by Tom Cain
54
Kensington Park Gardens
Alix could see Dmytryk Azarov’s lips move. She could hear the words he was saying. She knew — because he’d made a point of emphasizing this fact, as if to prove her importance to him — that he’d cancelled an important business meeting to be with her. But he was wasting his breath, because she felt so totally disconnected from him that none of it made any difference. He was as distant from her, and as unimportant, as the reporter on the screen of the television that was on, but ignored, in the far corner of the sitting room.
‘Don’t believe what they say in the papers about these women I was supposed to be seeing,’ Azarov was saying, working himself up into a fever of righteous indignation. ‘These… what do they call them?… party girls, who claim that I slept with them. It is all lies. These women just want money, and journalists are vermin who will spread any slander to sell their filthy rags…’
He felt he had to persuade her, that much was obvious. But Alix didn’t care if he’d slept with one party girl, or ten, or one hundred. Her head was filled with Carver. Her body was still sending reminders that he had been inside her, like pulsing echoes of their lovemaking.
‘All the time I was away, all I thought about was you,’ Azarov went on. ‘You were in my dreams. I missed your body next to mine…’
He didn’t realize that all he was doing was making Alix think of Carver’s body next to her. The memory of his touch was so vivid that it sent a little shiver through her, and made her catch her breath.
Azarov saw that tremor of emotion, and, of course, misinterpreted it. ‘You feel the same way, too! I knew it!’
Alix managed a wan smile as Azarov launched into another declaration of his passion for her. She was wondering how and when she was going to extract herself from Azarov’s life. She couldn’t possibly mention Carver. Irrespective of his own behaviour, Azarov did not take kindly to women who betrayed him, or the men with whom they slept. He would want revenge, and that frightened Alix, not just for Carver’s sake but also Azarov’s. He would not know what he was taking on.
She wondered where Carver was now. She knew what it meant when he disappeared the way he’d done last night. He was working. And she knew what that led to, too: violence, danger, secrecy and the constant worry of never knowing where he was and when, if ever, he would come home. By making love to him, and making herself so vulnerable to the effect he had on her, she had let that back into her life. She’d broken a vow she’d made to herself and…
Alix realized that Azarov had fallen silent. He was looking past her with an expression of total incredulity on his face. ‘Mother of God,’ he gasped, regaining the power of speech.
Alix turned to follow his staring eyes, and saw the television screen go blank, before the picture cut back to a pair of presenters trying to maintain some semblance of professional self-control.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
Azarov walked across to the remote control that was sitting beside the television, and rewound the picture. Alix watched explosions fall in upon themselves to leave intact metal towers and tanks. One helicopter flew backwards from the ground up into the sky, and another was magically reconstituted in mid-air. Then Azarov pressed play and the action was repeated, this time in the correct direction and at the right speed, ending in that terrible blank, dead screen. And as she watched Alix knew, with an intuitive certainty she could not possibly explain, that Carver was there. That blazing oil refinery had been the destination he had been heading for when he had left her lying in his bed.
He was there. And now, so soon after she had found him, Alix feared she had lost him for ever.
But while she worried about the personal cost of what had happened, Azarov was already working through the financial consequences. ‘This is exactly what Zorn said would happen. It’s almost as if… no, that’s impossible.’ He looked at Alix, talking to her now less as his lover than as another businessperson. ‘Do you think he knew this would happen? Or that he made it happen?’
Whatever Alix’s differences with Azarov, she shared with him the instinctive Russian belief that behind any disaster there was always a conspiracy. ‘That’s possible, of course it is,’ she said, her mind now fully engaged in the question. Carver had talked about Zorn, linking him to the woman she had known as Celina Novak. Now she could see connections starting to form in her mind between a string of previously separate elements: her mistrust of Zorn, her conviction that Carver had been at the refinery, and now the suggestion that Zorn had somehow been the instigator of the disaster there.
