Carver

by Tom Cain

  ‘Oh, baby, just you wait!’ he replied. Then he tilted his head back and screamed, ‘Mo-ney!! Mo-ney!!’

  Zorn watched, enthralled, his fingers jammed in his ears, as Braddock lifted the futuristic black gun to his shoulder and pressed a button on its side. The gun hummed as it charged itself for a few seconds, getting ready to fire. Then Braddock set his sights on the first window: the one directly opposite the stage on which Drinkwater would now be speaking.

  Braddock was now seeing the world through his weapon’s fire-control system. In the middle of the viewfinder there was a small red cross. He lined it up on the window, pressed another button, and let the laser-based system calculate the distance to the window and transmit that information to the grenade now sitting in the barrel. He adjusted the range so that the round would explode after it had travelled three metres beyond the window. Then he fired. And even before the noise of the explosion had died away he was swinging the gun towards the next window.

  *

  Alix was aware that something had smashed through one of the great windows that ran the length of the room. The air itself seemed to explode as a blast erupted above the guests’ heads, shattering one of the chandeliers, which plunged to the floor. The fragmented metal from the grenade combined with shards of broken crystal from the chandelier to create a flesh-shredding volley of shrapnel that sliced into the people crammed within the blast radius.

  Alix screamed in terror. Something hit her skull. There was a momentary burst of pain more intense than any she had ever known. And then everything went black.

  96

  * * *

  CARVER HEARD THE gun blast, drew the Sig Sauer from inside his jacket, and ran pell-mell up the next flight of stairs and along the corridor on the floor above. Whatever had just gone off, it was a lot more than a conventional rifle. And from the direction the noise had come from, on the western side of the building, it had been fired in the direction of the Goldsmiths’ Hall. There were five hundred people crammed in there, but Carver only cared about one of them: Alix. He prayed that she was still stuck in traffic. Or that the security people were taking their time letting her in. Or that she was stuck down in the basement, fixing her face in the ladies’ room. Anything would do, just so long as she hadn’t made it to the party.

  The noise had come from somewhere along this corridor. The lights weren’t on up here, but someone was certainly home.

  Carver took a second to take a breath and calm his racing pulse and heaving chest, then eased open the door to the main conference room and went in, his gun out ahead of him, seeing nothing but the dark shapes of the display panels boasting of Bandekar Technologies’ achievements and the lighting rig above them. There were no lights on here, either, and all the blinds were down. But as his eyes acclimatized to the dark, Carver could detect a door open at the far end of the room, and that the room beyond it was very slightly brighter than this one. At least one blind was open. And that, Carver knew, was where the shooter would be. He made his way forward, trying to combine speed with stealth as best he could. He had no idea that there were two dead bodies lying on the floor, half-hidden behind the panels … not until he tripped on Ashok Bandekar’s outstretched arm, and stumbled and bumped into the side of one of the panels. It wasn’t much noise, just a body against a metal frame, and a slight, involuntary grunt at the shock of the impact. But in that dark and silent room it sounded to Carver like an avalanche.

  The routine was easy. Acquire the target, allow the fire-control system to set its range and … what was that? Braddock couldn’t hear much through his ear protectors, but some soldier’s instinct, honed over years of combat, was warning him of danger. He paused for a moment and frowned. Zorn was motionless, his rapt gaze entirely focused on the chaos visible through the shattered window of the Goldsmiths’ Hall. No, the threat was outside the room.

  Braddock lowered the Punisher and turned his head in the direction the sound had come from, peering towards the open door to the conference room. He could see the black silhouettes of the display panels, but there was no sign of anything or anyone else. He was half-tempted to fire a grenade through the door, set to explode inside the conference room. That would soon solve the problem, if there was one. But he only had four rounds, and they were all needed to do the job on the Goldsmiths’ Hall. He looked hard for another second, lifting one of the protectors off his ear to listen for any sound on the far side of the door. But he saw and heard nothing. He gave a sharp twitch of irritation, then turned back to the window, raising the gun again. He’d lost several precious seconds, and every one of them represented a fraction less time to get away when the job was done.

  Braddock lifted the gun again and pointed it at the second window. The distance was set. He just had to add in the three-metre delay.

  That was done. He was ready to fire.

  From behind the display panel, Carver saw a man holding a stubby weapon that looked like an overweight sub-machine gun peering in his direction. He tried to stay completely motionless, holding his breath until he saw the man turn away from him and move into a firing position, aiming through a half-open window. Another man was crouched beside him, gazing out of the window. From his silhouette, he looked like the elusive waiter.

  Carver came out from behind the panel and dashed for the door, his gun out in front of him.

  Braddock turned and pointed his weapon towards Carver, who was already diving for the floor, rolling to one side, hitting the ground as the gun went off. He felt the round punch through the air above his head. It sped through the open door and exploded at the back of the conference room, blasting the wall behind him with a hail of metal fragments. The wall held firm, sheltering Carver and the other two men. Their respite only lasted a matter of seconds.

