Assassin

by Tom Cain

  The building on the left-hand corner of the junction was being renovated. There was scaffolding all the way up the walls and a skip outside on the pavement. The workmen had used a plank to run their barrows of rubble and waste up to the skip. And to make the job of pushing the barrow easier, they’d put the plank on the uphill side of the skip.

  Carver swooped left, straightened up again, picked up the cadence of his pedalling to take his speed even higher, lined up his front wheel with the plank and prayed.

  He hit the plank like a tightrope walker sprinting over Niagara Falls, kept pedalling like a maniac to maintain his momentum, and then gave a quick pull on the handlebars as he hurtled into the air.

  He cleared the skip. He saw the nearest man in the line throw himself out of the way. For an instant he thought he was going to smack into the side of one of the Mercs, but instead he landed on the bonnet, wobbled for a moment with the impact, and then ricocheted off it on to the tarmac. Carver swerved between two oncoming cars, jerked the handlebars again to get him over the kerb on the far side of the road, and then kept moving downhill on the next stretch of Karl Johans Gate.

  Behind him he heard shouts, slamming car doors, revving engines, a squeal of tyres and furious blaring of car horns. One look back confirmed what his ears had already told him. The Mercs had pulled across the road and on to the pedestrian paving. And now they were coming downhill, right after him, scattering the men and women in their path, in machines whose straight-line speed would run him down in a matter of moments.

  They hadn’t shot at him, though, and it told Carver that they wanted him alive. They wouldn’t use their weapons unless they had exhausted all other means of stopping him. But they still had a lot more means up their sleeves.

  The leading Mercedes was roaring up behind him, its front bumper almost touching his rear wheel. Carver swung right, picking his way between the people fleeing from the onrushing cars, trying to get some minuscule, temporary advantage from his bike’s manoeuvrability.

  He was running down the side of Karl Johans Gate now, sticking close to the buildings. Several of the bars and stores had put signs out on the paving. There were metal litter-bins placed at regular intervals. Their frames were firmly embedded in concrete plinths, as were official signs that marked this as a pedestrian zone. They were as immovable as bollards, so Carver ran between them and the buildings, gaining some small degree of protection as the two Mercedes roared along beside him like tigers in a zoo, eyeing up a tasty child kept from them only by the bars of their cage.

  Then just up ahead of him he saw a couple sheltering in a shadowy recess he took at first glance for a doorway. A second look told him it was a narrow alleyway between two shops, almost close enough to touch on either side.

  ‘Move!’ he yelled.

  The guy glanced back over his shoulder, saw Carver and leaped out of his way, pulling his girlfriend with him.

  Carver turned into the alley, not even trying to get round the full ninety degrees, but half turning the front wheel and letting it bounce off the far wall and ricochet him into the opening. The alley was far darker than the street, lit only by a single bulb above the back entrance to a clothing store. There were cardboard boxes piled outside it, next to an overflowing wheelie bin. Carver stopped for a second as he went past, leaning over to yank the bin out into the middle of the alley. He kicked out at the boxes, sending them flying, creating as much of a barrier as he could around the bin, then picked up the pace again.

  The alley ran slightly downhill and then suddenly fell away down a flight of a dozen steps. Carver stood up on the pedals, letting his bent legs act as shock absorbers as he clattered down, hit the bottom and hurtled out of a narrow opening into an enclosed courtyard, surrounded on all sides by an apparently unbroken square of looming buildings. But there were three cars parked in the yard, so there had to be a way out. He saw it: an arch, in the far corner, diagonally across the yard.

  Now there were shouts and running footsteps coming from the alleyway behind Carver. He pumped on the pedals and disappeared under the arch. It opened on to the cross street. The traffic flowed one way from Carver’s right to his left, going uphill, back towards the junction with Karl Johans Gate and the two Mercedes. The obvious move for a man on a bike was to turn right, against the traffic, making it much harder for any car to follow him.

  So Carver turned left.

