immobility.
Gradually, his pulse slowed. Carver lay immobile on the floor, while his Russian audience compared notes on his involuntary performance, the men jigging about on the couch and hooting with laughter as they mimicked him thrashing about. Then he gathered his breath and slowly, painfully, pulled his knees up behind him, so that he was sitting on his haunches, with his head on the ground, like a peasant prostrate before an emperor. It took him a few more seconds to gather his strength, and more seconds still before he could drag himself half upright and kneeling.
His fall had brought him closer to Zhukovski and Alix. They were only a few feet away now. His eyes were almost level with her breasts. With every breath he was bathed in her heady, spicy scent. His eyes were filled with the silver light dancing across her body. Even now, after everything that had happened, he was overwhelmed by desire, torn apart by longing for her.
“Apologize” said Zhukovski. “Kiss her feet and beg for forgiveness.”
Carver looked up, searching Alix’s eyes for some sign of hope, some recognition that he had not been utterly deceived.
“You don’t want this,” he said.
“I do,” she replied. Her voice was steady and cool, leaving no room for doubt.
He barely heard when Zhukvoski repeated the single word “Apologize,” or noticed when he nodded again to Titov.
As he endured that second electric whipping, it seemed to Carver that it was a voice other than his that screamed so loudly, another body that flopped and twisted so spastically. When the current stopped and he opened his eyes, he saw he was lying right at Alix’s feet. He did not need to get to his knees again. Once the power to move had returned, he could wriggle forward on his stomach, his pulse still racing, his chest heaving as he gasped for air, the sweat dripping from his body. He could stretch his neck so that his lips kissed the shining black leather as he whispered, “I’m sorry.” But whether he was apologizing to her, or simply to himself he really couldn’t tell.
Alix gave a flick of her foot, kicking his face away from her. Carver lay motionless, facedown on the rug, the gross physicality of his naked body a stark contrast to the intricate delicacy of the rug’s swirling, intersecting patterns.
Then she said a few words in Russian to Zhukovski. The Russian got off his chair, settled on his haunches, and grabbed Carver’s face, lifting it so that the two men were looking into each other’s eyes.
“Let me translate,” said Zhukovski. “Alexandra says you disgust her. She says she wishes to leave the room before the sight of you makes her physically sick.”
He paused for a moment as Alix turned on a four-inch heel and stalked from the room.
“Take a good look, Mr Carver. You will never see her again.”
“I won’t be missing much,” he croaked. His mouth was parchment-dry, his throat scarred by the force of his screams.
Zhukovski let go of his head, which flopped back down on the carpet. “Come now, you don’t really mean that. Even now, after she has reduced you to this pitiful state, you would crawl after her if you could, begging her to take you back.”
Carver didn’t reply. He was too busy trying to get back up on his feet. Paying painstaking attention to every movement, he made his way from his belly to his knees. He put one foot flat on the floor, then the other. He drew himself up until he was standing to attention in front of Zhukovski, who had returned to his chair and was watching the spectacle with amused interest. Carver swayed slightly, grinding his teeth as he struggled for his balance and his dignity. His cuffed hands were held down in front of him, pathetically preserving his modesty.
Zhukovski gave three slow, deliberate claps.
“Congratulations,” he said. “That was done like a true soldier. But my point remains. The woman has destroyed you. You fought my best man, Kursk, to a standstill. You overcame three of his subordinates—look at the mess you made of Titov here. You killed Trench and most of his men. But Alexandra brought you to your knees.”
Still Carver said nothing. It was taking all his concentration just to remain upright. Zhukovski watched his striving, then spoke a few words to Titov, who at once picked up an ornately carved wooden chair, heavily decorated with gold leaf, and placed it behind Carver.
“Sit down,” said Zhukovski. “Relax. I would be interested to hear your side of the story.”
He issued another order to Titov, who walked around to Zhukovski’s chair and handed his master the small black box.
Carver found himself staring at the omnipotent white button. Zhukovski caught his eye. Carver’s guts tightened as his system flooded with cortisol, the stress hormone, the anticipator of pain and bringer of fear. He swallowed hard. His armpits prickled.
