Assassin

by Tom Cain

  Buster snarled at him, furious to have been denied his prize. At the bottom of the hole the top of another plastic bag was poking through the crumbled earth. Carver did not have to take it out to know that it was filled with human faeces. He’d dug enough holes like this in his time.

  Someone had been here all right, someone with military training, used to covering their tracks and lying low in enemy territory. He took a look at the ration bags. There were still fresh scraps of food inside. Whoever had eaten them had arrived within the past few days… just like Carver. That suggested he might have been the one under surveillance, not Maddy. The trash told him something else: the watcher wanted Carver to know that he had been there. Otherwise, he could simply have taken it all away with him.

  But who would want to set up an observation post just to watch him fool around with a new girlfriend? And how could anyone have known he’d be there? He hadn’t planned to fly to Boise, the whole thing was a last-minute decision.

  He racked his brain, trying to remember the airports he’d been through on the way from North Carolina, hoping he could dredge up more anomalous images: people who’d looked out of place, or followed him, or seemed too self-consciously relaxed when he looked in their direction. Nothing came to him.

  Carver was walking back downhill now, Buster following reluctantly and disconsolately behind. There was a gnawing, energy-sapping tension in his gut as the realization struck him that if he really were the surveillance subject there was only one possibility left: the watcher in the woods had been directed there by Maddy herself.

  Carver thought back to their first meeting, that chance encounter in the Hôtel du Cap bar. That could easily have been a set-up. Same with the text message a few weeks ago – had it really been as randomly out of the blue as it seemed? And when Buster had caught the scent of the surveillance, out on that ride, hadn’t she been just a little too quick to say that it was a rabbit, too eager to change the subject?

  The man who’d walked up to her Bronco at the hot-dog stand, standing so close to the car, talking so confidingly: he’d skedaddled right out of there the moment he’d seen Carver turning back towards the car. Sure, he could have been a creep. But he could also have been her control. Her being pissed off by what he’d said certainly didn’t contradict that. Carver had argued with the men who’d given him orders often enough.

  And take that whole scene at the diner. Maddy goes to the bathroom. A few minutes later two bozos turn up out of nowhere and start an entirely unprovoked fight. Meanwhile, the same grey car is waiting out in the parking lot. What’s all that about?

  Now that Carver thought about it, he knew nothing about this woman, beyond what she had told him. He had never met the mysterious Mr Cross. In the time they’d been on the ranch, she’d never introduced him to her family, who supposedly lived so close by. And the ease with which she’d fallen for him… Carver was not given to insecurity or false modesty, but he didn’t think he was any kind of Casanova, either. Beautiful women did not line up to throw themselves at him. Yet this one had.

  Or maybe he was just being paranoid.

  He walked back to the house, telling himself not to let his suspicions wreck everything. He was having a good time. Just enjoy it.

  Maddy was in the kitchen, fixing herself some breakfast. ‘I was wondering where you guys had got to,’ she said as Buster bounded towards her.

  ‘We just went for an early-morning walk in the woods,’ Carver said. ‘Looked around a bit. Did some male bonding.’

  He was watching her eyes. Looking for any tell-tale flicker of alarm when he mentioned looking in the woods. There was none, just the smile of a woman who’s pleased to see her man.

  ‘That’s great,’ Maddy said. ‘You want eggs?’

  25

  Arjan Visar looked at the men sitting around him at the table. Every one of them could be counted as his competitor. Each would happily have killed any of the others if there was a profit to be had from that death. Now, though, they had been forced together by a greater, common enemy.

  Visar was used to making deals with his supposed enemies. He was an Albanian Muslim. Yet he dealt with gangs run by Catholic Croatians, Orthodox Christian Serbs, and his fellow-Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. All of those groups hated one another, but all recognized that the continued passage of drugs, women and even weapons was more important than any political or religious dispute. So when he heard about the threat posed by President Roberts’s anti-trafficking initiative, Visar understood immediately that any disagreements the men in his business might have were far outweighed by the long-term threats to all their livelihoods if Roberts should happen to succeed.

