The shock waves from the blast ripped through the car, shattering every window.
The Bentley was stopped dead in its tracks. The car behind ran straight into it, causing a slow-motion pile-up as it, too, was rear-ended. The cars coming the other way had also stopped again, to the sound of more screeching brakes and crashing metalwork.
Schultz gave a nod of appreciation at the effect of his work. Then he got up from the park bench and calmly walked away. As he went he switched calls to another line.
‘Ambulance,’ he said. ‘Now.’
*
Carver reached down and released the gun that was clipped to the side of his bike. His eyes were fixed on the Bentley just a few metres away. The chauffeur was slumped over the wheel, unconscious, but there was movement in the back of the car. Carver slowed, then braked to a halt as he came alongside the Bentley’s passenger compartment. He could see Zorn quite clearly through the shattered window. He looked dazed, but he was pulling himself together, shuffling along the rear seat, reaching for the door handle, trying to get out of the car. Carver stuck his gun-hand through the window. He took careful, considered aim. And then, as Zorn shouted, ‘Please! No! Don’t!’ he fired.
And then, for good measure, he unclipped the grenade, pulled the pin and threw that in as well.
The bright yellow emergency ambulance had been waiting at the far end of Murray Road, about five hundred metres from the crash. The moment the driver got the signal from Schultz, he turned on the siren and flashing blue lights and sped away up the road, across the Ridgeway towards Southside Common. Estimated time of arrivaclass="underline" a little over thirty seconds.
Carver had the bike moving before the grenade blew. The blast went off behind him as he gunned the bike across the road, between the trees that bordered the common and on to the open grassland beyond. The terrain was made for a trailbike, and the Honda sped away with the enthusiasm of a racehorse given its head and pointed at the finishing line.
For a good fifteen seconds, no one dared get out of their cars. Then the first door opened and a balding middle-aged man climbed out. Tentatively, looking from side to side as if he feared some new threat might suddenly appear, he made his way towards the crippled Bentley. With nervous darts of his head he looked at the mangled bonnet and engine compartment, and the driver still motionless at the wheel. He bent down to peer at the back passenger seats. He took one look at the blood-drenched body and the gore that the grenade had spattered all over the creamy leather seats. And then he wrenched his body to one side, bent almost double and threw up all over the road.
The man was still standing by the Bentley, dazed by the shock of what he had seen, when the ambulance arrived. He was ushered to one side by paramedics, who immediately forced their way into the car and removed Zorn’s inert, blood-soaked body, placing it on a stretcher and wheeling it to the ambulance. The driver came next.
The paramedics worked very fast. They did not seem to be too interested in the finer points of patient care. They just got the two victims into the back of their ambulance as quickly as possible and then set off again — lights flashing, siren wailing — so that they had been and gone within little more than a minute of the crash taking place. By the time the fire and police teams got there, the car was empty.
Malachi Zorn had just vanished from the face of the earth.
76
Parkview Hospital, Wimbledon
Under any normal circumstances, the victim of a violent, potentially fatal attack on Southside Common would be taken three miles across the South London suburbs to St George’s Hospital, Tooting. A teaching hospital that has won national awards for its standards of care, St George’s has an accident and emergency department that sees around a hundred thousand patients a year. It is open every hour of every day, has a resuscitation area for critically injured patients, and is staffed by four consultants, forty junior doctors and around fifty nursing staff. But when the ambulance carrying Malachi Zorn raced away from the scene of the assassination attempt, it did not drive east towards that waiting A amp; E. Instead it double-backed across Wimbledon Common, before turning north and then dashing less than a mile towards a smaller, private hospital that had no emergency facilities at all. It did, however, boast a much more significant speciality: extreme discretion. And in the case of Malachi Zorn, a billionaire financier attacked by an impromptu black ops team unofficially commissioned by Her Majesty’s government, privacy and silence were far more significant priorities than quality of treatment.
By the time that the ambulance drove through the hospital entrance and into a forecourt hidden from inquisitive passing eyes by a tall, thick hedge, Carver had already arrived, parked his bike and was waiting to greet it. He followed the paramedics as they rolled the gurney carrying Zorn’s blood-soaked body across the tarmac, past the plain-clothed policemen standing guard by the front door, and into the hospital itself. There was no one at all in the reception area, except for a single doctor. He was dressed in a suit, rather than scrubs, and he was not waiting to carry out a swift examination of his patient’s injuries, as one might have expected in a case of this kind. There was no attempt to administer drugs and fluids or blast the motionless figure back to life with shocks from defibrillator pads. Instead he just raised the blanket that had been covering Zorn’s face, gave a quick, brisk, businesslike nod and said. ‘Take him to Room 68, top floor,’ before following the gurney, the paramedics and Carver into the lift.
The atmosphere was oddly calm as they rose three floors to the top of the building, just the usual mix of self-conscious silence and uneasy attempts to avoid one another’s eyes. Then the doors opened, and the doctor stepped out first with a brisk ‘This way,’ as he strode away down the corridor. Room 68 was at the end, occupying one corner of the building. It had that three-star-hotel look so beloved by private hospitals: all pastel walls and patterned curtains, with two visitors’ chairs and a flat-screen TV on the wall opposite the bed. The chairs were occupied, and the TV was on as Zorn was rolled into the room, lifted off the gurney and placed upon the bed, still in his bloodied clothes, uncovered by any blanket.
‘Ah,’ said Jack Grantham, switching off the TV and getting to his feet, ‘the moment of truth.’
He stepped close to Carver, and in little more than a whisper said, ‘Six bodies in a tunnel underneath Centre Court, and a home-made bazooka disturbing the peace of the leafy, Tory-voting suburbs. That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think? Even by your standards.’
Then, as the paramedics left the room, Grantham turned back towards the bed, assumed the cheerful demeanour of a drinks-party host greeting his guests, and said, ‘Good afternoon, doctor, my name’s Grantham. I work for the Secret Intelligence Service.’
‘Good afternoon, Mr Grantham,’ replied the doctor. ‘I’m Assim. Hmm
… your face seems familiar. There was some publicity at the time of your appointment, I believe.’
Grantham grimaced. ‘Yes, we’re not as secret as we used to be… More’s the pity.’
Assim frowned inquisitively at the man who had risen to his feet from the second chair, and was now standing at the foot of the bed, tugging nervously at his moustache. ‘And you must be…?’
‘Cameron Young. I work for the Prime Minister. Look, can we get on with this, please? I need to report back to Number 10 as soon as possible.’
‘This is Carver,’ said Grantham, paying no apparent attention to Young as he completed the introductions.
‘So what is your position?’ Assim asked, shaking Carver’s hand.
‘Self-employed,’ Carver replied. ‘A private contractor, you might say.’