“Maybe you’re just jealous,” suggested Mulvagh.
“Now why would I be jealous of a woman younger than me who hooks up with a great-looking, unmarried general? Seriously, Tom, this could be worth looking into. It’s not like we’ve got a million other leads to distract us. Just run a few checks through a few databases. I’ll buy you a drink next time you’re out west…”
“Well, in that case, Dr. Jones, how could I say no?”
50
At some point in the night, Carver must have given way to his exhaustion, because he suddenly found himself waking up and realizing that the rising sun was shining in his face. As he screwed up his eyes, adjusting to the light, he noticed something else: the silence. The storm had passed.
Now he had to get help for Larsson. Up in the mountains, cell-phone signals were patchy, at best. The only way to be sure of getting through was to get to one of the hikers’ huts the local tourist authorities had scattered around the countryside and use the emergency telephone there. Carver consulted the map. The nearest hut was about three miles back the way they had come the day before. The journey was mostly downhill. He heated up bowls of porridge for himself and Larsson, promised his friend that help would soon be on its way, and set off back down the trail.
As he skied through the fine powder of freshly fallen snow, which dazzled in the sunlight from a cloudless sky, Carver realized that he was overcome by an entirely new and unexpected sensation. He felt great. He had faced and passed a supreme physical and mental test, and that knowledge filled him with confidence. Now he was ready to set off on his quest and find the woman he loved. In the meantime, he had no fear for Larsson. When he reached the hut and contacted the rescue team, he had absolute confidence that they would get to the cave in time. It came as no surprise to Carver, when he in turn was picked up by a cheerful figure on a snowmobile, that Larsson had been admitted to the hospital in Narvik, still badly sick, but with every prospect of making a full recovery.
Carver was also taken to the Sykehus, as the hospital was called, just to be checked for signs of frostbite or hypothermia. After he’d been cleared on both counts he visited Larsson, made sure he was doing all right, and promised to be back in the morning.
“Don’t worry-I’ll be fine,” Larsson said, summoning up an exhausted smile.
A nurse had come over to check his pulse and temperature. She was a classic Norwegian beauty: tall, blond, and blue-eyed.
“I’ll bet you will be,” Carver said.
He wandered out of the hospital, thinking he’d grab a beer and something to eat before finding a cab back to Beisfjord. Then something caught his eye.
There was a man standing a few steps away, just by the front door, reading an English newspaper. He looked up, saw Carver, and smiled.
It took a couple of seconds before Carver registered who it was.
“What are you doing here?” he said, his good mood vanishing as instantly as it had arrived.
“I got bored waiting for you to turn up on my doorstep,” said Jack Grantham. “Thought I might as well turn up on yours.”
He grinned and slapped Carver on the shoulder like a long-lost pal. “Come on. My hotel’s not far away and I’ve got a car waiting. I think you’re going to be interested when you hear what I’ve got to say.”
51
Grantham had one of his men waiting by the door of the car. Another was behind the wheel. They drove only a few hundred yards to a little old-fashioned hotel. There was a small lounge off the main reception area: a sofa and a couple of armchairs, ringing a fireplace; an ornate chandelier hanging from the ceiling; a tapestry on the wall; a coffee table in front of the chairs.
One of Grantham’s men handed him a laptop, which he placed on the table. Then the man joined his colleague standing a few yards away, keeping an eye on their boss and, by their very presence, discouraging anyone else from coming into the room.
“Pull up a chair-make yourself comfortable,” said Grantham, beckoning Carver closer.
“So what’s your big news?” Carver asked.
Grantham opened his laptop and clicked on a PowerPoint file. The screen was filled with a formal photograph of a U.S. Army officer in full dress uniform.
“His name is Kurt Vermulen,” said Grantham. “Until a few years ago, he was a three-star general in the U.S. Army.”
He gave a quick rundown of the general’s military career.
“Captain America,” said Carver.
“Something like that.”
“So why do you want me to kill him?”
“I didn’t say we did.”
“Why else would you come all this way?”
“Depends,” said Grantham.
“On what?”
“On what he’s really up to…”
Grantham opened a new page. It showed a series of grainy color photographs of Vermulen, now dressed in civilian clothes. Some were lifted from closed-circuit TV footage, others had been shot by photographers. He was in the crowd at a fancy theater, walking by a Venetian canal, standing by a crossing on a busy city street.
Carver looked at them all with equal indifference.
“Well, good luck with that,” he said. “I’ve got other business to take care of.”
“I know,” Grantham said. “Just like old times, isn’t it? But before you go, there’s something else you should see.”
“I don’t think so.” Carver got up to leave.
Grantham remained unruffled. “I’d stay if I were you. You’ll want to see this.”
Carver looked at him. Grantham had the calm of a man who was absolutely sure of his hand. The only way to see what he had was to call him on it.
“Okay,” said Carver, still standing. “Show me.”
“Take another look at these,” said Grantham, flicking through the shots of Vermulen once again.
“I told you already-I’m not interested.”
Grantham smiled. “Now watch,” he said.
He opened a new file. Up popped the same set of photographs, but this time the frames of the pictures were wider. They revealed the figure who had been cropped from the first set, the woman who was standing next to Vermulen in a satin evening dress at the Vienna opera, who was with him, and a black couple, outside the Hotel Gritti in Venice, who was sightseeing with him in Rome. And then, in a final sequence of new pictures, they showed Vermulen and the woman on a yacht; him in white Bermudas and a polo shirt, her in a bikini, sunglasses pushed up into her blond hair. The shots were grainy, extreme long distance. The couple was standing under an awning near the stern of the boat. In the first shot they were talking. Then she put her hand on his chest. Carver couldn’t work out if she was playing, or trying to ward the man off. By the third frame his hands were on her upper arms. In the fourth he was leading-or was it dragging?-her into one of the yacht’s staterooms. And they were gone.
“You shit,” hissed Samuel Carver.
“Yes,” said Jack Grantham. “Thought that would do the trick.”
52
Ever since he’d started putting himself back together, Carver had been wondering what he really felt about Alix. As his recovery progressed he began to piece together images of the few short days and nights they had spent together. A woman brushed past him in a store in Beisfjord, and as he caught a waft of her perfume in the air he knew at once, without thinking, that Alix had worn the same scent, and suddenly it was as if she were lying next to him again. And of course, he and Thor Larsson had talked about her, Larsson telling stories of the months in Geneva before her disappearance, or joking about his own first sight of Alix, dressed in La Perla lingerie and a brunette wig. She’d been getting ready to seduce a Swiss bank official who was their only link to the hidden men who had bought Carver’s deadly services, betrayed him, and then tried to have him killed.