Zhukovski smiled, then pressed the button, holding it for a single second, just enough to power another jolt through Carver’s body that picked him right off the chair, yelping like a wounded dog, and set him back down again with an impact that almost sent him toppling backward to the floor. Titov gave a gleeful cackle of delight and directed a sharp volley of Russian profanities in Carver’s direction. Zhukovski nodded contentedly.
“Well, we’ve established that this keeps you under control,” he said. “We can talk alone, just the two of us.”
His men were dismissed with a wave of Zhukovski’s hand. On his way from the room, Titov stopped by Carver’s chair, looked at him for a second, and smacked a right-handed haymaker into the side of Carver’s face.
The punch wasn’t as powerful as it might have been. Titov had to hit downward to reach his seated target and Carver was able to twist his head, deflecting some of the impact. So he was stunned, rather than knocked out cold; his jawbone was cracked, not shattered. But the pain was just as bad. As Titov left the room, happily rubbing his bruised knuckles, Carver twisted and rotated his head, trying to clear his brain. His mouth was filled with blood from his shredded cheek and battered gums. His tongue gingerly probed his teeth. A couple of molars felt as loose as baby teeth.
Suddenly, without any warning, his body shook with a tremor that seized him from head to toe—an unwanted reminder of his earlier convulsions, like the aftershock that follows an earthquake.
“Titov has never had much self-control,” mused Zhukovski, ignoring Carver as he squirmed and shivered. “So far as he is concerned, that is just an opening skirmish. He will want a lot more satisfaction before his score is settled. And I agree with him. I too have not finished with you. I want you to understand about Alexandra, that you never meant anything to her at all. So let me tell you about the real woman, not your fantasy lover.”
He got up from his chair and moved to a sideboard on which bottles and glasses were arrayed. There he poured himself a glass of vodka, neat, and returned to his chair.
“It was my wife, Olga, who discovered her, you know, at a Komsomol gathering. She was just a slip of a girl from the provinces—Kirov, if I recall. . . .”
“Not Kirov,” said Carver. “It was . . .” He frowned. He knew where Alix had lived as a child. The name was on the tip of his tongue. But for the life of him he couldn’t recall it.
Zhukovski shrugged indifferently. “I do not really care where it was. What was obvious from the moment Olga brought her to my attention was that this was a girl of astonishing capacities. Her eyes were crazy, of course. . . .”
“She told me,” said Carver. That much he did remember.
“Her teeth too. Did she tell you that? We had to fix those. But the rest was all Alexandra.”
He put his vodka on a side table to the right of his chair, taking the time to compose his thoughts.
“It was her hunger that struck me most,” Zhukovski continued. “She was hungry for a better life, hungry for experience, and, yes, hungry for sex. Every atom of that girl was female, yet she had a masculine desire for sexual conquest. There was no form of pleasure she would not explore. And then, as the duckling turned into a swan and for the first time in her life she became aware of her powers of attraction, she acquired a hunger for power. Perhaps she wished for revenge on all the boys who had spurned and mocked her, who can say? But she used her power over men like an empress. Some girls had to be persuaded, even forced, to put their bodies at the service of the motherland. Not Alexandra. She gloried in it.”
“What did she do afterward, when the wall came down?” Carver asked. He was starting to gather his senses now, the pain of his electrocution was fading, his body was back under control. He could sit still in his chair without twitching like an impatient schoolboy.
“You see,” Zhukovski said with a smile, nodding in satisfaction that he had been proved right, “you could not resist. You still want to know everything about her. Well, I will tell you. I left the committee for State security—what you would call the KGB—preferring to pursue my interests in private enterprise. Alexandra came with me.”
“You were her pimp?”
“Is that what she told you? I will have words with her about that. No, I kept her for my own use. As I have already told you, she is my mistress.”
“So why would you send your little pet on a suicide mission to Paris?”
“Because it was not a suicide mission. My orders to Wake were clear. His chosen assassin had to die. That was you, of course. I could not trust a man I did not know. But I had no intention of losing two of my most valued people. It was the English who decided to kill them as well.”
