Assassin

by Tom Cain

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Dr Lyngstad,’ said Carver, ‘first may I thank you for taking such trouble to patch me up. It must have been very difficult work. I appreciate it.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Mr Carver,’ said Lyngstad with a little nod.

  ‘I was just wondering…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How long do you think it will be before I can go back to work?’

  ‘Hmm…’ Lyngstad gave a contemplative sigh, relishing the impatience that was radiating from Grantham as obviously as the light from a bulb. ‘That would depend on your job. For example, if you were a civil servant, in a government department, I would say that you should take at least one month, possibly more, to recuperate – on full pay, of course. On the other hand, if we were at war, and the enemy were at the gate, so to speak, then I would look at your wounds, vicious as they are, and say, “They’re a long way from your heart.”’

  ‘You mean they won’t kill me?’

  ‘Quite so, Mr Carver. You will experience considerable pain and discomfort for some time. It could be many weeks before the wounds are properly healed and months, or even years, before the scars begin to fade, if they fade at all. But so long as you keep the wounds clean and bandaged and take painkillers when necessary, you are in no danger. You still have almost full mobility. Your senses are not impaired. No vital organs have been damaged. So if this were a war, and the situation was very serious, then I would send you back to the front line. And since I note both that you are in excellent physical condition and that your body bears clear signs of previous injuries, I should say that you are closer to a soldier than a civil servant.’

  ‘So he is ready to go then,’ said Grantham.

  Lyngstad ignored him. ‘Does that answer your question, Mr Carver?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, doctor.’

  ‘Right,’ said Grantham. ‘We’re off. I’ve already had your bags collected from the hotel. No need to hang around.’

  ‘No,’ said Carver.

  ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘Exactly what I said. Mrs Lyngstad has made me this excellent bowl of pasta. I can’t just leave it here uneaten, that would be rude. Besides, I’m starving. So first I finish the pasta. Then I go.’

  ‘Well said, Mr Carver,’ said Lyngstad.

  Just then, Greta appeared in the doorway that led to the kitchen, holding a saucepan. ‘I’ve got a little bit more if you’d like it,’ she said.

  78

  On his flight to England, Damon Tyzack considered the whole issue of loose ends. So far they had been looking after themselves quite satisfactorily. He’d been tracking news-feeds during the drive into Denmark and had been delighted to learn that so far as the authorities were concerned, the Oslo bombing case was closed. Both Carver and Larsson were dead. The manner of their passing, however, disturbed Tyzack. The official account stated that Carver, who was referred to by his original name Paul Jackson, had died when surrounded by police at his hideout close to the Swedish border. The use of Carver’s old name had niggled at Tyzack. He couldn’t help wondering also how the police had found that hideout. An Oslo police spokeswoman had stated that they were alerted by members of the public walking in the area, but to a man of Tyzack’s conspiratorial temperament, that account seemed too straightforward. There had to be more to it than that.

  Even if there weren’t, the very fact that he was worried told Tyzack something. He was operating much closer to the surface than ever before, straying uncomfortably into the public eye. It had begun with Jana Kreutzmann and her damned investigations into people-trafficking. Then there had been the whole business about Pablo the Pimpernel. He’d ordered Selsey to discredit Carver among his allies in MI6, and to send a message that Carver himself would see. But the whole thing had spiralled infuriatingly out of control. Lara Dashian was rapidly becoming the most famous whore in the world. People were talking about books and films about the grotty little tart. Unbelievably, the latest reports were even suggesting she might appear on the podium with Lincoln Roberts at his Bristol speech. That, Tyzack thought, would actually be doing him a favour. He could get them both at the same time.

  That left Selsey. Tyzack was under no illusions at all about the MI6 officer’s long-term reliability. If a man could betray one master, he could just as easily betray another. Of course Selsey did not know that Tyzack was his paymaster, but he knew enough to make it much easier for others to uncover connections that might make life very difficult indeed. In the meantime, buying Selsey’s silence could well prove an expensive proposition and Tyzack never liked spending money when there was another, simpler option.

