room beyond.
A grey-haired man was lying there, on a large brass bed, taking his midday rest. He grunted an indignant but sleepy protest, then slumped back on to the pillow as Carver dashed out of the room into a corridor. A staircase at the far end led down to the ground floor, or up to the roof. Carver went up and out on to a flat expanse of dazzling white. A clothes line was tied between two chimneys at either end of the roof. Carver undid one end and ran to the other, still holding the line.
He was about to abseil over the side when he looked down and saw a black-clad figure turning into the far end of the narrow alley to the rear of the house, holding a gun in his hand. Carver gave the clothes line a sharp, hard tug to make sure it would take the strain, then tied a honda knot to creat a lasso loop on the end of the line.
He peered over the edge of the roof.
The gunman was not far away now, walking slightly hunched forward, his pace tentative, his head extended as he peered from side to side, eyes set at ground level, looking out for his prey but nervous in case he himself was ambushed.
The angle of the man’s neck was ideal, but Carver would only have one chance to get this right. He played out the line, trying to calculate the amount he would need for what he had to do. Then, as the gunman walked by, Carver began lowering the looped clothes line, gently swinging it back and forth above the man’s head, not so fast that it would generate any wind noise, praying that he would not look up. The gunman was two paces past Carver now… three…
Carver swung the line to its fullest extent, past his target, then brought it back the other way, dropping it lower until the centre of the loop slipped over the man’s head and snagged against his neck.
That was the first the gunman knew of it.
He raised his free hand to tear at the line around his neck, then looked up, bringing his gun to bear on Carver, who was now standing, clearly visible, at the edge of the roof.
Before the man could fire, Carver pulled the line hard, tightening it like a hangman’s noose around the gunman’s neck. Now the gun was forgotten, dropped to the ground as both the man’s hands fought for purchase on the line. Carver pulled again and then a third time, increasing the pressure on the exposed neck, crushing the larynx and forcing his victim to stagger backwards towards him in the hope of creating some slack. But Carver kept pulling the line tighter and tighter, his jaw set in unrelenting determination as the man’s efforts to resist became more feeble and then ceased entirely. The body on the end of the line slumped into immobility. For now, Carver knew, the man was only unconscious. It would take a few minutes yet for death to follow, but follow it certainly would.
Now he used the line for the purpose he had originally intended, letting it out again and abseiling down the wall to the alley below. He looked at the man’s purple face and the grossly distended tongue that flopped out of his open mouth.
‘That was for Ginger,’ Carver said. He picked up the discarded gun and frisked the body for the spare clip. Then he looked around. About ten metres further down the alley, at the back of a restaurant, stood a large, wheeled dump-bin. Carver dragged the body across to it, heaved it in and covered it with a foul-smelling mix of half-eaten food, kitchen waste, empty bottles and containers. He wiped his hands on an old, discarded dishcloth, then closed up the bin and walked away down the alley.
At four to one, without a weapon, he’d not liked his chances. But now the enemy were a man down and he was armed. The odds were swinging in Sam Carver’s favour.
3
MI6 headquarters, Vauxhall, London
‘ All right, then, tell me the worst,’ said Jack Grantham as he strode into the meeting room. ‘What’s that grinning money-grubber been up to now?’
He slapped a file down on the table top, pulled out his chair with an energy that suggested limitless depths of pent-up irritability, and sat down.
Half a dozen staff were already in place. They looked at one another with raised eyebrows and quizzical expressions. After a decade of MI6 heads who were essentially political placemen — their every word calculated to avoid accountability; their only desire to tell Number 10 exactly what it wanted to hear regardless of the actual facts — Grantham’s cantankerous frankness took some getting used to.
‘Are you referring to our former Prime Minister?’ asked the amused, languid voice of the second most senior officer in the room, Piers Nainby-Martin, a thirty-year veteran of the Service, educated at Eton and New College, Oxford.
‘No, Piers, I’m referring to Simon bloody Cowell… Yes, of course I mean the Right Honourable Nicholas Orwell, one-time member for the constituency of Blabey and Trimingham, now fully occupied feathering his nest. What’s this I hear about his new business venture? Some kind of investment fund for the stinking rich… Come on, let’s be having it.’
Another officer, Elaine McAndrew, a bespectacled, mousy, bluestocking type in her thirties, stood up and pointed a remote control at a large plasma screen: ‘This is footage from last night…’
The screen came to life with grainy shots of a lavish outdoor party. A large circular dinner table, decorated with a splendid floral centrepiece, had been set beside a spotlit swimming pool. At the far end of the pool stood two silk-draped pavilions. Within one of them, two uniformed chefs stood behind a spread of whole lobsters, spectacular king prawns, a perfectly pink joint of roast beef, golden glazed chickens, silver bowls of pasta, rice and salads of every description, and a pair of chafing dishes whose fragrant, spicy contents would have graced a three-star restaurant. In the adjacent pavilion, a barman was ready with premier cru wines and vintage champagnes, European, Asian and American beers, and a selection of single malt whiskies for those who preferred spirits.
‘This is the Castello di Santo Spirito. It’s an estate in Tuscany, about ten kilometres from Siena, owned by an American called Malachi Zorn,’ the woman continued.
‘The American speculator?’ Grantham asked.
‘That’s right, sir, yes.’
Grantham harrumphed. ‘His speculations appear to have been successful, then.’
‘Yes sir, he’s believed to be worth in excess of fifteen billion dollars.’
There was a shuffling of papers from down the table and a voice piped up: ‘Fifteen point three, to be precise, according to the latest Forbes magazine list of the world’s richest individuals.’
A grimace of indifference tinged with disgust crossed Grantham’s face. ‘So what was the occasion?’
‘A dinner party, sir,’ said the female officer. ‘For guests of similar wealth.’
The camera turned to look back up a flight of stone steps towards a country house. From the champagne glasses whose rims were occasionally visible at the bottom of the picture it appeared to be attached to one of the wine-waiters. The camera came to rest on a man. His black suit was perfectly cut, but artfully crumpled, and his white dress shirt was tieless, its top three buttons undone to reveal a tanned, hairless chest. A group of guests — Grantham counted nine men and women — were following him down the stairs, like children trailing the Pied Piper.
‘Mr Zorn, I presume,’ said Grantham.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What’s the story with him, then?’
Nainby-Martin took over: ‘Could you pause the video a moment, please, Elaine?’ As the image froze, he glanced down at a file in front of him. ‘Malachi Vernon Zorn. Born in Westchester, New York, in 1970. His father was a banker, his mother a full-time housewife. Malachi was the only child. Educated privately at Phillips Exeter Academy, then went up to Harvard to study mathematics, for which he had a phenomenal aptitude. As a boy he was also an accomplished horseman, played a lot of tennis and was a competent yachtsman. So far, so conventionally privileged. But then came an unexpected twist. Both his parents died: mother first, then the heartbroken father.
‘Zorn was in his final year at Harvard, but walked out without graduating. He proceeded to hit the New York party circuit, apparently set on throwing away every penny of his inheritance as fast as possible. Aside from
