by Tom Cain
Accompanied by Ahmad Razzaq, Zorn led the way out of Centre Court and through all the people trying to get on to Wimbledon’s so-called Tea Lawn – in actual fact the All England Lawn Tennis Club’s staff car park, dolled up for the fortnight with a bandstand and tables with green and purple striped parasols. There was more muttering from both sets of guests, which only intensified as a posse of uniformed security guards barged their way past, stepping on the toes of one of the women’s Louboutin sandals as they went, escorting a dark, thickset, heavily stubbled player.
‘That’s Hernandez, the number nine seed,’ said Zorn, as the black uniforms and white tennis clothes were swallowed up by the crowd. ‘Tough guy, plays real hard, never gives up on a ball. But he’s up against Arana, and I say the kid wins it in four.’
The path towards Number Two Court narrowed, cramming spectators making their way there even more tightly together. The court was a plain concrete bowl, whose only concession to show court glamour was its padded seats. There were no celebrities to be spotted, no royal box to gawp at. Zorn could not have cared less. Oscar Hernandez was the established player, but Quinton Arana was a nineteen-year-old qualifier on a mission. The son of a blue-collar family from a Pennsylvania mining town, he’d already taken two seeded scalps in the first week, and he was gunning for a third. Zorn watched a couple of ultra-competitive rallies, filled with fizzing ground strokes, applauded both players as they chased down seemingly lost causes, gave a loud, ‘Yeah!’ of delight, and declared, ‘Now this is what I call tennis!’
22
* * *
CARVER HEARD EVERY word. His seat was to the side of the court, ideally placed to observe Zorn and his party in the front row, behind the nearest baseline. The collapsible umbrella on his lap concealed a directional microphone. The khaki canvas fishing bag next to it contained a hidden camera. It had not been detected in the derisory bag-check to which he’d been subjected at the entrance gate, nor had there been any body-search or scanner, a fact that would make his life a great deal easier later in the week. The camera was sending pictures back to the iPad that was also in the bag, along with a rolled-up copy of that day’s Herald Tribune newspaper, a V-neck cotton sweater from J. Crew, and a packet of throat lozenges. Carver was dressed in an all-American summer uniform of stone-coloured chinos, pale-blue Ralph Lauren shirt, and dark-blue, single-breasted Brooks Brothers blazer. He had padding on around his abdomen to give him a softer, fatter gut, and his normally clean-shaven chin and short, dark hair were now hidden beneath somewhat longer, wavy blond hair and a beard to match. Aviator shades covered his eyes. All the while that he kept Zorn under surveillance he kept turning the same questions over and over in his mind: asking himself what Zorn was really up to in London, and why someone wanted him dead so badly. He had nothing against Zorn, personally. In fact, he was impressed by Zorn’s disdain for the smart seats. It spoke well of him as a man. On the other hand, Carver had paid more than three thousand pounds for his Centre Court ticket. It seemed a pity to waste it.
Zorn seemed to feel the same way. After an hour on Court Two he relented and, to smiles of relief all round, led his party back to Centre Court. As he walked into the most famous tennis arena in the world, Carver was struck by its intimacy. The stands held fifteen thousand spectators, yet the players on court seemed almost close enough to touch. It was easy, too, to pick out individual spectators, Zorn included, in the crowd. From an assassin’s point of view, Centre Court was a gallery full of sitting ducks. That very intimacy, however, meant that it offered precious few positions where a marksman could lurk unseen and take his shot unobserved.
Another practical problem struck Carver the moment he walked into the stands. The gangways between the rows of seats were accessed by entrances, each of which was guarded by two armed forces personnel – one from the army and another from the navy – to make sure that spectators only entered or left the court during breaks in play. These guards were unarmed, but they were, nevertheless, trained fighting men, and their presence only added to the difficulties that Centre Court posed.
Zorn and his guests, meanwhile, were no more aware that Carver was surveying them there than they had been on the walk out to Court Two. At four o’clock they went to the Courtside Restaurant, reserved for debenture ticket holders, for afternoon tea. Tables at the restaurant were limited to six guests. Razzaq slipped away so that Nicholas Orwell could take the final place at the table. The security chief left the group, Carver thought, with the relieved air of a busy man who was glad to be able to get back to work.
Sitting alone, Carver appeared to bury himself in his newspaper, which he was holding in front of him at the table, angled upwards to make it easier to read. The paper concealed the iPad on which Carver was scrolling through the pictures he had taken that morning. Zorn, he noticed, had been wearing an earpiece. That wasn’t necessarily suspicious: he had every reason to want to keep discreetly in touch with his business affairs. But there was something else Carver spotted, and when he saw it, he immediately went back through every other picture he had taken to make sure that he had not just been fooled by a trick of the light. The answer was no. This was no trick – not of the light, at any rate.
Carver slipped the iPad back into his bag with a smile of deep satisfaction on his face. He had just worked out why he had been hired to kill Malachi Zorn. Now it was just a matter of deciding what, precisely, he was going to do with the discovery he had made. By the time he got up from the table to follow Zorn and his party back to their seats he had formulated a plan of action. He now knew the time, location and method by which he would hit Malachi Zorn.