  There was a tram clattering down the middle of the road, moving as fast as the cars around it. It was modern, smooth and squared-off, painted in two-tone blue, and split into three coaches with concertina links. Carver raced round the back of the tram, then turned uphill, following its path, squeezing his bike into the narrow gap between the tram and the pavement. His plan was simple. He wanted to get up alongside the tram, grab hold of the folding fabric between two of the coaches and then hang on for the ride.

  He just hadn’t counted on the tram going faster than he was. It was pulling away, leaving him exposed. With every second he was getting closer to the two Mercedes. He had to keep the tram between them and him. He forced his burning thighs to push harder and faster down on to the pedals. His chest was heaving with exertion, his skin burning hot and liquid with sweat.

  He was back alongside the last coach now. Just next to him he could see a couple of Oriental girls giggling as they watched his desperate attempts to keep up. They smiled and waved. One raised a camera and took a shot through the window, briefly dazzling him with her flash.

  Then he was past them and the joint between the coaches was almost within his grasp. Carver took his hands off the handles, leaned towards the tram, felt the bike start to swerve beneath him, losing its grip on the road surface, then grabbed at the thick, rubbery material and clung on for dear life.

  He stayed there as the tram continued across the junction with Karl Johans Gate, past the two Mercedes – Carver snatched a quick glimpse through the window and saw them parked on the paving of Karl Johans Gate, a man standing by one of them, talking into a mobile phone – and on across the top of a square, in the middle of which stood a church surrounded by trees. Now the tram started to slow down. Up ahead, Carver could see a line of people standing by a shelter, just before the next junction. They got up from their seats, picked up their bags and came closer to the edge of the pavement as the tram slowed down for the stop. Carver slowed too, letting go of the tram and pulling over to the side of the road. Then he got off the bike, propped it up behind the shelter as inconspicuously as possible and joined the other passengers as they clambered aboard.

  The tram moved off, turning right at the junction before heading downhill again, parallel to Karl Johans Gate, going the same direction Carver had been taking before he’d ducked into the alley. Ahead of him he could see an open, modern plaza and on the far side of that a neon sign over a glass-fronted entrance that said ‘Oslo Sentralstasjon’. The word looked strange, but when he said it in his mind it made perfect sense: Central Station.

  When the tram stopped again, Carver got off and raced across the paved square, under the awning and into the station. Ahead of him rose an escalator. Above it hung a dark blue sign, printed with Norwegian words in white and English in yellow. Carver read ‘Station hall’ as he dashed on to the escalator. He stood still on the moving steps, happy to let them do the work as he checked to see if his pursuers had caught up with him.

  He couldn’t spot any sign of them. He’d made it.

  For now, at any rate.

  39

  Carver stood in the main concourse of Oslo station while his escape plans fell to pieces around him. There were no night trains to Stockholm, or anywhere else outside the country: nothing till seven the next morning. In any case, that was irrelevant. Carver had no money. It had only struck him when he stood in front of the ticket-machine that his wallet was still in his jacket, draped on his chair in the café of the King Haakon Hotel. He’d patted his trouser pockets, in that futile way men have, as if the act of striking their groins with their han
ds can somehow magic a lost possession into being. Needless to say, the magic had not worked.

  He grimaced, hissed a single, heartfelt expletive and then cursed himself for letting his guard down. In the old days, when he worked on the principle that he might be forced on the run at any moment, he never went anywhere without a money-belt round his waist, containing cash, credit cards in at least two identities, matching passports and a clean pre-paid SIM card. Now he’d gone straight, he was as helpless as any other forgetful civilian.

  So what did he have?

  His most important asset was his phone. There wasn’t much battery power left, so he’d have to ration its use, but its text log contained the messages he’d supposedly received from Jack Grantham. They were the only evidence in his defence, the only suggestion that he had called the fatal room-number at someone else’s behest.

