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 Hotel 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 collapse. 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.