Assassin

by Tom Cain

  As he faced the wall of fire, an image suddenly came into Carver’s mind. He saw Tyzack grinning at him and heard his mocking laugh. ‘Screw you,’ Carver said, and ran full speed into the flames.

  It was only twenty feet to the door. Call it five racing strides, eight maybe with a man on his back. An Olympic sprinter could do it in a little over half a second. Carver took five. He had his head down and his eyes closed: a blind, broken man with an even more ruined creature on his back. The noise, the smoke and the heat seemed to engulf him as he charged on.

  And then he was through, stumbling out into the cool, clear air and falling to the bare earth. He had just enough self-possession to land on his front, protecting both Larsson and his own griddled back. As the two of them lay there, side by side, Carver saw Larsson’s blistered right eyelid open a fraction, just for a moment, and his lips move as he whispered, ‘The sky. Look to the sky…’

  Then the black-uniformed figures were on them. Someone was covering Carver’s body in a thick blanket. Dimly he realized that they must be putting out flames, but then there was a pinprick in his upper arm and oblivion wrapped itself around him in a blissful, soft cloak of darkness. And he was out.

  72

  Jack Grantham could hear the sound of sirens in the distance, the fire-engines and ambulances racing to the blazing barn and the casualties it had contained.

  He looked around frantically, saw Ravnsborg talking to Morten, the anti-terrorist officer, and sprinted towards him shouting, ‘Stop them! The emergency services – make them stop!’

  Ravnsborg’s face was a mixture of puzzlement and irritation. ‘Why?’

  ‘They mustn’t see what’s happened here. Not yet. If you want to catch the man who did all this, for God’s sake stop them!’

  Ravnsborg picked his phone out of his pocket, pressed a speed-dial button and snapped out an order. Seconds later the sirens fell quiet.

  He looked at Grantham. ‘You have one minute. Then they come. There are seriously injured men here. They cannot wait.’

  ‘They’re dead,’ said Grantham.

  Morten shook his head. ‘Larsson, maybe. His injuries are terrible. He won’t make it. But the other one, Carver. He’ll live.’

  ‘No,’ said Grantham. ‘That’s the whole point. He’s got to die. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the man who bombed the Haakon Hotel died here. He killed himself when surrounded by the police. Case closed. Pats on the back all round.’

  ‘But then the other man, Tyzack, will get away,’ said Ravnsborg.

  ‘There’s no “will” about it,’ Grantham pointed out. ‘He already has got away. And he’s not coming back. But if he thinks Carver’s been blamed for the bombing, then he’ll be feeling pleased with himself, a little bit cocky. So he won’t take the precautions he’d take if he knew he was wanted for mass murder.’

  Ravnsborg nodded. ‘OK, so you will help us track him down, yes? If he returns to Britain, he will be arrested and deported back to Oslo for trial.’

  Jack Grantham was almost certain that Damon Tyzack had recruited Bill Selsey and compromised the Secret Intelligence Service. He had no intention of letting him anywhere near a criminal court, particularly not one in a foreign country with no concern for British security. But there was no point getting into that now.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said in a spirit of international cooperation. ‘That’s just what I had in mind.’

  ‘But what about Carver?’ asked Ravnsborg. ‘How can we say he is dead, when obviously he is not?’

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ said Grantham, making Ravsnborg frown at the apparent tone of regret in his voice. Grantham’s face brightened: ‘But that’s not a problem. The man who died in that barn isn’t Samuel Carver at all. Samuel Carver doesn’t exist. He’s Paul Jackson, late of the Royal Marines and the Special Boat Service – just another twisted, embittered special forces veteran who came to a sticky end. There’s a lot of it about these days. And Jackson certainly does exist. We’ll give you all the paperwork you need: service records, photographs. Just say the word and it’s yours. By the way,’ he added, looking at his watch, ‘it’s been more like three minutes than one.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ravnsborg, with the faintest trace of a smile. ‘And if we wait another three the fire will have destroyed the building completely. And, sadly, much of the forensic evidence will be destroyed, too.’

  ‘What about Larsson?’ Morten asked.