Carver grimaced. “But Alix . . . why send her?”
Zhukovski shrugged. “Because she was bored. She had started complaining that she had nothing to do all day except shop, eat lunch, and go to beauty salons. I told her that every other woman in Russia would kill to have her life. But she was not convinced. She said she wanted to work in my organization. . . .”
“And you believed her?”
“I believed that she was bored. And I knew that a woman who feels like that will soon cause trouble. She gets drunk in public, or she screws her tennis coach. So I thought, okay, this is a simple job. All she has to do is sit on a motorcycle and flash a camera. If it works, then maybe I can think of further assignments.”
Carver could imagine Alix being driven crazy by a life that required nothing of her except a futile fight against time. She was approaching thirty. Zhukovski might start looking elsewhere. She would see other, younger girls examining her, waiting for the first wrinkle, the slightest thickening of her waist or drooping of her breasts, the first sign that her power was waning. She was smart enough to plan another life. But would that life have to be within Zhukovski’s organization, or had she been telling the truth when she talked of wanting to escape?
Stupid question. She’d made her feelings perfectly clear on that score. A boot in the face wasn’t exactly a subtle hint. Forget her, she didn’t want to be rescued. If she wanted to be part of Zhukovski’s crew, she could go to hell with the rest of them. He could still turn things around.
He measured the distance between him and Zhukovski. He could cover the gap in a single leap, he was sure. Zhukovski would be hampered, being in a soft armchair. He’d find it tougher to get to his feet.
Carver let his head sag on his shoulders, then mumbled, “It’s over, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Zhukovski. “For you it is.”
The Russian relaxed, confident that Carver was a broken man. He reached his right arm out toward the vodka sitting on the table beside the chair, turning his head toward the glass as he did so. And in that moment of vulnerability, Carver leaped.
He had tensed his feet against the ground, pressing his toes into the carpet, bunching the muscles on his upper thighs and sucking in his stomach. Then he’d pushed up and away from the chair with every remaining ounce of his strength, aiming to smash headfirst into Zhukovski’s face.
He stopped dead in midair as fifty thousand volts jack-knifed his body for the fourth time, crashing him down to the carpet, leaving him groveling in agony once again.
“Did you really think I would be that careless?” asked Zhukovski, getting up from his chair. He stood over Carver. “Well, did you?” he repeated. Then he kicked Carver in the guts, driving the breath from his body.
“Don’t you understand who I am?” Zhukovski did not raise his voice so much as refrigerate it, delivering every word with a frozen, deliberate matter-of-factness. “I was a colonel in the KGB. I made dissidents watch as their entire families were burned alive: wives, children, mothers, fathers, everyone. I made prisoners place their hands in boiling water, then peeled their skin off like a tomato. Do you want me to do that to you?”
“No,” groaned Carver. “Please. I beg you. I’ll help you. I can do that. I know the password to the consortium’s computer. I have the key to decrypt all the files. I’ll tell you. Just, please . . . just stop hurting me.”
“Well now . . .” Zhukovski was almost whispering to himself. He was walking around Carver, circling his body. “Why would I want to do that?”
He kicked Carver again, this time at the base of his spine, making him arch backward as the wounded muscles went into spasm. As Zhukovski kept moving around him, Carver shrank into a fetal curl. He was dry retching, unable to speak.
Zhukovski stamped on his ankles.
“I’m not impressed,” he said. “I had expected a former member of the special boat service to have a greater resistance to physical pain. Perhaps you have gone soft. Or perhaps you are merely pretending to give in. What do you say?”
Carver’s face was lying to one side on the floor. He was resting the weight of his head on the undamaged side of his jaw. Zhukovski could clearly see the angry red swelling that marked the area where Titov’s punch had connected, so he ground his heel into the center of the bruising, gradually increasing the pressure on Carver’s face, pinning his battered head while his body writhed helplessly. Carver let out a muffled howl of pain.
“No, that was not pretense,” said Zhukovski. “But still, you might have set a trap for me. For a man of your skills, it would be no problem to booby trap a computer. Replace the battery with explosives and one strike of a single key would set it off. I have used that method of assassination myself. Perhaps we will finally discover what secrets are hidden in this ridiculous machine. But if it really is a trap, you will be the one who dies.”



