Assassin

by Tom Cain

  Larsson looked down at them like an amiable giraffe, a rueful smile on his face. ‘It was Kari. She said they made me look like an ageing hippy. Apparently, I’m much more handsome now.’

  He did not sound entirely convinced.

  ‘Well, I think you look just cute,’ said Maddy with a hint of a smile, teasing him a little. ‘And you did what you were told, too, which has to be a good thing.’

  ‘Thor, meet Maddy,’ said Carver. ‘She’s a big believer in the chain of command.’

  ‘Damn straight,’ she agreed.

  ‘It’s all my fault, of course,’ said Carver. ‘If I hadn’t got this man’s frozen, half-dead body off an Arctic mountainside and into Narvik hospital, he’d never have met the beautiful nurse who stole his heart… and his balls, apparently.’

  Larsson laughed, but there was something forced about his good humour, as though he wasn’t in the mood for banter. It occurred to Carver that it probably wasn’t a brilliant idea, winding a man up about his wife-to-be two days before their wedding, even if he was your mate.

  ‘So how is Kari, anyway?’ he said, switching to polite conversation. ‘She joining us for dinner?’

  Larsson shook his head. ‘No, she’s got her family down from Narvik. They need looking after and there are all the last-minute things to do for the reception. But you’ll see her tomorrow, at the rehearsal.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ said Maddy.

  Carver looked up at the signs pointing the way to taxis, car-hire, trains and car parks. ‘Where are you parked?’ he asked Larsson.

  ‘I’m not. We’re taking the train. This is a country where the public transport actually works. I’ll get you both day-cards for the buses, trams and metro. Costs almost nothing and you can use them as much as you like.’

  It took less than five minutes to walk through the arrivals hall, get tickets and settle into their seats. A minute after that they were moving. The whole process had been so swift and painless that Carver almost failed to notice the man standing by the airport information desk in the baseball cap and dark glasses. There was something about that face, the hollow cheeks and slightly petulant, sulky mouth that nagged at Carver’s memory, though the answer stayed just out of reach. But there was no doubt the man’s head turned and followed them as they walked by.

  Well, of course it did, Carver told himself. Maddy had that effect on most men. Get a grip.

  On the train he tried not to think about it, concentrating on the instant guide to Oslo Larsson was giving them. He had a tourist’s map of the city, taken from a rack at the station. ‘OK, here’s the station,’ he said, pointing to a mass of converging railway lines on the right-hand side of the map. And here’ – Larsson’s finger pointed to the middle of the map – ‘is the royal palace. You see the street that runs almost directly between them? That’s Karl Johans Gate. It’s the main street in the city, all the fanciest stores are there. That’s where we have all the big parades and everything. We’re going to have dinner at the King Haakon Hotel, which is about halfway along. It’s a little old-fashioned, but you should definitely see it.’

  ‘And they’ll let you in now you don’t look like a hippy,’ grinned Carver.

  This time Larsson smiled back. ‘Well, that’s the real reason I had it done, of course…’

  He went back to his map, running his finger straight down from the royal palace to the shore of the fjord on which Oslo lay. ‘Anyway, round here it’s all been redeveloped in the past few years and it looks good, very modern, futuristic almost. The area on the waterfront is called Aker Brygge. It’s like a boardwalk. There are trendy bars and restaurants, fancy modern apartments, lots of yachts moored alongside – it’s where all the cool people go.’

  ‘Which is why you’re not taking us, right?’ said Carver.

  ‘No!’ Larsson laughed, his normal good humour now totally restored. ‘I thought we’d go down there for some drinks after dinner.’

  ‘Sounds nice,’ said Maddy.

  ‘It is,’ Larsson agreed. ‘And the other place you should definitely see while you’re in town is the opera house, which is here, by the station. It’s very new and it’s definitely the craziest-looking place in Oslo. You can even stand on the roof.’

  ‘And that’s as crazy as this place gets?’ Carver asked. ‘An opera house?’

