No Survivors (25 page)

The truck driver swung left, trying to dodge the Porsche, but the tail of his trailer lost its grip on the road and started swinging around counterclockwise, into the middle of the road, colliding with the out-of-control sports car.

The Porsche hit the side of the trailer head on. There was just enough clearance for the hood to slide underneath it, but the passenger compartment was sliced from the rest of the car body like the top off a boiled egg, ripping Wynter’s head and shoulders from his body.

The trailer and the ruins of the Porsche came to a rest, lying across the highway, right in the path of the cement mixer, which braked, skidded, and slammed sideways into the wreckage.

By the time the two truck drivers had stopped shaking and clambered down from their cabs, Carver was a mile up the road. He left the highway at the next exit and pulled into a service station. A car was waiting for him, a black Rover 800. Carver parked the Honda and walked across to the Rover, passing a leather-jacketed, crew-cut man coming the other way. He got into the back of the Rover.

Grantham was waiting for him in the front passenger seat. He glanced up as Carver got in, looking at him in the mirror.

“Bit messy, weren’t you? Blood all over the carriageway, heads knocked off? Not exactly discreet.”

Carver shrugged. “I’m out of practice.”

Grantham twisted around to face him, holding out an envelope.

“Here are your tickets,” he said. “That fancy leather bag on the seat next to you is your hand luggage. Your suit is hanging up on the hook behind me. There’s a wallet in the jacket pocket, litter in the trousers. You can change at the airport. And there’ll be a gun waiting for you in Nice: your usual make and model . . . What’s the matter?”

“Thinking about the job just now. You’re right—it wasn’t good enough.”

“You got it done—that’s the main thing. And don’t worry—we’ll have a quiet word with the police. No one’s going to be announcing Kenny Wynter’s passing any time soon.”

“I hope not,” said Carver. “Otherwise, how’s he going to have lunch?”

C
arver was met at the airport by a courier bearing a sign that read WYNTER. He was given a brown padded envelope, for which he signed. As the courier disappeared into the milling crowd, Carver worked the envelope with his fingers, feeling the outline of the SIG and the spare magazines. Reassured by the possession of a weapon, he acquired the kind of underpowered, midmarket sedan that constituted a luxury vehicle in the eyes of the airport’s car-rental companies and set off along the coast to Antibes and the legendary Hotel du Cap. The Grill was located in a waterfront pavilion known as Eden Roc. He got there ten minutes early.

The restaurant was perched on the edge of a cliff, the customers protected from the drop by a ship’s railing made of glossy white-painted metal, topped by a polished wooden handrail. The whole place had a nautical feel to it. The floors were decked in pale wood, the tables and chairs were all white and shaded by a white canvas awning, the waiters had crisply pressed trousers and polo shirts, also dazzling white, the better to set off their permanent tans.

The maître d’ led Carver to a rectangular table, set for three, right next to the railing. He had an uninterrupted view out across the bay, past Juan-les-Pins, toward Cannes. Underneath the railing, a narrow strip of vegetation, the bright blue and yellow flowers bobbing about in the breeze, clung to the rock above the clear turquoise water. After the freezing blizzards of Norway and the drab grayness of England, the bright sunlight that sparkled across the sea and warmed the air filled him with energy and good cheer.

Turning his attention back to the restaurant, Carver sipped a glass of iced mineral water and casually scanned the other tables, just like any other lone male checking out the talent. On a weekday in April, the hotel had only just reopened for the season and the Grill wasn’t too busy, just a smattering of rich, middle-aged customers taking a spring vacation. Carver looked away. He wasn’t going to stop checking, but he was pretty sure the place was clean. Now he could concentrate on the yacht, at least a hundred feet long, that was cruising slowly across the bay, moving so gently through the water that it barely left a ripple in its wake. It had a dark-blue hull and dazzling white superstructure designed like the outline of a giant paper dart raking down toward the dagger point of the bow: The cabins and staterooms massed at the stern.