‘What will you do if Zorn really did plan all this?’ she asked Azarov. ‘I did warn you that I thought there was something suspicious about his scheme.’
Azarov grinned. ‘And I told you that a man should not pick up the dice unless he has the balls to lose everything on a single roll. I am very happy that I placed my money on Zorn. He has certainly rolled the dice. Surely, too, he will win.’
A picture of Nicholas Orwell appeared on the screen, as a presenter’s voice announced that he was missing, believed dead at the scene.
Now Azarov laughed out loud. ‘So he was willing to let his closest ally die to help his plan succeed. Ha! This Zorn is a man with iron in his soul.’
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Alix insisted. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘And you asked the wrong question, my beautiful darling. It should have been: what are we going to do? And I will tell you. We have been invited to go to the tennis at Wimbledon tomorrow with Malachi Zorn. If he still goes — and he will, I guarantee — then we will go with him. I want to take another close look at this man, and I would like you to do the same. I want to know exactly what he is made of, and a woman’s eye will see what a man’s does not. You know the saying: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I do not yet know whether Malachi Zorn is my greatest friend or my most bitter enemy. But either way, I will stay close.’
Dmytryk Azarov was by no means the only one of Malachi Zorn’s investors to be glued to the TV news. In his suite at Claridge’s, chosen at Charlene’s insistence because it had been designed by Diane von Furstenberg, Mort Lockheimer was cheering every horrific element of the disaster unfolding before his eyes. He had watched Zorn’s BBC interview and been puzzled by the way so much of it had been devoted to the risk of energy terrorism. Now he got it. Zorn had obviously been given some kind of inside information that an attack was imminent — either from the perpetrators or through leaks from the security forces; Lockheimer wasn’t bothered which. Zorn must have set up a bunch of short positions, just like he’d done so many times before. Now he was watching them all pay off in spades. And if Zorn was getting rich, so was Lockheimer.
Lockheimer was at least forty pounds overweight. His entire body was covered in a thick mat of black and grey hair, and the only thing covering it right now was a white towelling bathrobe. ‘What did I tell you!’ he exclaimed, grabbing Charlene in a gleeful bear hug. ‘That little fucker Zorn just hit the fuckin’ jackpot. Didn’t I say you should blow him… didn’t I?’
Charlene looked at her husband appraisingly. ‘He made us a lot, huh? Millions?’
‘Tens of millions, baby!’
She reached down and started undoing the knot of the towelling belt that was holding her husband’s robe together. ‘Well, in that case, sweetie, why don’t I just blow you?’
55
Rosconway
The Cabinet office staff had arranged for a St John Ambulance crew to be present at the conference, just in case anyone tripped over a pipe, or was taken ill. Somehow they had survived the blast with their vehicle intact. But Carver only had to take one look at the chalk-white skin and dazed eyes of the amateur volunteers to know that they were too traumatized by the overwhelming violence that they had just witnessed to be of any help. It made little difference: he and Schultz knew enough about basic battlefield medicine to tend to Nikki Wilkins’s immediate needs. They climbed up i
nto the ambulance and commandeered the splints, bandages and morphine shots they needed to stabilize her broken leg and head injury, and reduce the pain of the wounds. Then they carried Wilkins, still unconscious, back to the Audi, laid her out along the rear seat, and strapped her in as best they could.
‘Drive,’ said Carver. ‘Head for Pembroke. There’s got to be a hospital there.’
They were less than a mile down the road, still travelling beneath a pall of smoke that was spreading across the sky as far as the eye could see, before Carver had gone online and found both the location of the South Pembrokeshire Hospital and directions for getting there. He was about to offer Schultz his condolences for Tyrrell’s loss — nothing too overwrought, just a simple acknowledgement that a good man had gone — when the phone rang. It was Grantham. His first words were: ‘You’re alive.’
‘Don’t sound so disappointed,’ Carver replied.