77

When Alix had said that the sight of Carver was making her physically sick, she was telling the truth. As he lay naked and defeated at her feet, slobbering over her boots, it was all she could do not to retch. She had to kick him away before she vomited right over him.
But she was not nauseated because she held Carver in contempt, she was sickened with herself. She had delivered the only man who truly loved her into the hands of the man who could do him the most harm—a monster. She had played one game too many, told one too many lies. And now Carver was paying the price for her treachery.
She had been furious with him, that last night in Geneva. At first it had just been the sulky irritation that follows a lovers’ tiff. That had given way to sullen frustration at his refusal to take her with him when he went to investigate what was happening. She felt patronized, the little woman left behind while the big strong man went off to work. And then, when Kursk appeared and turned the peaceful café into an slaughterhouse, she had felt the helpless rage that comes with fear and abandonment. She blamed Carver for her seizure and she stoked her anger against him in order to fortify her for what she had to do next.
She would die, she knew, if Yuri Zhukovski ever suspected that her relationship with Carver had been anything other than a professional deceit. Her survival depended on persuading him that she had simply gone back to what she did best: using her powers of emotional and sexual manipulation against a helpless man. So she’d laced her account of the previous three days with sneering mockery. She’d portrayed Carver as a deluded fool, capable enough at combat or sabotage, but a fumbling amateur when he held a woman, rather than a gun, in his hands.
There was a certain truth in that, of course. But that was why she’d liked him so much, why she knew now that she could have loved him, if only she’d let herself. It was Carver’s unexpected emotional vulnerability that made him a complex, lovable human being, not just a killing machine.
She’d told herself that as long as she was alive, there was always hope that somehow she might be reunited with Carver. She did not know how or when, but she felt sure he would try to find a way to get her back. Until then, all she could do was convince Yuri that he had nothing whatever to worry about. So she’d turned off her true feelings and given herself to him, letting him use her as he wished, paying her penance by prostituting herself more utterly than ever before in her life.
Finally, she had done one last service, the one for which she could least forgive herself. When Carver had called, shortly after lunch—less than twelve hours ago, though it seemed like a different age—she played the part of the helpless kidnap victim, crying out to him and squealing in fake pain when Yuri pretended to slap her.
When the telephone had been put down, and Carver set on his way, Yuri had grabbed her by both arms and looked directly into her eyes as if searching for any last sign that she had betrayed him. He did not appear to find any.
“You are a good girl,” he’d said. “I always had faith in you and you did not give me cause to regret it. That was very sensible. I should have hated to have to punish you. But now . . .” his face cleared and his mood lifted. “Now you deserve a reward. Go into town, one of the men will drive you. Buy whatever you like. Make yourself beautiful again.” He’d ruffled the short, black hair with almost fatherly affection. For once there was a trace of warmth, even affection in his voice. “I miss my pretty, golden girl.”
Alix did as she was told. She’d spent hours trying on the shortest skirts, the highest heels, and the brightest jewels the boutiques of Gstaad—a town well used to expensive women—had to offer. But that was just the start.
Her body was massaged. She had manicures and pedicures. Her face was caked with masks, then soothed with creams. Her hair was lengthened with extensions (“From Russian women, just like you!” the hairdresser had squealed, thinking this would make her happy rather than deepen her self-loathing), then dyed back to blond, then artfully styled and sprayed. Finally her face and limbs were painted to the absurdly artificial, beauty-queen perfection that a man like Zhukovski would understand best, and she was ready to be delivered into his presence again.
Alix had teetered into the chalet’s vast living room in her stiletto-heeled boots and Stella McCartney microdress to be faced by the hungry, lascivious stares of Kursk and his crew of deadbeat psychopaths. Yuri had greeted her with the flicker of a smile and the words, “Alexandra, my dear, you look magnificent. I cannot wait to see the look on Mr. Carver’s face when he sees you!”
She had been unable to keep the falseness from her laugh.
