by Tom Cain
‘Nothing, I’m really happy.’
‘You don’t sound it.’
Carver gave a rueful chuckle. ‘Sorry. I’m just not used to it, you know, happiness. Don’t know what to do with it.’
‘How do you mean?’
He screwed up his face, had some more beer and said, ‘I was given away when I was a baby, by my mother. I was adopted. My new parents tried their best, but their hearts weren’t in it.’
She reached across and touched him: ‘I had no idea…’
‘How could you?’
He paused for a moment while the waitress brought their orders. As she left the table, Carver watched her for a second and then caught the eye of a massive lump of muscle sitting up by the bar dressed in jeans and a black leather biker’s waistcoat. He had razor-cut blond hair, a beefy, sunburned face and a neck so thick it seemed to flare out in a single diagonal line from his jawline to his shoulders. It was very possible, Carver thought, that the man’s collar-size was higher than his IQ, and the guy next to him didn’t look any smaller or more intelligent. The only thing different about the second man was that he didn’t wear a waistcoat, but he did have a close-cropped beard. Now he saw Carver too. Both men raised their shot-glasses mockingly, downed their drinks in one and then stared leeringly at Maddy.
‘Ignore them,’ she said. ‘Go on with what you were saying.’
‘Well, I left school and went into the Marines. Just as I was coming to the end of my time, I met this girl called Kate. We were going to get married. Only that never happened…’
Maddy said nothing, knowing the effort it was taking Carver to reveal himself, knowing also what it said about his feelings for her that he thought she was worth it.
He turned his head away. The guys at the bar had finished their second drinks and were ordering another round with the grim relentlessness of men aiming to get very drunk, very fast.
Carver turned back to Maddy. ‘She died,’ he said. ‘Well, she was killed, a hit-and-run driver. They never caught the bastard.’
‘So you were abandoned again,’ Maddy said. ‘And the night we met, same thing. Do you remember, I said I’d got you on the rebound? You went, “You got me sooner than that. I hadn’t finished hitting the wall.”’
Carver was grateful for the chance to laugh. ‘That sounds right. We got back together, you know, me and Alix.’
Maddy tried to make her voice sound casual as she asked, ‘What happened?’
‘It didn’t work out. We loved each other, but we’d never had a normal life together. It had always been crazy. And that was painful, a lot of it, but at the same time, it was exciting. It turned out we were fine with crazy. It was the everyday stuff we couldn’t handle.’
‘So do you still see her?’
‘No, the last I heard she’d gone back to Moscow – she’s Russian. Anyway, she’s very successful now. Very rich.’
‘Uh-oh, I can’t compete with that!’
‘You don’t have to. It’s the everyday stuff that I really like about you. That’s what’s making me happy.’
‘And making you happy is what’s getting you all messed up?’
‘Among other things.’ Carver frowned. ‘I think we’ve got company.’
22
The two gorillas lumbered across the room, their eyes fixed on Maddy, looking dumb, drunk, mean and horny. Maybe if they’d had any wits about them they’d have noticed that the guy sitting next to the sexy little lady didn’t seem too scared by the sight of them heading towards his table with nothing but trouble on their minds.
Carver got up and took a couple of paces towards the men, holding his hands up in front of him in the universal gesture of conciliation.
These boys didn’t do conciliation.
The one in the waistcoat jabbed out a meaty paw and shoved Carver aside with a grunt, barely sparing a glance as Carver staggered backwards into an unoccupied table.
There were menus on all the tables, just sheets of paper laminated in plastic. Carver picked up a menu and rolled it up nice and tight. Then he calmly stepped up behind the two men, who were too busy introducing themselves to Maddy to pay him any mind, and tapped his left hand on the back of the leather waistcoat.
Its owner turned round and managed to say, ‘What the f-’ before his speech was turned to a wordless, retching struggle for air as Carver’s right arm flashed forward holding the rolled-up menu and caught him right on the Adam’s apple. The man bent double, clutching his throat and that was when Carver kneed him in the face and laid him out on the floor.
That seemed to annoy his bearded pal. He pulled a knife, strode towards Carver and stabbed upwards, right at his guts.
Carver just bent his shoulders forward, sucking in his stomach muscles to avoid the blade, and stuck his arms out in front of him, one hand crossed over the other to block the stab. Then Carver grabbed the onrushing knife hand and twisted it round behind the other man’s back, following it round so that he was now behind his assailant. He lashed out with a foot into the back of the bearded man’s knee, causing his stance to crumple, then, still holding off the knife with one hand, he grabbed the back of the stubbly blond head with the other. Carver smashed it down, face-first into the table-top, knocking the man out cold.
The entire fight had taken less than ten seconds. Carver hadn’t even broken sweat.
He looked down at the table, where Maddy was just staring at him, speechless, stunned by Carver’s capacity for efficient, cold-blooded violence.
‘Damn! I only ate half my burger,’ he said. And then, ‘We’d better go.’
He led Maddy past all the staring, dumbstruck drinkers, then peeled off half a dozen fifty-dollar notes and handed them to the barman.
