“Why don’t you, then?”
“Because I’d rather own you. You have a debt against your name. A debt that can never be repaid. What you did cannot be undone. But you can make… let’s call them reparations. You can do things for me, for your country. If you get killed along the way, tough luck, I couldn’t care less. If you succeed, well, you’ve done some good to set against the harm. So there it is. I have you taken out to some landfill site, shot in the back of the head, and buried under several thousand tons of garbage, or you go to work…”
Grantham paused and looked Carver in the eye. Then, quite quietly, with just a twist of irony in his voice, he added, “Now who’s the chimp?”
Carver nodded, taking the shot. He’d started the pissing contest, Grantham was entitled to piss back. And he seemed like a decent bloke, underneath. Carver wondered what their professional relationship might have been if he’d stayed in the SBS: the soldier and the spook, both on the same side, both roughly the same age and with comparable ranks. They’d have worked pretty well together. It would be very different now.
“Okay,” he said. “Suppose I accept these terms. What’s the first job?”
“Zhukovski, obviously, but not because I care about you rushing off to rescue Moscow’s very own Mata Hari. You don’t strike me as a knight in shining armor. All you really care about is getting the Russian before he gets you. So get him. And get his sidekick Kursk. You’ll be doing us a favor.”
“Don’t suppose I get any backup,” said Carver.
“You must be joking.”
“Didn’t think so. What if I succeed?”
“Then you live to fight another day. Under the same terms as before. There’s no shortage of landfills.”
There was silence in the room. Then Grantham spoke again, a new note of conciliation in his voice. “Look, you used to be a good man, Carver. You did good work. This is your chance to do good work again. It won’t be public. There won’t be any medals. But you’ll know…”
Carver weighed Grantham’s words. He was offering him a chance at redemption, just as Dame Agatha had done. Looked like there’d be a lot of redeeming going on. That was probably just as well, all things considered.
“Don’t bother calling the airport,” he told Dame Agatha. “That plane can leave without me.”
She looked surprised. “Are you declining our offer?”
“No, but I need a flight that gets me there faster. So, if it doesn’t sound too much like backup, I need the use of your phone.”
Dame Agatha pushed it across the table. Carver dialed the operator.
“Get me Platinum Private Aviation. They’re at Biggin Hill…” He held a hand over the mouthpiece and said to Dame Agatha, “Also, I need my case back and everything in it: the gun, the passports, the video camera, and the money. Don’t worry, I won’t shoot.”
Grantham drew a gun from his own shoulder holster and pointed it at Carver. “Just in case you change your mind.”
Dame Agatha stepped outside the office. A moment later the door opened and she returned, accompanied by a secretary carrying the case. Carver gestured at her to bring it over. He was already talking to the charter jet company.
“You’re in luck,” said a friendly, efficient voice on the other end of the line. In British aviation, as in British medicine, it was amazing how much more helpful people became the moment you decided to go private. “We’ve got a Learjet 45 inbound from Nice. The crew overnighted in France, so they can still get you to Switzerland and back within their time limit for the day. I’d suggest flying into Sion. It’s a much smaller field than Geneva or Zurich, but closer to Gstaad: just a fifteen-minute helicopter ride across the mountains. Don’t worry, we’ll sort that out for you. Meanwhile, we’ll get the plane refueled, flight-planned, and ready to leave as soon as we can. Should have you on the ground at Sion in a little under three hours.”
“Great,” said Carver.
“Happy to help,” said the voice. “That will be 5,546 pounds, inclusive of all taxes and the helicopter charter at Sion. Can you give me a credit card?”
“Yes,” said Carver. “It’s an Amex, name of James C. Murray…”
After completed the booking, Carver told the two spies, “Right, I’ll be on my way.”
Dame Agatha watched him leave the room, then turned to her colleague from MI6. “You didn’t tell him about the girl.”
Grantham put his gun away. “No.”
“I think you’re wrong about his feelings for her, you know.”
“Well in that case, he’s wasting his time.”
“But we win, whatever happens,” said Dame Agatha.
“Yes,” said Grantham matter-of-factly. “That’s the general idea.”
It was now 2:40 p.m. in London, an hour later in Switzerland. There were just under five hundred miles between London and Gstaad, and Carver had two hundred minutes in which to complete them. Up on the wall, the clock continued its measured, relentless progress.
73
Sion airport was laid out lengthways along a valley between two lines of mountains. The valley was narrow and the runway shared the space with a freeway, the two strips of tarmac running dead straight, side by side, barely two hundred meters apart. As he watched Carver’s Learjet land, Thor Larsson wondered how many times pilots got the two surfaces confused and landed on the A9 expressway.
When Carver got off the plane, Larsson was waiting for him with the computer.
“Here it is,” he said. “The, er, special adaptation has been made as you requested. And, aah…”
Larsson looked away, his eyes fixed on the distant mountaintops.
“What is it?” Carver asked.
“I finally managed to open some of the files. I know what all this is about, what you did.”
Carver nodded. “Okay. Did you also find out what they told me I was doing? Does the name Ramzi Hakim Narwaz mean anything to you?”
A diffident smile crossed Larsson’s face. “Yeah, I know about him.”
“And?”
“And I don’t blame you for what happened. You were double-crossed. So, anyway… you need to know the password. There are eight characters: T r 2 z l o t G. The first T and the last G are capital letters. This is very important. The password is case sensitive.”
“How the hell am I going to remember that?” asked Carver.
“Simple, I have created an image for you, like in a picture book. There r 2 zebras lying on the Grass. Capital ‘T,’ capital ‘G.’ Do you get it?”
Carver gave an impatient snort, but Larsson persisted.
“Come on, repeat after me: There r 2 zebras lying on the Grass.”
“Jesus wept, I haven’t got time. I can’t afford to be late.”
“You can’t afford to forget this, either. The system gives you three chances to get the password right. If you fail, a virus is released that wipes the entire hard drive clean. There’ll be nothing left at all.”
Carver did as he was told – five repetitions. Larsson handed over the laptop in its case, which Carver slung across his chest, from one shoulder to the opposite hip.
“Thanks,” he said. “My chopper’s across the airfield. Walk with me. We can talk on the way.”
It was just after half past six local time and the sun was just beginning to dip behind the highest of the peaks to the west, casting jagged black shadows diagonally across the valley as Carver strode across the apron to the helicopter pad. He had a little under thirty minutes to get to the Palace Hotel. The weather looked clear. Allow five minutes to take off, fifteen to get to Gstaad, and another five to get from the chopper to the rendezvous at the other end. It should just be possible.
“How much did you manage to retrieve?” he asked Larsson.
“Only a small proportion of what’s on there, but enough to know that Max had logged every detail of that operation, and a lot more besides. It looks like he was making himself a safety net in case anything went wrong.”