  It might be necessary to deal with Selsey personally. And if he was going to do it, the sooner the better. Once the President had been hit, things might get a little hectic and he’d be wanting to lie low. He knew where Selsey lived. Tonight he’d pay a house call.

  Bill Selsey wished for nothing more than the chance to go home. He wished he’d never gone down to meet that manipulative old bastard Percy Wake. He wished he’d never been seduced and deluded by the prospect of easy money and a cheap thrill. He wished he’d never harboured such childish resentments against Jack Grantham, and, even more, that he’d not been so stupid as to believe that he could outwit Grantham in a contest of wills and cunning. And he wished he’d never walked into Sir Mostyn Green’s office and seen him sitting there with a face like thunder while Dame Agatha Bewley introduced herself and said, ‘We’ve never met, but I feel as though I know so much about you.’

  And now here he was, tied to a chair in a windowless basement while the man opposite him, with the soft face and the steely eyes, loosened his tie, took a drink of water and said, ‘Right, Bill, let’s go over this one more time. We found the money, all of it. You hadn’t even moved it out of the account it had been paid into. I mean, I’m sorry, Bill, I know you were never out there in the field, but even so, that’s bloody stupid, isn’t it?’

  Selsey gave a sad, beaten shrug. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘No, Bill, not maybe: certainly. There’s no doubt at all you were bloody stupid. But what I want to know is, who put that money there? Eh? Who paid you all that lovely dosh?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Selsey pleaded. ‘I swear I was never given a name.’

  ‘Oh right, so the money just arrived, did it? Maybe the Easter Bunny put it there, is that what you think? Or the Tooth Fairy? Or Father fucking Christmas?’

  The man got up and walked right up to Selsey’s chair till he was looming over him.

  ‘I don’t like your attitude,’ he said. ‘You know what I think? I think you’re taking the piss. I think you know, but you just don’t want to tell me. So, one more time: the money, who gave you the money?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ whimpered Selsey. ‘I don’t… I don’t…’

  And then he started to cry.

  79

  Assistant Commissioner Peter Manners, commanding officer of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, S015, cleared his throat, the way a man does when he’s about to state a position and wants the world to know it. ‘No disrespect, Dame Agatha, but I have to say I take the same view as Tord Bahr. I’ve got a lot of time for the man, he’s bloody good at what he does, and I can assure you that we have been working with his people to ensure that there are no loopholes, no weak spots, no opportunities for anyone to make an attempt on the President’s life. It’s a responsibility we all take very, very seriously.’

  ‘I know you do,’ said Dame Agatha Bewley in a conciliatory tone that was almost maternal, as if she were settling a fight between argumentative children. ‘But I must say I’m surprised Bahr refused to pay any attention to what Mr Carver told him. After all, it doesn’t hurt to take precautions, no matter how implausible a threat might be.’

  ‘It’s a personal thing,’ said Carver. ‘We had a run-in recently. I made him look stupid in front of his boss. He’ll never admit I could be right again.’

  ‘His boss… reall
y?’ asked Dame Agatha, her eyebrows arching as she leaned forward on her desk and looked at Carver over the top of her reading glasses. ‘Might one ask…?’

  ‘Afraid not,’ said Carver. ‘Confidential. But you can take it that I’m personally familiar with the President’s security arrangements. And I want to keep him alive. That’s also personal.’

  ‘I try not to get personal myself,’ said Manners. ‘I look at this professionally, and I’d ask a simple question: suppose Bahr believed you, Carver, how would that change anything? He’s already done everything he can. Unless he has specific information to go on, what else is there?’

  ‘He could keep an eye out for Damon Tyzack.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be doing that. Crowd control and observation is a police responsibility and I’ve already entered every available picture of Tyzack into the facial-recognition software we’ll be using for the event. If he’s there, we’ll spot him. You seem amused, Carver, why’s that?’