‘That’s for our bill.’ He nodded at the people behind him. ‘Buy ’em all a round on me. Keep the change. And please, don’t bother calling the police. I don’t want to press charges.’
The barman gasped, ‘But…’
‘They attacked me. You saw that.’
‘Sure, sure,’ babbled the barman, taking the money.
‘See what I mean?’ said Carver to Maddy as they walked out into the lot. ‘How are you supposed to stay happy when so many people just want to screw it all up?’
She got into the Bronco, still not saying anything. As they headed for the road Carver noticed a nondescript grey sedan parked at the far end of the lot. It looked like a million others. But he was absolutely certain it was the same one that the guy at the hot-dog stand had been driving. It could have been a coincidence. But Carver didn’t believe in coincidence, any more than he did in accidents.
When Carver and the woman had gone, Tyzack got out of the car and went to see what had happened. He had spotted the two rednecks as they arrived and decided on the spur of the moment to use them in a little experiment. He told them his wife was inside, having a date with another man. He said he wanted the two of them taught a lesson and offered five hundred bucks, up-front, for the job. The idiot duo had been only too happy to oblige, unaware that they were being used as lab-rats. Tyzack was curious to see what kind of shape Carver was in. Fifteen minutes later, Carver walked out without a scratch. The lab-rats, Tyzack soon discovered, had taken part in a very swift, very brutal experiment. Carver, it seemed, was on excellent form.
Tyzack was delighted. It wouldn’t be half so pleasurable taking down a man who couldn’t put up a good fight.
23
Tord Bahr was sitting in front of a screen in Washington, DC, looking at water features in Bristol, England. They ran down the middle of Broad Quay, the waterside area at the city’s heart that was once one corner of the Golden Triangle of the British slave trade. Three centuries ago, ships left Broad Quay for Africa, laden down with trade goods that would be exchanged for human beings. This living cargo was shackled with iron chains and kept in conditions so vile that more than twice as many Africans died on the journey as survived to be sold in the markets of Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. The money rai
sed by their enslavement was used to buy sugar, molasses, cotton and tobacco to take back home to Bristol.
Given all that, Bahr understood why the President wanted to make his public address from a stage at the end of the quay. He could see the symbolic significance of starting a war against modern slavery from that point. But that didn’t mean he liked the President’s sudden decision to go there, not when it was his job to keep Lincoln Roberts alive. An overseas presidential visit required a massive amount of planning, involving as many as two thousand bureaucrats, servicemen and women, presidential staffers and politicians, not to mention the bomb dogs that would sniff every square inch of the ground the President would cover. Under normal circumstances, a Presidential Advance Team would be sent out months in advance to consider every possible eventuality that might occur during a visit. Now Bahr was being given days, not weeks, to do the same job.
There was at least the minuscule consolation that any potential threats to his boss’s life would be working at equally short notice. An assassination typically requires at least as much planning as its prevention, but even so, killers are as capable of being spontaneous as anyone else. So now Bahr was looking at dozens of water-spouts, no more than six inches tall, arranged in rows along a series of shallow, flagstoned basins down the centre of the quay. Assuming that the whole area would be packed with people – and when you had a president who made rock gods and supermodels look like minor local celebrities, every area was always packed – those basins would be as filled with people as the cobblestoned areas around them. And Bahr couldn’t have people falling over and suing the President, any more than he could have them shooting him.
He gave a deep, frustrated sigh, ran a hand through his hair, momentarily ruffling its immaculate neatness as he scratched his scalp, and spoke to one of his subordinates. ‘OK, Craig, you’re gonna have to talk to the local people here, because all these fountains, or whatever, have got to go.’
‘You want them turned off?’
‘No, I want them totally boarded over, solid enough for folks to stand on. And I want those boards sealed tight so nothing gets underneath, and I mean absolutely nothing.’
‘Sure, I’ll get right on it.’
‘Now, do me a favour, pan left and down, let me see those cobblestones.’
In Bristol, Special Agent Craig Bronstein turned his head and examined the ground beneath his feet. The signal from the miniature Motorola video camera hidden in his sunglasses was sent instantly to one of the TV displays in front of Tord Bahr, 3,600 miles away.
‘I don’t like cobblestones,’ Bahr said, as much to himself as Bronstein. ‘Too easy to dig up and use as missiles. Can we get asphalt or something poured over them?’
‘I doubt it. This whole area’s kind of a regeneration project. They’re very proud of it. And I don’t think the stones are gonna be an issue. They’re pretty well secured. You’d need a jackhammer, pickaxe at the very least, to dig them up.’
‘Let me think about that,’ said Bahr, sounding a long way from convinced.
He switched his attention to another screen: ‘Hey, Renee, those four-lane highways, either side of the quay: they’re closed to traffic the night before the visit and they stay closed until the President has left the country. If anyone complains about it, tell them it’s non-negotiable… Right, now I want to think about tunnels… What’s under the ground down there? Where are the access points? C’mon, people, talk to me. I need to know…’
Albanian gangs had been the dominant criminal force in the British sex industry for the best part of a decade and the Visar clan was the most powerful of them all. Of course, not all Albanian immigrants to the UK were drawn to organized crime. For the most part they, like so many immigrant communities in so many nations, survived by taking menial, minimum-wage jobs which the host country’s natives refused to consider.