“Don’t worry,” Yuri had said, taking her reaction as a sign that she wanted nothing to do with the Englishman. “I know how you had to suffer, and I am going to make him pay. We will have dinner first and then he will be brought to us. And then we will be entertained.”
Alix was sitting opposite Yuri in the dining room when she heard the van arrive. It drove past the front door and down the drive that spiraled around the chalet to the basement garage. There was a slamming of doors and a scuffling of feet somewhere down below them in the bowels of the house. When the servants brought in the food, she could not taste it. The vintage champagne was stale on her tongue.
At last, Yuri told the butler, maid, and cook that they could return to their homes in the village. He waited until they had left the building, then rose from the table, took Alix’s arm, and walked her back to the living room. He placed himself in a chair by the fire and patted one of its overstuffed arms, indicating that she should perch there. Alix obeyed. She even forced herself to giggle. “I’m looking forward to this.”
She had expected Carver to walk into the room tall and proud, ready to negotiate with Yuri, man to man. When he was led in like an animal, his body exposed, his head shrouded in black, it was all she could do not to choke, to weep. She forced herself to remain cold and aloof as he suffered the agonies that destroyed his body from within and crushed his spirit before her eyes. And then, at last, she’d been able to escape.
Alix kept her composure until she was out of the room. She’d stifled her sobs until she reached the marble sanctuary of her bathroom, with the door locked behind her. Only then did she weep for her man, for herself, and for the love that had been thrown away.
She ran a bath, partly to cover the sound of her crying, but also as an excuse for her absence. Men took it for granted that women had an almost infinite need to soak themselves in scalding hot water. Besides, she knew that Yuri would have forgotten her by now. She had seen the venom in his eyes when he looked at Carver, and known what that meant.
Alix lay in the bath, breathing the Chanel-scented steam, watching her limbs turn lobster pink in the heat. By the time she rose to her feet, letting the bubbles slide from her body as she reached for her soft, heavy cotton towel, she knew what she had to do. Whatever it cost.



78

Zhukovski spoke into a telephone. A few seconds later, Kursk, Titov, and Rutsev reappeared. Carver was placed in the middle of a five-man procession. Kursk led the way, carrying a gun, a Beretta 92. He walked side-on, pointing the gun behind him at Carver, whose left arm was held in Rutsev’s heavy grip. Titov came next, holding the belt’s remote control. Zhukovski made up the rear. Only Dimitrov was missing.
The line of men went through the living room and into the hall. Kursk signaled Carver to stop. Then he walked to the far end of the hall, farthest away from the front entrance, to what looked like a standard wooden door set into an alcove under the main stairs. Its domestic appearance was misleading. When Kursk opened it, his grunt of effort suggested a far heavier, more solid construction—something designed as a barrier to people and sound alike. Another sign from Kursk told Rutsev to lead Carver toward him. Once again, Carver was covered twice over: the gun in front of him, the belt control behind.
The side door opened onto a set of bare concrete steps that led down to the basement of the chalet. Kursk went ahead, got to the bottom, turned to face back up the stairs, and shouted, “Okay!” The other men then started to walk down into the basement. The stairs opened into a narrow corridor lit by the harsh flickering of a bare fluorescent tube.
Carver recognized the feel of the concrete beneath his feet. He could smell stale exhaust fumes. The garage where he had first arrived at the chalet must be down here. But that was not his destination. Instead, Kursk led the group through a thick steel door into a completely bare, windowless room, roughly twenty square feet.
The walls were a brilliant chalk white, as were the floor, the ceiling, and the inside of the door. He caught a familiar whiff of new paint. This was the place where he had been left before, blindfolded.
He looked around and realized he had missed some of its salient features. A closed-circuit TV camera at one corner of the ceiling was focused on the room’s only furniture, a single high-backed metal chair, right in the middle of the room. It was bolted to the floor and set at right angles to the door. Leather straps had been attached to the back, the arms, and the legs of the chair, ensuring that anyone sitting in it could be totally restrained. A black wire snaked from a socket on the wall to a pair of headphones resting on a hook attached to the back of the chair. A second hook held a roll of duct tape.