  ‘I’m not a big believer in facial-recognition programs. They’re too unreliable, too many ways to throw them off, particularly when you’re working in real time. In the lab, after the event, yes, then you might get something you can use. But live, well, I’d back myself to get past any system that I know of, and Tyzack will too.’

  ‘Maybe we have systems you don’t know about.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Dame Agatha’s voice cut through the verbal wrist-wrestling match. Mother was losing her patience. ‘I find this pointless male need to compete deeply, deeply tedious. It is my judgement, which is shared by the Home Secretary, that we need to consider Mr Carver’s information seriously. And I would add that both I and Mr Grantham have reason to respect Mr Carver’s professional abilities, if not always his tact. Let us assume, for now, that we are facing a threat from a former member of the special forces whose personality is amoral, cunning and utterly ruthless. Let us also suppose that he may be making some form of airborne attack. So, Assistant Commissioner, perhaps you would be good enough to talk us through the existing precautions, before we move on to anything else?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Manners, getting to his feet. A 50-inch screen was fixed to the wall at one end of the room, linked to a laptop. Manners bent over the keyboard and aerial images of south-west England, followed by central Bristol, appeared on the screen. Just as Tyzack had done when talking to Arjan Visar, he described the journey that would bring Lincoln Roberts on Air Force One to RAF Fairford and then on by helicopter to College Green. Then he turned his attention to the presidential motorcade.

  ‘Basically it’s a combination of British and US vehicles and personnel,’ he began. ‘In the lead we have armed motorcycle outriders from the Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Department. They’re followed by three cars containing our officers from S015, running in front of and to either side of Cadillac Two, which is one of the presidential limousines. The Chief of Staff will ride in that, along with the Emergency Satchel. Inside the satchel is everything the President needs to order the launch of a nuclear war, so we try to keep it safe.’

  ‘So I should hope,’ muttered Jack Grantham, who had remained silent during Manners’s argument with Carver, preferring to enjoy it as a form of spectator sport.

  Manners chose to take the remark as a joke and gave a forced chuckle. ‘Absolutely! Wouldn’t want to lose that. So… There then follow several more escort vehicles, split between SO15 and the US Secret Service. Their occupants are very heavily armed, and trained in close-quarters combat. With the greatest of respect to Mr Carver and Mr Tyzack, they are capable of taking down any conceivable ground-attack short of a full-scale military assault. Anyway, these escorts drive fore and aft of Cadillac One, in which Mr Roberts will be riding. There will also be a number of minibuses filled with White House staff and members of the press, all vetted in advance, of course.

  ‘I have to say that the only form of attack that I can envisage having any sort of success against this motorcade would be some kind of guided missile, though it would have to be very powerful indeed. Cadillac One is as well armoured as a Challenger battle tank. Serious question, Carver: does Tyzack have access to that kind of ordnance?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Carver. ‘And I don’t see him going for a missile, even if he could get one. Whatever he does, he’ll want to be there. This is about him as much as the President.’ Carver gave a wry chuckle. ‘With Damon Tyzack it’s always personal.’

  This time Manners’s smile was genuine. ‘Well, in that case, he’ll be looking for an opportunity at the speech itself.’

  He put another image up on the screen. ‘This is Broad Quay. They’re putting the stage at the waterside, here, facing inland, with the President’s back to the water. As you can see, there are a number of newly completed or renovated towers along the right-hand, eastern side of the quay. These contain offices, hotels or residential properties. All will be repeatedly searched in the run-up to the speech. All rooms with windows giving a clear line of sight to the stage will be emptied and secured. All roofs will be occupied by our people and/or US Secret Service. Aside from that, the site comprises an open expanse where the crowd will gather, with wide roads on either side, running back several hundred metres, wider by the stage, but narrowing the further it gets inland. On the west side of the quay, that’s the left as you look at it, there’s nothing but low buildings all the way back, very few of which have flat roofs. So there are virtually no potential shooting positions, even if any would-be assassin could get in those buildings in the first place. And we will be making sure that he can’t.’

