by Tom Cain
Just as Carver pressed ‘send’, the waiter started walking away from the table, and that unexpected motion acted like a wake-up call, snapping Carver straight back into an alert and focused state of mind. That waiter had moved like a man who had come to a realization of some kind and made a conscious decision to act on it. That wasn’t in itself suspicious. A bored man on minimum wage checks the time, wonders how much more of his shift there is to go, then decides he’d better do some work before he gets a bollocking. But if that were the case, why did the waiter leave the champagne behind? And why did his watch look like a Rolex? It could have been a cheap fake, of course. Or was the watch real, and the waiter an imitation? No one with any half-decent military, police or intelligence training would make such a basic mistake. So the man had to be an amateur of some kind. He could be a reporter looking for a scoop, or a paparazzi with a hidden camera, in which case he was a serious irritation, but posed no immediate danger. Or he could have serious, hostile intent. The attack on Rosconway had been planned by experienced professionals, but executed by gullible beginners, disposable fall guys to be used and thrown away. Was Zorn planning something similar here?
It had taken Carver just a few seconds to collate, analyse and process all this data: considering all the various possibilities, rejecting some, accepting others on an essentially subconscious level. Meanwhile another part of his mind was watching the waiter push and squeeze his way through the crammed guests towards the staff exit. And then the word ‘Zorn’ flashed into his brain like a neon sign.
No, that was impossible. Zorn was a wanted criminal. He was certainly smart enough to have worked out for himself that there would be an unofficial death sentence on his head. It would be an act of utter foolhardiness to walk into a room filled with armed men employed by the government he had publicly humiliated, and with the wealthy, powerful men he’d secretly ripped off. Either that or the act of a supremely confident, even arrogant man, convinced of his own superiority over the common herd, and addicted to the challenge of pitting himself against apparently overwhelming odds and winning.
The waiter had not looked like Zorn, but the differences were superficial: long dark hair instead of short and blond; a heavy moustache where Zorn was clean-shaven; heavy-rimmed glasses for a man with twenty-twenty vision. The height and built, though, were entirely consistent.
There was no guarantee whatever that the waiter really was Malachi Zorn. He could turn out to be completely legitimate. This could all be an example of Carver’s excessive paranoia. But Carver’s willingness to see potential danger in even the most innocent circumstances had helped keep him alive all these years.
Before he had even finished thinking the problem through he was already on the move, easing his way past dark-suited men and brightly dressed women, murmuring brusque apologies as he went, following the waiter like a hunter tracking his prey.
89
The Goldsmiths’ hall occupies an entire block of the City of London. Its main entrance is on Foster Lane, and the rear facade, on which can be found the Assay Office, which officially tests and grades the purity of precious metals, backs on to Gutter Lane. Malachi Zorn, however, left the building by a side entrance, which opened on to Gresham Street. He turned right and walked across Gutter Lane and then turned right again into the entrance to the Wax Chandlers’ Hall. This, too, occupies a small block of its own. And its eastern facade runs along Gutter Lane, directly parallel to the rear elevation of the Goldsmiths’ Hall.
Armed spotters from the Anti-Terrorist Squad watched him all the way, noting that his appearance matched that of one of the catering staff assigned to the Zorn Global launch: a Pole by the name of Jerzy Kowalski. They saw him approach the private security guards manning the front door of the Wax Chandlers’ Hall and be granted admission.
‘Typical fucking Pole,’ grumbled one of the spotters. ‘Got a second job tonight.’
‘Good luck to him,’ the man on the other end of the radio link replied. ‘Our kids are too lazy to get off their arses. Not the Poles’ fault if they’re prepared to graft.’
‘Better call it in, anyway.’
They alerted the command centre, but it was purely a formality. The man was leaving the reception. If he’d left anything nasty behind him he wouldn’t have popped next door. He’d have got as far away as possible as fast as he could manage.
Carver couldn’t believe it. One minute he’d been following the waiter across the hall, the next he’d run straight into an impenetrable scrum of people that seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. A legendary supermodel was deep in conversation with the multi-billionaire owner of a Premiership-winning football club, and even in this exalted company their overwhelming combination of celebrity, sex appeal and stupendous wealth was enough to draw a crowd. Carver couldn’t get through the mob, so he’d had to go around it, and by the time he’d done that the waiter had disappeared. He might have stayed in the main body of the hall, but if he had it would be almost impossible to find him. So Carver took a chance and went through the staff exit into the barely controlled chaos required to provide five hundred guests with a constant supply of drinks and canapes. He tried to look through the hubbub for the bespectacled, moustachioed waiter. But the man he was hunting had gone.