  The venue he chose for his summit meeting was, ironically, the presidential suite of a seven-star hotel in Dubai, just a few miles from the squalid basement bar where Lara Dashian had been bought and sold and Tiger Dey had swallowed one cocktail cherry too many. The city was geographically convenient for the men Visar had in mind and was, in any case, an informal neutral zone for international crime. Asian, former-Communist and European entrepreneurs whose fortunes came from less-than-savoury activities poured huge amounts of cash into the city and largely desisted from the routine violence which was so central to their business models elsewhere.

  Visar’s guests around the $25,000-a-night suite’s gold-leaf dining table comprised two Russians, a Chinese and an Indian. One of the Russians owned a Premiership football club, another a Formula 1 motor-racing team. The Indian had a cricket eleven in his nation’s multi-billion-dollar Premier League. The Chinese possessed a string of racehorses that dominated tracks from Royal Ascot to Hong Kong. All had yachts, jets, old masters and young mistresses of the greatest possible beauty and expense, replaced at regular intervals.

  For now, the mistresses could wait. There was business to be done.

  The meeting was being conducted in English, since that was the only common language for all five men.

  ‘We all understand the proper way to do business,’ Visar began. ‘We talk to one another and because we are men of honour, we give our word and we make a deal. But sometimes, there is no deal. There is no talk. Sometimes you must strike fast, like a snake that bites a man before the man can tread on its head. That is why we are here. We must strike, like the snake.’

  ‘And this snake, whom does it bite?’ The voice, a deep, guttural rumble, belonged to Naum Titov, leader of Russia’s Podolskaya crime gang.

  ‘The American President, Lincoln Roberts,’ replied Visar, the calm matter-of-factness of his voice impressing the other men more forcefully than any melodramatic flourish would have done.

  ‘What are you, fucking crazy, man?’ Titov exclaimed. ‘Kill President? Forget it. Impossible.’

  ‘Might one ask why you think this is necessary?’ inquired Kumar Karn, head of the most powerful Mumbai syndicate, in the old-fashioned, oratorical manner of an expensively educated Indian.

  ‘Because Roberts is the man who will tread on our heads,’ said Visar. ‘If we do not kill him, he will kill us, or at least kill our business. Roberts is about to make a major policy announcement. Trust me, I know this. He will commit the Army of the United States – also the Navy, Air Force, intelligence agencies, everything – to fight, in these words exactly, “the unspeakable evil of the global slave trade”. He is, we can say, declaring war on people-trafficking. I need not tell you what effect this might have on our commercial activities. That is why the President must die. There is no alternative.’

  ‘American presidents declare many wars,’ remarked Wu Xiao-Long, the 489 or supreme leader of the global Wo Shing Wo triad organization. ‘The wars on drugs and terror failed. Why will this be different?’

  ‘Perhaps because it will not be opposed, night and day, from within America itself,’ Karn suggested.

  He got up from his chair and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window from which all the lights of Dubai could be seen, glittering in a dazzling profusion that defied all talk of economic collaps
e. Karn did not stop to admire the view. Instead he turned back to look at the men at the table.

  ‘Any American president knows that many of his own country’s intellectuals, its celebrities and its young people harbour a profound suspicion of any overseas conflict. They feel obliged to oppose it as a matter of principle. The media, also, exaggerate defeats, but ignore victories. They accuse their own soldiers of atrocities while turning a blind eye to those committed against them. Therefore, wherever and whenever America wages war, its campaigns will constantly be undermined by negativity and hostility from within.

  ‘But I think that Mr Roberts has been very cunning in his choice of enemy. For who, in America of all nations, can possibly stand up for slavery? This war will appeal to their bottomless feelings of guilt. The same principle will surely apply to Western Europe as well. The very people who are usually most vociferous in their opposition to Uncle Sam will be those applauding his new venture. It is, I think, a most astute and clever war to declare.’

