7
* * *
SHAFIK PRESSED A speed-dial number and spoke: ‘Remove Eriksen. But do not dispose of him. Not yet.’
Carver had no intention of taking Shafik’s job, whatever it was. On the other hand, leaving now would entail either killing or at the very least disabling the other three people in the garden. It was doable, but it would only complicate the situation still further, and he didn’t need the aggravation. ‘So who’s the target?’ he said.
Shafik relaxed, sitting back in his chair, confident that, for now at any rate, he had got what he wanted. ‘His name is Malachi Zorn. He is an American, based on Long Island, New York.’
‘And what’s his problem?’
‘He costs other people a great deal of money. My clients are usually competitors, but they are united in the conviction that their businesses—’
‘Their banks?’
‘Yes.’
Carver gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Unbelievable. You want me to stop bankers losing money. I never thought I’d stoop that low.’
Ginger laughed. Shafik looked at her sharply, then allowed himself a smile. ‘Very good, Mr Carver, but this is not just about bankers. Malachi Zorn makes a great deal of his money placing very large bets against corporations. He takes short positions or uses derivative instruments that capitalize on falling asset prices and even total collapse. The very act of taking these positions taints his targets. Perfectly good, well-run, solvent companies can be destroyed. And all these companies have shareholders, the majority of whom are funds run for the benefit of ordinary citizens: investing for their future, for their pensions. They are the ones who get hurt by a man like Zorn.’
Carver had been eating olives while Shafik made his speech in defence of shareholder capitalism. ‘And there was I thinking this had something to do with senior executives getting nervous that their bonuses might be a zero or two short this year,’ he said when it was over.
Ginger laughed. ‘I hadn’t realized that you were such a cynic, Sam.’
‘Huh … no matter how hard I try to be cynical, the truth is almost always far worse.’
Shafik gave a contemptuous snort. ‘Grow up, Carver. The only way all the little guys make a small amount of money is if the big guys make lots of it. That is how the system works. Anything else is just … communism.’
‘But why do you want Zorn removed now?’ Carver asked. ‘It sounds like he’s been operating for quite a while. Why the sudden desire to stop him?’
‘Because …’ Ginger began. Then she stopped herself and looked at Shafik. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.’
‘Not at all … go ahead.’
‘Up until now Zorn has always worked alone,’ Ginger continued. ‘That’s been the source of his mystique: one man, betting his own money against the system.’
‘Or a spoilt playboy playing his selfish games at other people’s expense,’ Shafik snapped.
Ginger flicked her eyes up at the heavens in mock exasperation. ‘You’ll have to excuse my boss, Sam. He takes our work very personally sometimes.’
‘I don’t give a damn about your boss,’ Carver replied. ‘Tell me about Zorn. What’s changed?’
‘He’s getting partners for the first time in his career: serious investors. He’s using their money to start a fund: Zorn Global. Very private, very exclusive, but also very well-financed. He’ll have tens of billions of dollars behind him, all provided by ultra-high-net-worth individuals. No institutions at all.’
‘So he’ll have more leverage, and be able to do more damage, as they would see it, to your clients?’
‘You have got it in one, Mr Carver,’ said Shafik.
‘Well, you’re right about one thing. I’d certainly have turned down the job.’
‘But …?’
‘But now I’m considering my options. And I want to know the details. When does this have to be done? Where? How? That kind of thing.’
Ginger spoke again, ‘It has to be done quickly. Zorn is launching his fund at the end of next week in London.’
‘How come he’s not doing it on Wall Street?’
Shafik answered the question, ‘His new fund has investors from around the world. It will operate globally. Wall Street serves the world’s biggest domestic economy, but London is the centre of international finance.’
‘And it’s also where many of his investors like to be at this time of year,’ Ginger went on. ‘They go to parties, Royal Ascot, Wimbledon. You know the kind of things. Zorn’s crazy about tennis. He’s going to be at Wimbledon for a few days next week. He’s going Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.’
Carver couldn’t stop himself from asking, ‘What about the days in-between?’
‘Ladies’ quarter-finals, semis and final,’ said Ginger. ‘Zorn ignores them – he’s a sexist when it comes to tennis.’
‘Or a realist,’ Shafik observed.
‘But for the men’s days,’ Ginger went on, refusing to rise to the bait, ‘he has tickets for himself and his guests: debenture seats, the best for Centre, Number One and Number Two Courts, six at a time. He likes to know that he has his choice of all the most important matches. He’s spending tens of thousands of dollars a day, but what does he care?’
‘He even enquired about hiring a box at Lord’s,’ Shafik said, with a shake of his head. ‘As if he could possibly appreciate cricket.’
