Tom Cain - Carver

‘There’s some very slight residual swelling, as one might expect from surgery carried out four or five months ago,’ Assim said. ‘It’s barely perceptible and the discolouration is very slight, and easily covered up with a minimal amount of make-up. But it’s certainly there.’

He turned the head to one side and looked behind an ear and underneath the jaw, on both occasions wiping the concealer away to reveal faint scars. ‘Yes, there’s no doubt that this man has undergone a number of surgical procedures. I’d need to X-ray him, of course, to be completely certain. But I would not be surprised to find evidence of work on his jawbone, his chin, the bossing of his skull, his cheekbones and even the orbital rims around his eyes. In each case it would have been possible to reduce the mass of the bone by shaving or grinding it, or to augment and/or reshape a particular bone with fillers and implants of various kinds. Wait a moment…’

Assim took a look at the crown of the man’s head. ‘Yes, he’s had some hair transplantation, too. It’s really first-class work, so it’s as imperceptible as one can get. But it’s there all right. You might want to get a dentist to take a look at the teeth, too. It’s not my field, of course, but given what else has been done to this man, it’s reasonable to assume that his teeth were included in the overall makeover.’

‘Are you telling me that this man, whoever he is, has been given the face of Malachi Zorn?’ Young asked.

‘I suppose I am, yes,’ Assim replied.

Young glared indignantly at Grantham and Carver. ‘And you didn’t see fit to tell me about this deception?’

‘It would only have confused matters,’ Grantham said. ‘“Let’s kill the bad guy” might not be a politically acceptable plan, but at least it’s a simple one.’

‘Zorn has informers everywhere,’ Carver added. ‘It wouldn’t have bothered him at all if he’d known that the government was helping me kill him, in the belief that the target was genuine. In fact, he’d have been delighted. It would make his death official, which is exactly what he wanted. But if he’d known we’d discovered he was using a double, that would have changed everything.’

Young ran a hand through his hair and gave a baffled sigh. ‘I’m sorry. Why would it change things?’

‘Because Zorn wants the world to think he is dead. But if the victim is just someone who looks very much like Zorn, and we know it, that’s no good to him.’

‘Yes, but why is it so important to him to be dead?’

‘Because dead men can’t be tried for killing hundreds of people or stealing billions of dollars and pounds. Cops don’t chase dead men. Angry billionaires who’ve just been massively ripped off don’t hire hit men to go after corpses. Dead men are safe.’

‘Ah, yes… I see,’ said Young. ‘So now what?’

‘Well, the first thing to do is to switch on the television,’ Grantham said.

The set flickered back to life. It was tuned to Sky News. A banner was rolling across the bottom of the screen. It read, ‘Breaking news: billionaire financier Zorn believed dead in South London attack.’

‘Excellent,’ said Grantham. ‘Time to send in the troops.’ He took his mobile phone out of his pocket, pressed a button and said, ‘You’re on.’ Then he looked around the room at the other three men and said, ‘Have I forgotten anything?’

‘Yes,’ said Carver, ‘why don’t we wake this poor bastard up?’

Wentworth

The black-uniformed SAS men slipped over the walls of Malachi Zorn’s rented mansion like vengeful wraiths. Immediately before the start of the operation they had been informed that Zorn was almost certainly the mastermind behind the refinery attack that had killed the Director of Special Forces. He had been responsible for the sudden death of a man who was not only their ultimate commanding officer, but also a former colonel of the regiment. The eight men assigned to capture Zorn were grimly determined to get him by any means possible. And if he happened to get hurt in the process, so much the better.

The man on screen was a sports reporter. He spent ten months a year covering the various injuries, transfer deals, disciplinary issues and sexual shenanigans with which Premiership footballers filled their days. For two weeks in midsummer he became an instant expert on tennis, reporting on Wimbledon. But now all hell had broken loose in the streets less than a mile from the tournament, and suddenly he’d swapped thigh strains and broken strings for hard-core news reporting.

‘I don’t know if you can see behind me the burned-out remains of the Bentley limousine that is believed to have been carrying the controversial American financier Malachi Zorn,’ he was saying.

‘Yes, Barry, we can see it,’ said the newsreader in the studio. ‘But is there any more information about what actually happened here?’

‘Yes there is, Kate. This was a very public assassination attempt, carried out in front of lines of cars all stuck in a traffic jam — a jam that may even have been created as a means of trapping Zorn. From what eyewitnesses are saying, a car pulled out into the middle of the road, stopping the traffic in both directions, before suddenly driving away at high speed. Seconds later there was a huge explosion that disabled the Bentley.’

‘Was that some kind of mine, like the IEDs we’ve become so familiar with in Afghanistan?’

‘Possibly. Some witnesses, however, are describing a rocket or bazooka being fired at the car. All we know for certain is that the Bentley was disabled. Very soon after that, a man approached the stricken car on a motorbike, fired a gun into the passenger compartment and then lobbed a grenade into it. One eyewitness who saw the interior of the car is still too distressed to speak. It’s safe to say it was not a pretty sight.’

‘And what about Mr Zorn? Do we know whether he is dead or not?’

‘That’s still hard to say, Kate. Certainly it seems very unlikely that anyone could have survived this attack. But he might have had one stroke of luck. A London ambulance was nearby and rushed to the scene. Mr Zorn’s body was taken from the car and driven away within a minute or so of the incident. It’s thought that his head may have been covered by a blanket, suggesting he was already dead, but I’m getting conflicting reports on that.’

‘So where is he now?’

‘We’re not sure, Kate. There’s been no word from any of the local hospitals. Meanwhile, in another extraordinary development, rumours are sweeping the tennis world that there has been some sort of incident in the tunnels beneath Centre Court, possibly involving gunfire and multiple fatalities. I have to stress, though, that these are unconfirmed…’

With a press of a remote control the screen turned to black.

‘What do you think? Am I now officially dead?’ asked Malachi Zorn.

‘How could you not be?’ Razzaq replied. ‘Carver blew up your car, then used a gun and a grenade to carry out the actual hit.’

‘The grenade bothers me,’ Zorn said.

‘Why so?’

‘If that grenade went off inside the car, how come the ambulance men were able to put the body on a stretcher? It should have been torn to pieces by the blast.’

Razzaq frowned. ‘True, though a blast can easily be blocked or deflected. A table-leg saved Hitler from von Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb, after all.’

‘I guess,’ said Zorn. ‘But I’ll still be happier when I see some spokesperson standing outside a hospital, saying how tragic it is that I passed away.’

The SAS team had divided into two four-man patrols, which were now approaching both the front and rear of the building. Surveillance of the property with highly sensitive parabolic microphones and thermal-imaging binoculars had detected the presence of two adult males in the room that Zorn was believed to use as an office. The two men were still in place as the troops reached the building and flattened themselves against the walls. They weren’t going in through any of the mansion’s doors. They didn’t need to. Simultaneously they placed coiled rings of explosive cord, whose blast was tamped and focused by black rubber tubes of water up against the brickwork. The moment the signal was given, the cord would be detonated. Even before the smoke had cleared, the SAS would be in the building and racing towards their quarry.