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.
92
The men who had trained Alix how to defend herself had drummed some very simple, basic rules into their pupils. In any fight, the winner is almost always the one who strikes first. So do not wait to be attacked. Take the initiative. Be decisive. And do not stop until you are absolutely certain that your opponent cannot do you any harm.
Perhaps it was the sight of a woman who had been trained in the same class as her that made Alix’s mind flash back to those days. But whatever the reason, it suddenly became clear to her that her only chance of getting past Celina Novak was to take her by surprise and then forget whatever qualms she might have about instigating violence.
Alix feinted to go past Novak again. But then, as the other woman moved to block her once more, Alix raised her knee and kicked sideways and down, driving the hard point of her heel into the side of Novak’s right knee, collapsing the joint and making her scream in excruciating pain. Novak’s leg gave way, and as she went down, Alix stepped behind her and caught hold of her hair before she had time to fight back. Alix gripped hard, and then, going with the direction of Novak’s fall, smashed her face against the side of the basin counter. She heard a sickening crackle like an eggshell being crushed underfoot, and Novak’s nose collapsed into a misshapen pulp, smearing blood and snot against the hard plastic counter top as she slid down to the floor, hitting the back of her head against the rock-hard ceramic tiles.
Novak lay there, half-dazed, writhing as she tried to draw up her elbows and her good left leg to push herself upright. Alix told herself to remain detached, and let the training that had been drummed into her twenty years before take over. This was a necessary means to a justifiable end. Lives were at stake: she could not afford to be squeamish.
She waited till Novak’s knee was bent to ninety degrees, presenting an ideal target. Then she took a deep breath, gathered her strength and jabbed her heel hard into the soft skin at the side of the joint, dragging another bubbling, coughing attempt at a scream from Novak’s blood-filled mouth. Alix aimed one more kick with her shoe’s pointed toe at Novak’s temple, putting her down again and leaving her flat out on the floor, barely conscious and hardly able to breathe.
Keeping half an eye on Novak, knowing that she could still be a deadly threat as long as there was breath in her body and a pulse, however faint, in her veins, Alix kicked off her shoes and pulled off her hold-ups. She grabbed hold of Novak’s wrists, and while Novak was still too stunned to resist passed one of the holdups around them in a figure-of-eight pattern. Next, she pulled both ends hard, till the nylon stocking dug into the flesh of Novak’s wrists, and knotted them tight. She repeated the same process with Novak’s ankles, provoking more muffled moans as she pulled the legs straight and worked the devastated knee joints.
Novak was immobilized. Now Alix needed some means of making her talk. She scrabbled through her evening bag, looking for something that could inflict pain: even a metal nail file, jabbed under an eye, would do. She found an even better option: a small bottle of eau de parfum spray. But that was only half of what Alix had in mind. Novak’s bag had fallen from her hand. Alix opened it. Sure enough, she kept a packet of cigarettes and a lighter there. Alix removed the lighter. Then, with it in one hand and the perfume in the other, she returned to Novak’s prone, twitching body.
Alix knelt down astride Novak’s chest, with her knees digging into her upper arms on either side. She looked down at Novak’s eyes. They were open but still unfocused. Alix slapped the side of Novak’s face and saw the other woman blink several times as she tried to focus her sight and gather her wits.
‘Watch,’ said Alix.
She pressed down the top of the scent bottle, spraying it above Novak’s head. Then she flicked the lighter and lifted it towards the cloud of perfume. It caught fire, turning into a jet of flame. Alix placed the lighter down on the floor. Then she used her now empty hand to brush away the hair from Novak’s forehead. It was a strangely tender gesture, but its purpose could not have been more brutal. Alix lowered the scent bottle till the flame was touching the skin that she had just exposed. She forced herself to leave it there for a couple of seconds, long enough to make Novak screw her eyes shut and make another high-pitched gurgling sound.
Time was passing. The unknown danger was drawing closer. Alix leaned down and hissed in Novak’s ear. ‘In case you were wondering, I’m not too scared or too soft to burn what’s left of your face. They’ll be able to fix the nose… eventually. But burns… that’s much tougher.’
Alix could see the effort of concentration it took Novak to produce a mushy, slurring response that was so indistinct that Alix had to stop and think before she could distinguish the three words: ‘Screw you, bitch.’
‘I’m in a hurry. I’m not going to give you any chances. You wouldn’t give me any. Just tell me: what’s going to happen? Why are they all in danger?’
Novak twisted her lips into a defiant smile, her scarlet lipstick now invisible beneath the thick coating of her even richer, thicker red blood. ‘Too late. Can’t stop it,’ she said.
Alix picked up the lighter again, drew another flame from the scent bottle, and held it against Novak’s left cheek, waiting fully five seconds till the nauseating smell of burnt hair and grilling skin filled her nostrils. The horror of what she was doing was so great and so real that it all but overpowered her will.
‘I won’t stop,’ Alix said, almost to persuade herself as much as Novak. And as the words left her mouth she saw a sudden flicker in Novak’s eyes and a twitch at the corner of her mouth as Novak detected the first signs of weakness.
‘Yes, you will,’ she mumbled.
‘Eat it,’ Alix said, and this time she ran the flame across the raw flesh and bone of Novak’s nose and then left it licking at her lips as Novak’s body twitched and her head thrashed from side to side to escape the blistering heat.
‘Stop! Please stop!’ Novak begged, and Alix let go of the nozzle, killing the fire.
There were tears in Novak’s eyes. She was crying in pain, and that was somehow the hardest thing of all for Alix to bear. ‘For God’s sake, just tell me what I need to know,’ she pleaded.
Novak looked at her. ‘Grenade attack. Through windows. Everybody dies.’ And then, as Alix got to her feet, she added, ‘But you’re too late… you’re much too late.’
93
For the past few months, every time Zorn had landed a major investor, he had started buying ‘put’ options on the shares of the corporations they owned or managed, betting that the value of those corporations would go down. He was, essentially, taking a bet on the value of their deaths. And each had a different price on his head.
A faceless chief executive, for example, who had siphoned off billions from a multinational bank, would not be missed for long. There was always another greedy cipher in a suit waiting to take his place. So his company’s shares would be rocked, but not devastated, by his passing. A brilliant entrepreneur, on the other hand, whose vision had transformed a fledgling computer brand into an iconic global technology brand, was a very different matter. Men like that — and they were almost invariably men — were stars. Their customers were also their fans. Remove them, and the companies they had created might not collapse, but they would be shaken to their very foundations. And their share prices would drop like stones.
During his brief shift as a waiter, Zorn had confirmed the presence of several such individuals scattered amidst the guests thronging the Goldsmiths’ Hall. So now he started buying ‘puts’ on their shares, doubling and even trebling the size of his existing positions, looking for options that needed to be exercised at the earliest possible dates. Since the market was rising, no one was interested in options that depended on prices falling within the next week, or less. That made those options dirt cheap. So Zorn was able to make his money go much further,