  Larsson grinned. ‘What can I say? Oslo is a great city. It’s clean, it’s peaceful and there’s fantastic countryside just a few minutes away on the train. But I have to admit, it’s not exactly exciting.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Carver. ‘I’ve had all the excitement I can stand.’

  32

  Jana Kreutzmann was the last passenger to board the flight from Berlin, dashing through the terminal towards the departure gate, calling out to the ground staff, imploring them not to close the flight, gasping her thanks and apologies as she stood by their desk and presented her boarding pass. She was always late, always rushing, always trying to fit twenty-five hours of passionate commitment into every twenty-four-hour day.

  Ten years ago, a boyfriend had taken her to see the E55 highway that ran from Dresden in the old East Germany through to Prague in the Czech Republic. One stretch of the highway close to the town of Teblice, just over the Czech side of the border, had become infamous for the hundreds of East European prostitutes who touted for trade. They clustered in the neon-lit doorways and outdoor drinking areas of countless sleazy roadside bars. They fought for customers, grabbing and embracing the men who got out of passing cars and trucks. The men would grab them back, pawing and prodding the prostitutes like shoppers sampling fruit in a marketplace.

  Prices started at thirty euros for half an hour of sex, and rose to 250 for an entire night’s pleasure, either at a girl’s tawdry room, with thick grime on the window-frames and no sheets on the bed, or at one of the neighbourhood hotels that catered for prostitutes and their Johns. All the while, the girls’ pimps would lurk in the background, forcing their stables to work harder, making sure that none of the men tried to get away without paying. The entire operation was controlled by criminal gangs. Local police, all bought and paid for, had become an irrelevance.

  Jana had been working for Amnesty International then, as had her boyfriend, Dieter. He had hoped that his righteous indignation at the appalling exploitation of innocent young women by evil men would earn him a fuck out of political solidarity, if nothing else. But he had miscalculated Jana’s response.

  Her outrage, unlike his, was not remotely synthetic. When they got back to their hotel, 20 kilometres away, she pulled out her laptop and went online. It took her just a couple of minutes to find sex-guides advising men how to get to the highway’s busiest stretches and what they could expect when they got there.

  ‘Listen to this!’ Jana had exclaimed as Dieter lay in bed, wondering when the hell she was going to climb in next to him.

  Jana started reading from the screen: ‘ “Unfortunately, most girls do not show much enthusiasm in bed. At least the prettier ones usually lie passively in bed, but if you show them how you want them to handle you they seem quite obedient. They are also often grateful for tips, because they see little or nothing of your payment, after the bar and her pimp take their share. This may also explain their lack of enthusiasm.” Can you believe that? These guys know that the prostitutes are basically slaves, who don’t even get paid for letting men abuse their bodies, but they still complain because they aren’t enthusiastic. Pigs! Fucking pigs!’

  ‘Don’t worry about them,’ said Dieter. ‘Come to bed, huh?’

  ‘What? And have sex? With you? So you can tell your friends that I am not enthusiastic but, oh yes, I am very obedient when I am told what to do? Are you crazy?’

  Jana had never again let Dieter anywhere near her. Instead she had devoted herself to the cause of all the women and children around the world who were trafficked and forced into sex-slavery. Subsisting on occasional donations and fees from speeches and journalism, Jana Kreutzmann had spoken t
o abused women, confronted the criminals who so cruelly mistreated them and lobbied politicians. She had displayed manic determination and unflinching courage and slowly, as the years went by, she had helped to make a difference. The media that had once regarded her as an obsessive, feminist nutcase now saw her as a twenty-first-century heroine. The criminals who had once dismissed her as an insignificant irritant now saw her as an increasingly dangerous threat to their business.

  Official recognition was shown to her too. The European lawmakers in Brussels regularly called her, and paid for her consultancy. Now the Nobel Institute, the organization behind the Nobel Prizes based in Oslo, had invited her to a symposium bringing together academics, campaigners and media experts who specialized in the issue of people-trafficking. Together, they would compile a paper to be presented to the Anti-Slavery Conference. Over the past few days Jana had heard rumours that President Lincoln Roberts himself would be addressing the conference. His support, even if it were little more than a gesture, would be a huge boost to the anti-slavery movement.