  ‘Put him on your helicopter, fly him out,’ said Ravnsborg. ‘It will be faster, anyway.’

  ‘And Carver?’ Grantham asked. ‘He’s going to need treatment, but he can’t go anywhere near a hospital. We need someone discreet who can be trusted absolutely…’

  Ravnsborg made another call. When it was over, he said, ‘It’s done. There will be a doctor waiting for us, a man who has worked for the police for years. He is retired now, but only recently, and he was the best. He will meet us at his house. But we need a way of getting Carver there without attracting attention.’

  ‘How about that?’ said Grantham, nodding towards Larsson’s giant Volvo. ‘Lie him down in the back, there’s plenty of room. The woman who came with Larsson, is she Carver’s?’

  ‘She has a relationship with him, yes,’ said Ravnsborg. ‘Her name is Madeleine Cross. She is American.’

  ‘He gets around, that boy, I’ll say that for him,’ remarked Grantham. ‘Come on then, let’s go and have a word with Ms Cross.’

  ‘No need,’ said Morten. ‘She is coming to us.’

  Jack Grantham knew no more about the workings of the female mind than any other male. But he didn’t need to be an expert to see that Madeleine Cross was one shocked, distraught and furious woman. She aimed for Ravnsborg, the only man of the three she recognized, and launched right in.

  ‘What’s the matter with you people? Where’re the ambulances? I heard the sirens but they stopped and there are wounded men down there. They’re going to die and you’re just standing around doing nothing. What’s going on here?’

  Ravnsborg let her anger crash him like the waves against a cliff. Then he gently placed two huge hands on her shoulders and said, ‘I understand your distress, Mrs Cross. But please, do not be concerned. Look, do you see the men near Mr Larsson?’

  She turned to look back the way she had just come. Members of the anti-terrorist unit were placing Larsson on a stretcher. From beyond the main house came the sound of a helicopter engine.

  ‘He is being airlifted to Oslo,’ Ravnsborg continued. ‘It is his best chance. We are getting Mr Carver treatment, too. And you, Mrs Cross, are going to help us. Come, let me explain…’

  Ravnsborg led her away towards the Volvo. Grantham was just about to follow them when Morten grabbed his arm. ‘Just a moment,’ Morten said. He waited until the other two were out of earshot before he spoke again. ‘Your plan is very clever, Mr Grantham, but you have forgotten one thing.’

  ‘Really?’ said Grantham with studied casualness. ‘What might that be?’

  ‘Larsson. Whether he lives or dies, he has to be explained. Armed personnel surround a building where a terrorist is hiding and not one of them is even scratched. But a civilian is killed while they all stand around doing nothing. How does that happen?’

  Grantham chuckled condescendingly. ‘Yes, I can see how that might be a problem… particularly for the man who commands those armed men. But don’t worry, I think you’ll find that Mr Larsson died a hero. He’s some kind of weapons expert, as I recall. I dare say he was called in to defuse the booby-traps, something like that. Brilliant man, terrible loss, deeply missed, that’s the big picture. I’ll think of the details. Don’t worry, Morten, that’s what I do. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a Volvo to catch…’

  Jack Grantham strode away towards the car. By the time he got there, Carver’s unconscious body was already being lifted aboard.

  73

  ‘Is he dead?’

  Maddy nodded. ‘They switched off the life-support. I’m so
sorry… I just spoke to Karin. At least she saw him. That’s something, I guess.’ Her eyes were red from crying, her cheeks still lined by the tracks of mascara-stained tears. She swallowed, chewed her lip and then said, ‘She’s pregnant with his baby. Ten weeks.’

  ‘Oh God…’

  Carver closed his eyes and his face slumped back down on to the padded examination table on which he was lying.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice muffled. ‘Dragging you into all this… I had no idea…’

  He was finding it hard to talk. He’d been drugged unconscious twice in twelve hours and he couldn’t clear the narcotic fog from his brain. There were things he wanted to say to Maddy – explanations at least, if not excuses – but the right words wouldn’t come. There was something else, too, something he had to do, but he couldn’t remember what.