As the yacht came to a halt about one hundred yards offshore, Carver could see two figures, a man and a woman, leaning against the stern rail of the open upper deck and looking toward shore. The man had his arm around the woman’s waist, holding her body close. She was going with it, leaning into him, molding her body to his.

Carver recognized Vermulen because he’d instantly matched the man and his boat to Grantham’s photo file. But he knew that the woman was Alix on a far deeper level, that animal instinct that makes one instantly aware of a lover’s presence with an intensity that burns with excitement and pain in equal measure.

She was wearing a simple summer dress. Every so often the wind would catch it, fluttering the skirt, or pressing the fabric to her body, outlining the lines of her thighs and the curves of her hips and breasts. Carver felt the stirrings of sexual desire reawaken in him, like an old friend returning after a long journey to a faraway destination. Finally, Alix was real, there in the flesh, and this mission wasn’t just a challenge thrown down to him by Grantham. It was a compulsion. He had to get her back.

Down at water level, a door slid open at the stern of the vessel and two crewmen appeared, maneuvering a speedboat, maybe fifteen feet long, that was lowered into the sea at the end of a line. Vermulen pointed this out to Alix and the two of them went back inside before reappearing a minute or so later beside the crewmen, down by the water.

The general was carrying a black leather briefcase. He was about to get into the speedboat when Alix stopped him and adjusted the collar of his pale-blue shirt, fiddling with it for a moment until it was exactly to her satisfaction. It was a very feminine, proprietorial gesture: a woman taking possession of her man before she kissed him good-bye and let him loose in the world.

Carver felt an acid stab of jealousy, then told himself, Get a grip. That’s what she does—she makes men believe that she cares. But with you it’s real.

As Alix waved him off, Vermulen jumped into the speedboat, which brought him to a jetty at the foot of the cliffs. He came ashore, then made his way up a steep set of stone steps from the jetty to the restaurant.

Carver got to his feet to greet him. He wanted to be eye to eye with the man who had been sleeping with his woman, the man he might soon have to kill. He wanted to know exactly what kind of competition he faced.

Close up, Vermulen’s face was a little fuller than it was in his army photograph, the jawline less cleanly defined. His full head of hair, swept back from his forehead, was as much silver as gold, and he was carrying a very slight paunch. But none of these flaws detracted from the aura of purpose and energy that seemed to charge the atmosphere around him. In fact, they added to the effect, giving him the imperious air of a man who was living life to the utmost, taking everything the world had to offer, certain of his ability to master any circumstance or individual he might encounter.

The general stuck out a tanned forearm and gave Carver a crushing handshake. “Hi. Kurt Vermulen,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Kenny Wynter,” said Carver. “Likewise.”

Vermulen gave Carver his own once-over, looking him up and down as if he were a soldier at a parade-ground inspection. The two men sat down, the briefcase on the floor between them. The general summoned a waiter.

“Just get us a nice selection of seafood—lobster, oysters, whatever’s fresh and good today. We’ll take some green salad with that, some bread and butter.” He looked around the table. “You okay with that?”

It was strictly a rhetorical question. The officer was taking command. Carver shrugged his assent.

“Good,” said Vermulen. “I don’t consume alcohol at lunchtime. We’ll take a large bottle of still water, please. Unless you want some wine, Mr. Wynter . . .”

“No worries,” Carver replied, thinking his way into the character: the north London street kid whose brains had got him into Oxbridge, and whose criminal instincts had bought him a life of confident, class-less wealth. “I’m here for business, not booze.”

“And your business is taking things that are not your own?”

Wynter wouldn’t have let that one go, so Carver didn’t, either.

“I thought the U.S. Army was in that business, too.”

Vermulen laughed. “Touché, Mr. Wynter.”

They talked some more, sparring, each seeing what the other was made of. Then the food arrived, a great plate heaped with half-lobsters, langoustines, oysters, squid, and fillets of the Mediterranean sea bass the French call
loup de mer,
the wolf of the sea. Once plates were filled and glasses of iced water poured, Vermulen became more serious.