  Besides the phone, his pockets produced his day-card for the Oslo public-transport network, a couple of two-euro coins left over from Paris, and sixty-eight Norwegian kroner in change. So was there anywhere he could go with that? He looked at a route map. The nearest station to the Swedish border was Halden, due south of Oslo. There was a train leaving in eight minutes’ time, but the cheapest ticket was almost two hundred kroner. He’d just have to jump it and hope to avoid the ticket-collector once he got on board.

  Carver looked around, as he had done repeatedly since he arrived at the station, sweeping the concourse for his enemies. This time he saw one, a man, apparently buying a bottle of water from a newsagent’s stand. His back was turned to Carver, but his shaven head and the line of the black nylon bomber jacket stretched over his massive shoulders were familiar. He’d been third from the left in the picket line of men arrayed in front of the Mercedes.

  Very calmly, without any sign of haste, Carver walked away from the ticket-machine.

  The man put the mineral water back in the cooler and followed Carver, slightly behind him and a few paces to his right.

  Carver spotted another familiar face, apparently losing interest in the departures board.

  He was still walking quite slowly, as were the men tailing him. They were like competitors in a track-cycling sprint, idling around the track, waiting to see whose nerve would crack first, who’d be the first to try a burst of speed.

  Carver walked beneath a sign directing passengers towards the airport express, the left-luggage office and the south exit. Ahead he could see another set of escalators. People were slowing down as they reached them, manoeuvring cases on and off. A mother was taking hold of her small child.

  Now Carver ran.

  He sprinted up to the start of the escalator, barging one man out of the way. Then he grabbed the long handle of a large roller suitcase and yanked it out of its owner’s hand, dragging it behind him as he kept moving. As he stepped on to the downward escalator, Carver swung the case round so that it toppled over, blocking the entrance to the escalator. He got moving again, taking the moving steps three at a time while a barging, complaining, pleading knot of humanity formed around the case.

  He reached the bottom and dashed towards the exit. Carver dared not slow down for an instant. He did not need to look behind him to know that his pursuers, whoever they were, had not been long delayed.

  40

  Tyzack had a vision in his head of how he wanted this to go. He’d make Carver sweat. He’d even give him the illusion that he might get away. But that illusion wouldn’t last long. Tyzack had always been the fitter, faster and stronger man: that was one of the many things that had been so unjust about the way Carver had betrayed him. So he’d win, that was inevitable. He’d hunt Carver down, corner him and take him away – he had the place prepared, a farmhouse miles from anywhere. And then, when Carver was tired and hungry, when the arrogance had been knocked out of him and he knew for sure that no one was coming for him, Tyzack would sit down with him and have a little chat. They’d talk about the old days, put a few things straight before Tyzack pulled the plug.

  So far, it was all going nicely. Carver had got away from his men in Karl Johans Gate, but that was all part of the game. It would have been a disappointment to catch him too easily. And the momentary illusion of success had only made Carver’s failure at the station all the sweeter: it had been a joy to watch him search for the wallet. Only a few minutes gone, and already he was broke. His only shirt was covered with blood, and once he stopped running, he’d feel the evening chill something rotten.

  But Carver wasn’t going to stop running for a while yet. He’d keep moving till he felt the way they used to on training runs – past the point when you wanted to stop, and the point where you wanted to puke, to the point where you wanted to die. Tyzack would make sure of that.

  He’d had enough of leaving it to his men to do the job. As Carver fled from the station, Tyzack stepped out of the fast-food joint from which he’d been observing the main concourse and broke into a steady jog. As he set off in pursuit, Tyzack felt in great shape, well on top of his game. This was a race he was going to win.

  41

  A motorway ran past the railway station before plunging into a tunnel that hid its traffic out of sight of the city. Carver didn’t stop moving, trusting in his agility and the good sense of Norwegian drivers to keep him alive. He crossed the last two lanes and, breathing heavily now, ran beneath a ramp that carried traffic up to a raised intersection. He needed to slow down, get his bearings and gather his strength. As he looked around it struck him that he’d been driven right down to the sea. The men on his trail were like a pack of hounds running down a stag, backing him into a corner till he had nowhere left to run.

