Assassin

by Tom Cain

  ‘Man, you guys have sure screwed this up,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry,’ said the third man in a languid upper-class English accent. ‘I’m sure we’ll have it all more or less under control by the time your boy gets up to say his piece.’

  One of the Americans rolled his eyes at the other, who nodded back. The arrogant and often unjustified air of casual superiority affected by some British officers had become a publicly acknowledged source of irritation to their US Army counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now they were going to have to spend a whole day stuck on a roof getting their chains yanked by this mousy-headed, sulky-faced jerk-off.

  Damon Tyzack, however, couldn’t have been happier, even if he had been obliged to dye his hair. He had counted on the fact that the weak spots in the security for any major event occur along the fault-lines between different nations and agencies, all of whom mistrust, despise and compete with one another to a greater or lesser degree. At the very least they fail to communicate fully. So if the system were put under unexpected additional stress, he’d felt certain it would crack.

  The Bradford Pakistanis had done their job perfectly and were well worth their hundred grand. Tyzack had confidently sauntered past an overworked gatekeeper with a single flash of a well-forged military ID card. Once he was inside the security cordon, looking as though he knew what he was doing, no one had asked him any questions. Now he’d found himself a grandstand seat for the big event, up here on the roof. Everything was proceeding exactly as he had planned.

  Tyzack’s iPhone was encased in a black rubber housing which gave it a military air. He used it to call Ron Geary, who was sitting with two other men in the back of the white Ford Transit, parked near an open expanse of playing fields, all deserted on this weekday morning, to the north-east of the city.

  ‘Confirm your status,’ he said.

  ‘Ready to go, boss. Just say the word.’

  ‘Await my command,’ he said. ‘Out.’

  Everything was in place. All he needed now were his targets.

  87

  ‘Hello, Lara, my name is Lincoln Roberts. Well, don’t we make a pair?’

  Jake Tolland had to smile at that. Roberts was the epitome of an African-American patriarch: physically imposing, exuding a commanding dignity, with a full head of hair lightly dusted with silver threads among the black. Next to him, Lara looked tiny, very young and utterly vulnerable. The White House stylists had deliberately gone for the most innocent, girl-next-door look they could find, rejecting anything that even hinted at sexiness. So she’d been dressed in flat shoes, loose-cut jeans, a plain T-shirt and a knitted cotton cardigan to ward off the cool of a grey day in June. Her hair was tucked behind her ears and the make-up artist had given her face just enough definition to show up under the stage lights, without adding any glamour whatever.

  Even so, Tolland thought, Lara looked wonderful and he agonized for the umpteenth time about the fact that his heart did a backflip every time he set eyes on her. It was inappropriate in every way. She was too young for him. She had been appallingly abused by men. They were supposed to have a dispassionate, professional relationship. If she wanted anything from him, it was protection. Yet he could not deny what he felt and the detached, observing side to his nature saw that she was the perfect poster-girl for Roberts’s campaign. The world would fall a little in love with her, too. And for a black President to be fighting for the rights of a white slave girl, well, Tolland reckoned that was a stroke of public-relations genius.

  ‘And you must be Jake Tolland…’

  Tolland realized with a start that the President was talking to him. He just managed to splutter an answer: ‘Er, yes, Mr President.’

  Lincoln Roberts looked him in the eye, and as he looked into that strong, warm, wise face Tolland found himself overawed, almost hypnotized by the sheer charisma of the man.

  ‘You wrote a good story, Mr Tolland. I could tell that you were being true to your subject. I admire that. I can see why Lara trusts you. You be sure to keep deserving that trust.’

  ‘Yes, Mr President, I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Good for you. So, you guys gonna ride with me to Bristol?’

  Jake Tolland gulped and nodded, unable to speak. He was twenty-six years old, at the very start of his career, and the President of the United States had just offered him a lift.

  He was vaguely aware of a woman laughing softly just behind his right shoulder.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Chantelle Clemens as she walked by. ‘We’ve all been there. The man has that effect on everyone.’

  Forty-five minutes later, the presidential motorcade pulled up backstage at Broad Quay. Roberts got out and walked to a special media area where he posed for press photographers and TV crews with the British Prime Minister, who was basking in his reflected glory. A huge roar rose from the crowd as Roberts’s face appeared on the massive screens that were arrayed at regular intervals along the full length of the quay, followed by a few desultory boos for the PM.

  Two hundred feet up on the office-block roof Damon Tyzack saw the images on the screens and spoke a single word into his phone.

  ‘Go!’

  88

  Carver’s frustration had been growing with every minute and hour that passed. He and Grantham were atop another building, about half as tall as the one on which Tyzack was positioned, and sixty yards further north, roughly a third of the way back along the quay from the stage. Ever since he had taken up his position, he’d been scanning the tens of thousands of faces within range of his binoculars, but had seen no sign of Tyzack. Carver wondered whether he had made a total fool of himself. He told himself to take it easy. His damaged pride was of no consequence if Lincoln Roberts delivered his speech safely.