There were, for example, Albanians among the cleaning staff at the Bristol hotel where a Home Office official called Charles Portland-Smyth was staying while liaising with the Secret Service’s Presidential Advance Team. On the day, several British police outfits, including the Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Department, the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, otherwise known as S015, and the Special Escort Group would all be publicly involved in assisting with presidential protection. Officers from MI5 would also be more discreetly deployed. All came under the overall control of the Home Office.
Charles Portland-Smyth was not a complete idiot. He did not – as so many other government officials have done – leave his laptop on a train, in a pub, or sitting on the front seat of his car, handily placed for any passing thief. He did, however, leave it in his room, unprotected by any password, when he went down for an early-morning workout and shower in the hotel gym, followed by a healthy breakfast of muesli and fresh fruit.
When he got back, the laptop was still there, exactly where he had left it. He had no idea that a memory-stick containing the entire contents of his hard drive was sitting in the apron pocket of an apparently humble housemaid. So it was that all the details of the President’s schedule, movements and protection protocols were in the hands of the Visar clan by the time Portland-Smyth was walking through the hotel lobby, smiling ingratiatingly at the small group of Secret Service agents who were waiting for him, and saying, ‘Jack, Craig, Renee… hope you all slept well. Let’s just wrap up the fine points of the plan and then we can all go home!’
24
‘He’s just chasing rabbits.’
Carver did not know where the words had come from. Maybe he’d dreamed them. But the moment he opened his eyes, he knew there was a reason his subconscious had pushed them to the forefront of his mind.
It wasn’t rabbits Buster had been chasing two days earlier. There’d been someone up on that hill.
Carver looked at the bedside clock. It was 05:32. Through a crack in the curtains he could see the first light of dawn. Maddy was asleep next to him. He got out of bed, pulled on his trousers, a sweatshirt and a pair of trainers and walked round the bed to the door.
He had the handle in his grasp when he paused, and walked back to her side of the bed. She kept a handgun in the drawer of her bedside cabinet: she’d told him about it once when he asked about her security. He slid open the drawer and pulled out a Springfield XD sub-compact 9-mm pistol. The barrel was barely three inches long, and the whole gun weighed just a couple of pounds unloaded, making it the perfect handbag weapon: a smart choice by a woman who knew what she was doing. It would suit him just fine, too.
He slipped out of the room, down the stairs and into the hall, where Buster spent the night curled up in his basket. Carver gave a low whistle and the German Shepherd looked up sleepily, no longer hostile but still not certain whether he was happy to be disturbed by this new addition to the household.
‘Walkies,’ said Carver.
That made up Buster’s mind. He scrambled out of his basket, panting with excitement and wagging his tail. Carver led him out through the back door and across the dewy grass towards the tree-line a couple of hundred yards away.
The woods rose on a west-facing slope. The dawn sun was behind them and the section of the field nearest the house was bathed in its low, amber rays. Beyond that, the rest of the field and the trees were cast in shadow. Anyone watching from the trees would have a perfect spotlit view of Carver. He, on the other hand, had the sun in his eyes and was looking into relative darkness.
He clapped his hands and said, ‘Buster!’ in a half-whispered voice. Then he broke into a run and dashed across the field, chased by the dog who was delighted to play along with the game.
There were no shots, no response of any kind from the hill.
As he came closer and stepped into its shadow, Carver was no longer dazzled. The light here was low but even, plenty good enough for his purposes. He headed uphill, trying to re-create the route he and Maddy had taken on horseback. Buster followed, nose down, reacquainting himself with the smells of this part of the forest. Carver
paid attention, too, inspecting every inch of the forest floor as he walked very slowly between the trees, stopping to look around at the state of the low-lying branches and undergrowth through which he passed.
There was nothing to see: no footprints, no trampled plants, no sign whatever that anyone had been there. More minutes dragged by, and still nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe he’d got himself worked up about nothing.
And then he spotted it: a scattering of oak leaves on the ground. Nothing unusual about that… except that some of the leaves were much darker than the others, more rotten, and therefore older. They should have been lying beneath the top layer of newer, paler leaves. Something had disturbed them.
A few yards further on, Carver found a stone lying slightly to one side of a small depression in the earth from which it had been dislodged. There were no hoof-marks nearby: no horse had done this. Elsewhere, a twig from a sapling had been snapped at shoulder height.
They were only tiny deviations from the norm. Under normal circumstances, no one would notice them. Even to a trained eye, like Carver’s, the first impression had been subconscious. Only now did he realize that he must, at some level, have picked up the spoor of a man when he was riding through the woods, but refused to register the information.
The sound of barking echoed through the trees. Carver followed the noise until he came upon Buster, working away at the ground. This was the same place he’d run to when they’d last been up there. Beside him was a hole, filled with three or four empty plastic packets of military rations. Buster wasn’t paying any attention to them, though. He had found something far more interesting, and Carver realized what it must be. He took five quick strides towards the dog and yanked on his collar, pulling him away from the hole.
