Tom Cain - Assassin

The first fifty thousand was already sitting there, enough to enable Selsey to think, I’ve earned more than you this year, old boy, whenever Grantham’s casual arrogance became more than usually irritating. The second instalment would soon follow. For Selsey had just received his first instructions.

He was ordered to investigate the poisoning of an Indian people-trafficker called Tiger Dey. To help him in this task, he was advised to examine the passenger manifests of an Emirates Airlines flight from London to Dubai, and to check relevant CCTV footage at both Dubai and Heathrow airports. He was also given a contact in the Dubai police, who would provide him with access to the official investigation of Dey’s murder – an investigation that had, unusually, begun while its subject was still, just, alive. Finally, he was supplied with the number of a recently opened account at a Zurich bank, and the name of a former prostitute who would be able to assist in his inquiries.

Taken together, he was assured, these leads would provide a great deal of information. All he had to do, for now at any rate, was to use this information to arouse Jack Grantham’s interest, and persuade him that Samuel Carver had started killing again. From then on, events would take care of themselves.

Selsey had assigned a junior agent to do the donkey work. Provided with the passenger list he had quickly spotted the name ‘James Conway Murray’ and recognized it at once as one of Carver’s known aliases. He had the relevant footage pulled from Heathrow Terminal Three’s cameras. As always, the footage was infuriatingly indistinct, but there certainly was a man who answered to Carver’s general description, carefully keeping his face away from any direct exposure to the cameras with a skill that only an experienced professional would possess.

Selsey asked for any records of further flights by Murray and was rewarded with a BA ticket to San Francisco, leaving three days after the Dubai job. There was no flight yet between Dubai and London – he would have to keep looking for that. Meanwhile Murray had gone to the States. That would be a lead worth following in due course.

He put in a call to Dubai, beginning the negotiations that would get him the police reports. The local detectives had already concluded that Dey’s killer must have been the Englishman who had sat with him at the Karama Pearl Hotel. They had interviewed Dey’s bodyguards without success: they would not squeal to the police, not even on their boss’s killer. But Selsey’s call made the Dubaians suspect that someone in London knew who the man was. So the deal was obvious: the reports in exchange for the name. Selsey told them he would think about it.

He also had to start the process of extracting information from the Swiss bank. With any luck the people there would be cooperative: the Swiss were far more open than they used to be. Otherwise he’d have to use more underhand methods. He also needed a way into that refuge where the prostitute was hiding. All that would require resources, and for that he needed Grantham’s approval. It was time to approach his boss… and start lying in his face.

Jack Grantham sat back in his chair and rubbed his forehead, trying to ease his tension and fatigue. He let out a long slow exhalation, then leaned forward and looked at Selsey standing on the far side of his desk.

‘I’m sorry, Bill, but I just don’t buy it. The last I heard, Carver was doing high-end security work. He tells nervous billionaires and politicians how to keep themselves safe. He even does dummy attacks, just to test their protection. The pay’s good. There’s no danger. He doesn’t feel like shit thinking about what he’s done. Why would he want to go back to wet jobs?’

‘Maybe he’s strapped for cash. Plenty of people are these days. I don’t really know why he’s done it. I’m just looking at a pile of evidence that says he has.’

‘Well, how did we get dragged into this anyway?’

‘A private call from Dubai,’ said Selsey, pleased that he could now stick to something that had a grain of truth. ‘The authorities there already know that Dey’s killer is British. They think it would be good for the continued friendship between our two peoples if we helped identify him.’

‘Forget it. We’re not going to do their bloody plod-work for them. If they arrest a suspect and he happens to be British, it’s a straightforward Foreign Office matter, nothing to do with us.’

‘Unless he actually is Carver,’ mused Selsey, delighted that Grantham had given him an opening. ‘We wouldn’t necessarily want him falling into anyone else’s hands, would we? Not with what he knows.’

‘No, we bloody wouldn’t…’ Grantham muttered. He had made deals with Carver, deals that would be very embarrassing indeed were they ever to be made public. It wouldn’t be good for a senior MI6 officer to be exposed as a close associate of a paid killer. He shook his head. ‘I still can’t work out what’s really happening here. I mean, what if someone’s framing Carver, using him as camouflage to hide what they’re up to?’

‘Seems a bit elaborate,’ said Selsey, trying to sound a lot more relaxed about the speed of Grantham’s thought processes than he actually felt.

‘Maybe, but even so, I’m not entirely sure about this.’

‘Still, there’s no harm in looking a bit deeper, eh? We might as well find out what’s going on, just to keep our own back well covered.’

‘That’s always worth doing,’ Grantham agreed. ‘All right, Bill, dig around. Tell me what you find. And don’t tell anyone else.’

‘Of course not,’ said Selsey. ‘You can count on me.’

Harrison James put the phone down on a furious senior senator from Florida, having just informed him of the cancellation of a planned presidential trip to Miami. Officially the President had been going to visit the National Hurricane Center and lunch with local business leaders; unofficially he was repaying the senator for his endorsement early in the primary season. James had given the senator a vague explanation of the President’s change of plans, saying that he’d be making an overseas trip with significant national security implications that made his destination confidential for the time being.

When the pork-barrelling old bastard asked, ‘Are we talking Afghanistan, here, Hal?’ he’d replied, ‘Well, I can’t comment on that, Javier. But I’ll tell you this, the President has dynamic, far-reaching plans for the projection of US power around the world. If you can help make those plans a reality, he will not forget your sacrifice.’

Christ, the shit you had to talk just to smooth old men’s egos, James thought, putting down the phone. Seconds later, the red light was flashing again.

‘It’s the British ambassador,’ James’s personal assistant informed him. ‘He wants to talk about the Prime Minister’s role in the President’s visit.’

‘I’ll bet he does,’ muttered James, then forced a smile into his voice as he said, ‘Sir Michael, good to hear from you. What can I do?’

‘Morning, Hal, it’s just this whole Bristol business. The PM’s delighted the President is coming to see us, naturally. Can’t wait. And, of course, bearing in mind Britain’s historic role in the abolition of slavery, he’s absolutely supportive of any effort to stamp out this vile business today. He’s just concerned that our presence is acknowledged, as it were.’

‘You mean he doesn’t want to be totally upstaged in his own back yard.’

‘Absolutely, Hal, I knew you’d understand. And if you need a royal or two to greet the President off the plane, or host a spot of lunch, you only have to ask.’

‘That’s great, Sir Michael,’ said James, wondering how the Brits managed to sound so damn condescending, even when they were kissing your ass.