‘Well, who cares about cricket, anyway?’ Ginger laughed, getting her own back. She smiled again at Carver, trying to make him complicit in her gentle mockery of Shafik, doing what she could to draw him again into some kind of relationship. ‘The crucial day is this coming Friday, 1 July. That’s when Zorn will formally launch his fund with a reception at the Goldsmiths’ Hall, in the heart of the City of London, for a very exclusive selection of guests – his investors, senior politicians and bankers.’
‘Including the men who want him dead?’
‘Possibly,’ she admitted.
‘And you wonder why I’m cynical?’
‘There will also be a number of figures from the media and entertainment industries,’ said Shafik. ‘Zorn is not foolish. He knows they will attract more attention than any number of middle-aged, unattractive male billionaires.’
‘But you do want Zorn to make it to his own party?’
‘Indeed not.’
Carver drank some more beer. He put the glass down and said, ‘So you’re looking for an unfortunate accident?’
‘Precisely – the tragic end to a brilliant career. And it must be visible: Zorn must be seen to die.’
‘To send a message?’
‘I’d prefer to say: to encourage any other independent operators not to be so greedy,’ Shafik suggested. ‘In any case, you can be sure that my clients will attend the funeral and send many magnificent wreaths.’
‘Well, then they’d better hope I don’t decide to pay my respects as well. I don’t have any views about this Malachi Zorn one way or another. But I’m taking a serious dislike to your clients.’
8
* * *
Brick Lane, London E1
THE PACKAGE WAS addressed to Brynmor Gryffud at the office of his graphic design agency, Sharpeville Images. The company specialized in branding and website design for charities and pressure groups involved in controversial fields, such as minority and animal rights, environmental activism and anti-war campaigning. Gryffud was a tall, thickset, heavily bearded Welshman who looked and sounded as though he should be farming sheep, playing rugby and drinking a dozen pints a night – all of which he had done in his time. As he liked to tell clients in a rich, musical voice made for lyrical speeches, ‘Whatever the Daily Mail is against, that is what we are for.’
In addition to his design work, Gryffud ran a small, but vociferous, group of his own, the Forces of Gaia. It specialized in stunts that drew attention to what Gryffud and his supporters viewed as unacceptable assaults on the environment. Inspired by the fathers’ rights campaigners, who had attracted global coverage simply by appearing at high-visibility, high-security locations such as Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace dressed up as superheroes, Gryffud had relied on wit and imagination to make his point. His actions had given him a high profile, and even brought in new clients for his business, but he’d long since accepted that they hadn’t made a damn bit of difference to the environment.
The screensavers on his office computer were pictures he had taken of the Welsh hills where he had been raised, and to which he still returned whenever possible. Gryffud’s connection to that landscape and, through it, to the planet as a whole was part of his very soul. His certainty that man’s abuse of all the bounty that nature had bestowed on him was leading to the inevitable desecration, even destruction, of the planet caused him intense pain. Now his patience had run out. Recently, Gryffud had been listening to angrier, more radical voices. He had been persuaded that it was time for a total change of tactics.
He was looking at a standard white postal packing box, 180 mm long by 100 mm wide and 50 mm deep. Inside it were four clear plastic packets, each containing ten fat marker pens, along with a delivery notice stating that each packet cost £4.99, plus £7.75 post and packaging, making a total of £27.71, paid through PayPal. Two of the packets contained blue pens, the other two red ones.
It was an everyday transaction for a company like Sharpeville Images, one that had attracted no official attention whatsoever on its way through the postal system. In the choking atmosphere of state-sanctioned paranoia that pervaded early twenty-first-century life, any phone call or email was liable to interception. But old-fashioned snail mail was a much more secure means of sending covert messages and goods: provided, of course, that the postal service was up to delivering them.
When he had opened the box and seen the pens lying within it, Gryffud had got up from behind his desk and walked across his office. He had closed the door and lowered the blinds that covered the window, through which he could normally keep an eye on his staff and they on him. No one had thought anything of it. The lowering of ‘Bryn’s blinds’ was the accepted sign that Gryffud was deep in creative thought: that mysterious process through which he came up with the unexpected, innovative concepts that had made the company’s name and kept them all in work.
But it wasn’t a desire to tap into his creativity that had prompted Brynmor Gryffud to cut himself off from the world.
He went back to his desk and took one of the blue pens out of its packet. Using a scalpel, he cut open one end of the pen and held it at an angle, the open end above the palm of his other hand. Under normal circumstances, the reservoir that contained the pen’s ink would have slid out. Instead, an innocuous white plastic tube, about 70 mm long and 8 mm in diameter, landed on Gryffud’s hand. The burly Welshman’s beard was spit by a piratical grin. The tube was a detonator. Fitted with a fuse and inserted into a mass of explosive material, it would turn an inert collection of chemicals into a highly destructive bomb.
