leveraging his cash so that any fall in the market would net him staggering profits. Of course, by the same token, any rise would render his options worthless. But the prices were not going to rise. That he, and he alone, knew for sure.
As he put the last components of his plan in place, Zorn was struck for a moment by the extraordinary reality of what he was doing. An act of mass-murder was about to take place at his request, the second in the space of just four days. It struck him that he was not remotely bothered. He didn’t feel bad about it at all. He wanted people to die. He wanted other children to feel the same way he had done when fate had robbed him of his parents. He wanted to wallow in death.
A few metres away, Braddock shifted his position and reached for the cord that controlled the window blinds.
He looked at Zorn.
‘It’s show time,’ he said. Then he lifted the grenade launcher to his shoulder.
94
Carver emerged from the side entrance to the Goldsmiths’ Hall and had himself patched through to the spotters on the far side of Gresham Street. ‘I assume you’re armed.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you using laser sights?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, do me a favour and switch them on. Then track me. Whoever I talk to, point the sights at them.’
‘Got it.’
Carver crossed Gutter Lane, looking down it as he went. He could see the lights from the party on one side of the narrow street. He could see the Wax Chandlers’ Hall on the other side, so close the two buildings almost seemed in touching distance. He started to get a very bad feeling indeed.
Two security guards in cheap black suits and over-gelled hair were standing on either side of the entrance to the Wax Chandlers’ Hall. Beyond them a short flight of steps led up through an arched portico to the interior of the building.
Carver went up to the nearest guard and produced his Ministry of Defence ID.
‘I need to get into the building,’ he said.
‘No, you don’t,’ said the guard. ‘No one gets in unless they’re on the list. You’re not on the list. You don’t get in.’
He gave a smug, self-satisfied nod, as if delighted by his awesome powers of reasoning.
‘Yes, I do,’ Carver said.
‘You got a problem, mate?’ asked the second security guard, lumbering towards Carver.
‘No… you do. Look at your mate’s head.’
‘What the fuck are you going on about?’
‘Look at his head.’
A red laser dot was glowing right in the centre of the security guard’s forehead.
‘Oh shit…’
‘You got one too, mate!’ the first guard shouted.
‘So here’s the thing,’ Carver went on. ‘You’re both currently under observation by Metropolitan Police snipers. With me so far?’
The men nodded.
‘Now, I’m about to go in this building. Try to stop me and they’ll shoot. Or stand up against the wall, legs apart, hands flat against the wall, and don’t move, and you won’t have a bullet where those red dots are. What do you reckon?’
The men spun round and raced for the wall. Carver walked up the stairs, drawing his gun as he went, relieved that he had not had to use it earlier: if Zorn was in here, he didn’t want him alerted by the sound of gunfire.
95
Alix ran up the staircase towards the reception. She heard the sound of laughter and then, as she got to the first-floor landing and turned left towards the Livery Hall, it was followed by applause that was merely polite to begin with, but then built to a cheering, hooting, foot-stamping crescendo. When she saw the screens at the very far end of the room, she understood why. Malachi Zorn was about to speak to his loyal disciples, every one of whom expected to be told just how much richer they were this evening than they had been at the start of the week.
She took her eyes from the screen and, all thoughts of Azarov driven from her mind tried to scan the room for Carver. It was no good. She’d never find him in this crowd. Her stomach seemed to be gripped by sharp steel claws as Celina Novak’s words echoed in her memory: ‘You’re much too late.’ No… she couldn’t be. To win Carver back again, only to lose him for ever, would be more than she could bear. She pushed her way through the people, ignoring the protests as she barged against bodies and stepped on toes, turning her head this way and that in the desperate hope that she might, by pure chance, catch sight of the man she loved.
Up on stage, Zorn began to speak: ‘Thank you… thank you… No, really, that’s enough!’ The joke broke the spell, and the laughter faded away into an expectant silence. ‘So… I guess you want to hear how the fund is doing, huh?’
There was another laugh, and a couple of good-humoured heckles from the crowd. ‘Damn right we do!’ shouted one man.
Mort Lockheimer had spent the days since the Rosconway attack working through endless trading permutations in his mind, trying to decide just how much had already been added to the value of his personal Zorn Global fund. Now he was punching the air and whooping like a fan at a ball game. ‘Show me the money!’ he yelled.
‘How come you don’t get that excited over me?’ asked Charlene.
‘Oh, baby, just you wait!’ he replied. Then he tilted his head back and screamed, ‘Mo-ney!! Mo-ney!!’
Zorn watched, enthralled, his fingers jammed in his ears, as Braddock lifted the futuristic black gun to his shoulder and pressed a button on its side. The gun hummed as it charged itself for a few seconds, getting ready to fire. Then Braddock set his sights on the first window: the one directly opposite the stage on which Drinkwater would now be speaking.
Braddock was now seeing the world through his weapon’s fire-control system. In the middle of the viewfinder there was a small red cross. He lined it up on the window, pressed another button, and let the laser-based system calculate the distance to the window and transmit that information to the grenade now sitting in the barrel. He adjusted the range so that the round would explode after it had travelled three metres beyond the window. Then he fired. And even before the noise of the explosion had died away he was swinging the gun towards the next window.
Alix was aware that something had smashed through one of the great windows that ran the length of the room. The air itself seemed to explode as a blast erupted above the guests’ heads, shattering one of the chandeliers, which plunged to the floor. The fragmented metal from the grenade combined with shards of broken crystal from the chandelier to create a flesh-shredding volley of shrapnel that sliced into the people crammed within the blast radius.
Alix screamed in terror. Something hit her skull. There was a momentary burst of pain more intense than any she had ever known. And then everything went black.