  Another eruption of noise burst from the crowd as the stage was suddenly lit in a blaze of spotlights that glowed bright against the drab grey backdrop of the city and the cloudy sky. A voice that sounded as though it belonged at a heavyweight boxing match rather than a political gathering boomed across the speaker stacks arrayed alongside the video screens. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States!’

  The crowd leaped to their feet. The noise of their applause rose even higher and a blast of ‘Hail to the Chief’ rang from the loudspeakers as Lincoln Roberts strode to the front of the stage and waved to the vast mass of humanity stretching back from the stage as far as the eye could see. One of the screens was positioned directly below Carver’s position. The volume it produced combined with that of the crowd was deafening.

  And then, as the music died away and tens of thousands of people settled down to listen to what the President had to say, and he stood there calmly, smiling at the TV cameras, letting the mood subside a little before he began his oration, Carver heard a whirring, buzzing noise above his head and something very much like an oversized insect zipped past him, just a few feet overhead.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ he shouted.

  ‘What?’ asked Grantham.

  ‘That thing that flew by, like a cross between a mosquito and a miniature helicopter.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Grantham, nonchalantly. ‘Probably one of the spotter drones. The cops use them to observe the crowd. They’ve got video cameras. Clever little buggers. They use electric motors, very quiet, and they’re only a couple of feet across, so you can’t see them from the ground.’

  Realization dawned on Carver, just as Lincoln Roberts began his speech.

  ‘More than two hundred years ago, my ancestors were taken captive on the shores of Lake Chad in central Africa, in a land then known as Bornu. They were marched overland many hundreds of miles to the barracoons of Lagos, then sold to the white slavers who would transport them across the oceans to the colonies of the Americas and the Caribbean. They made the terrible crossing of the Atlantic, the dreaded Middle Passage, and were sold again in the slave market in Charleston, South Carolina. The people who shipped my ancestors across the Atlantic, and brought
the profits back to cities just like this one, were white. The people who owned, worked and whipped my ancestors in the plantations were also white…’

  Carver could almost feel the shame rising from the audience, the consciousness of a sin that could never be expunged or atoned for. But he was only half listening to Roberts. Instead, his concentration was focused on the sky above the crowd as he swept his binoculars slowly back and forth, looking out for the drones.

  ‘But white people were not the only sinners in the slave trade, nor Africans the only victims,’ Roberts continued. ‘No white man had ever ventured close to Lake Chad at the time my folks were seized. They were first enslaved by their fellow-Africans, who probably traded them to Arab merchants along the way. And this trade flowed in more than one direction. Over the centuries, hundreds of thousands of white Europeans, many of them from England, were captured by raiders and taken to be sold in the slave markets of North Africa. This is how it has been since the very dawn of mankind. Slavery is the original form of human oppression. And it is still among us, on a greater scale than ever before, right here in the heart of our civilization, right now in the twenty-first century.

  ‘So it is time we made a stand…’

  As the crowd started getting to their feet, clapping and cheering as they rose, Carver shouted at Grantham, ‘How many of these drones are there?’

  ‘Dunno. Two, I think.’

  ‘It is time we said, “Enough is enough!”’ Roberts declared.

  The crowd noise rose another level as Carver yelled, ‘You sure?’

  ‘No,’ Grantham replied, having a hard time making himself heard. ‘Why does it matter?’

  Roberts’s voice grew stronger still: ‘It is time we put an end to slavery. And that is what I, and you, are going to start doing today.’

  Carver’s throat, still suffering the after-effects of Tyzack’s torture, felt as though he’d just swallowed a cocktail of acid and barbed wire and his voice was starting to go. ‘Don’t you get it?’ he rasped. ‘ “Look to the sky.” That’s what Thor meant. Tyzack is using a drone!’

  Grantham cupped a hand to his ear and screwed up his face to indicate that he couldn’t hear over the din. Then the noise subsided as the President stood silently again so that he and everyone else could all catch their breaths.

  ‘It’s the drones,’ Carver repeated. ‘That’s how Tyzack is going to do it.’

  ‘You sure? They’re not armed or anything,’ said Grantham sceptically. ‘But call it in if you think you’re on to something.’

  On stage Lincoln Roberts was moving to the next section of his speech. ‘Pretty soon I’m going to tell you all how I believe we can use the power of our armed forces and the strength and justice of our cause to beat the people-traffickers and slave-traders. But first, I want to show you what slavery looks like today; what form its victims take. I’d like to introduce a very special, very brave young woman whom I had the privilege of meeting earlier today. She comes originally from the land of Armenia. Some of you may have heard or read of her story… how she was betrayed by a member of her own family and handed over to men of unspeakable evil and brutality… how she was bought and sold just like my ancestors were… how she was forced into prostitution against her will; beaten, raped and abused. To understand this young lady’s courage, just know that as we were coming here I showed her the words that I have just spoken to you, words that describe her shame and degradation. Yet she still agreed to stand by me today because she felt that it was her duty so to do – her duty to the women who still suffer as she once did. It is my profound honour to introduce to you… Miss Lara Dashian!’

