by Tom Cain
The hall itself could have been a banqueting chamber in the palace of a Roman emperor or Russian tsar, so massive were its proportions, so rich the colour scheme of scarlet and gold. More mighty columns supported an even more ornate ceiling, and at the far end of the room a velvet-draped alcove was filled with a spectacular display of gold platters, jugs and cups. The most inspiring sight of all, however, came from the four great crystal chandeliers that hung over the centre of the room. They glittered not with electric bulbs, but with almost two hundred actual candles that cast a soft, warm, golden glow over the hall. The light was extraordinarily flattering, and it gave the whole event, whose sole purpose was to worship at the altar of money, an unexpectedly sensual atmosphere.
It was almost a pity, Ginger thought, that it would all soon be destroyed. Almost a pity: but not quite.
‘Would you like some more champagne, sir?’
Malachi Zorn could not resist it. He’d seen Drinkwater across the room, sitting in his wheelchair, playing the same role, but for a new master, and had felt compelled to go right up to his own double. So now here he was in disguise, offering a drink to a man who looked exactly like his real, undisguised self. It was like some crazy hall of mirrors, mixed with a delicious, thrill-ride sensation of fear. If anyone realized what he was doing, he’d be lost. But no one did. The blatantly obvious police protection unit who were attempting to blend into the crowd, despite the unsubtle bulges in their jackets where their guns were holstered, glared at him suspiciously. But they were doing that to anyone who got within ten metres of Drinkwater.
‘Back off,’ one of them said, as Zorn held out the magnum of champagne so that its neck was tilted upwards over Drinkwater’s glass, ready to pour if required. ‘Mr Zorn has his own personal drinks with him. Someone should have told you that.’
‘No one told me anything,’ Zorn replied, grateful that the guests were so tightly packed and the hubbub of conversation and laughter so loud that no one could hear just how lousy his attempt at a Polish accent really was.
There had sure been an incredible turnout. The assassination attempt on Wednesday had made this an even hotter ticket than it had been before. Everyone wanted to be able to say that they’d been to Zorn’s public resurrection from the apparent jaws of death. Zorn had spotted a couple of investors who’d privately told him they would not be able to make it. One of them had come all the way from Palo Alto, California, another from Kyoto, Japan. They must have flown in overnight. No one wanted to say no to this invitation.
The celebrity eye candy was out in force, too: a smattering of supermodels, actresses, athletes and rock stars, all enticed by the prospect of a fifty-thousand-dollar stake in Zorn Global, just for a walk down the red carpet, a wave to the paparazzi and a couple of hours of their time. But as entertaining as it was to gawp at beautiful women in revealing clothes, or men with Super Bowl rings and Olympic gold medals, Zorn’s real interest was in guests who were far less easy on the eye. With a very few exceptions, the men whose presence he was committing to memory tended to be dressed conservatively, albeit expensively; to be aged fifty and over; and to be deeply dull, if not actually unappealing to look at. But they owned the fashion houses, movie studios, TV channels and sports franchises that kept the celebrities in business. They were the CEOs and chairmen of the banks into which the stars placed their pay cheques. They took the decisions which closed factories in one place, and reopened them thousands of miles away in some cheaper, more convenient location. They were his investors, and it was very important to Malachi Zorn to know precisely who had turned up, because then he would know who was going to die. And once he knew that, he could determine the final few plays in his great game.
‘Almost there, Dad!’ he whispered to himself.
He put the magnum down on the edge of one of the buffet tables and checked his watch. If they were sticking to the original schedule, he was due to start speaking in ten minutes, or rather, Drinkwater was. It was kind of a pity, really, Zorn thought. He was curious to know what ‘he’ was planning to say. But there wasn’t going to be much of a speech. A minute, two at the most after Drinkwater started speaking, Braddock would go into action. Zorn wanted to be at his screen, ready to react to the first market movements when news of the massacre got out. He couldn’t afford to stick around at his party a moment longer.