When Zorn left Wimbledon shortly after five thirty, apologizing to his guests that his business commitments made his departure unavoidable, Carver was fifty metres behind Zorn’s dove-grey Bentley on a motorbike. He had by now learned all that he needed to know, but it never hurt to go the extra distance when preparing for a job, so Carver followed his target all the way back to Wentworth.
It had not crossed his mind to be concerned that the multinational crew of waiters and waitresses had included a young Chinese woman among the Poles, Australians and Spanish. Nor had he attributed any great significance to the fact that a couple of times during the day the faces in the crowd, either watching the tennis or trying to make their way from one part of the All England Club to another, had included a slightly older Chinese male, respectably dressed in a lightweight summer suit and tie. Carver’s mind was focused on his job as the perpetrator of one killing. He was not thinking of himself as the target of another.
23
* * *
Whitehall, London SW1
SIR FREDERICK GREENHILL, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, looked around the table. ‘So, any other business?’
The question was a formality. The agenda for the meeting had been completed. A couple of the senior intelligence officers and civil servants who comprised the committee membership began gathering up their papers. But then Cameron Young, the Prime Minister’s political advisor, and his personal representative on the JIC, spoke up: ‘Yes, there is one thing, actually.’
Young did not look much like the slick corporate types, with their sharp suits and self-satisfied expressions, who constituted the majority of the Prime Minister’s closest associates. He had pale-ginger hair, a fleshy face, and a bushy drooping moustache – which gave him the slightly morose, doggy air that had long ago inspired his nickname: Fred Basset. This particular hound, however, had claws and teeth worthy of a Dobermann. Young had qualified as a barrister before becoming a political operator. He possessed intelligence and ambition in abundance, not to mention an independently wealthy American wife who had become one of London’s leading political hostesses. He was not a man to be crossed.
‘As I’m sure you’ll be aware, the American financier Malachi Zorn is formally launching a new investment fund in London at the end of this week,’ Young continued. ‘Many of the world’s richest and most influential individ
uals have placed very large sums of money in this fund, and will be attending the launch party, as will the PM himself. He sees this event as a tremendous vote of confidence in the government and in UK plc, and he wants the world to know about it.’
‘Is that wise?’ asked Sir Charles Herbert, the Foreign Office’s man on the committee. ‘Some of the individuals in question are not necessarily people with whom the PM would want to be associated. The provenance of their fortunes is not always as respectable as one might wish.’
‘I’m sorry?’ asked Young with a frown.
‘He means the money’s dirty,’ snapped Jack Grantham, whose duties as Head of MI6 included attendance at JIC meetings.
‘Then we will make sure that the PM is not photographed standing next to any of them,’ said Young, with an almost imperceptible air of impatience. ‘But he has to make an appearance. There’s just going to be too much money and too much power in the room to ignore. And of course, Mr Orwell will be there.’
‘Well, we wouldn’t want him hogging the front pages while the PM sits at home at Number 10 …’ Grantham mused.
‘No, we certainly would not,’ Young agreed. ‘The question that concerns me, however, is this: what are the security implications of this event in particular, and Mr Zorn’s presence here in general? I’m sure many of you will be aware of the interview Mr Zorn gave to the BBC World programme HARDTalk yesterday. He gave a public warning to the UK government that we were at risk from attacks by eco-terrorists. Firstly, let us just establish the facts of the matter. Do you have any reason to believe he’s right, Dame Judith?’
The successor to Agatha Bewley as Head of MI5, Dame Judith Spofforth, was not given to dithering. Her reply was immediate, all the facts at her fingertips: ‘Not at the moment. We keep a weather eye on the most extreme ecological and animal rights groups, of course. They tend to go in for nasty, frequently illegal, but essentially small-scale activity: harassing executives that work for companies of which they disapprove, digging tunnels on the sites of planned motorways, and so on. But there’s no sign any of them have any major stunts in mind.’
Cameron Young turned to Euan Jeffries, the Director of GCHQ. ‘Euan?’
‘I must say, I agree with Dame Judith. We’re not seeing any significant traffic that indicates planning for an attack of that kind.’
‘Jack?’
Grantham thought for a second. To anyone else in the room, it looked as though he was sifting through intelligence data and analysis in his mind, weighing up the threat to the UK. In fact, he was thinking about Ahmad Razzaq and his contract on Malachi Zorn. Strictly speaking, he ought to mention it – the PM would go ballistic if Zorn came to any harm on British soil. But the fact was, Grantham had not been asked about threats to Zorn. He’d been asked about eco-terrorists.
‘No,’ Grantham said. ‘Not a dicky bird.’
Young nodded encouragingly. ‘Well, that’s reassuring. Nevertheless, the PM believes that we have to be seen to respond. He does not relish the prospect of doing nothing and then standing up in front of Parliament – or, even worse, Newsnight – when a bomb goes off somewhere. He is also keen to have an initiative to take to this launch. Congress ignored Mr Zorn. We will not make that mistake.’
Dame Judith cast her sharp eyes in Young’s direction. ‘May one ask what you have in mind?’
