Tom Cain - The accident man

A second fax arrived soon afterward. It notified Carver that $1.5 million had been wired to his numbered account at Banque Wertmuller-Maier de Geneve. Whoever his employers were-and Carver had no great desire to find out, any more than he wanted them to know too much about him-they always paid on time, and in full.

Max called again when the plane was over the western United States.

"So where are you now?"

"Half an hour out of LA," Carver replied. "The pilot's putting his foot down. Should be on the ground in a little over ten hours."

"Right, so that'll make it seven thirty p.m. Central European Time. We don't expect much action before midnight, so that's fine. But there's something else we need you to sort out first."

Carver was several thousand miles away, speaking via a satellite phone. But his anger got through just fine. "You're joking. Two jobs? Both improvised? You must think I've lost the will to live."

"Don't worry, the second one's just routine," Max said. "Backup in case the first strike doesn't work out. Our friend has another property he uses for private meetings-personal and professional, if you follow my drift. If he feels under threat, he'll use it as his safe house. Except you'll have made it unsafe, won't you? Don't worry, we've got the code to the alarm system. It's a piece of piss."

Carver sighed. It didn't matter what you did for a living. In the end, you took the same crap from the people who paid your wages. He listened as Max described the little love nest where Ramzi Hakim Narwaz liked to conduct his private business. This was one Islamic terrorist who took his cover as a decadent apostate really seriously. It was an Oscar-winning performance.

A few minutes later, the floor plans and wiring schematics of the Narwaz apartment came through on the Gulfstream's fax. It took Carver half an hour to work out what he was going to do. The next time Max made contact, he had his equipment list ready. He listed the transportation, weaponry, explosives, timers, fuses, and tactical equipment he'd need, then got down to the finer details.

"I'll need a small tin of lubricating oil-3-in-1, something like that. Then get me half a dozen small-size plastic freezer bags, self-sealing; a plain black garbage bag; a mechanic's torch with a head strap; a pair of scissors, industrial ones with three-inch ceramic blades; a screwdriver, wire cutters, a roll of duct tape, a can of air freshener, a bottle of Jif cleanser, a few pairs of thin latex gloves, and a Mars bar."

"Why the hell do you need a Mars bar?"

"To eat. I've got a sweet tooth. And come to mention it, why not get me a takeout pizza?"

Max did not bother to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "Whatever you say, mate. Any favorite toppings?"

"I couldn't care less," said Carver. "It's the box I'm interested in. On second thought, don't worry. I'll get it myself. I'll be needing a decent meal."

Carver's plane landed at Le Bourget Airport, a few miles northeast of Paris, and taxied into a private aviation hangar. When Carver reached the bottom of the steps, a maintenance engineer handed him an envelope and a large carrier bag. Inside the envelope were a parking ticket with the space number written on it, a Honda motorcycle key, and the key to a locker in the terminal building. The carrier bag was filled with clothes. Carver carried it back up into the plane and got changed.

Max had given him black cargo pants, black T-shirt, black nylon bomber jacket, black trainers, black helmet. The rest of the gear was in a backpack, stowed in the terminal locker. It was just as black as everything else.

The bike that awaited him in the car park was a unmarked Honda XR400. It was a dirt bike, designed for rutted country paths rather than city streets, as skinny and high-stepping as a whippet. But it was ideal for Carver's purposes. If the operation went wrong and he needed to get away fast, he wanted a machine that could go where police cars and their heavy, powerful bikes could not.

Five minutes after leaving the airport, Carver stopped at a roadside pizza parlor and ordered a pizza for takeout. While it was being cooked, he went looking for the bathroom, carrying his pack with him. There were two individual cubicles, each with a toilet and basin. He made his way to the nearest one and got out the gun he'd specified, a SIG-Sauer P226 pistol, with a Colt/Browning short recoil mechanism and no safety catch. There were twelve Cor-Bon 9mm 115 grain +P Jacketed Hollow Points in the magazine.

The SIG was the British Special Forces' pistol of choice for antiterrorist and undercover work. Carver had used it on countless military operations and had stayed with it ever since. Now, as always, he stripped his gun, checked it, and reassembled it. The whole process took him less than a minute. On one level, it was a basic precaution to make sure the weapon functioned. But it was also a ritual that helped him focus on what was to come, like an athlete moving into the zone, getting his game face on.

Next, Carver plugged the washbasin. He reached into his backpack and took out the can of 3-in-1, and poured its contents into the basin. Then he reached in again, removing a small brick of what looked like gray modeling clay. It was C4 explosive-plastic. He put the C4 into the basin and started kneading it, mixing the oil and plastic together, like a baker working his dough. He ended up with a sticky, pliable putty that itself was completely safe. It could be molded into any shape and stuck to any surface. You could shove it in small plastic bags-just as Carver now started to do, dividing it into four equal portions. You could hit it, burn it, even shoot it full of bullets and nothing would happen. But put a fuse, a blasting cap, or a timer into it and suddenly you had a bomb.

Once the bags of explosive putty had been stashed in Carver's backpack, he got out the cleanser and poured it all over the basin, removing any traces of oil or C4. He set the taps on full blast to rinse it all away and threw the bottle in the trash. There was still a slight smell of oil and plastic in the air, so Carver sprayed air freshener around the tiny room, then junked that can too. A man was waiting outside as he left. Carver shrugged his shoulders apologetically, held his nose, and murmured, "Pardon."

He collected his pizza and ate half of it in the parking lot. The rest he threw away in a Dumpster. He kept the box, mounted the Honda, and headed south into Paris.

The apartment was on the Ile Saint-Louis, one of the two islands in the middle of the river Seine that sit virtually at the dead center of the city. The street outside was filled with tourists enjoying the island's relaxed village atmosphere and the warm, late-summer evening. They wandered along, taking their time, stopping to look in shop windows or check out the menus of the restaurants and cafes dotted along the sidewalks.

Carver parked his bike and got off, still wearing his helmet, carrying the pizza box. Anyone who spared him a passing glance would just see a delivery man. Only a very sharp eye would spot that he was wearing a pair of latex gloves as he walked up to the front door of the eighteenth-century building where Ramzi Narwaz entertained his lovers. A few seconds' work with a set of skeleton keys got him in.

He looked around the ground-floor lobby, familiarizing himself with its layout, then walked down it to a back door that led into a bare courtyard with a row of trash bins down one wall. Directly opposite him an archway opened out onto the street at the back of the building. Relieved to see that there was more than one way out, Carver got rid of the pizza box and went back into the building.

The apartment was on the top floor, up several flights of stairs. Once again the locks were no barrier. Carver stepped into a central hallway with a floor-to-ceiling window at its far end. It was almost dark outside, but the streetlights gave off enough illumination to enable Carver to see his way around.