Leaving the bottle on the table, he turned and made his way as quickly as possible to the staff exit.
88
* * *
CARVER WAS WONDERING what the hell he was doing. The room was so packed that it was hard to see more than a few metres in any direction. The sound of chit-chat and laughter was so loud that it was almost impossible to overhear anything distinct. He could only catch fleeting glimpses of individual guests. A tall blonde dressed to kill in a scarlet cocktail dress caught his eye; him and every other heterosexual male in the room. Something about her nagged at him, but before he could react in any way, the wall of people had closed again and she had disappeared from view. And that was the problem: if anything did happen, it would be virtually impossible to make his way through the press of people fast enough to take the split-second action that might be required.
His phone buzzed: a text from Alix: ‘Stuck in traffic but on my way, like it or not haha! Ax’
Carver winced. He’d done all he could to persuade Alix not to come, but she’d never been the type to do as she was told: he wouldn’t be interested in her if she were. This time, though, it was serious. Her safety was at stake. He had to think of a way to head her off.
As he was looking at his phone screen, Carver was half-aware of a waiter a few feet away, putting a bottle of champagne down on the table and checking his watch, but he paid him little attention. The human brain is not particularly interested in people or things that are where they might be expected to be, doing what they should be doing. But it reacts immediately to sudden movement: it senses a possible threat and an immediate fight or flight reaction kicks in.
Just as Carver pressed ‘send’, the waiter started walking away from the table, and that unexpected motion acted like a wake-up call, snapping Carver straight back into an alert and focused state of mind. That waiter had moved like a man who had come to a realization of some kind and made a conscious decision to act on it. That wasn’t in itself suspicious. A bored man on minimum wage checks the time, wonders how much more of his shift there is to go, then decides he’d better do some work before he gets a bollocking. But if that were the case, why did the waiter leave the champagne behind? And why did his watch look like a Rolex? It could have been a cheap fake, of course. Or was the watch real, and the waiter an imitation? No one with any half-decent military, police or intelligence training would make such a basic mistake. So the man had to be an amateur of some kind. He could be a reporter looking for a scoop, or a paparazzi with a hidden camera, in which case he was a serious irritation, but posed no immediate danger. Or he could have serious, hostile intent. The attack on Rosconway had been planned by experienced professionals, but executed by gullible beginners, disposable fall guys to be used and thrown away. Was Zorn planning something similar here?
It had taken Carver just a few seconds to collate, analyse and process all this data: considering all the various possibilities, rejecting some, accepting others on an essentially subconscious level. Meanwhile another part of his mind was watching the waiter push and squeeze his way through the crammed guests towards the staff exit. And then the word ‘Zorn’ flashed into his brain like a neon sign.
No, that was impossible. Zorn was a wanted criminal. He was certainly smart enough to have worked out for himself that there would be an unofficial death sentence on his head. It would be an act of utter foolhardiness to walk into a room filled with armed men employed by the government he had publicly humiliated, and with the wealthy, powerful men he’d secretly ripped off. Either that or the act of a supremely confident, even arrogant man, convinced of his own superiority over the common herd, and addicted to
the challenge of pitting himself against apparently overwhelming odds and winning.
The waiter had not looked like Zorn, but the differences were superficial: long dark hair instead of short and blond; a heavy moustache where Zorn was clean-shaven; heavy-rimmed glasses for a man with twenty-twenty vision. The height and built, though, were entirely consistent.
There was no guarantee whatever that the waiter really was Malachi Zorn. He could turn out to be completely legitimate. This could all be an example of Carver’s excessive paranoia. But Carver’s willingness to see potential danger in even the most innocent circumstances had helped keep him alive all these years.
Before he had even finished thinking the problem through he was already on the move, easing his way past dark-suited men and brightly dressed women, murmuring brusque apologies as he went, following the waiter like a hunter tracking his prey.
