Tom Cain: Assassin

It had been Karin who had insisted on Carver speaking at the service. She came up to him now and told him, ‘Say all the good things, like you would have done at… at our wedding. Tell the jokes, even if they are rude. Make him live for me again, just for a few moments… please.’

When the time came for him to speak, Maddy gave his hand an encouraging squeeze. He stepped up to the lectern, past the coffin in which Thor’s remains lay, offering a silent prayer that he be allowed to get through his words without breaking down. As he looked out over the congregation, he paused for a moment to collect his thoughts and gather his strength, and it was then that he saw, right at the back of the church, a flash of golden hair beneath a black hat. The woman beneath the hat must have sensed his gaze upon her for at that instant she raised her face and her clear blue eyes looked straight into his. He felt his stomach flip and told himself it was only natural that Alix should be here. She and Thor had become very close. There was nothing more to it than that.

Carver swallowed hard, coughed and thanked God for the fact that his emotion would be read by the congregation as understandable nervousness. He felt their eyes upon him, and the weight of their expectations. Somehow he had to find a way to acknowledge the loss they had all suffered and the joy they had taken in the person who was gone. He thought of what Karin had said: ‘Make him live for me again.’ So he set aside the notes he had made and stepped back down from the lectern. Then he stood beside the coffin, looked out at the people crammed on to the hard wooden pews and told them about his friend.

This book is explicitly and unambiguously a work of fiction and its characters entirely imaginary. Nevertheless there are elements in it that are based on fact. So far as possible, for example, I have tried to make the descriptions of the slave trade – the abusive techniques of the traffickers; the experiences of the women; the facts and figures; even the price for which a sex-slave can be bought in an airport coffee-shop – as accurate as possible. The facts are so appalling that they need no exaggeration.

Amidst a great welter of research material, three books in particular gave me some small measure of insight into and understanding of trafficking: McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers, by Misha Glenny; The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade, by Victor Malarek; and Selling Olga: Stories of Human Trafficking and Resistance, by Louisa Waugh. All are strongly recommended to anyone wanting to know more about the trade and the criminals who operate it. The US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report, available online, is also an invaluable source of data on global slavery. Finally, my fictional House of Freedom was inspired by a report in the New York Times on the work of Sharla Musabih, founder of the City of Hope refuge for battered wives and trafficked women in Dubai. Ms Musabih dedicates her life to the real-life Lara Dashians who suffer appalling exploitation in Dubai, just as they do all over the world – Britain, Europe and the USA included.

Anyone who has ever visited Dubai, Oslo, London, Bristol or even Cascade, Idaho will, I hope, recognize those places from my descriptions. Nevertheless, they will also spot the many liberties I have taken. I would, for example, strongly advise anyone lucky enough to own an XSR superboat, a fabulous piece of kit for which they will likely have paid in excess of a million pounds, not to attempt to drive it under Bristol’s Prince Street Bridge.

Likewise, to the very best of my knowledge, there is no Karama Pearl Hotel in Dubai, nor a King Haakon Hotel in Oslo. On the other hand, the Oslo Opera House is even more astonishing than my meagre powers of description can suggest, and the Gabelshus Hotel certainly does exist. I recommend it for its elegant surroundings, charming staff and free breakfasts, afternoon teas and buffet suppers. Those familiar with the boggling restaurant prices in Oslo will understand the significance of the word ‘free’ in this context.

One other inaccuracy, however, was entirely unintended. The air-defence systems that I attribute to HMS Daring certainly are those planned for deployment on the Type 45 destroyers, of which she is the first. Yet it emerged after the book was written that thanks to delays, cost overruns and the matchless, life-threatening incompetence of the Ministry of Defence, HMS Daring has actually taken to the seas without her main Viper missile system. I can only hope that the Navy’s meagre budget has run to a Lynx helicopter and its Sea Skua missiles. If not, any real-life Damon Tyzacks will stand a very good chance of getting away.

Tom Cain, Sussex, 2009

Tom Cain is the pseudonym for an award-winning journalist with twenty-five years’ experience working for Fleet Street newspapers. He has lived in Moscow, Washington DC and Havana, Cuba. He is the author of The Accident Man and The Survivor.