  ‘How about underground access to the site?’ asked Carver.

  ‘All checked, rechecked, guarded and sealed,’ said Manners. ‘Every sewer, every drain. The rats must be wondering what hit them. So, to continue… Once the President arrives, all the close guarding work will be handled by his Secret Service personnel. Our efforts will be concentrated on the crowd. We’re planning body, bag and shoe searches, very much like airport security, with walk-through scanners, explosives dogs and extensive video monitoring of the crowd. And don’t worry, Mr Carver. We’ll be relying on good old-fashioned human observation as well as fancy technology, and we’ll be watching out for troublemakers, known terrorists, anyone who even scratches their arse in a suspicious manner. And just in case anyone does get a gun past security, and makes it somewhere near the stage, the President’s autocue will be a reinforced, bullet-proof shield. As I say, we’re taking this very seriously indeed.’

  80

  Damon Tyzack was a man for whom the phrase, ‘I know where you live,’ was more than a figure of speech. He had long known exactly where Bill Selsey went at the end of a working day. Now he was also certain that Selsey had been blown. All the more reason, then, to dispose of him as soon as possible.

  One of Tyzack’s men, Ron Geary, had trailed Selsey from the moment he stepped on to the street outside the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, obeyed the signals that took him across several lanes of rush-hour traffic and stepped up to the platform at Vauxhall railway station, where he took a train to the terminus at Waterloo. There he made the five-minute walk across to the suburban services at Waterloo East, spent ten minutes browsing magazines at a WHSmith bookstall and buying a cup of Earl Grey tea before getting on his regular evening train to Lee in the south-east suburbs of London.

  Like most of Tyzack’s more reliable employees, Geary was a Special Forces veteran. He was therefore well able to spot the tail that MI6 had put on Selsey and make sure that he was not spotted himself. Along the way, he sent pictures of both MI6 officers from his phone to Tyzack, who was being driven south in the back of a white Ford Transit van, as anonymous a form of transport as the roads of Britain provide.

  Geary stayed on the train, handing over the surveillance to another one of Tyzack’s people, who picked up Selsey as he came out of Lee station and turned right on to Burnt Ash Road. Neither Selsey nor his MI6 tail noticed the harassed-looki
ng woman smoking a cigarette and pushing a baby-carriage who followed them along the busy commuter route, still laden with the last dregs of evening traffic trying to get on to the South Circular.

  Her name was Raifa Ademovic. She had arrived in Britain five years earlier as an illegal immigrant, imported by Tyzack just as he was establishing his own trafficking network. With her greasy hair, prominent nose and almost permanent scowl, Raifa was never going to be of much value in the brothel to which she was first shipped. But the remarkable number of credit cards, banknotes, driving licences and wallets that she managed to lift from her paltry clients suggested that she might have other, exploitable talents. When she reacted to a john who tried to give her a playful smack by punching, clawing and biting him into the nearest A &E department that impression was confirmed. Tyzack had been making good use of her bad attitude ever since.

  Raifa turned into the side road on which Selsey lived and watched as he approached and entered his semi-detached home. With a sullen defiance typical of her character, she stopped directly opposite the house, in full view of anyone inside it, or standing guard outside. She walked round to the front of the baby-carriage and briefly made encouraging noises at the small child – borrowed from a friend – who sat there, doped to the gills with motion-sickness tablets. Then she lit another cigarette, turned her back on the captive toddler and dialled a number on her mobile phone. In the genteel, middle-class area where Selsey lived, plenty of respectable citizens might disapprove of such blatantly bad mothering, but none would suspect her true purpose.

  ‘He is in house now,’ she told Tyzack. ‘I see three other men. One following Selsey, he go inside house with him. Another man, he meet them at door, stay in house also. Final man in car outside. He watch Selsey go by, raise hand to say hello to man following, then make call. I guess he tell boss, OK, they get here.’