Gryffud repeated the process for a randomly chosen red pen, from which a bright yellow tube, similar to the white one, appeared. This was an igniter, virtually identical to the detonator, except that its purpose was to start an instant, short-lived, but highly intensive blaze.
The two devices were replaced in their respective pens and returned to the appropriate packets. Gryffud picked up his phone and made a call.
‘The pens have arrived,’ he said. ‘They’re exactly what we asked for. How about you?’
‘No worries, mate,’ replied Dave Smethurst, ‘Smethers’ to his mates, a former army staff sergeant who now worked as a private contractor. Like Gryffud, Smethurst had a specialized clientele. He went on, his voice imbued with the adenoidal flatness of the East Midlands – as dreary an accent as Gryffud’s was mellifluous – ‘The lads have grabbed all the containers we need. And the gardening supplies are piled up in the barn.’
‘I hope you shopped around, Smethers.’
‘Oh yeah, we went to at least ten different garden centres, looking for the best value. And meanwhile the ladies, God bless ’em, are hard at work making the cakes.’
‘Good, sounds as though we have everything we need for the party. I’ll see you at the farm, then.’
‘Oh yeah, this is going to be fookin’ great. It’s really going to go with—’
‘Don’t say it,’ Gryffud interrupted.
There was a laugh at the other end of the line. ‘Take it easy, Taff. I was just winding you up.’
Gryffud ended the call.
‘… a bang,’ he murmured to himself, finishing the other man’s sentence.
Then he pulled up the blinds and opened his office door to the world once again.
9
* * *
The Old Town, Geneva, Switzerland
SHAFIK HAD A helicopter waiting to take Carver the eighty-five miles across the Aegean Sea from Mykonos to Athens. ‘Don’t worry,’ Ginger had said. ‘I’ll get the hotel to send you your luggage.’
‘Will you, now?’ thought Carver, wondering how many bugs and tracking devices would have been tucked away among his possessions by the time he saw them again. Thinking also, ‘Funny, I haven’t told you where to send them …’
Thanks to the mid-afternoon Swissair flight, Carver reached Geneva within three hours, but it was long enough to consider a number of different options for extricating himself from the Malachi Zorn hit. Forty minutes later his cab was pulling up on a narrow cobbled street in the Old Town district, beside the four-hundred-year-old building where he had a top-floor apartment.
There was a café next door, with a few plastic tables and chairs on the street, and steps down to a tiny, low-ceilinged basement room within. Years before, it had belonged to a friend of Carver’s called Freddy. Two nights after Carver’s fateful assignment in Paris, a Russian psychopath, Grigori Kursk, had forced Freddy to lie face down on the floor, then shot him through the back of the skull at point-blank range. Now the café was run by Freddy’s widow, Marianne, and her nineteen-year-old son, Jean-Louis.
Marianne had insisted on staying on, despite the terrible memories. To leave, she said, would be an act of desertion. At first she had struggled to keep the café going and pay the rent. Then, about nine months after Freddy’s death, her lawyer had called to inform her that a life insurance policy of which he had not previously been aware had just paid out, enabling her to buy the lease outright.
Marianne was certain that there was no such policy. It seemed clear to her that Carver was the source of the money. Kursk would never have walked into the café that night had he not been looking for Carver and Alix; this was a private act of atonement, and it was accepted, graciously, without a word on either side. Had Marianne asked, Carver would of course have denied having anything to do with it. But in his own mind, this was just one of a number of debts of honour he chose to pay: no different, for example, from the two teenagers in southern Africa – the son and daughter of a man who had saved his life – whose education he was funding.
Carver had more money than he needed for himself. There was no point hiding it away in a bank if it could be useful. And it made it easier to sleep at night knowing that something he did, however tiny in the great scheme of things, was unequivocally good.
‘Sam!’ Jean-Louis said, seeing him come through the café door. ‘I thought you were going to be away for a month?’
‘Me too.’
‘So the vacation, it was not fun?’
‘It started well.’
‘But turned to shit?’
‘Something like that.’
‘You want a coffee, a cup of your English tea, a glass of wine, maybe?’
Carver was still a Royal Marine at heart. He rarely said no to a brew. ‘Tea would be good. Thanks.’
Silence descended as Carver drank and Jean-Louis busied himself with other customers. When the cup was empty, the boy came over to take it away. Carver reached for his wallet.
‘Non! Don’t be crazy … I will put it on your account,’ Jean-Louis loudly insisted. Then, as he bent forward to take the mug, he added, much more quietly, ‘There is a man at the front, by the window.’
‘Dark-blue business suit, playing with his phone, yeah, I spotted him,’ Carver murmured back.