A ripple of anticipation spread across the hall. One of Drinkwater’s minders had stepped behind the wheelchair, and was now pushing it across the room towards a stage that had been erected at one end, just in front of the treasure display, while his colleagues marched ahead, clearing the way. The MC for the evening was a famous newsreader. He was picking up a twenty-thousand-pound fee for making a two-minute introduction written for him, he thought, by Zorn’s PR team. In fact it had been composed by the Prime Minister’s speechwriters, and then vetted in painstaking detail by the Attorney General. It was vital that the newsreader’s bland platitudes and insipid jokes contained nothing that might in any way create a legal liability for the government, as and when its deception was revealed. Now the newsreader made his way to the front of the stage, his progress broadcast to the guests by two large screens on either side of the room. He glanced at the autocue to his right, and gave a quick, throat-clearing cough to confirm that his mic was working. Beside him there was a small podium, approached via a ramp and equipped with another mic on a low stand. This was where the man he believed was Malachi Zorn would make his speech.
On the floor of the hall, Ginger looked over the heads of all the shorter, lesser mortals to check the progress of the wheelchair and its entourage. Drinkwater would reach the stage in around a minute, she reckoned. It would then take another minute or so for him to be correctly positioned, and for the mic to be adjusted so that he could speak into it with ease. Ginger allowed another two minutes and thirty seconds for the newsreader’s introduction, and the applause that would certainly follow. All in all, Drinkwater would begin his speech in approximately five minutes.
She took her phone out of her evening bag and sent a three-word text. It read: ‘Go in five.’
She waited for the one-word reply: ‘Roger.’
And then she turned on her heels and made for the exit.
90
Damn the London traffic! Damn the security controls everywhere! Alix was stressed enough as it was, her emotions torn between her longing to see Carver and anxiety about what might happen if she came face-to-face with Azarov at the reception. She could only hope that the presence of so many other people would force him to control his temper. Just to make matters worse, she was running way late. And then she was literally running, heading down the road in her high heels as she gave up on the logjammed traffic, paid off her taxi-driver, and made a dash for it, praying that her high heels would not give way under her or catch in the gap between two paving stones. Suddenly the lightweight summer jacket and nylon stockings she’d put on in recognition of the chilly weather seemed horribly superfluous, doing nothing but make her hotter and sweatier, and adding to her feeling of physical discomfort and em
otional fluster as she arrived — breathless, her chest heaving — at the entrance to Goldsmiths’ Hall. Her invitation was checked, her name ticked off a list, and her body and bag were both scanned before she was allowed into the entrance hall. A uniformed doorman was waiting for her at the foot of the main staircase.
‘The reception is in the Livery Hall on the first floor,’ he said, looking at her with avuncular sympathy. ‘But if madam would like to take advantage of the cloakroom facilities, they are downstairs to your right.’
Alix smiled weakly, and just about managed to say thank you before scurrying away to get rid of her coat and try, if it was remotely possible, to repair the worst of the damage to her face and hair.
‘My God, you look terrible,’ she muttered half a minute later, as she placed her evening bag beside one of the ladies’ room basins and gazed miserably at her reflection in the mirror.
And then behind her she heard an instantly recognizable voice from the past: ‘Oh no, darling, you don’t look terrible. You look much worse than that.’
Alix turned to look straight into the smirking, gloating face of the woman she’d known as Celina Novak. The hair was fake. The eyes wore contact lenses. But Celina could have stuck her head in a paper bag and it wouldn’t have made any difference. Alix would have known her anywhere.
Ginger had been walking past the marble balustrade on the first-floor landing when she had seen Alexandra Petrova come past the guards on the door and make her satisfyingly bedraggled way towards the doorman. Ginger had slipped behind a pillar and watched as the old man had directed Petrova to the cloakrooms. Quite rightly: she could hardly be allowed to show herself in public in that state! Ginger knew that she should content herself with relishing her contemporary’s pathetic decline from a distance, and get out of the building as soon as possible. But as she walked down the staircase the temptation to let Petrova know exactly what she thought of her was irresistible.
Without making a conscious decision about it, she had not walked straight to the front door of the hall. Instead, she’d turned left, towards the stairs that Petrova had taken, and followed her down into the basement. And now, as she looked at her rival standing so despondently in front of the mirror, Ginger was delighted by the instinct that had brought her there. Petrova had long since ceased to be a drab provincial wallflower, but at this one moment she was vulnerable. She was looking anything but her best, while Ginger was resplendent and made all the more beautiful by the triumphant glow that she could almost feel shining from herself.
‘I’m sure you know that I had that Englishman of yours,’ she said, with exaggerated casualness. ‘Oh, sorry… hasn’t he told you? Well, perhaps he didn’t want you to know how much he begged me. It was quite embarrassing, to be honest. I hate to hear a grown man whine, don’t you? If it hadn’t been work, I wouldn’t have bothered.’
Petrova looked her straight in the eyes, but said nothing. Her silence irritated Ginger. Petrova had changed. In the old days she certainly would have risen to that bait.
‘He finishes so quickly, though, doesn’t he?’ Ginger went on. ‘I must say, I’d expected more, looking at him. But you can never tell…’
Still Alix remained silent. The stuck-up bitch was becoming seriously irritating. Ginger kept going, searching for Petrova’s weak spots, knowing that one of her verbal poison darts would sooner or later get through, ‘He was giving me the eye, you know, upstairs. He didn’t recognize me, I could tell. He just liked what he saw and wanted to fuck it. I hope he won’t be too disappointed when he sees you…’
Ginger looked at Petrova. She felt she was getting closer, and her natural instinct for inflicting pain put the next words in her mouth: ‘Such a pity that it will be one of the last things he ever sees.’