‘You know, for once, I might actually be pleased to hear your voice,’ said Grantham. ‘So what the hell just happened?’
‘Someone stuck a dozen home-made mortar barrel tubes in an old Hiace van, loaded them with explosive shells, and blew the shit out of an entire refinery. And I should have stopped them.’
‘How?’
‘I wasn’t at the refinery when the shells hit. I was at the launch site.’
‘What do you mean? Had you found out what was happening?’
‘No, I’d worked out what might happen. I didn’t think there’d actually be anything there.’
‘Well, that’s as clear as mud.’
‘Sorry…’ It struck Carver that he might not be as out of it as that St John Ambulance crew, but his mind was still reeling as it struggled to process what he had just experienced. It was time he pulled himself together.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Here’s how it was done. The van that contained the mortars was parked inside an old barn, at a deserted farmyard about a kilometre from the refinery. The weapon was set to a timer, along with some kind of incendiary device — petrol by the smell of it. The moment the mortars fired, the van was burned out, removing all trace of the people who’d driven it or worked on the weapon. This was a professional job, straight out of the old IRA manual.’
‘Really? You think there were Paddies involved?’
‘Maybe… but it could just as easily have been one of ours. Anyone who served in Ulster during the Troubles, or even did bomb disposal work on this side of the Irish Sea, would have seen things like this.’
‘But how could they have known about the conference today?’
Carver thought for a moment: no, it was out of the question. ‘They couldn’t,’ he said, definitively. ‘Look, this was a totally last-minute event. No one had any warning. That’s why it was such a dog’s breakfast. The organization, the security, the media coverage — it was all a total joke. But this attack was the exact opposite. It was very carefully calculated. Whoever hit the refinery had every single one of those launcher tubes calibrated to the last millimetre, the last bloody fraction of a degree. Each of those things hit a target. And making the launch tubes, the framework to hold them, all the projectiles… getting hold of the explosives… no, there wasn’t anything last-minute about that. I’d say weeks of preparation, even months, went into this.’
‘So what are you saying — that it was just a bloody coincidence? I’m not buying that.’
‘Why not? Stranger things have happened. But even if it was a coincidence that the attack and the conference were planned for the same place at the same time, I don’t think there was anything remotely coincidental about the time and place of the attack itself. Come on… someone blows the crap out of a massive oil refinery the day after Malachi Zorn’s told the whole world that eco-terrorism is the big new threat… What do you think?’
‘I think it’s a bit bloody adjacent, certainly.’
‘Exactly, so what are the markets doing right now? Let me guess: oil price rocketing, stocks crashing, pound through the floor…’
‘All of that and more,’ Grantham agreed. ‘It’s a total nightmare. The economy was weak to begin with. An event like this could send it over the edge.’
‘Meanwhile Zorn’s cashing in. He’s got to be. The whole thing was a set-up.’
‘Except for Orwell… how do you explain that? Are you seriously saying Zorn deliberately sacrificed his own right-hand man?’
‘I don’t know,’ Carver admitted. ‘He could have done. The amount of money he stands to make, my guess is he’d do just about anything. But you’re right… I don’t have any concrete link between this and Zorn.’
‘I might be able to help you with that,’ Grantham said. ‘Early this morning, hours before the refinery was hit, someone went to a farmhouse in the middle of Wales, miles from anywhere, and executed four men and a woman. According to the locals, they’d been staying there for the past few days. The police are searching the place now. They’ve found evidence of a bomb-making factory: a couple of kilos of home-made explosives, plus several discarded gas canisters of various sizes, steel girders, welding equipment-’
‘Exactly what you’d need to make the set-up I saw,’ Carver pointed out.
‘Precisely.’
‘But everyone was killed. What good is that?’
