Tom Cain: Assassin

Death awaited on that choppy brown estuary water, but Tyzack wasn’t slowing down to avoid it. He was charging gleefully, exultantly, onwards. Hardly turning his head, he pointed his gun in Carver’s direction.

‘Shall I put you out of your misery now?’ he asked.

The crew of the Lynx had been tracking the speedboat’s progress on their radar. Now, as it emerged into the mouth of the river, they had visual contact. The pilot’s orders were clear. Ensure that the target was well clear of any civilian water traffic, then shoot at will. He was planning to let it go a mile out to sea. At that point it would be two miles from where his helicopter was waiting. Then he would fire. His Sea Skua missiles travelled at close to the speed of sound. Less than ten seconds after their launch the speedboat would be blasted from the face of the earth.

There was a manic glee about Damon Tyzack as he sped towards oblivion. His head was held high, his hair blown back by the wind rushing in through the shattered screen. His arms stuck straight out from his shoulders at right-angles, like the arms of a clock at nine: one hand on the wheel, the other holding the gun. His bright blue eyes were fixed in a fevered stare and his blood-smeared lips were twisted into the wild grin of a man embracing his own damnation.

Carver was waiting, calculating, praying that he still had time, knowing that there were just seconds in it. He could see the helicopter in the distance, hovering just above the horizon. How long would it wait?

And then he saw something else, much closer; the prospect of salvation.

The XSR hurtled out of the river and hit the first waves coming in from the sea. The bow reared up into the air, hurling both men back in their seats, off balance.

Tyzack’s gun was jolted upwards by the impact. Carver yanked his arms out from under his legs and lashed the side of his right hand into Tyzack’s left wrist. The blow sent the gun spinning from Tyzack’s hand. It fell to the deck and skimmed away over the bucking, rearing wood surface.

Carver unclipped the buckle of his safety harness then clambered upright. Tyzack made no attempt to stop him, or to resist in any way. His chest heaved in a convulsive hack, spraying Carver in a deep pink spume of foaming blood. Then he let go of the wheel, spread his arms wide as the boat started veering round in a circle and wheezed, ‘Go ahead. What’s the worst you can do?’

Carver didn’t punch Tyzack. He wasn’t worth breaking a knuckle over. He just slapped his head three times, left-right-left with great swinging blows that left Tyzack slumped barely conscious in his seatbelt.

‘This is for Thor Larsson,’ said Carver, pulling the plaited leather belt from his jeans and tightening it around Tyzack’s neck. He pushed the pin of the buckle between two strands of leather and wrenched the buckle round behind Tyzack’s head.

Carver undid Tyzack’s harness and pulled on the belt, yanking his head forward until he was doubled up. Then he began tying the loose end of the belt to the blood-spattered rim of the boat’s steering wheel.

Tyzack was coming to. He turned his head and looked up at Carver through unfocused eyes. He tried to speak, but all he could manage was a feeble, wordless croak.

Carver bent down and asked, ‘How’s it hanging?’

In the Lynx the pilot watched the sudden apparently random change in the speedboat’s course with alarm. He wasn’t sure if the pilot had lost control or was trying to escape. And he wasn’t going to wait long enough to find out.

‘Fire!’ he commanded.

The Sea Skua missile scorched away across the sky.

Carver caught a quick flash of light in the corner of his eye as the rocket engine ignited.

He took one last look at Tyzack, suspended from the steering wheel like a discarded puppet. Then he raced back towards the stern, grabbing hold of the passenger seats and physically dragging himself through the cabin as it juddered with the impact of each fresh wave.

A mile away, the Skua acquired its target before plunging into its final death dive.

Carver reached the stern and flung himself into the water, diving away from the thrashing propellers then staying underwater as the missile hit the boat. The shock waves from the blast punched Carver in the back, driving the breath from his lungs and pushing him still deeper, fighting for control until he was finally able to kick upwards again and emerge, gasping for air, on the surface.

He took one quick look to get his bearings and struck out for the shore.

They took Thor Larsson home to rest alongside his ancestors in a treeless, windswept graveyard that lay atop a headland overlooking the Norwegian Sea. At its centre stood a church, a simple construction of white-painted wood with a modest spire at one end. The houses of the village where Thor had grown up were wooden too, coloured deep russet red, yellow ochre and green: gaudy bursts of brightness against the featureless landscape of scrub and sand and the constantly shifting whites, greys and blues of the limitless sky and the sea.

Carver wore the suit he’d bought for Larsson’s wedding and a black tie he’d bought at Heathrow.

Maddy was waiting for him by the churchyard gate. They didn’t say anything at first, didn’t even shake hands.

‘I didn’t think you’d be here,’ he said. ‘I expected you to go home.’

‘Oslo was safer. It was the one place I knew he wouldn’t be. And Karin needed help with, you know, everything. So…’ She shrugged, and then said, ‘I would have told you if you’d called.’

‘No phone,’ he explained. ‘Tyzack took mine and I never got round to buying another. Had other things on my mind.’

Carver’s words blew away on the breeze coming in from the sea. They faced one another in an awkward, unaccustomed silence.

‘Oh Christ,’ she said, ‘don’t just stand there.’

And then they hugged.

‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he whispered, holding her tighter to feel the soft press of her body and breathe in the scent of her hair.

‘You had,’ she murmured, her mouth against his shoulder.

‘And now?’

She didn’t answer, but stepped out of his embrace, running her hands through her hair to push it back into place.

‘I saw you on TV with the President,’ she said. ‘Him shaking your hand as you were sitting up in that hospital bed.’ She smiled. ‘I was proud of you.’

‘You were?’ he said, as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears.

‘Uh-huh.’ She grinned. ‘Even if the news guy said you were just “a bystander, injured in the bombing”.’

Carver laughed. ‘Yeah, I heard that too.’

‘You’re all right, though?’

‘Sure. They just insisted on keeping me in overnight for observation. That reporter kid was in the same ward as me. He spent the whole time on the phone to his agent. Every time it rang, he got a little bit richer.’

‘Well, he did a very brave thing,’ said Maddy, taking his arm as they slowly walked up towards the church. ‘So did you.’

‘That’s what Roberts said, too. Well, almost. His exact words were, “Son, you must have cojones of steel if you think the way to save a president is to shoot at him.’”

She giggled. ‘The President said that? Really?’

‘Absolutely. But very quiet, with his head right by mine, so the reporters wouldn’t hear.’

Carver felt as if they were getting back to their old selves. They still weren’t all the way there yet, nowhere close. But give it time.

Maddy held his arm tight against her. They couldn’t talk any more now, because there were introductions to be made and condolences to be expressed. Carver murmured all the proper expressions of sympathy as he was introduced to the family, but he knew they must resent him for being alive when their beloved Thor was dead. Everyone had been told about his heroic self-sacrifice. No one knew about the betrayal that had come before.