  While Roberts was making his introduction, Samuel Carver was trying to get a message through to Assistant Commissioner Manners. The officer to whom he spoke did not have his name on the official list of the communications system’s approved users. He certainly wasn’t willing to disturb his commanding officer at such a vital point in the day’s proceedings. And anyway, he could not hear, let alone understand what Carver was saying over the cacophony of background noise. In the end, he cut Carver off without a word of warning, still less apology.

  On HMS Daring one of the seamen operating the Sampson radar displays called over an officer. ‘There’s something odd going on here, sir. It’s the area directly above where the President is giving his speech. I’m seeing three spotter drones.’

  ‘Yes, what’s the problem?’

  ‘There are only supposed to be two.’

  ‘So which one isn’t meant to be there?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. The drones don’t carry any kind of identification beacon, they’re too small. They’re only the size of model airplanes, sir.’

  ‘What’s the altitude?’

  ‘About one hundred and fifty feet, sir.’

  The officer thought the problem through. Even if there was an extra drone, and there was something suspicious about it, they didn’t know which one it was. Even if they did know, they could hardly blast it out of the sky: that close to the ground, the exploding missile would cause a host of casualties in itself.

  In the circumstances, he did the sensible thing. He covered his backside, called the ship’s bridge, informed them of the situation and passed the problem up the line.

  89

  Damon Tyzack felt just fine about what he was going to do. If there was one thing he really hated, it was pompous, sanctimonious moralizing. This President Roberts was the worst kind of preachy, self-righteous politician. It would really be doing the world a favour to get rid of him. And… ah, perfect! Here came little Miss Dashian, looking very nicely scrubbed-up and respectable. He thought of the whore he’d carried to his hotel bed in her high heels, micro-skirt and painted tart’s face.

  You don’t fool me, my dear, Tyzack thought. You’d still be anybody’s for five hundred dirhams.

  He looked down at the iPhone. Its screen displayed a map of the Broad Quay area. A moving, flashing dot showed the position of the drone that Geary and his men had launched from the playing fields. It was moving towards the stage, its precise location tracked by a pair of ever-changing co-ordinates at the bottom left of the screen. After yesterday’s practice runs, Tyzack knew precisely where the drone had to be, at what altitude, and at what speed it had to be travelling to ensure the delivery of its payload to the precise spot where the President and the whore were standing.

  And now she started to talk. ‘My name is Lara Dashian…’

  ‘Well, that does it,’ murmured Tyzack, his finger hovering over a digital ‘Fire’ button displayed at the screen’s bottom right.

  The drone had settled on a course that aimed it directly at the stage. It was moving in.

  Just a few seconds to go now.

  Carver had been reduced to screaming down the microphone, ‘Get him off the stage! Get the President off the fucking stage!’ But the people at whom he was shouting either could not or would not hear him.

  Lara Dashian had begun to speak. This, Carver realized, was the perfect moment for Tyzack to strike. He must think Christmas had come early, being able to get rid of his prime target, the President, and an inconvenient witness to a past crime.

  There was only one way to stop this.

  Carver stepped right up close to Grantham and yelled in his ear, ‘Give me your gun!’

  Grantham shook his head.

  ‘Give me the bloody gun!’

  Grantham turned and pushed Carver away.

  Carver stepped back, away from Grantham’s hand, fractionally adjusted his balance and then sprang forwards. As he moved he swung the heel of his right hand, slamming it into Grantham’s face, just to one side of his chin. The blow caused Grantham’s head to jerk round, wrenching the tendons of his neck and sending his brain bouncing off the inner walls of his skull like a pea in a whistle. Grantham was lifted off his feet and flung back across the roof until his body slammed to a halt against a raised air-conditioning vent.

  Carver walked across and removed Grantham’
s gun from its shoulder holster. SIS must have taken advice from the Special Forces because the gun was a SIG-Sauer P226, precisely the same model that Carver himself always used. That would make life easier.

  Something had to, because what he was about to do was verging on the impossible.

  He stepped to the edge of the roof and looked over the parapet to the stage, at least one hundred yards away. The distance was at the very furthest limit of the gun’s effective range. He was shooting downwards, into and across a stiff breeze coming in off the river behind the stage.

  But he had no alternative.

  Carver raised his gun, aimed it at Lincoln Roberts, President of the United States, and fired.

  90

  ‘No!’ shouted Damon Tyzack as four gunshots rang out and one of the clear perspex screens that acted both as the President’s autocue and his shield shook with the impact of the bullets.

  On the display in front of him the drone was still five seconds away from the point at which the two anti-personnel grenades mounted in place of the conventional surveillance equipment could be released.

  Before the sound of the shots had died away, the first Secret Service man had hurtled across the stage, grabbed the President and was manhandling him away. Roberts appeared to be trying to stop him. He was reaching out towards the girl, but the agent, now joined by two of his colleagues, had virtually lifted their charge off his feet and was carrying him to safety.

  Two seconds left and Tyzack – his system surging with a toxic cocktail of rage, impotence and overwhelming frustration – thought about firing on the President himself. But his own gun was still holstered. It would take too long to draw, aim and fire. In any case, unless he shot the three Secret Service men up there with him before aiming at their President he would be signing his own death warrant. There was certainly not time to hit all four targets. From now on in it was strictly a damage-limitation exercise.