Assassin

Carver looked at her, trying to see some sign of forgiveness or hope for him in her eyes. Maddy had rested one of her hands against the table to balance herself. He reached up to hold it, but she snatched it away.

'Just kill him,' Maddy said. Then she got up and walked out of the room without a backward glance. Jack Grantham peered round Dr Lyngstad's back, screwing up his mouth in squeamish disgust. 'Your back,' he said, 'looks like a badly darned sock.'

'Piss off.'

'Oh dear, feeling sorry for ourselves, are we?' he said, getting closer to Carver while Lyngstad, not best pleased by the criticism of his handiwork, shot a venomous look over the top of his glasses. 'Woman trouble, I bet. I passed that American piece of yours in the hall and she didn't look too happy. I don't know… every time I ever meet you, there's some girlfriend or other giving you grief.'

'Has it ever occurred to you that you might be the reason why?' Carver asked. 'Telling her Tyzack had been in the States… Now she's convinced he'll be after her next, and she blames me.'

'You say that as though she's wrong. So, is she gone for good, you reckon?'

'As long as Tyzack is still around, she is.'

Grantham could not keep the smirk from spreading across his face.

'Jesus wept… That was what you wanted,' Carver snarled. Grantham had managed to irritate him as much as usual but there was one compensation: the anger was cutting through his brain like Drano down a blocked pipe.

'That's not quite fair,' said Grantham. 'I honestly thought she had a right to know that there was a possible threat to her safety. But yes, it did occur to me that there might be consequences. And I wasn't entirely unhappy about that because experience has taught me that if I want you to do something, well, let's just say you tend to need an incentive.'

'To get Tyzack?'

'Who else?'

'You don't think that the fact my best friend is dead because of Tyzack is enough of an incentive? Or that I might feel like killing him just for what he's done to me?'

'Yes, but I wanted to be absolutely sure.'

'I see. So where is he?'

'Ah, well…' A look that came as close as Grantham would ever get to embarrassment crossed his face. 'I was hoping he might have told you something about where he was heading next.'

Carver closed his eyes, forcing his mind back to the barn. And then it came to him, the warning he had to relay: 'No, I don't know where he is now. But I think I can tell you where he's going to be in two days' time. He'll be in Bristol. And he'll be trying to assassinate Lincoln Roberts.'

A look of incredulity crossed Grantham's face. 'He told you this, did he?'

'Not in so many words, no,' Carver admitted.

'So how, then?'

'He said he was going to do a job that would put him in a different league. He also said it would be "the big one". He wouldn't be more specific than that, though I knew he was longing to tell me everything. He's trying to prove that he's better than me. In his mind that means taking out the world's number-one target. And that's always going to be the US President.'

Grantham shrugged. 'Not necessarily. Could be any number of people… the Queen, the PM, bin Laden, the Pope. Could be a celebrity.'

'Yes, it could be,' said Carver, 'but Damon Tyzack has no reason to kill any of them. Let me ask you something: have they worked out who the target was last night?'

'Yeah, some German woman, name of Kreutzmann. She was a journalist, one of those campaigning types. The bomb was in her room.'

'And what does she campaign about?'

'People-trafficking,' said Grantham. 'Evidently she's against it.'

'Right, and that job Tyzack did in Dubai, the targets were a people-trafficker and a pimp. Maddy said you told her Tyzack had worked in the States. Who was the target?'

'Chap called Norton Krebs. He was some sort of financial consultant.'

'Oh yeah? Who did he consult for?'

'Well, some of his clients were pretty unsavoury.'

'Slave-traders?' asked Carver.

'I honestly don't know. But it's possible.'

'OK, let's forget about him. That still leaves Tyzack and the people who are paying for him up to their necks in the slave trade. Meanwhile President Roberts is flying into Britain to give a speech at a conference about slavery and people-trafficking. I don't know, maybe it's a coincidence. But if I'm wrong, I just look paranoid. If you're wrong, Tyzack takes a potshot at the President.'

'Point taken,' said Grantham. 'But suppose it is the President, all he's doing is giving a speech. Why would anyone need to kill him?'

'Depends what he's going to say.'

'Well, no one knows the answer to that,' said Grantham. 'The speech has been totally embargoed. The Yanks won't even tell Number Ten. It's really put the PM's knickers in a twist. He even wanted us to see if we could find out what was in the bloody thing. We had to tell his office that we'd love to oblige, but sadly we don't have any bugs in the White House and it's a bit short notice to try and turn one of his staff.'

'For you, perhaps,' said Carver. 'But maybe I can help.'

74

It had been mid-afternoon in Washington, DC when the bomb detonated at the King Haakon Hotel. It took diplomats from the local US embassy a couple of hours to establish that there had been nine US citizens listed among the hotel guests. None of them had suffered anything worse than mild shock, along with a few cuts and bruises, most of which had been acquired in the scrum as the hotel's occupants tried to leave the stricken building. The news was passed to relieved officials at both the State Department and White House, who could now relax knowing that there would be no domestic political repercussions from the incident and that media coverage would be limited.

Sure, it was an outrage, but there were no signs of involvement by any known terrorist group. All the evidence suggested that this was a criminal attack, to be handled by local police. It wasn't headline news in Peoria.

So the aide who handed Harrison James a briefing document on the bombing did not think she was giving him anything of any great significance or sensitivity.

'We drafted a statement, right there on the top sheet,' she said.

'Fine,' said James, not bothering to look at it. He was up to his neck in final preparations for the President's trip to England.

The aide turned to leave. She had almost reached the door when James, as an afterthought, casually asked, 'They got any idea who did it yet?'

'No name,' she said. 'But the police released a photograph of a guy they said was wanted for questioning. They said he was armed and dangerous. Seems he killed some other folks, too, making his getaway.'

'Hope they catch him then,' said James.

A few minutes later, sighing with irritation, he told himself he'd better look at the damn briefing package before he took it into the President. The statement was fine, though he knew Roberts would add a flourish or two of his own. The information was pretty straightforward. James raised an eyebrow when he read the account of the gunfight on the opera house roof and the apparent disappearance of the hotel bomber. Then he turned a page and saw the shot the police had released. The copy in front of him had been taken from an internet download. The quality was poor. But Harrison James did not need high resolution to recognize that face.

Now the bombing had his attention.

He called Tord Bahr, from one private mobile phone to another, keeping the conversation off the White House and Secret Service logs.

'We have a situation,' he said. 'And I want you to make it go away.' Plenty of men Harrison James had worked for swore by the principle of deniability. The less their subordinates told them, the safer they felt. Lincoln Roberts took a very different view. The first time they'd discussed working together, he'd told James, 'I don't see any excuse for ignorance. When there's something I need to know, tell me. And if I don't need to know it, well, tell me anyway.'

So James told his boss about the picture of Samuel Carver holding the phone from which he'd triggered the Oslo bombing. Roberts didn't rant and rage. He didn't demand immediate action. He didn't blame anyone for risking his life with a mass-murderer. He sat at his desk, steepled his fingers and took a moment to reflect, like a university professor considering a philosophical proposition. The first word he said was: 'Interesting…' He thought some more and added, 'I guess there are two possibilities here. Either my ability to judge another man has totally broken down, or they got the wrong guy.'