Assassin (32 page)

‘Point taken,’ said Grantham. ‘But suppose it is the President, all he’s doing is giving a speech. Why would anyone need to kill him?’

‘Depends what he’s going to say.’

‘Well, no one knows the answer to that,’ said Grantham. ‘The speech has been totally embargoed. The Yanks won’t even tell Number Ten. It’s really put the PM’s knickers in a twist. He even wanted us to see if we could find out what was in the bloody thing. We had to tell his office that we’d love to oblige, but sadly we don’t have any bugs in the White House and it’s a bit short notice to try and turn one of his staff.’

‘For you, perhaps,’ said Carver. ‘But maybe I can help.’

It had been mid-afternoon in Washington, DC when the bomb detonated at the King Haakon Hotel. It took diplomats from the local US embassy a couple of hours to establish that there had been nine US citizens listed among the hotel guests. None of them had suffered anything worse than mild shock, along with a few cuts and bruises, most of which had been acquired in the scrum as the hotel’s occupants tried to leave the stricken building. The news was passed to relieved officials at both the State Department and White House, who could now relax knowing that there would be no domestic political repercussions from the incident and that media coverage would be limited.

Sure, it was an outrage, but there were no signs of involvement by any known terrorist group. All the evidence suggested that this was a criminal attack, to be handled by local police. It wasn’t headline news in Peoria.

So the aide who handed Harrison James a briefing document on the bombing did not think she was giving him anything of any great significance or sensitivity.

‘We drafted a statement, right there on the top sheet,’ she said.

‘Fine,’ said James, not bothering to look at it. He was up to his neck in final preparations for the President’s trip to England.

The aide turned to leave. She had almost reached the door when James, as an afterthought, casually asked, ‘They got any idea who did it yet?’

‘No name,’ she said. ‘But the police released a photograph of a guy they said was wanted for questioning. They said he was armed and dangerous. Seems he killed some other folks, too, making his getaway.’

‘Hope they catch him then,’ said James.

A few minutes later, sighing with irritation, he told himself he’d better look at the damn briefing package before he took it into the President. The statement was fine, though he knew Roberts would add a flourish or two of his own. The information was pretty straightforward. James raised an eyebrow when he read the account of the gunfight on the opera house roof and the apparent disappearance of the hotel bomber. Then he turned a page and saw the shot the police had released. The copy in front of him had been taken from an internet download. The quality was poor. But Harrison James did not need high resolution to recognize that face.

Now the bombing had his attention.

He called Tord Bahr, from one private mobile phone to another, keeping the conversation off the White House and Secret Service logs.

‘We have a situation,’ he said. ‘And I want you to make it go away.’

Plenty of men Harrison James had worked for swore by the principle of deniability. The less their subordinates told them, the safer they felt. Lincoln Roberts took a very different view. The first time they’d discussed working together, he’d told James, ‘I don’t see any excuse for ignorance. When there’s something I need to know, tell me. And if I don’t need to know it, well, tell me anyway.’

So James told his boss about the picture of Samuel Carver holding the phone from which he’d triggered the Oslo bombing. Roberts didn’t rant and rage. He didn’t demand immediate action. He didn’t blame anyone for risking his life with a mass-murderer. He sat at his desk, steepled his fingers and took a moment to reflect, like a university professor considering a philosophical proposition. The first word he said was: ‘Interesting …’ He thought some more and added, ‘I guess there are two possibilities here. Either my ability to judge another man has totally broken down, or they got the wrong guy.’

‘I’d say your judgement is pretty good.’ The President smiled. ‘Yeah, that’s what I’d say, too. But I could be wrong. And if anyone finds Carver, I’d sure feel better if it was us.’