  ‘Not clever for us,’ growled Titov, thinking of the string of brothels he owned in more than twenty major American cities.

  ‘My point exactly,’ said Visar, who was Titov’s partner in that operation, and the supplier of more than half the women involved.

  ‘Then this is serious for sure,’ agreed Wu, refilling his glass. ‘My snakeheads will not be happy. Already they get shit from the US Coast Guards, losing many people, hurting their profits. Now it can only be worse. So, Mr Visar, I agree that we must act. But how? At what time, what place?’

  ‘Less than two weeks from now,’ said Visar, ‘the President is planning to give a speech at a conference on slavery in Bristol, England. This speech has not yet been announced to the public. But the US Secret Service is already in Bristol, preparing for the visit.’

  ‘Then they are surely more prepared than are we,’ remarked Karn. ‘That must be to our disadvantage.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ Visar conceded. ‘But the President is not making it easy for his staff. He will not make his announcement indoors at the conference itself, before an audience of a few hundred delegates. Instead, he will speak to a crowd of thousands in the open air. Lincoln Roberts wants to make his war on slavery a movement of the masses, so that his opponents must battle against a great weight of public opinion.’

  ‘Surely, then, public outrage will be all the greater if any harm should befall him,’ said Karn. ‘Roberts is popular, indeed he is loved. To be associated with his demise could be counter-productive in the extreme.’

  ‘We will not be associated,’ said Visar. ‘Any US president has enemies aplenty. Let the Americans argue about which of them did this. Maybe someone will choose to claim responsibility. There is a man who hides in the hills of Waziristan. He would be happy to make the world think he could kill an American president. Or maybe we will find some other man, and place the blame on him.’

  Naum Titov grunted in approval. ‘Then let us have our killing.’

  26

  Damon Tyzack was met at Heathrow by a uniformed chauffeur and told that Arjan Visar wanted to meet him. Immediately.

  He was driven straight to Farnborough airport, less than twenty miles away, where a private jet was waiting to take him to Málaga on the Spanish Costa del Sol. From there a helicopter ferried him on a fifteen-minute journey to the private landing pad tucked away behind Visar’s villa.

  Tyzack was not a man given to being impressed, but even he was astounded by the opulence in which Visar lived. The main house was built around a colonnaded courtyard with an ornate stone fountain at its centre. Marble mosaics, crafted in a gaudy profusion of patterns and colours, covered the floor of every room. Massive sofas were strewn with shiny satin cushions decorated with swirls and curlicues of golden thread. The vulgarity of it all was overpowering. This was a retreat fit for a Roman emperor, and a Nero or a Caligula at that.

  Arjan Visar, when he appeared, was oddly out of keeping with his home. Small and scrawny with the pallid skin of a sickly child, he was dressed in plain black shirt and trousers. Strands of hair were plastered unconvincingly over his balding scalp. Tyzack could have broken him like a twig. But then, any of the thugs who took Visar’s orders could have done the same. And yet they did not. They accepted Visar’s control over an operation that he had grown from its beginnings amongst the petty brigands of rural Albania to its current position of dominance over a trade that stretched from the furthest backwaters of China, Africa and the former Communist states to the greatest cities in Europe and North America.

  Visar caught Tyzack gazing at his surroundings and smiled apologetically. ‘This was my brother’s property. It is not to my taste. But my wife likes it very much, so…’ He shrugged as helplessly as any other henpecked husband.

  Tyzack knew that Visar would have his wife killed without a second thought, if he ever thought it necessary or deserved. Rumour had it that he had been behind the death of his own brother, which had led to his taking total control of the clan. That, too, was worthy of an emperor.

  A servant appeared at Visar’s side. ‘You have had a long journey,’ said Visar. ‘Would you like a drink, some food maybe? Whatever you want, the kitchens can supply.’

  ‘Just a glass of water, please,’ said Tyzack, determined to keep a clear head. He had carried out jobs for the Visars many times. But his orders had come from Visar’s henchmen, communicating by phone and email. This was his first personal contact with Visar himself. That meant he was either in for very good news, or very, very bad. Tyzack told himself that Visar would hardly have carted him all this way just for a bollocking, or even a bullet in the back of the head. There had to be more to it than that.