89
* * *
THE GOLDSMITHS’ HALL occupies an entire block of the City of London. Its main entrance is on Foster Lane, and the rear facade, on which can be found the Assay Office, which officially tests and grades the purity of precious metals, backs on to Gutter Lane. Malachi Zorn, however, left the building by a side entrance, which opened on to Gresham Street. He turned right and walked across Gutter Lane and then turned right again into the entrance to the Wax Chandlers’ Hall. This, too, occupies a small block of its own. And its eastern facade runs along Gutter Lane, directly parallel to the rear elevation of the Goldsmiths’ Hall.
Armed spotters from the Anti-Terrorist Squad watched him all the way, noting that his appearance matched that of one of the catering staff assigned to the Zorn Global launch: a Pole by the name of Jerzy Kowalski. They saw him approach the private security guards manning the front door of the Wax Chandlers’ Hall and be granted admission.
‘Typical fucking Pole,’ grumbled one of the spotters. ‘Got a second job tonight.’
‘Good luck to him,’ the man on the other end of the radio link replied. ‘Our kids are too lazy to get off their arses. Not the Poles’ fault if they’re prepared to graft.’
‘Better call it in, anyway.’
They alerted the command centre, but it was purely a formality. The man was leaving the reception. If he’d left anything nasty behind him he wouldn’t have popped next door. He’d have got as far away as possible as fast as he could manage.
Carver couldn’t believe it. One minute he’d been following the waiter across the hall, the next he’d run straight into an impenetrable scrum of people that seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. A legendary supermodel was deep in conversation with the multi-billionaire owner of a Premiership-winning football club, and even in this exalted company their overwhelming combination of celebrity, sex appeal and stupendous wealth was enough to draw a crowd. Carver couldn’t get through the mob, so he’d had to go around it, and by the time he’d done that the waiter had disappeared. He might have stayed in the main body of the hall, but if he had it would be almost impossible to find him. So Carver took a chance and went through the staff exit into the barely controlled chaos required to provide five hundred guests with a constant supply of drinks and canapés. He tried to look through the hubbub for the bespectacled, moustachioed waiter. But the man he was hunting had gone.
A ripple of anticipation spread across the hall. One of Drinkwater’s minders had stepped behind the wheelchair, and was now pushing it across the room towards a stage that had been erected at one end, just in front of the treasure display, while his colleagues marched ahead, clearing the way. The MC for the evening was a famous newsreader. He was picking up a twenty-thousand-pound fee for making a two-minute introduction written for him, he thought, by Zorn’s PR team. In fact it had been composed by the Prime Minister’s speechwriters, and then vetted in painstaking detail by the Attorney General. It was vital that the newsreader’s bland platitudes and insipid jokes contained nothing that might in any way create a legal liability for the government, as and when its deception was revealed. Now the newsreader made his way to the front of the stage, his progress broadcast to the guests by two large screens on either side of the room. He glanced at the autocue to his right, and gave a quick, throat-clearing cough to confirm that his mic was working. Beside him there was a small podium, approached via a ramp and equipped with another mic on a low stand. This was where the man he believed was Malachi Zorn would make his speech.
On the floor of the hall, Ginger looked over the heads of all the shorter, lesser mortals to check the progress of the wheelchair and its entourage. Drinkwater would reach the stage in around a minute, she reckoned. It would then take another minute or so for him to be correctly positioned, and for the mic to be adjusted so that he could speak into it with ease. Ginger allowed another two minutes and thirty seconds for the newsreader’s introduction, and the applause that would certainly follow. All in all, Drinkwater would begin his speech in approximately five minutes.
She took her phone out of her evening bag and sent a three-word text. It read: ‘Go in five.’
She waited for the one-word reply: ‘Roger.’
And then she turned on her heels and made for the exit.
