Tom Cain - Carver

‘But Comrade Choi, I thought you said that this was not a suitable place for an assassination,’ Jian said.

‘For the kind of assassination Carver must carry out, yes, that is quite correct. But we can be more subtle. Let us suppose a group of civilized middle-country persons, anonymous amidst a sea of strangers, and lost in their own conversation, bump into an English barbarian. He is jostled for a few seconds. Perhaps there is a brief flash of anger. But then there are polite apologies, tempers cool, everyone goes on their way. The men from the middle country are soon lost in the crowd. It is as if nothing ever happened. Then, a few minutes later, the Englishman is taken ill. By the time he dies, my men and I have left the tournament. By the time an autopsy reveals that the Englishman’s heart attack was caused by poisoning, all the men but me will have long since left the country. I will of course be above suspicion, for why would a brilliant entrepreneur stoop to the murder of a stranger? And should anyone ask, I will have a dozen witnesses confirming my presence at a business meeting that lasted all day.’

‘Very good, Comrade Choi,’ the man from the State Security Ministry said. ‘You will of course send me written details of your plan for examination and comment. But in principle we are agreed. Carver will die tomorrow.’

Kensington Gardens, London

They met on the path that runs beside the Long Water in Kensington Gardens, just another two lovers snatching a few furtive moments together at the end of a working day.

‘I was so worried about you,’ Alix said. ‘As soon as I saw it all happening on the news, I just knew you were there, and I thought… I’m sorry…’ She rummaged in her handbag for a tissue to wipe away the tears that had caught her by surprise. ‘Dammit,’ she muttered, trying to manage a smile, ‘I was hoping to look pretty for you!’

With the same delicacy of touch that could be so arousing when they were in bed, but now just made her feel loved and comforted, he gently stroked a tear away from her cheek. ‘You always look pretty — much better than pretty,’ he said. Then he took her in his arms and she rested her head against his chest, hearing the strong, steady heartbeat that reassured her more than any words of his could do.

Alix sniffed, cleared her throat and, embarrassed by the weakness that she had just displayed, tried to snap back into a steadier, more professional mindset.

‘So what really happened?’

‘There was a very effective, professional, calculated assault on an oil refinery that just happened to cause a ton more collateral damage than the people who planned it expected.’

‘And who did plan it?’

‘In theory, a group called the Forces of Gaia. In practice, your old friend Celina Novak, calling herself Uschi Kremer, put the idea into their heads.’

Alix frowned. ‘You said she was working for that guy Razzaq…’

‘Yes.’

‘Who works for Zorn… You mean, this was all his idea?’

‘Got it in one. This whole thing was basically a financial scam. Zorn sticks a pile of money into the market, placing it all on bets that will pay off if there’s a disaster. Then he gives the market jitters by saying, “The eco-terrorists are coming!” Then they come. Then he cleans up… only in this case he does even better than he ever dreamed of because half the government is taken out along with the refinery.’

‘So Azarov was right,’ Alix said. ‘As soon as he saw the news — as it was all happening — he said that Zorn must be behind it.’

‘I thought that was over, you and Azarov.’

‘As far as I’m concerned it is. But I said I would do one last thing with him. We’re supposed to be going to Wimbledon tomorrow, as Zorn’s guests…’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it. I have to smile at the guy and act like nothing has happened, when all the time I know what he has done. Anyway, Azarov wanted me to pay close attention to Zorn. He said my woman’s eye might spot something that his male one could not. Why are you smiling?’

‘Because I just had exactly the same idea as Azarov,’ he said. ‘There’s a couple of things I need to know. And you could tell me the answers…’

An hour later, and six miles south-east across London, Carver was in a pub off the Walworth Road with Schultz and his oppo, an ex-lance corporal called Kevin Cripps. There were three pints of London Pride on the table, and whisky chasers for Schultz and Cripps. Carver was carrying out an impromptu mission briefing using Google Earth shots of Wimbledon on his phone screen to set the scene, and an assortment of coasters, pepper pots and cigarette packets to represent elements of the action he was describing.

‘Think you can do it?’ he asked them at the end.

‘Can you get all the kit by tomorrow morning?’ Schultz replied.

Carver nodded.

‘Even the Krakatoa?’ Cripps sounded sceptical.

‘Absolutely.’

‘In that case, boss, it’s a piece of piss,’ said Schultz.

Wentworth

The last of the reporters had long since left Malachi Zorn’s rented mansion. Now he and Razzaq were left in peace to consider their next moves.

‘What are you going to do now that Orwell is dead?’ the Pakistani asked. His religious principles did not permit him to consume alcohol, but he had a fat Cohiba cigar, fresh from Havana, to assist him in his thinking.

‘On Friday night, you mean?’

‘Yes. That was going to be his finest moment. Who is going to take his place now?’

Zorn was drinking red wine. He swirled it in the glass, savouring the bouquet as he thought about his reply. ‘Good question. I need to think this through. My first instinct is to go ahead as planned. We just need another way to get the guests in the room.’

‘Do we? Do you? Isn’t what you already have enough?’

‘Enough is a word I don’t recognize, Ahmad. There’s no such thing as enough.’

‘Sometimes there has to be. There are points when the wisest course is to accept that one cannot have everything one wants. Having enough is better than losing it all.’

‘What makes you think I will lose anything?’

‘It is not so much that I think you will, as that I fear you might. Let us take this from the beginning. You wished to take revenge for the deaths of your parents. Correct?’

‘That was one of the motivations, yes,’ Zorn agreed, pouring himself some more wine. ‘Another was… just victory, I guess. I want to win. That’s the American way.’

‘Indeed it is…’ Razzaq let out a long stream of aromatic smoke. ‘But Americans should know by now that one day’s victory can be the next day’s defeat.’

‘This has nothing to do with defeat,’ Zorn said. ‘There is a class of people that I hate. I want to beat them at their own game. I want to hurt them, to crush them. I want them down on their fat, piggy knees. And since they value money more than anything else, the best way to do this is to take their money, multiply it many times, and then steal it from them so that I am richer than they can ever be. And you’ll be rich, too, Ahmad, don’t forget that.’

Razzaq laughed. ‘I never forget that! But let us look at the way in which you set about achieving your ends. First, you entice investors to give you enormous sums of money. You create a situation in which they are pleading with you for the chance to hand over hundreds of millions — even billions — of dollars. They are like turkeys begging for Christmas.’

Now Zorn’s face was split by a schoolboy grin. ‘I know, aren’t they?’

‘And of course, Orwell was the perfect man to help you do this. He always had the ability to persuade himself that the best possible course of action was whatever he happened to be doing at the time. He fooled himself first, before he fooled anyone else. Tell me, what did he do with the money you gave him?’