Tord Bahr spent the night getting nowhere. Carver had disappeared. No one knew where he was. There were no satellite images, no communications intercepts, no leaks or leads from anyone, anywhere. He finally crashed out at three in the morning. At five he was woken by a call from his office and told that the Norwegians had just announced that the suspect in the Oslo bombing had died when cornered by police. Bahr sank back on to his pillow with his face wreathed in something perilously close to an actual smile. He wasn’t bothered that the man’s name had been given as Paul Jackson. A guy like Carver would have multiple aliases. All that mattered was that the face of the man the Norwegians were talking about was unmistakably his. If Carver was dead, he couldn’t possibly cause any trouble to anyone. The big brown clouds that had threatened an almighty shitstorm had passed and the sun was shining on Tord Bahr’s little world.

Bahr thought about trying to grab a couple of hours’ more sleep, but it wasn’t in his nature to take it easy. Instead he got up and went for a three-mile run. He showered, dressed and ate his customary bowl of granola and fruit. He got to work shortly before seven and spent an hour working on the final details of the President’s trip, talking to his people in London and Bristol, and to the Brits with whom they were working, most of whom struck Bahr as pompous, arrogant, lazy and incompetent. Plus, the way they spoke, every last one of them sounded gay.

He had just put the phone down on some asshole police commander when he got a call on his cellphone.

‘Tord Bahr?’ said a British voice, one that sounded oddly familiar.

‘This is he.’

‘Hi, this is Samuel Carver.’

‘I thought you were dead,’ said Bahr. He sounded disappointed.

‘That’s the theory,’ Carver replied. ‘But here I am.’

‘Pity, for a moment there my life just got a whole lot simpler. So, you want to tell me what the hell is going on?’

‘Certainly. I’m trying to work out whether there’s a highly trained psychopath trying to kill your boss. Wondered if you could help me with that.’

Bahr had a short fuse at the best of times. These were not the best of times. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ he snapped. ‘Your famous British sense of humour?

Listen, I got a lot of work to do. I don’t have time for this shit.’

Carver took a deep breath and fought the urge to get angry right back at him. With studied calm he said, ‘It’s not shit. It’s a legitimate threat, a man called Damon Tyzack. He served with me, briefly, in the SBS. He got sacked and blamed it on me. It was him who set up the Oslo bombing, tried to frame me for it. So yesterday me and Tyzack had a little chat, and shortly before he said goodbye he told me he had a job to do. I believe that job is the assassination of Lincoln Roberts.’

‘Whoa! Hold up there. You say you had this guy and you let him leave? Are you frickin’ nuts?’

‘Well, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. I was his captive, not the other way round.’

Tord Bahr yawned. With his free hand he tried to rub the sleep from his eyes.

‘Wait a second,’ he said. ‘Run this by me from the top. This Tyzack is some kind of professional killer?’

‘Correct,’ said Carver.

‘He had the same training as you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you served together in the military?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But he captured you, which tells me that he’s better than you …’

‘Yeah, that’s what it tells him, too,’ said Carver. ‘Personally, I doubt it.’

‘Kind of similar, aren’t you? Like brothers or something.’

‘I sincerely hope not. Listen, Bahr, Tyzack is a man you should take very seriously. Technically, he’s very accomplished. Morally, he’s sociopathic. That’s a dangerous combination.’

‘And you think that’s unusual?’ asked Bahr. ‘My whole life is dealing with people like that.’

‘So Tyzack’s not unique. But you’re about to go with the President to a conference on people-trafficking, and trafficking is what Damon Tyzack likes to do when he isn’t killing people. So the question is: will the President do anything, or say anything in Bristol that would make him the next target?’

‘Honestly, I don’t know,’ said Bahr. ‘I’m not in the loop on the President’s speaking plans. He’s restricting the contents of his speech to an absolute need-to-know basis. And I don’t need to know what he’s going to say. I just need to keep him alive while he’s saying it. So, tell me, what actual, concrete evidence do you have that Tyzack is planning a hit? And, if so, what is the target, date and location of the attack?’

‘Concrete evidence? None,’ said Carver. ‘He just told me that he was about to do a job and implied it was a big one.’