“You are an educated man, Mr. Wynter, so you will appreciate my meaning when I say that I feel that we are living in a time akin to Ancient Rome at the end of the fourth century A.D. Our civilization is still intact. Our comforts are greater than ever. But our will is crumbling. We lack the guts and determination to defend ourselves. And all around us, a dark age is drawing on. Enemies are prowling; populations are on the move. They sense our weakness and they await the moment to strike.”

The rhetoric sounded grand enough, but to Carver it seemed hypocritical, coming from a man in a luxury restaurant, not a warrior on the front line.

“You’re the one who left a military career,” he retorted. “You stopped fighting. How can you blame the rest of us for not doing our bit?”

For a second, Carver could sense Vermulen prickling at this assault on his self-regard. But then he recovered his composure.

“On the contrary, I left the U.S. Army precisely because our defense and foreign-policy establishment was not prepared to fight the necessary battle, the one that I believe will determine the fate of the West: the battle against radical Islam.”

That took Carver by surprise.

“What are you, some kind of Crusader?”

“Absolutely not: I don’t want any war at all. But I fear it’s coming anyway. It began in Afghanistan. It’s being fought in Chechnya right now, and in the former Yugoslavia. Islamic terrorists are aiming to create a radical Muslim state in Kosovo, able to stab a knife right into Europe’s guts. And the States will be next.”

“You reckon?” said Carver. “What’s that got to do with why I’m here?”

“Because you are going to acquire something I need very badly for our struggle. And by getting it, you’re also going to deny it to our enemy. Now, you come to me highly recommended, so let me make you a serious offer. You bring me what I want, in pristine condition, and I will pay you five hundred thousand dollars, half in advance, in any form you want, into any account you name.”

“What is it you want?”

“A document. Don’t ask me about its contents, because I will not reveal them. All I can say is that they could be vital to the future peace of the world.”

Carver looked as indifferent as Wynter would have.

“You say that as if I should care. So where is this document?”

Vermulen leaned forward and lowered his voice.

“Sitting in a plain brown file, secured by a wax seal. This seal must be intact when you return it to me, or I will refuse to pay the rest of your money. The file is currently being kept inside a safe, located in a house about a dozen miles from here, in the hills above a village called Tourrettes-sur-Loup, due west of the town of Vence. It is guarded by armed men and trained attack dogs, as well as motion detectors, inside and out. There are alarms on the ground-level doors and windows. I have no information as to the model of the safe, or the exact nature of its lock. The combination, if there is one, is also unknown. You’d better assume, though, that it is protected by palm- or eye-scanners, in addition to that combination.

“The occupants of the house are ethnic Georgian gang members, based in Russia. Their leader is a man named Bagrat Baladze. He doesn’t like to stay too long anywhere, so his people and his document will only be at this location for the next ninety-six hours maximum, maybe less. I do not know where they plan to go next and cannot be certain of tracking them. That means it has to be done now. Are you interested?”

Carver didn’t look too impressed. “I’m not sure about that. See, I like to plan my work thoroughly. It can take weeks, even months. But thorough planning prevents stupid mistakes. That’s why I’m sitting here with you, not rotting in a cell.”

“The exact same principle applies in the military,” Vermulen agreed, speaking normally again. “But equally, there are times when speed is of the essence. This is one of them. So can you do it, or do I need to consider other options?”

“Depends. Tell me about the building where these muppets are staying.”

“There are detailed plans in the case.”

“Maybe, but give me the gist of it, all the same.”

“The layout is typical of vacation properties in this area. It’s an old farmhouse, newly renovated. It hasn’t even gone on the rental market yet, not officially anyway.”

“So the builders have only just moved out?”

“I imagine so.”

“Okay, that could be useful. Now tell me about the setting—what’s the size of the grounds? Are there a lot of other properties close by? How about topography and cover—trees, bushes, rocks, that kind of thing.”

“The property is right at the northern edge of the village. It has been chosen for its seclusion and privacy. There are no other houses within five hundred feet in any direction. The lot covers about two and a half acres. It’s on the lower slopes of a four-thousand-foot hill—”