‘We need a high-profile event of our own, a proper eco-terrorism summit: senior figures from the intelligence, defence and energy communities; a couple of top energy executives; scientists who can discuss the possible implications of a blown-up oil rig, that sort of thing.’
‘Clearly you will want to make an announcement within the next week or so,’ said Sir Charles Herbert, with diplomatic smoothness. ‘But surely there’s no rush over the summit itself. As I’m sure you’ll know, these things take many months to organize. In fact, I dare say everyone will have forgotten about the idea long before anything can be done.’
Cameron shook his jowly head. ‘No, the PM is adamant. An announcement is not enough. He wants to be seen taking swift, decisive action. It’s got to be put together immediately: tomorrow, in fact, nice and early so it dominates the whole day’s news cycle. So I’d be very grateful if all the relevant bodies would rustle up a few of their brightest stars. To save any interdepartmental wrangling, we’ll coordinate it all from the Cabinet Office. And let me emphasize in the strongest possible terms, the PM wants a real spectacular.’
The men and women of the Joint Intelligence Committee were, by definition, highly experienced, unflappable individuals who weren’t given to panic. But even they had a hard time concealing their shock at what Young had just proposed.
‘Where were you thinking of holding this meeting?’ Sir Charles Herbert asked, hoping that a moment’s consideration of the practicalities would swiftly scupper the PM’s hare-brained scheme. ‘It’s going to be hard getting one of the major London conference venues at such short notice.’
Cameron Young was not deterred. ‘No, we don’t want anything like that. We have to have maximum media coverage, so we need a photogenic backdrop.’
‘Well, maybe you should try an oil rig, then,’ suggested Jack Grantham, wondering to himself just how mad this was going to get.
He, too, had underestimated Cameron Young. ‘No, we considered that option. But it’s always a nightmare getting people to and from rigs, and they can’t cater for the number of visitors we had in mind.’
‘And just think what would happen if the weather got up, and you suddenly found several chopper-loads of dignitaries stuck on a rig overnight with all the media jackals,’ said a man from the Ministry of Defence. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘Precisely,’ said Young. ‘We need a controllable environment. And we think we’ve found just the one …’
24
* * *
Wentworth
CARVER WATCHED AS Zorn’s Bentley disappeared behind the gates of his mansion. He rode back up the road a few hundred yards, then pulled into a lay-by, took off his helmet and checked his phone. There was one missed call: Grantham.
‘Learn anything?’ the MI6 man asked when Carver got through to him.
‘Yes.’
‘Anything you want to share with me?’
‘Well, I have one question. Zorn’s never been married, right?’
‘No.’
‘Thought so. Just checking.’
‘You want to tell me why?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Have you worked out what you’re going to do: method, time, location and so forth?’
‘Yes, pretty much.’
‘And …?’
‘And as soon as I’ve finalized everything, and worked out exactly what I need, I’ll tell you.’
‘Big of you,’ Grantham said. ‘Meanwhile, Zorn’s not going to Wimbledon tomorrow, correct?’
‘That’s right. What of it?’
‘I’ve got another little job for you.’
‘Just because I’m not tracking Zorn tomorrow doesn’t mean I won’t be busy,’ Carver objected. ‘I’ve got a lot to prepare, and bugger all time to do it in.’
‘You help me, and I’ll lend a hand with that. I have ways of saving you a lot of time. Access to resources, you might say.’
‘We’ll see about that … what do you want?’
‘Zorn’s given some interview to the BBC. He says the next big thing is energy terrorism – eco-loonies blowing up oil rigs and so forth.’
‘That old chestnut. I spent half my time in the SBS freezing my tits off in the North Sea, climbing on to oil rigs and pretending to kill terrorists who’d occupied them. I’ll bet they still train for that. But we’ve never had a single terrorist on a single rig.’
‘Be that as it may, the PM’s got his knickers in a twist. He’s decided to hold some bloody stupid summit meeting tomorrow morning …’
‘So what do you want from me?’
‘I need you to go. Strictly speaking this is a domestic iss
ue, so our Security Service friends are being annoyingly territorial and saying it’s their responsibility, not ours. That means I can’t send anyone on an official basis. But I need someone there, someone I can trust.’
‘And you think you can trust me?’ Carver asked, with just a hint of amusement in his voice.
‘Not much.’
‘But what’s the point? What can I achieve there?’
‘I don’t know,’ Grantham said, with an exasperation that was principally directed against himself. ‘But this meeting wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for Malachi Zorn. I’m not sure he planned for it to happen: I don’t care how brilliant he is, he couldn’t have predicted that the PM would respond to his interview this way. But he wouldn’t be going on about energy terrorism – and this isn’t the first time, apparently – if he didn’t have a bloody good reason for it.’
‘So this is basically an unknown element in a plan that’s still a total mystery. Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Yes, if you want to put it that way.’
‘And you have no idea what good it will do me, or you, if I’m there?’
‘Correct.’
‘Well, if I go, you’d better give me precisely what I need for the Zorn job. And some of it you won’t like.’
‘Well, naturally, the Service can never condone violence, torture or the harming of soft, furry animals …’