  His body was naked, and numb from the neck down with local anaesthetics. A grey-haired doctor, glasses perched on the end of his nose, was working his way down Carver’s back, buttocks and legs, repairing the damage wreaked by Tyzack’s cane. He had been introduced to Carver as Dr Rolf Lyngstad. His wife Greta, a former nurse, was assisting him. The hundreds of stitches combined with the lines of the wounds to create a brutal cross-hatching over Carver’s shredded skin.

  Maddy glanced up at Lyngstad, who caught her eye and then very deliberately turned away, devoting his full attention to Carver’s back. Whatever she was about to say, he was not going to hear it.

  She crouched down by the end of the table until her head was level with Carver’s. Quietly, but with fierce insistence, she said, ‘Look at me. Look me in the eye.’

  His head tilted up again.

  Now her voice was somewhere between a whisper and a hiss. ‘I know you kill people. The cops told me. Three guys last night. That’s true, isn’t it?’

  He didn’t deny it.

  ‘But the sick bastard who did all this to you, who killed Thor, he’s still out there.’

  A fractional nod.

  ‘And he’s been planning… all this, right? He’s been working on it a while. That British guy who knows you, Grantham…’

  Carver’s eyes widened: ‘He’s here?’

  ‘Yeah. He told me about Damon Tyzack. He said it looked like he’d been setting you up, not just here, but other places. He said Dubai was one. And California. The sick bastard was in the States. And it made me think. That day at the hot-dog stand, the guy who creeped me out, that was him, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure.’

  ‘But it might have been…’

  Carver nodded again.

  ‘He knows where I live. Doesn’t he? He knows where I fucking live!’

  ‘Yeah… I think so.’

  ‘Was he there? When we were together?’

  Carver didn’t have to reply. The look on his face told her all she needed to know.

  ‘Shit! That’s just… I mean, what am I supposed to do now? Where am I supposed to go?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Carver repeated.

  ‘Sorry? Oh, screw that. Sorry doesn’t begin to cut it. No, I don’t want you being sorry…’ She knelt down in front of him again. ‘I want you to kill him, Carver. Do you understand me? I want you to blow his sorry ass away. I want Damon Tyzack dead. I want him in pieces. I want to know that he’s never coming back, that he can never find me, or hurt me. And if you can promise me that he’s gone then maybe, just maybe, I might let you back in my life. Because right now, I wish I’d never met you.’

  Carver looked at her, trying to see some sign of forgiveness or hope for him in her eyes. Maddy had rested one of her hands against the table to balance herself. He reached up to hold it, but she snatched it away.

  ‘Just kill him,’ Maddy said. Then she got up and walked out of the room without a backward glance.

  Jack Grantham peered round Dr Lyngstad’s back, screwing up his mouth in squeamish disgust. ‘Your back,’ he said, ‘looks like a badly darned sock.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘Oh dear, feeling sorry for ourselves, are we?’ he said, getting closer to Carver while Lyngstad, not best pleased by the criticism of his handiwork, shot a venomous look over the top of his glasses. ‘Woman trouble, I bet. I passed that American piece of yours in the hall and she didn’t look too happy. I don’t know… every time I ever meet you, there’s some girlfriend or other giving you grief.’

  ‘Has it ever occurred to you that you might be the reason why?’ Carver asked. ‘Telling her Tyzack had been in the States… Now she’s convinced he’ll be after her next, and she blames me.’

  ‘You say that as though she’s wrong. So, is she gone for good, you reckon?’

  ‘As long as Tyzack is still around, she is.’

  Grantham could not keep the smirk from spreading across his face.

  ‘Jesus wept… That was what you wanted,’ Carver snarled. Grantham had managed to irritate him as much as usual but there was one compensation: the anger was cutting through his brain like Drano down a blocked pipe.

  ‘That’s not quite fair,’ said Grantham. ‘I honestly thought she had a right to know that there was a possible threat to her safety. But yes, it did occur to me that there might be consequences. And I wasn’t entirely unhappy about that because experience has taught me that if I want you to do something, well, let’s just say you tend to need an incentive.’

