‘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 liked 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.