  As she collapsed into her seat and began her flight to Oslo, Jana Kreutzmann felt for the very first time as though she might just be on the winning side.

  33

  Presidential speechwriter Bobby DiLivio chewed on the end of a newly sharpened pencil. ‘OK,’ he said, taking it out of his mouth and tapping it on a legal pad in front of him, ‘how about this? “Human trafficking is a scourge in the world, a stain upon the conscience of civilized society.” What do you guys reckon – too much alliteration, maybe?’

  ‘How about too many friggin’ clichés?’ sniped his colleague Josh Grunveld, laughing as he dodged the ball of paper DiLivio flung in his direction.

  Over at the far end of the White House writers’ room, Thornton Black, the third member of the team working on the President’s Bristol speech, paced up and down the carpet, squeezing a black and yellow Nerf ball in his hands.

  ‘Don’t worry about the clichés, man. That’s Roberts’s genius. He turns that trash into pure gold.’

  ‘You calling my work trash?’ DiLivio asked, beginning to bridle.

  ‘Man, this is politics, it’s all trash,’ Black replied. ‘So, did you guys see that story in the Huffington Post, the one about that sex-slave kid that got rescued in, I don’t know, Dubai? Abu Dhabi? Some place like that – Middle East, anyway. Story came out of the London Times…’

  ‘Nuh-huh,’ muttered DiLivio, chewing the pencil again.

  Grunveld frowned. ‘Was that the one where the dude killed the Indian guy? Yeah, think I remember that…’

  ‘So, would it be a totally crazy idea to get that chick over to England for the speech?’ Black went on. ‘The way the guy wrote it, she sounded pretty cute. I’m thinking a black president with a white slave, that’s an image, right? God, that shot’s going to be on every front page in the whole damn world…’

  ‘Why stop there?’ Grunveld asked. ‘We could get a little slumdog and some old Chinese dude, make it a real rainbow nation.’

  ‘Aw, come on, man, I’m trying to be serious here,’ Black protested.

  ‘You know, it could even make some money,’ said DiLivio. ‘If we got enough kids, from enough different countries, we could auction ’em off to Hollywood celebrities after the speech. Get Madonna and Angelina bidding against each other, who knows how high it could go? Pay for the whole trip.’

  ‘Good to know you take the scourge of the century so seriously, DiLivio. Always helps a speech when it’s written from the heart.’

  ‘C’mon, Thorn, you know I was kidding.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I wasn’t. I honestly think this kid could make the whole thing real. Put a face on the problem, y’know? Give people something they can understand, not just a bunch of fine words and big numbers. The chick was eighteen when she got sold by her own aunt, for Christ’s sake. She was flown thousands of miles and forced into prostitution… People are going to look at her, think, “Gee, she could be our daughter.” That’s what I mean – she makes it real.’

  ‘You know, Thorn, that’s not a totally dumb-ass idea… considering it’s one of yours,’ Grunveld conceded. ‘You should think about it, Bob.’

  ‘OK, I’ll take it to Hal, see what he says,’ said DiLivio, as Thornton Black shouted, ‘Yes!’ and danced a touchdown celebration. ‘Now, the speech… How about I make it, “Human trafficking is a curse upon the world”?’

  ‘How about we start again from the top?’ suggested Grunveld.

  ‘Yeah,’ Black agreed. ‘’Cause, Bob, what you’ve got so far is total shit.’

  34

  The fifth-floor corridor of the King Haakon Hotel was reserved for the exclusive use of female guests. Men could hardly be forbidden from walking past the rooms, but they certainly were not encouraged to do so.

  Damon Tyzack had no qualms at all about intruding. As he made his way along the carpet to the last door on the right he was dressed entirely in black, from his combat boots and his military fatigue pants to his shirt, fleece and ballistic vest – even the cap that hid most of his flame-red hair. He wore gold-framed glasses, a bushy moustache and there was a large and very vivid purple birthmark on his cheek: the kind of thing that people try very hard not to stare at, even though they are unable to see anything else.