  Ahead of him, to his left, lay a long thin strip of water that must once have been a dock. Away to his right, past a line of buildings, he could see a car park, beyond which was a much larger expanse of open water. Carver did not believe in stealing cars. He did not approve of petty criminals who preyed on innocent civilians, nor did he enjoy attracting undue attention from the police. But it was a bit late for scruples now. If he was going to get away, he’d need wheels. He turned right, picked up his pace again, and made for the car park.

  He was running parallel to a development, which lay between the narrow dock and the car park, the size of a full city block. At first glance, it looked ordinary enough: modern, flat-roofed, maybe half a dozen storeys tall. The lower storeys were glass-fronted, revealing workshops of some kind. As he went further, however, Carver realized that this was actually just a rear extension to a much larger structure. And the more he saw of it, the stranger it became.

  The whole thing was an exercise in asymmetry and skewed geometry, with almost no true horizontal or vertical lines: everything was tilted or off-centre. Its angular aggression reminded Carver of a gigantic, architectural stealth bomber, as though all the brain-scrambling planes of stone and glass had been chosen to deflect radar beams. Then he realized that there were people walking along great ramps that ran up the side of the building along and out on to the roof. Some were standing at the very top of the façade, waving down to friends on the ground far below, like figures in a Maurice Escher drawing of staircases that lead round and round in an infinite, impossible spiral.

  This must be the famous Oslo Opera House that Thor Larsson had mentioned.

  He was approaching the car park now. A narrow strip of water ran like a moat between the car park and the opera house, bridged by a single stone walkway. He looked around, trying to find a car to take, one left in a place where he would not be spotted.

  It wasn’t going to be easy. A cluster of figures was standing at the near side of the opera house roof, directly opposite him. For now, their attention was directed across the city towards the pillar of smoke and dust still rising from the wreckage of the King Haakon Hotel, but if they ever dropped their eyes, they would have a clear view over the parked cars. There were more people dotted around him, going to and from their vehicles.

  A group of sightseers was standing by the sea wall, taking in the v
iew of the opera house and the water. One of them was pointing across to the far side of the harbour, where a giant ferry, belching black smoke from its funnel, was just getting under way, slowly nosing its way out of its berth and into open water. The moment the tourists lost interest in it and turned back in Carver’s direction, they’d see him. Meanwhile, the men pursuing him were getting closer. He ducked down between two lines of cars and considered his situation.

  He had no money to buy a way out. He had no weapon with which to fight. He had no tools with which to force open a car. His only hope was to hijack a car as it arrived or left the car park. He’d get out of town, dump the car and think of his next move.

  Carver was hiding behind a chunky Audi Q7. It was fast, tough and equipped with four-wheel drive: the perfect getaway vehicle but as inaccessible to his bare hands as Fort Knox. He heard the sound of a car coming into the car park, its tyres crunching on the gravelly surface. Raising his head and peering through the Audi’s windows, he spotted an old VW Golf manoeuvring into a space. That would have to do.

  The moment the engine died, Carver made his move. He got to his feet and sprinted towards the car.

  The car door was opening. The driver emerged, a grey-haired, elderly woman. Carver hesitated. Christ, had he really been reduced to beating up old ladies for their car keys?

  As he stopped, he heard a shout. He couldn’t make out the exact words, but he didn’t have to. He turned his head and saw three men walking towards him, sixty or seventy metres away. They were spread out, each walking between a different line of cars and they moved with a calm, purposeful stride as they cut off Carver’s line of escape, knowing that they had him.

  The middle man of the three was Damon Tyzack. Carver could see that he was smiling, just as he had been at the King Haakon Hotel. But his mocking smirk had given way to the rapacious, scavenging grin of the hyena, made in anticipation of the taste of blood, the tearing of flesh and the cracking of bones against teeth.