  ‘To get Tyzack?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘You don’t think that the fact my best friend is dead because of Tyzack is enough of an incentive? Or that I might feel like killing him just for what he’s done to me?’

  ‘Yes, but I wanted to be absolutely sure.’

  ‘I see. So where is he?’

  ‘Ah, well…’ A look that came as close as Grantham would ever get to embarrassment crossed his face. ‘I was hoping he might have told you something about where he was heading next.’

  Carver closed his eyes, forcing his mind back to the barn. And then it came to him, the warning he had to relay: ‘No, I don’t know where he is now. But I think I can tell you where he’s going to be in two days’ time. He’ll be in Bristol. And he’ll be trying to assassinate Lincoln Roberts.’

  A look of incredulity crossed Grantham’s face. ‘He told you this, did he?’

  ‘Not in so many words, no,’ Carver admitted.

  ‘So how, then?’

  ‘He said he was going to do a job that would put him in a different league. He also said it would be “the big one”. He wouldn’t be more specific than that, though I knew he was longing to tell me everything. He’s trying to prove that he’s better than me. In his mind that means taking out the world’s number-one target. And that’s always going to be the US President.’

  Grantham shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. Could be any number of people… the Queen, the PM, bin Laden, the Pope. Could be a celebrity.’

  ‘Yes, it could be,’ said Carver, ‘but Damon Tyzack has no reason to kill any of them. Let me ask you something: have they worked out who the target was last night?’

  ‘Yeah, some German woman, name of Kreutzmann. She was a journalist, one of those campaigning types. The bomb was in her room.’

  ‘And what does she campaign about?’

  ‘People-trafficking,’ said Grantham. ‘Evidently she’s against it.’

  ‘Right, and that job Tyzack did in Dubai, the targets were a people-trafficker and a pimp. Maddy said you told her Tyzack had worked in the States. Who was the target?’

  ‘Chap called Norton Krebs. He was some sort of financial consultant.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Who did he consult for?’

  ‘Well, some of his clients were pretty unsavoury.’

  ‘Slave-traders?’ asked Carver.

  ‘I honestly don’t know. But it’s possible.’

  ‘OK, let’s forget about him. That still leaves Tyzack and the people who are paying for him up to their necks in the slave trade. Meanwhile President Roberts is flying into Britain to give a speech at a conferen
ce about slavery and people-trafficking. I don’t know, maybe it’s a coincidence. But if I’m wrong, I just look paranoid. If you’re wrong, Tyzack takes a potshot at the President.’

  ‘Point taken,’ said Grantham. ‘But suppose it is the President, all he’s doing is giving a speech. Why would anyone need to kill him?’

  ‘Depends what he’s going to say.’

  ‘Well, no one knows the answer to that,’ said Grantham. ‘The speech has been totally embargoed. The Yanks won’t even tell Number Ten. It’s really put the PM’s knickers in a twist. He even wanted us to see if we could find out what was in the bloody thing. We had to tell his office that we’d love to oblige, but sadly we don’t have any bugs in the White House and it’s a bit short notice to try and turn one of his staff.’

  ‘For you, perhaps,’ said Carver. ‘But maybe I can help.’

  74

  It had been mid-afternoon in Washington, DC when the bomb detonated at the King Haakon Hotel. It took diplomats from the local US embassy a couple of hours to establish that there had been nine US citizens listed among the hotel guests. None of them had suffered anything worse than mild shock, along with a few cuts and bruises, most of which had been acquired in the scrum as the hotel’s occupants tried to leave the stricken building. The news was passed to relieved officials at both the State Department and White House, who could now relax knowing that there would be no domestic political repercussions from the incident and that media coverage would be limited.

  Sure, it was an outrage, but there were no signs of involvement by any known terrorist group. All the evidence suggested that this was a criminal attack, to be handled by local police. It wasn’t headline news in Peoria.

  So the aide who handed Harrison James a briefing document on the bombing did not think she was giving him anything of any great significance or sensitivity.

  ‘We drafted a statement, right there on the top sheet,’ she said.

  ‘Fine,’ said James, not bothering to look at it. He was up to his neck in final preparations for the President’s trip to England.