‘I have no idea. And what’s more, I don’t care, because I’m not going to be the one that does it. I’m not taking the job.’
‘Really? I thought you had no choice. You have a murder charge hanging over you.’
‘That’s happened to me before, in case you’ve forgotten,’ said Carver. ‘But I’m still here, aren’t I? I’ll deal with Razzaq, whoever he’s working for.’
‘About that murder charge… the other one…’ Grantham began.
‘What about it?’
‘I have a file, you know. I compiled it in the months after you and I first met. Did a little digging around. Had some colleagues in France look through CCTV footage. Checked your movements, looked into a few Panamanian bank accounts and shell corporations, that kind of thing.’
‘I can’t say that surprises me,’ said Carver.
‘And although I never quite found a smoking gun — or should that be a shining laser? — I did put you there or thereabouts, as they say.’
‘She died in an accident,’ Carver replied flatly. ‘There’s been an inquest. It’s official.’
‘Oh, I agree. And there’s nothing to be gained by raking over that old ground. But I’m sure you know what did for Al Capone. It wasn’t the racketeering, or the corruption or even the Valentine’s Day massacre-’
Carver completed the sentence: ‘It was tax evasion.’
‘Good,’ nodded Grantham, ‘I thought you’d get the point. The fact is, you’ve made a lot of money over the years, Carver, and you’ve paid sod all in tax. That’s very antisocial. The Revenue would be most upset.’
‘It’s none of their business. I’ve not lived in the UK for years.’
‘Come on, you’re smarter than that. You’ve been paid money by lots of people in lots of different tax jurisdictions. Unless you’ve signed the appropriate forms, which I very much doubt, you will now owe tax, plus interest, in all those jurisdictions. That’s a lot of pissed-off authorities. Once they start digging over your affairs and finding out who paid you the money, well, those’ll be some seriously pissed-off clients. They’ll want to shut you up. Not nice.’
‘Unbelievable. First Razzaq, now you… so much for my holiday.’
‘That’s life.’
‘And don’t tell me… You can make all this grief go away if I do what you want. So what’s that?’
‘The same thing Razzaq wanted,’ said Grantham, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. ‘Tell him you’ll assassinate Malachi Zorn.’
Carver contacted Razzaq within the hour and told him he was accepting the Zorn assignment. His conditions were straight-forward. Half the fee was to be paid up front to a Panamanian bank account. Carver would not start work unless and until he received notification from the bank that the funds had been received. He needed a detailed itinerary for every day and night of Zorn’s visit to the UK, as well as registration numbers of the cars he would be using. Detailed plans should be supplied of both Zorn’s residence and offices, including electric circuitry, plumbing, air conditioning and security systems. Once he had these, Carver would not make contact of any kind with Razzaq, and certainly not with Magda Sternberg, alias Ginger. The first that either of them would know of the hit would be when they heard about it on the news or witnessed it with their own eyes.
His terms were accepted in every respect. In return, Razzaq had only the two conditions he’d listed before, but he repeated them with special emphasis. ‘It must be done before Friday, the first of July,’ he said. ‘And it must be public.’
14
Chinatown, London
Ahmad Razzaq operated on a strictly need-to-know basis. Although Ginger Sternberg was aware that Carver had been hired to assassinate Malachi Zorn, he saw no need whatever to explain the underlying thinking behind that, or any of the other tasks he had assigned her. Ginger, for her part, knew that she was not entirely trusted, and, although the gaps in her knowledge frustrated her, she did not resent Razzaq’s caution. After all, she knew perfectly well that he was right to be that way. She was, indeed, entirely untrustworthy.
Before Carver had even left Mykonos, she had contacted another of her clients to inform them that he had been invited to assassinate Zorn. No sooner had Carver accepted Razzaq’s offer than she confirmed the news. She was summoned at once to a meeting to discuss this new development. She made an excuse to Razzaq, and by Saturday evening she was in London, sitting in a small room above a dim sum joint in Gerrard Street, right in the heart of Chinatown, where the ends of the street are marked by red ceremonial gateways, the mini-supermarkets advertise their wares in Chinese script, and half the restaurants have ceremonial lion statues standing guard outside their doors.
Ginger was taking tea with a Chinese businessman. Like her, he was in his early forties, but, thanks to an unlined face and slender build, looked a least a decade younger. He was dressed for the weekend in Emporio Armani jeans and a lightweight summer cardigan, no shirt underneath. His name was Choi Deshi, though he now went by the westernized name Derek Choi. It was public knowledge, thanks to his regular appearances in gossip columns and glossy magazines — invariably with a beautiful woman on his arm — that Choi owned a number of successful restaurants and clubs, as well as a growing portfolio of retail and domestic property developments. It was less well known, however, that he had begun his career as a member of the unit known to native Chinese as Zhong Nan Hai Bao Biao, or ‘the bodyguards from the Red Palace’: the agents who protect the lives of China’s most senior leaders. For the past dozen years, however, since his arrival in London and his swift climb up both its business and social strata, he had been what the Chinese term a ‘deep-water fish’: in other words, a foreign-based undercover agent of the Guoanbu, or State Security Ministry.
It was the Guoanbu that had supplied Choi with the seed money for his commercial empire, and they had also used him as the front-man for placing a two-billion-dollar investment in the Zorn Global fund. In Beijing’s eyes, this was an extremely worthwhile investment, both because there was a very good chance that Zorn would succeed in generating a massive return on their money, and because the methods by which he operated — principally aggressive, highly leveraged short trades that profited from economic downturns — were deeply damaging to western economies. The West might be unwilling to accept that it was in a fight to the death with China for domination of the next few hundred years of world history, but Beijing was very much at war.
Choi, like Razzaq, saw no need to share any of his underlying thinking with Ginger Sternberg. Just as she had only cared about the money he had offered her to keep him informed of Razzaq’s activities, so his discussions with her never strayed far from the practical consequences of the information she provided.
‘I presume you will supply me with a description and photographs of this man, Samuel Carver. But for now tell me this: how good are his chances of success?’
‘Very good, in my opinion,’ Ginger replied. ‘After all, Zorn’s own head of security is plotting to have him killed. He’s bound to leave gaps in his boss’s protection.’
‘So you say, but you and I both know not to take anything at face value. Leave Razzaq to one side for the time being. How dangerous is Carver himself?’
‘Extremely dangerous, that’s why he was hired. He was a highly decorated officer in the British Special Boat Service, and his record as a private operative is outstanding. I assume your superiors know, even if you do not, that he was responsible for the death of President Gushungo in Hong Kong last year…’
She was pleased to see by his frown that this was news to Choi. She had the advantage over him for once, and wanted to rub it in: ‘It happened on Chinese territory, after all.’