‘I think he has not just played with his phone. I am certain he has taken a photograph of you.’
Carver nodded fractionally, then got up from his seat. ‘See you tomorrow. Give my regards to your mum,’ he said, clearly enough to be heard.
Yes, the man with the phone had looked up. And it hadn’t just been idle curiosity.
Carver gave the man a good long look on the way out, letting him know he’d been made.
The man with the phone looked right back, letting Carver know that he didn’t give a damn.
Carver walked out, feeling the man’s eyes on his back, listening for the slightest sound of movement behind him. None came.
Outside, on the street, he turned into a cobbled yard. On all four sides stood centuries-old buildings whose floors were linked by a complex web of external staircases and covered passages that wound around their walls like the endless, logic-defying stairs in a Maurits Escher drawing. Carver made the way to the top of his building and let himself in. Within seconds, his landline started ringing.
He picked it up. ‘Carver.’
‘Check your email.’
The voice was Shafik’s. Carver got out his iPhone and touched the mail icon. He had a new message with two jpeg files attached to it.
‘Open the files,’ Shafik said.
Grinding his teeth in silent irritation, Carver did as he was told. The first photo showed the body of the man he had killed on Mykonos, lying in the restaurant dumpster. The second had been taken in the café within the past five minutes. So Jean-Louis had been right.
‘And your point is?’ Carver asked.
‘I was concerned that you might have had a change of heart about our agreement. As you flew away from our meeting, you might have imagined that you were escaping my sphere of influence. I wanted to impress upon you that this was not the case. I know where to find you, Carver, and my intention remains the same as before. If you fulfil our agreement, I will reward you very handsomely. If you do not … well, I don’t like making threats. I’m sure I don’t have to.’
‘I don’t do threats, Shafik. I don’t pay any attention to the ones people throw at me, and I don’t bother making any of my own. But since you’re on the line, I remembered something while I was flying home—’
‘And what was that?’
‘I remembered what happened to Quentin Trench. He double-crossed me: set me up on a job and then tried to have me killed. Clearly he didn’t succeed. In fact, the last time I saw him, he was bobbing up and down in the middle of the English Channel, dead as a doornail, with a distress flare blazing away where the middle of his face used to be … Do you see what I’m getting at here?’
‘Absolutely.’
Carver frowned. He could swear there was a smirk in Shafik’s voice. ‘Glad we’ve got that sorted,’ he said, ignoring it.
He hung up and walked through his apartment to the kitchen. The fittings along two of the walls had been updated a couple of years ago, but the granite-topped island unit in the middle of the room was the same as when he first moved in.
One side of the island was given over to a wine-rack. Carver got down on to his haunches, reached in, and removed a bottle of St Emilion premier cru claret from the second row down, three bottles along. He put the bottle down on the floor beside him, then reached into the space where it had been. At the very back was a small, round, rubber-topped button. Carver pressed it.
There was no other noise in the flat. So it was just possible to hear the soft hum of an electric motor as the centre of the granite top slowly rose from the island, eventually revealing a chromed steel frame within which were fitted six plastic drawers of varying depths.
A thick pad of charcoal-grey plastic foam filled each drawer, with specifically shaped openings cut to fit the different contents: precision tools in the top drawer; specialist power tools in the second; circuit boards, timers, detonators, remote controls, automotive brake and accelerator overrides and explosive tyre valves in the third and fourth; then blocks of explosives, arranged by category, in the fifth. The final and deepest drawer contained the two brands of firearm to which Carver had been loyal since his days in the SBS: the Heckler and Koch MP5K short-barrelled sub-machine gun and the Sig Sauer P226 pistol, along with accessories and ammunition.
Tucked in next to the firearms was a bundle of yellow plastic handcuffs that looked like oversized cable-ties. Sometimes it came in handy, being able to immobilize a man without having to stop him permanently. Carver never left home without them.
These were the basic tools of his trade. In his wardrobe he kept a safe containing a variety of passports and credit cards in different identities, plus cash, diamonds and bearer-bonds. These were intended to fund any mission he was likely to undertake and, in the event that he had to disappear fast, get him anywhere in the world and fund a modest lifestyle for the next year or two. If he needed specialist equipment or materials – drugs and poisons, for example – he went to one of a small and very discreet group of expert suppliers. If security measures and customs barriers made it im possible to carry weapons across borders, he specified what he would need from his clients as one of the conditions of his employment.
Still, he found that it helped him to look at his gear when he was contemplating the practicalities of a job. The contents of those foam-lined drawers spoke to him, giving him ideas about the how, what, where and when of what he had to do.
Although, in this case, there was something else for Samuel Carver to consider. Because he hadn’t yet decided who his target would be.