‘And from that you figure it’s Lincoln Roberts?’ Carver knew how feeble his warning sounded. He tried to make it anyway: ‘Look, I know it sounds crazy, but—’

‘But nothing,’ Bahr interrupted. ‘You know how many threats we are currently investigating against the President? I mean real, confirmed threats, with credible evidence of hostile intent? More than six hundred a month, that’s how many. We’ve got everyone from the Aryan Nation to al-Qaeda under observation. Lincoln Roberts is like a magnet for nut-jobs and we follow them all up, every last one. Maybe your guy is dangerous. But I don’t know, because you have nothing to tell me beyond, “He said he was going to do something big.” What am I supposed to do with that? You give me some real facts, I’ll take a look at them. But this kind of bullshit, forget it. No use to me. So, Carver, enjoy your life. This conversation is over.’

‘Charming, isn’t he?’ said Jack Grantham, who’d been listening to the conversation on the speakerphone.

Carver was still lying on his front on the examination table, though the doctor had finished his handicraft.

He reached out and handed Grantham back his phone. ‘Oh yeah, Bahr’s a fun guy all right,’ he said.

‘How did you get to be such great chums?’

‘I helped him out with some security work. It didn’t end well for him. I was hoping he’d got over it. Apparently he hasn’t. So now what?’

‘What’s next,’ said Grantham, ‘is we go back to London and I spend some time playing bureaucratic games in Whitehall, trying to persuade people that even if the Yanks won’t take the threat of Damon Tyzack seriously, we should. I’ll see if I can get this in front of the Joint Intelligence Committee, point out it wouldn’t do much good to trans-Atlantic relations to have the US President killed on British soil by a British assassin. There’s an outside chance that might scare the powers-that-be into action. Trouble is, unless I have something better to give them, they’re liable to react the same way Bahr did. I mean, he wasn’t exactly tactful, but one could see his point.’

‘Well, there is one other possibility,’ Carver said. ‘If Tyzack persuaded Thor to work for him against me, maybe he involved him in the job he’s about to do. I mean, that’s what Thor does …’ His voice trailed away.

‘Did,’ said Grantham, not unkindly.

Carver pulled himself together. ‘Has anyone checked his laptop? He had everything on that. If he was working on something, that’s where it’ll be.’

‘Ravnsborg already thought of that. He’s brighter than he looks, that man. Anyway, his people went to Larsson’s apartment. They found his computer, but it was protected by iris-recognition.’

Carver had a hard time getting the next question out. ‘Couldn’t they …’ He sighed; tried again. ‘Couldn’t they remove his eyeballs and use them?’

Grantham shook his head. ‘Apparently not. The system only works with living tissue. Besides which, Larsson’s eyes were pretty badly damaged. Might not have worked anyway. They’ve got their boffins trying to hack into the computer. They’re working on the phones, too.’

‘Forget it,’ Carver said. ‘Whoever they’ve got, I guarantee they won’t be as good as Thor. The guy was a bloody genius - a big, geeky, hippy …’

Grantham nervously placed a hand on an undamaged area of Carver’s left shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know he was your friend.’

‘It’s just … we never had the chance to talk, to put it right. He died thinking I hated him …’

Carver’s voice drifted away. Grantham reached out his arm again, but Carver brushed it away impatiently.

‘I’m not looking for sympathy,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to think. Larsson did say something, just before they put me under … something about the sky … That’s it, got it: “Look to the sky.”’

‘Is that all?’ asked Grantham. ‘“Look to the sky”? You’re sure there was nothing else?’

‘No, that was it.’

‘But that could mean anything. He could have meant something spiritual or religious. You know, look to the sky, to heaven, God, angels, all that kind of thing.’

‘Thor Larsson didn’t believe in God and angels.’

‘It’s amazing how dying can suddenly make someone start believing.’

‘No,’ said Carver, ‘that wasn’t the point of what Thor was saying. He was giving me a warning. He knew that something was going to happen. It’s got to be Tyzack. Whatever it is he’s doing, it’s coming from the sky.’