  Next to him trotted a yellow Labrador, a breed whose remarkable sense of smell and limitless appetite made it perfectly suited to work as a bomb dog. Yellow labs are also disarming. They are so appealing, so smile-inducing that they envelop their owner or handler in their golden glow. When Tyzack had appeared at the front desk claiming to be conducting a check for explosives in Ms Kreutzmann’s room, flashing a fake ID from a non-existent security firm, giving the clerk a confirmatory phone number that was routed through to one of his men, sitting in a van parked not fifty metres away, he was immediately believed.

  Tyzack wasn’t entirely lying. He really did have every intention of checking the explosives he was going to place around the bedroom, sitting area and bathroom that Jana Kreutzmann would soon be occupying. He wanted to make absolutely certain that she could not possibly survive their detonation. Fräulein Kreutzmann had been causing Tyzack a great deal of trouble with her endless investigations into other people’s business. Some of the articles she’d written lately had been getting uncomfortably close to trafficking routes and networks in which he had a direct personal interest. There was every chance that if she were allowed to keep going she might expose him to the kind of public attention that would prove extremely embarrassing. That could not be allowed to happen.

  He had been given a pass-key. It let him into a very feminine environment that reminded him a little of the Cross woman’s ranch-house in Idaho. It wasn’t the specific style of furniture or decoration, just the feeling that someone had worked hard to make things pretty. There were raspberry-pink cushions arranged on the creamy sofa and bright green apples in a china bowl made to look like a wicker basket on the glass table in front of it; softer pink curtains over the window behind; a gold and scarlet patterned bedspread. It made Tyzack uneasy to be in the room – it was all too perfect, as though the women who stayed there were somehow better, even happier than him – but the fact that he was about to smash it all to pieces came as a calming, comforting thought.

  He was using shaped charges of cyclotol – a 70/30 mix of two explosives: TNT and RDX – designed to provide an intense, highly focused blast. The largest charge was placed in the toilet cistern, with two smaller back-up devices behind an air-conditioning vent and under the sofa. The key to the whole system was the room’s own bedside telephone. Tyzack opened it up and inserted a tiny transmitting device.

  When the phone rang, the transmitter would send a detonation signal to all three devices. A separate circuit, however, acted as a safety-catch: nothing would happen until it had been remotely activated.

  Tyzack wanted to be sure that the target was in place before he let the bomb do its work. He unscrewed the switch outside the bathroom t
hat controlled the lights inside and put another transmitter in it. When the light was switched on, he would know. It would, of course, have been a simple job to link the switch directly to the bombs. Tyzack, however, had other ideas.

  Jana Kreutzmann arrived in Oslo shortly after eight in the evening. The Nobel organization had sent a car to meet her and deliver her to her hotel. By nine she had checked in and was heading up to her room. When she got there, she kicked off her shoes and called room service to order a light supper. It would be with her in twenty minutes, she was told. Perfect, she thought, that would just give her time to take a shower. She was longing to wash away the accumulated cares and stresses of another fourteen-hour day, so she walked over to her bathroom, turned on the light, and then let the water run, building up heat, while she slipped out of her clothes.

  * * *

  The transmitter on the light switch worked perfectly, alerting Tyzack as soon as it was turned on. He looked through a pair of compact binoculars to check that the other elements were in place; then he murmured a single word to himself: ‘Showtime!’

  35

  Thor Larsson had reserved a table by the window, equally well placed to watch the passers-by outside on Karl Johans Gate, or inside the café. Carver took off the jacket he’d worn over his plain black T-shirt, jeans and leather Converse sneakers and slung it over the back of his chair. He understood the choice of restaurant when he saw Maddy look around the room, taking in the rich wooden panelling; the swagged curtains; the half-naked statues mounted on the walls between the windows; the splendid arrangements of white flowers dotted around the room, their petals glowing in the light cast by crystal chandeliers; and the murals of Victorian gentlemen and their ladies, eating, drinking and being merry. If there was anywhere in Oslo calculated to please a visiting American, this was it.