Oh, that was better! There was fear in Petrova’s eyes now, and a nervous anxiety in her voice as she finally broke her silence to ask, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know? But I’ll tell you this, it’s not just Carver, it’s all of them. Take a tip from an old friend: this is one party to avoid.’
Petrova started forward, obviously wanting to warn Carver, and Ginger stepped sideways into her path, blocking her way.
‘Get out of my way,’ Petrova snapped.
‘No, that’s not possible,’ Ginger said. ‘I can’t have you raising the alarm. But don’t worry, we’ll be quite safe down here.’
‘I said, get out of my way.’
‘And I said no.’
91
Carver had searched through a warren of passages and checked a multitude of rooms. But the man he was looking for was nowhere to be seen. So now there was only one possibility. He’d left the building. Carver put his wrist to his mouth and spoke into his microphone, giving his ID and current position before asking, ‘Has anyone exited this way in the past few minutes?’ He tried to fight the rising fear that he’d lost the man. ‘I’m looking for a male, medium height, dark hair, with a moustache.’
‘Yeah, there was someone answering to that description. Hang on… yeah, one of the waiters, Jerzy Kowalski.’
‘Any idea where he went?’
‘Yes. He was observed turning right on Gresham Street. He then proceeded to the Wax Chandlers’ Hall, on the far side of Gutter Lane, and entered the building.’
‘Why?’ Carver asked, rushing towards the Gresham Street exit.
‘Sorry, don’t get you?’
‘Why did he enter the building? Is there any reason why a waiter would be needed there tonight? The place is being used for business meetings.’
‘Sorry. Can’t help you.’
‘Well, somebody fucking find out!’
The door to the street was just up ahead. But as Carver ran towards it he was gripped by a foreboding that this was just a replay of the Rosconway disaster. Once again he would end up in the right place, but at the wrong time: always a step behind Malachi Zorn and unable to stop the slaughter.
Zorn made his way through the Wax Chandlers’ Hall, past the three bodies in the conference room, to the office where Braddock was waiting to go into action.
He was sitting by a window, cradling the XM-25 Punisher in his lap. The lights in the room were off, and the blinds on the windows were down, with just enough of the summer evening glow from outside seeping in to prevent the room being totally dark. When the time came, Braddock would lift the blind and open the window just far enough to allow him to aim and fire. Across Gutter Lane from where he sat, barely twenty metres away, were the five tall, arched windows of the Goldsmiths’ Hall, glowing gold with the light from the great chandeliers. Braddock had four grenades. He was going to put them in quick succession through the four windows nearest to him. And then he was going to get the hell out.
‘How are you doing?’ Zorn asked.
‘All right.’
‘We’re all good, huh? That’s great.’
Braddock said nothing. He had no intention of getting into a conversation. He didn’t like Zorn being here, to begin with, and there was something about the American that only made his misgivings worse. The man seemed hyped up and jittery. Braddock was out of his comfort zone, and the stress of it all was making him overexcited just when it was important to stay totally calm. He had a pair of ear protectors, like headphones, around his neck. Now he put them on.
‘OK, OK, I won’t disturb you,’ said Zorn, getting the message.
Razzaq had left a laptop in the room for him, and Zorn used it to get online and check the markets. With just over an hour of trading left on the New York Stock Exchange, the Dow Jones and S and P 500 index were both up almost three per cent on the day. That was exactly what Zorn would have expected. Markets almost always overreact on the downside after a disaster, whether man-made or natural, and then recover the moment that people start seeing the opportunities that always follow catastrophe. His own very public vote of confidence had only served to give the whole process a kick-start: he had set a bandwagon rolling and, since most traders like
d to run with the herd, they had raced to get onboard. Once again he would be alone as he went in precisely the opposite direction.
92
The men who had trained Alix how to defend herself had drummed some very simple, basic rules into their pupils. In any fight, the winner is almost always the one who strikes first. So do not wait to be attacked. Take the initiative. Be decisive. And do not stop until you are absolutely certain that your opponent cannot do you any harm.
Perhaps it was the sight of a woman who had been trained in the same class as her that made Alix’s mind flash back to those days. But whatever the reason, it suddenly became clear to her that her only chance of getting past Celina Novak was to take her by surprise and then forget whatever qualms she might have about instigating violence.
Alix feinted to go past Novak again. But then, as the other woman moved to block her once more, Alix raised her knee and kicked sideways and down, driving the hard point of her heel into the side of Novak’s right knee, collapsing the joint and making her scream in excruciating pain. Novak’s leg gave way, and as she went down, Alix stepped behind her and caught hold of her hair before she had time to fight back. Alix gripped hard, and then, going with the direction of Novak’s fall, smashed her face against the side of the basin counter. She heard a sickening crackle like an eggshell being crushed underfoot, and Novak’s nose collapsed into a misshapen pulp, smearing blood and snot against the hard plastic counter top as she slid down to the floor, hitting the back of her head against the rock-hard ceramic tiles.