There were more fluorescent lights on the ceiling. On the wall directly opposite the chair a large, shallow box, maybe four feet wide and three high, had been fixed. It had a black frame, but the biggest surface, facing the chair, was made of clear Plexiglas. The interior was white and fitted with yet more lights. They had not yet been switched on.
The room was no warmer than it had been before. Carver could feel the sweat chilling on his skin. He felt dazed, his mind fried by successive electric shocks. His face throbbed. His back and ankles were painfully tender. He longed for a sip of water to ease his raging thirst. But he wanted to take a piss just as badly. It had taken all his concentration not to wet or soil himself when the shocks had ripped through him. Now his bladder was sending stabbing reminders through his guts. He had to hold out. He would not allow Zhukovski to see him reduced to this.
Rutsev pulled Carver over to the chair and shoved him into it. Then he strapped him down, securing his chest, waist, and thighs. The straps’ buckles were fastened behind and underneath the chair. With his hands still cuffed, he had no hope of reaching them. His head, however, was left free. Rutsev had to remove Carver’s leg irons to bind his ankles to the chair legs. Carver longed to kick the fat-faced Russian, just for the pleasure of causing him pain. But the stun belt was still around his waist, its control still safely in Titov’s hands, and Kursk had his gun trained on him. There was no purpose in taking the risk. He had more important things to do.
Rutsev was wearing a watch. It told Carver the time was 12:14. That was good to know.
Dimitrov came into the room, carrying the computer case. He unzipped it and removed the laptop, handing it to Zhukovski. The case was left on the floor a few feet from Carver’s chair, impossible for him to reach. Everyone except Alix was there. Carver supposed she must be upstairs, getting herself ready for a long, hard, sweaty night with the boss.
Zhukovski turned to Carver. “I will give you the computer,” he said. “You will not open it, or start it up, or do anything until my men and I have left the room and the door has been closed. If you try anything that even looks suspicious, you will be shot. We will be in another room, watching you through that camera.” Zhukovski gestured at the CCTV that peered down from the ceiling. “When you have opened and started the computer and successfully entered the password, raise your hands.”
Kursk moved to the door and stood there, his Beretta pointing at Carver, while the other men filed out of the room. Then he too slipped through the door, walking backward, keeping the gun on Carver until the last possible second. The door slammed shut. Carver heard the scrape of metal on metal and then two sharp impacts as a pair of bolts were slid into place. He was alone. He had the laptop. Now he could start to fight back.
First, though, he had to open the damn thing. With his hands cuffed together, he couldn’t keep the Hitachi still with one hand and press the catch with the other. He ended up holding it almost vertically, jammed against the strap across his thighs. It flopped open and that movement was almost enough to send it crashing off his lap. Carver slammed his linked fists down on the open keyboard, stopping it just in time.
Then he sat back and let his pulse slow back down. He took a couple of deep, calming breaths, then pressed the power button, waited for the password box to appear.
His mind was blank. He didn’t have a clue what should go in that narrow strip of pure white screen. Those repeated bursts of electroshock must have battered his brain as thoroughly as a pummeling from a heavyweight. His circuits were fried. His short-term memory had been burned away. No wonder he hadn’t been able to remember where Alix grew up.
Carver tried not to panic. He fought against the tightening in his throat, the fluttering in his stomach and the desperate sensation that his mind was skidding out of control. He had to dig deep into the furthest recesses of his consciousness. The information was there, somewhere, if only he could find it.
There was a word image, he knew that, a way of making sense of the eight letters and digits. Something about zebras. But how many sodding zebras? Two? Three? No, two, definitely two. What had they been doing? Lying? Dozing? Or was it sleeping?
He collected his thoughts. The sentence had to be eight words long. He closed his eyes and tried out the various possibilities. He felt like a child doing a spelling test. Okay. He was pretty certain he had it now.
His linked hands hovered over the keyboard as he rehearsed the sentence: I see two zebras sleeping on the grass. That was it.
But what if he was wrong? Larsson had been adamant: He only had three chances to get it right or the hard drive would be wiped out—that much he could remember. Well, no point waiting all night. His right index finger hovered over the keyboard, then started tapping.