  ‘I congratulate you on your recent work, Mr Tyzack,’ said Visar. ‘Now I have more for you.’

  Visar clicked his fingers and another servant stepped silently out of the shadows. He carried a laptop, which he placed on a table in front of Visar and then opened.

  ‘Thank you,’ the Albanian said as his servant disappeared again. He looked up from the screen and caught Tyzack’s eye. ‘Let me explain…’

  * * *

  Tyzack had switched from water to an ice-cold San Miguel beer. He had wolfed down a freshly made club sandwich. And all the time he had been going over the information Visar had given him. Tyzack had never been regarded as academically gifted but, contrary to some of his teachers’ scathing reports, he lacked neither intelligence nor application. He simply needed to be interested before he made an effort. The mechanics of killing interested him very much indeed. It was his special subject.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think I can do it. Won’t be easy, of course. He’s the President of the United States. He has a lot of very clever, well-trained people working very hard to stop him getting hurt. So let’s cut out the things we can’t do. No point trying to attack Air Force One. There’s no aircraft on the planet with better, newer countermeasures against any missile known to man.

  ‘The landing’s a no-no, too. He’s coming into RAF Fairford. That’s actually a US Air Force base and they keep B2 stealth bombers there, so it’s already sealed up tighter than a gnat’s arse – if you’ll excuse the expression. No way anyone’s breaking in unless they’re on a suicide mission. And I’m not.’

  ‘You did not strike me as that type,’ said Visar.

  ‘From Fairford, he’ll take Marine One to Bristol, call it twenty minutes’ flight time, give or take,’ Tyzack continued. ‘The exact route won’t be determined till the day, which makes it virtually impossible to guarantee a hand-held missile strike. He’s landing at College Green, opposite Bristol Cathedral, and you can bet they’ll have Cadillac One pulled up right under the chopper’s disc. He’ll be out one door and in the next in three seconds, and if there’s an angle for a shot from anywhere at any point, then some Secret Service agent’s made a cock-up. Forget that.

  ‘The President’s car itself is totally impregnable. They may call it Cadillac One but the only thing about it that’s a Cadd
y is the badge. That thing is a tank. Even the windows are transparent armour. You can’t shoot it, gas it, blow the tyres, nothing. And there’ll be twenty-odd motors back and front of it, stuffed with armed men. It’s only a few hundred yards from the landing site to the stage at Broad Quay so the motorcade’ll be almost as long as the journey.’

  ‘I get the point, Mr Tyzack. You do not think the President can be attacked on the road.’

  ‘Exactly. The only point he’s going to be vulnerable is when he’s actually onstage. So… may I?’

  He gestured at the laptop. Visar nodded and swivelled it round so that the screen was facing Tyzack, who spent a few seconds typing instructions before turning the computer again so that both men had a view of the screen.

  ‘Google Earth,’ he said, ‘best innovation in the history of crime. Gives any man his own private spy satellite. For example, let’s find the precise grid references of the point on which Roberts’s stage will be constructed. Here we go: fifty-one degrees, twenty-seven minutes and eight-point-five-seven seconds North, and two degrees, thirty-five minutes, fifty-one-point-four-seven seconds West.’

  ‘I can read a reference, Mr Tyzack, is that really necessary?’

  Tyzack grinned broadly. ‘Oh yes, Mr Visar, it is absolutely necessary. That reference is what will kill the President. And I know just how I’ll do it.’

  27

  ‘Ten million dollars,’ said Visar when Tyzack had finished his explanation. ‘That is a very generous figure and it is not open to negotiation. I will pay you half in cash. The other half I will give you in kind: women, territories, rights to certain operations. Over time, these properties will prove far more valuable than a straight payment. Before we conclude our agreement, however, I need to be sure that the technical side of the plan is feasible. Can you be certain of that?’