‘Not everyone. One of them got away, a woman, name of Deirdre Bull. She tried to make a run for it. Whoever attacked the farmhouse tracked her, shot her, and left her for dead. But she lived. In fact, she’s lying in the intensive care unit at Bronglais General Hospital, Aberystwyth, right now. Oh, and here’s an interesting titbit: when she was rescued she even told the paramedics they had to stop the attack
…’
‘What? She told them about Rosconway?’
‘No such luck. She just mentioned an attack. They thought she meant the one on the farm.’
‘Christ, has she been interviewed yet?’
‘Apparently not. The local coppers have been told she’s not well enough to talk.’
‘Oh, bollocks to that!’
For the first time the hint of a smile entered Grantham’s voice. ‘That’s what I thought, too. Why don’t you get up there, see if you can get in for a word with Ms Bull? Play at being Andy Jenkins, pillar of the MoD, a while longer. I’ll have a word with the local police chief, appeal to his sense of patriotism at a time of national emergency, so you shouldn’t have any trouble from him.’
‘What about the medics?’
‘Oh, just use your natural charm, Carver. How can they resist?’
‘I’d better get going. It’s got to be a two-hour drive to Aberystwyth, minimum.’
‘No need. There’s an airport at Haverfordwest, just the other side of Milford Haven from where you are now. They’ve got a helicopter charter outfit there. Get a chopper, go to the hospital, get Bull to link this to Zorn, and then get back here to London. We need to discuss what to do about Zorn. And speaking of that particular devil, he’s about to make a public statement, live on every TV channel known to mankind. I’d better see what he has to say for himself.’
Carver put away the phone and turned on the car radio, tuning it to Radio 5 Live, and heard the voice of a news reporter saying she was outside the mysterious American billionaire Malachi Zorn’s Surrey mansion, and was expecting him to appear at any moment.
‘Zorn?’ asked Schultz, as they entered the outskirts of Pembroke. ‘Is that the bastard you said was responsible for what just happened?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’d like to tear that fucker limb from fucking limb.’
Carver looked at Schultz. He’d planned on doing the Zorn job alone. But there was a lot to be said for having the massive SBS man on his side. He thought about his plans and the specific ways in which Schultz might improve them. Yes, it could certainly work.
‘Suppose I helped you do that?’ he asked.
‘You taking the piss, boss?’
‘Never been more serious. Listen, no one knows whether you’re dead or alive rig
ht now…’
‘Nah, suppose not.’
‘And it’s going to be days before they work out the final casualty lists. So you could just disappear off the grid, couldn’t you?’
‘The CO’s not going to like that. I’m a company sergeant major. I’m supposed to set an example, do my duty, not piss off on private jollies.’
‘Don’t worry about that. The man I was just talking to is a very influential individual. If I ask him to square it for you, trust me, there won’t be a problem.’
Schultz pulled up at a red light and gave Carver a long, searching look. ‘What exactly was it you said you did for a living, boss?’
‘I didn’t say.’
‘But we’re going after this Zorn geezer?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you know a bloke who can just call up Poole, get my CO on the line, and tell him what to do?’
‘Yes.’
The light turned green and Schultz drove away. ‘And what exactly do you want from me?’
‘Drop the girl at the hospital and get me to the airport at Haverfordwest. Then head for London. Give me a number and I’ll call you. We’ll be doing the job tomorrow. We’re going to need someone else, too, someone we can trust. And I mean, absolutely. One word of this gets out-’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got the right man. He was in the Service, got out about six months ago. Just about to fuck off to Iraq with one of them Yank security companies.’
‘And he’s good?’
‘One of the best.’
‘Then that’ll do me.’
‘And we’re going to take this Zorn bastard out?’
‘Well, Snoopy,’ said Carver, ‘just you wait and see.’
On the radio the presenter was saying, ‘And now let’s cross back, live, to Surrey, where we are about to hear an official statement from the man who predicted a tragedy like today’s, and who was a close personal friend of the late Nicholas Orwell. I can see on my monitor that the statement is about to begin. So this is Malachi Zorn…’