I . . . c . . . 2 . . . z . . . s . . . o . . . t . . . G
A message appeared on the screen: “Password failed. Remaining attempts: 2.”
No! The fear and tension gripped Carver again, even tighter than before. Where had he gone wrong? “I’m sure there are two zebras on the sodding grass,” he muttered. And then he realized he’d solved the problem: not “I see” but “There are.” Yes, that was it.
T . . . r . . . 2 . . . z . . . s . . . o . . . t . . . G
There was something crushing about the computer’s immediate response: “Password failed. Remaining attempts: 1.” He was almost sick with nerves.
“Think, you stupid bastard, think!” He was talking out loud now, nodding his head, jerking his upper body against the restraints.
“The zebras, two of them, on the grass . . . aren’t they sleeping? They can’t be. So what the hell are they doing? Dozing, lying . . . lying, dozing . . . Lying. They’re definitely bloody lying.”
One last deep breath. One final hover of his index finger over the keyboard. Then he went for it.
T . . . r . . . 2 . . . z . . . l . . . o . . . t . . . G
Nothing happened. For an endless, heart-stopping second the screen was completely blank. Frantically, Carver hit the space bar again and again. Then the familiar Windows desktop appeared, the screen was dotted with icons. And hidden away within the gray plastic box, a tiny transmitter beamed a single signal.
For Zhukovski was right. It was a booby trap. But the computer was not where the danger lay. Slipped within the padded sides of the carrying case were two sheets of C4 explosive and thermite incendiary accelerant, linked to a radio-operated timer detonator. That timer had just been activated by the space bar: thirty minutes’ delay for each strike of the bar. In precisely four hours it would set off a firebomb that would instantly incinerate anyone in its vicinity and reduce the Chalet Constanza to ashes and cinders.
Carver raised his head to the ceiling, then punched the air with his fists.
He remained on his own for a couple of minutes. He guessed Zhukovski would wait awhile to make sure there was no detonation. Then the white door opened and four of the Russians filed back in. Kursk had his gun out, as always. Rutsev alone was missing from the gang.
Zhukovski walked across to the chair and picked the Hitachi off of Carver’s lap. “Thank you, Mr. Carver,” he said. “You have done me a favor and provided rich entertainment. I was greatly amused by your ridiculous little aide-mémoire, trying to remember how many zebras were—what was it?—lying on the grass.”
Carver fought the temptation to tell Zhukovski that the joke would soon be on him. The bomb would detonate at a time when the chalet’s inhabitants would be fast asleep, with their bodies shut down and their minds least capable of swift response, even if they awoke. By then, either Carver would have found a way out of his captivity, or the Russians would have destroyed him. The odds were heavily against him, but he hadn’t given up yet. He felt a strange mix of profound mortal terror, knowing that he had only hours to live, and equally deep elation. At least he’d go down fighting. At least he’d make them pay.
And maybe, even now, there was a chance he might escape. If he could only get out of this damn chair.
“Why don’t you let me help you?” Carver pleaded. “I can get into the files.”
Zhukovski looked at him with an expression of pity at his boundless stupidity. “I don’t give a damn about the files,” he said. “And if curiosity should strike me, well, Moscow has the finest cryptographers in the world. If you truly have found someone able to crack these codes, which I doubt, be assured that I will have no problem doing the same.”
He bent down by the chair, his hands on his knees, so that his face was level with Carver’s.
“Let me tell you what does matter to me,” Zhukovski said. “I want to see you suffer. I want you to die as slowly and painfully as possible. You f*cked my woman. It does not matter how or why. If word should spread that you did this and escaped with your life, both my friends and my enemies—many of whom are the same people—would see that as a sign of weakness on my part. But if stories of your torture spread across Russia, if men sitting over bottles of vodka tell horrific tales of what happened to the man who tried to cross me, if they see that my woman is more slavishly devoted to me than ever . . . well, then they will know that Yuri Zhukovski is not a man to be trifled with.”