  Carver came to a halt on his stomach, his arms out in front of him, pointing towards the window, both hands still clasping the Sig.

  Braddock was getting to his feet, his gun still aiming in Carver’s direction.

  Carver fired four times, ignoring the waiter, aiming only at Braddock. The range was no more than five or six metres. The rounds went right through Braddock’s torso and into the window behind him, shattering the glass.

  Braddock staggered backwards, dropped the Punisher, lost his balance, and fell backwards through the window, taking the blind, wrapped around him like an impromptu funeral shroud.

  Carver took two more steps forward, keeping his gun on the waiter. ‘On the floor!’ he shouted. ‘Face down, arms and legs wide. And don’t move or I’ll blow your fucking head off.’

  Carver was expecting a plea for mercy or a desperate cry of, ‘Don’t shoot!’ Instead the words he heard were calm, controlled and completely unexpected: ‘Pick up the grenade launcher.’

  He was so taken aback, he could only say, ‘What?’

  ‘Pick up the damn grenade launcher. Aim it at the window opposite this one. Then fire it. I’ll give you a billion dollars.’

  97

  * * *

  ‘YOU MUST BE Malachi Zorn,’ said Carver. ‘Roll over. Up against the wall. Sit on your hands.’

  Zorn did as he was told. Then he looked at Carver. ‘I mean it. I’ll give you a billion dollars if you just put a couple more rounds into that hall across the way. But, uh, you’d better do it quick. I have a way out of here, but it won’t stay open long.’

  Carver shrugged. ‘Sorry, but I’ve got better things to do. I’m Carver, by the way. I’m the guy you paid to kill you.’ Keeping the gun in his right hand, with his eyes still fixed on Zorn, he put his wrist up to his mouth again: ‘This is Carver. I’m in the Wax Chandlers’ Hall. The shooter is down. I have Zorn. Give me five minutes.’

  A voice cut in on the line. ‘You know what you have to do.’ Carver did not have to be told that it belonged to Cameron Young.

  He put both hands back on the gun and looked directly at Zorn. ‘Your old friends don’t like you any more. They want you dead. Sounds like they’d rather deal with the fake Zorn than
the original.’

  ‘They won’t feel that way when they realize all the money has gone. There’s over a hundred billion, you know, maybe more after tonight. Depends on how many we got with that first grenade.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard all about the money. I got the full rundown. And here’s the thing: I couldn’t give a shit.’

  Zorn laughed. ‘Me neither … I never cared about the actual dollars and cents. They were just a means to an end.’

  ‘Which was?’

  Zorn sighed. In the half-light from the window he suddenly looked washed out, exhausted: a man whose supplies of adrenalin had just evaporated. He sounded, too, like a man who needed to confess.

  ‘I just wanted to screw the people who’d screwed me. To get my revenge for my mom and dad. To show the world that all these masters of the universe who run the banks and the hedge funds are just a bunch of crooks – greedy, stupid, arrogant crooks. And the only way to do that was to take their money. They don’t understand anything else. I mean, they screwed the whole world, wrecked the economy, took trillions of dollars from all the regular people they treated like dirt …And even when everyone knew what they’d done, they didn’t say sorry. They didn’t admit they’d got it wrong. They just went right back to ripping the whole world off, all over again. So I wanted to rip them off … and I did.’

  ‘You also killed hundreds of people. What’s that got to do with getting your revenge on rich bankers?’

  ‘What’s it ever got to do with anything? Every new religion, every revolution, people always die. It’s unavoidable.’

  ‘That’s every terrorist’s excuse. Those deluded idiots you got to blow up that refinery probably said just the same thing. But don’t kid yourself. This had nothing to do with changing the world. It was all about money.’

  ‘What can I say? I needed to be certain of what was going to happen.’

  ‘You wanted to make the car crash,’ said Carver to himself.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Just something someone said to me a few days ago about the way the system works: the money system.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I took their money, a billion bucks at a time,’ Zorn said defiantly. ‘Then I took positions that made profits you wouldn’t believe. And the guys on the other side of the trades were the banks. So every cent I was making, they were losing. A hundred billion, straight off the top. Even to those fuckers, that’s a lot.’

  ‘What were you going to do with it?’ Carver asked.

  ‘The hell knows … all I wanted was a hut on a beach somewhere. Malachi Zorn was meant to be dead. So I’d get myself a new name, maybe a new face. Run a bar or something … whatever.’

  ‘That was never going to happen. You must have known that.’

  ‘Maybe. And maybe I didn’t care.’

  ‘That was your final play, wasn’t it? I’m guessing if they killed you, they’d lose the cash. It’s not in the accounts of Zorn Global, right?’

  Zorn nodded. ‘Got it in one.’

  ‘So where is it?’

  Zorn laughed at the sheer cheek of the question. ‘You think I’m going to tell you that? No way. That money is my Get Out of Jail Free card. That money is what stops you killing me. You may not care about it, but your masters sure as shit do.’

  ‘My masters, as you call them, ordered me to kill you. They didn’t say anything about money.’

  ‘And are you going to kill me?’