90
* * *
DAMN THE LONDON traffic! Damn the security controls everywhere! Alix was stressed enough as it was, her emotions torn between her longing to see Carver and anxiety about what might happen if she came face-to-face with Azarov at the reception. She could only hope that the presence of so many other people would force him to control his temper. Just to make matters worse, she was running way late. And then she was literally running, heading down the road in her high heels as she gave up on the logjammed traffic, paid off her taxi-driver, and made a dash for it, praying that her high heels would not give way under her or catch in the gap between two paving stones. Suddenly the lightweight summer jacket and nylon stockings she’d put on in recognition of the chilly weather seemed horribly superfluous, doing nothing but make her hotter and sweatier, and adding to her feeling of physical discomfort and emotional fluster as she arrived – breathless, her chest heaving – at the entrance to Goldsmiths’ Hall. Her invitation was checked, her name ticked off a list, and her body and bag were both scanned before she was allowed into the entrance hall. A uniformed doorman was waiting for her at the foot of the main staircase.
‘The reception is in the Livery Hall on the first floor,’ he said, looking at her with avuncular sympathy. ‘But if madam would like to take advantage of the cloakroom facilities, they are downstairs to your right.’
Alix smiled weakly, and just about managed to say thank you before scurrying away to get rid of her coat and try, if it was remotely possible, to repair the worst of the damage to her face and hair.
‘My God, you look terrible,’ she muttered half a minute later, as she placed her evening bag beside one of the ladies’ room basins and gazed miserably at her reflection in the mirror.
And then behind her she heard an instantly recognizable voice from the past: ‘Oh no, darling, you don’t look terrible. You look much worse than that.’
Alix turned to look straight into the smirking, gloating face of the woman she’d known as Celina Novak. The hair was fake. The eyes wore contact lenses. But Celina could have stuck her head in a paper bag and it wouldn’t have made any difference. Alix would have known her anywhere.
Ginger had been walking past the marble balustrade on the first-floor landing when she had seen Alexandra Petrova come past the guards on the door and make her satisfyingly bedraggled way towards the doorman. Ginger had slipped behind a pillar and watched as the old man had directed Petrova to the cloakrooms. Quite rightly: she could hardly be allowed to show herself in public in that state! Ginger knew that she should content herself with relishing her contemporary’s pathetic decline from a distance, and get out of the building as soon as possible. But as she walked down the staircase the temptation to let Petrova know exactly what she thought of her was irresistible.
Without making a c
onscious decision about it, she had not walked straight to the front door of the hall. Instead, she’d turned left, towards the stairs that Petrova had taken, and followed her down into the basement. And now, as she looked at her rival standing so despondently in front of the mirror, Ginger was delighted by the instinct that had brought her there. Petrova had long since ceased to be a drab provincial wallflower, but at this one moment she was vulnerable. She was looking anything but her best, while Ginger was resplendent and made all the more beautiful by the triumphant glow that she could almost feel shining from herself.
‘I’m sure you know that I had that Englishman of yours,’ she said, with exaggerated casualness. ‘Oh, sorry … hasn’t he told you? Well, perhaps he didn’t want you to know how much he begged me. It was quite embarrassing, to be honest. I hate to hear a grown man whine, don’t you? If it hadn’t been work, I wouldn’t have bothered.’
Petrova looked her straight in the eyes, but said nothing. Her silence irritated Ginger. Petrova had changed. In the old days she certainly would have risen to that bait.
‘He finishes so quickly, though, doesn’t he?’ Ginger went on. ‘I must say, I’d expected more, looking at him. But you can never tell …’
Still Alix remained silent. The stuck-up bitch was becoming seriously irritating. Ginger kept going, searching for Petrova’s weak spots, knowing that one of her verbal poison darts would sooner or later get through, ‘He was giving me the eye, you know, upstairs. He didn’t recognize me, I could tell. He just liked what he saw and wanted to fuck it. I hope he won’t be too disappointed when he sees you …’