He turned to Titov and issued a series of instructions that prompted another leering grin to break out across his henchman’s emaciated death’s-head face. Titov put the stun-belt control in the back pocket of his trousers, then stepped up to the chair and pushed Carver’s head against its solid metal back, hard. He placed a strap across his forehead and tightened it so that the leather seemed to dig into his skull. A second strap was forced across his mouth, then yanked tight so that it both gagged him and tugged against his loosened teeth and cracked jaw bringing agonizing pain with each tiny movement.
Carver was frightened now, really frightened. When he’d tried to jump Zhukovski, he’d known it wouldn’t work. He was just trying to engineer a situation in which he could play the part of a beaten man, begging for his one chance of salvation: the computer. He’d been prepared to take whatever punishment Zhukovski could hand out, the end justified the means. But he was no longer playacting. His terror was entirely genuine.
Carver had seen a TV show once about a British prisoner of war who pretended to go crazy, so that the Germans would hand him over to the Red Cross. But by the time he was finally free, it was too late; the pretense had become reality. He had truly gone mad. Carver was like that prisoner. When the cuffs were taken from his wrists, he made no attempt whatever to resist as his hands were secured to the arms of the chair. He did not want to give Zhukovski or his men the slightest excuse to press the white button that had so completely enslaved and unmanned him. Just the thought of what it would be like to squirm and jerk against his restraints, the imagined pain that would cause, was enough to leave him in a ferocious sweat. The final straps were tightened without any further bolts of electricity. He almost wept with gratitude.
There was a smooth efficiency to Titov’s actions. His normal twitchiness had been replaced by the calmness of a man who took deep comfort and satisfaction from his labors. But he had not finished his handiwork. First, he reached behind the chair and picked up the headphones, which he placed over Carver’s ears. There was no sound, simply a muffling of the world around him, as if he had stuck his fingers in his ears.
Next, Titov grabbed the roll of tape. He pulled out a strip about four inches long and tore it off with his teeth. Then he leaned forward and pulled on Carver’s eyelids, forcing them down.
As soon as Carver realized what Titov was doing, he immediately closed his eyes. He wanted his captor to know that he was cooperating. He was doing everything he possibly could to be good.
Carver felt the sticky grip of tape on his right eyelid, then a jerk as it was pulled up, and a second grip as Titov smoothed the other end of the strip onto his forehead. His eye was open now, wide open. And he could not blink. Then Titov did the same thing to his other eye. He took a step back from the chair, placed himself directly in Carver’s line of vision, and took the dreadful black box out of his trouser pocket. He held it up next to his grinning face in his left hand. He stretched his right arm out in front of him and raised his index finger. He looked at the box. Then he turned his head and looked at the finger. And then he winked.
Carver heard the muffled sound of laughter. At the edge of his vision, he could just see Dimitrov and Rutsev doubled over. But Carver didn’t care about them. His full concentration was on Titov’s finger as it slowly, ostentatiously rotated in the air, swooping from one side of his body to the other, closing in until it was just inches from the black box and its gleaming white button.
Carver’s taped eyes widened even further. His gagged mouth emitted a pathetic, wordless whimpering. His sweat was slick against the back of the metal chair. Titov let him suffer, relishing every second of Carver’s terror. Then he put the box back in his pocket and turned away.
He was leaving the room! The torment was over!
Carver saw Titov walk out of his field of vision. He saw Dimitrov pick up the black computer case and take it with him as he too departed. He heard the slamming of the door and the clicking of the bolts. For a few moments Carver just sat there, naked, cold, and immobile in the silent solitude of his gleaming cell.
Then, without warning, the white box on the wall opposite him burst into blazing light, a white-hot glare that burned into his defenseless, wide-open eyes. At the same time, the headphones burst into life and his ears were pounded with a deafening burst of white noise, like the static of an untuned radio. The noise exploded in his skull, filling his brain with a random roar that had no structure or meaning, nothing that his mind could grasp or comprehend. The light attacked him like a blowtorch. And there was absolutely nothing he could do.
The noise and the light would go on forever and he could not turn them off. He could not close his eyes. He could not block his ears. He could not move any part of his body. He could not even hear himself when he screamed.