  Carver looked down at the man at his feet. It would be so easy to take him out: a double tap, point-blank. But the thought of it made him feel as worn out as Zorn looked. He was sick of the presence of death: sick of taking lives for reasons that, if they’d ever made sense to him, certainly didn’t any more. He heard the sound of running footsteps coming from the corridor, then saw the first torch beams cutting through the dusty air of the wrecked conference room.

  ‘They’ve arrived,’ Carver said to Zorn. A few moments later the first SAS men came through the door.

  ‘All yours,’ Carver said. ‘I’m out of here.’

  He was in the corridor when he called in to the command centre again. ‘Carver here. I just handed Zorn over to your people.’

  Cameron Young’s voice buzzed in Carver’s ear. It sounded anxious, ‘Is he alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you find out what he did with the money?’

  ‘Do you think we should discuss this now? People are listening.’

  ‘But you found out what he’s done with it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The line went dead. Carver kept walking. A few seconds later he heard a brief burst of gunfire behind him.

  Outside the hall the street was filled with police cars, ambulances and fire engines. Cameron Young was waiting on the pavement at the bottom of the steps that led down from the front door. The moment Carver appeared, Young grabbed him by the arm and led him away to one side.

  ‘Well?’ he whispered.

  ‘Well, what?’ Carver asked, all innocence.

  ‘Did you find out?’

  ‘Did I find out what Zorn did with the money?’

  ‘Yes!’ Young’s normally smooth personality sounded as though it was beginning to fray at the edges.

  ‘I did,’ Carver said.

  Young took a very deep breath and made a visible effort to pull himself together. ‘And?’

  ‘He hid it. There was a hundred billion dollars and he hid the lot. I asked him where, but he didn’t want to tell me. Sorry about that.’

  ‘But that money …’ Young blustered. ‘It belonged to … to … to very influential people.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t any more,’ said Sam Carver. And he walked away into the night.

  Ten days later …

  98

  * * *

  The Old Town, Geneva

  ‘HOW’S YOUR HEAD?’

  ‘Much better,’ said Alix. She took the big white mug of coffee that Carver held out to her, sipped a little and smiled. ‘Thanks for asking … And thank you for the coffee, too.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Carver. He looked down at her, curled up on one of the oversized armchairs in his Geneva flat. They weren’t the same chairs as the ones that had been there when they first met, and Alix wasn’t dressed exactly the same – this morning she was wearing a white singlet, slim black jersey trousers, and a pair of grey cashmere bedsocks – but his delight in seeing her there hadn’t changed one jot in all the years that had passed.

  ‘Budge up,’ he said, and snuggled next to her on the chair. He looked at her again, and frowned as he saw a look of sadness drift across her face like the shadow of a cloud passing overhead. ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  She held the cup close to her face in both hands and took another drink before she answered. ‘I was just remembering that night. The people nearest the blast were ripped to pieces. I was so lucky … When I came to, I was covered in blood, but it wasn’t mine.’

  Carver gave her arm a squeeze. She’d told the story so many times over the past few days, almost as if she hoped that if she repeated the words often enough the pain of what they described would begin to fade. Thirty-nine people had been killed, among them Drinkwater and his guards. And so far as the world was concerned, Malachi Zorn had died in that wheelchair. The man who was shot in the room across the road had never even existed: his passing went unrecorded. Meanwhile, more than a hundred guests had been injured, their wounds running the gamut from crippling mutilation to the kind of surface injury Alix had suffered.

  She was right, she had been lucky. A glancing blow from a flying chunk of ceiling plaster had left her with nothing worse than concussion. Carver felt blessed by her survival.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Don’t fight it. Your mind needs to heal, just like your body.’

  She nodded, with a wry half-smile, as she said, ‘I guess …’ And then her smile brightened a little. ‘You help me heal,’ she said. ‘You make me feel safe.’

  They kissed, very softly. Carver smiled. ‘
Mmm … you taste of coffee.’

  ‘Is it good?’ she asked.

  ‘Very. Remind me to congratulate the guy who made it.’

  ‘I could congratulate him, if you like.’

  ‘That sounds like a plan.’

  Alix looked around. ‘So where is he, this coffee guy?’

  Carver played along, frowning in apparent bafflement. ‘I don’t know. I think I saw him go into the bedroom.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Uh-huh …’

  ‘OK … so this bedroom … will you be there too?’

  Carver grinned. ‘Might be.’

  ‘Then what are we waiting for?’

  About the Author

  Tom Cain is the pseudonym of an award-winning journalist with twenty-five years’ experience working for Fleet Street newspapers. He has lived in Moscow, Washington, DC and Havana, Cuba. He is the author of The Accident Man, The Survivor, Assassin and Dictator.

  Also by Tom Cain

  The Accident Man

  The Survivor

  Assassin

  Dictator

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  A Random House Group Company

  www.transworldbooks.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain

  in 2011 by Bantam Press

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Tom Cain 2011

  Tom Cain has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448110391

  ISBNs 9780593067659 (cased)