‘Got it in one. This whole thing was basically a financial scam. Zorn sticks a pile of money into the market, placing it all on bets that will pay off if there’s a disaster. Then he gives the market jitters by saying, “The eco- terrorists are coming!” Then they come. Then he cleans up… only in this case he does even better than he ever dreamed of because half the government is taken out along with the refinery.’
‘So Azarov was right,’ Alix said. ‘As soon as he saw the news — as it was all happening — he said that Zorn must be behind it.’
‘I thought that was over, you and Azarov.’
‘As far as I’m concerned it is. But I said I would do one last thing with him. We’re supposed to be going to Wimbledon tomorrow, as Zorn’s guests…’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it. I have to smile at the guy and act like nothing has happened, when all the time I know what he has done. Anyway, Azarov wanted me to pay close attention to Zorn. He said my woman’s eye might spot something that his male one could not. Why are you smiling?’
‘Because I just had exactly the same idea as Azarov,’ he said. ‘There’s a couple of things I need to know. And you could tell me the answers…’
An hour later, and six miles south-east across London, Carver was in a pub off the Walworth Road with Schultz and his oppo, an ex-lance corporal called Kevin Cripps. There were three pints of London Pride on the table, and whisky chasers for Schultz and Cripps. Carver was carrying out an impromptu mission briefing using Google Earth shots of Wimbledon on his phone screen to set the scene, and an assortment of coasters, pepper pots and cigarette packets to represent elements of the action he was describing.
‘Think you can do it?’ he asked them at the end.
‘Can you get all the kit by tomorrow morning?’ Schultz replied.
Carver nodded.
‘Even the Krakatoa?’ Cripps sounded sceptical.
‘Absolutely.’
‘In that case, boss, it’s a piece of piss,’ said Schultz.
64
Wentworth
The last of the reporters had long since left Malachi Zorn’s rented mansion. Now he and Razzaq were left in peace to consider their next moves.
‘What are you going to do now that Orwell is dead?’ the Pakistani asked. His religious principles did not permit him to consume alcohol, but he had a fat Cohiba cigar, fresh from Havana, to assist him in his thinking.
‘On Friday night, you mean?’
‘Yes. That was going to be his finest moment. Who is going to take his place now?’
Zorn was drinking red wine. He swirled it in the glass, savouring the bouquet as he thought about his reply. ‘Good question. I need to think this through. My first instinct is to go ahead as planned. We just need another way to get the guests in the room.’
‘Do we? Do you? Isn’t what you already have enough?’
‘Enough is a word I don’t recognize, Ahmad. There’s no such thing as enough.’
‘Sometimes there has to be. There are points when the wisest course is to accept that one cannot have everything one wants. Having enough is better than losing it all.’
‘What makes you think I will lose anything?’
‘It is not so much that I think you will, as that I fear you might. Let us take this from the beginning. You wished to take revenge for the deaths of your parents. Correct?’
‘That was one of the motivations, yes,’ Zorn agreed, pouring himself some more wine. ‘Another was… just victory, I guess. I want to win. That’s the American way.’
‘Indeed it is…’ Razzaq let out a long stream of aromatic smoke. ‘But Americans should know by now that one day’s victory can be the next day’s defeat.’
‘This has nothing to do with defeat,’ Zorn said. ‘There is a class of people that I hate. I want to beat them at their own game. I want to hurt them, to crush them. I want them down on their fat, piggy knees. And since they value money more than anything else, the best way to do this is to take their money, multiply it many times, and then steal it from them so that I am richer than they can ever be. And you’ll be rich, too, Ahmad, don’t forget that.’
Razzaq laughed. ‘I never forget that! But let us look at the way in which you set about achieving your ends. First, you entice investors to give you enormous sums of money. You create a situation in which they are pleading with you for the chance to hand over hundreds of millions — even billions — of dollars. They are like turkeys begging for Christmas.’
Now Zorn’s face was split by a schoolboy grin. ‘I know, aren’t they?’
‘And of course, Orwell was the perfect man to help you do this. He always had the ability to persuade himself that the best possible course of action was whatever he happened to be doing at the time. He fooled himself first, before he fooled anyone else. Tell me, what did he do with the money you gave him?’
‘He gave it right back to me to invest in Zorn Global, of course — his own fee and the charity money!’ Zorn replied gleefully. ‘My bet is he was planning to make a huge profit on all of it, give the charity the original five mill, and keep the rest for himself. I’ve already had messages from his lawyers. Sure as shit they want to know how much money there’ll be for the estate.’
Razzaq nodded. ‘Without any doubt that is what they want. So, Orwell helped you get the money. Then you found a way of multiplying it many times over. And by complete chance this turned out to be more successful than even you could have imagined. I am assuming that today’s events have returned a much bigger profit because of the deaths of Orwell and the rest.’
‘That’s a fair assumption, yes.’
‘All right. But it has also caused you a problem which we need to assess. The plan originally called for you to be assassinated prior to the public launch of the fund. Then I would persuade Orwell to host the event in your memory. I say, “persuade” but of course it would have been simple. He would have loved that chance to be the centre of attention.’
‘Oh yes, I can see him now, giving them all his big, fat Nicholas Orwell grin…’ Zorn agreed.
‘And the investors would all come to the Goldsmiths’ Hall pretending that they were doing it in your memory, but in reality because they wanted to know what was going to happen to their money.’
‘Sure… the contracts they signed when they invested their money specified that in the event of my death, they would receive all the money they had invested, plus eighty per cent of any profits. And after Rosconway, they’d all figure that would be eighty per cent of a helluva lot…’
‘So they would come to toast your memory and their even greater good fortune. And we’d kill them all.’ Razzaq stubbed the cigar out in the ashtray by his side, punctuating his words with downward jabs as he said, ‘Every… last… one of them.’ He sat back in his chair and went on, ‘But now Orwell himself is dead. So I ask you, how will any of the investors be persuaded to attend?’
‘Perhaps you could say that you were going to make the big announcement?’ Zorn suggested.
‘Ha! You forget that I know what is going to happen. I am not that foolish a turkey! And that is why I ask you now whether it would not be simpler to cut this whole project short. You already have enough money to last a thousand lifetimes. I assume that you can make sure that your investors never see a penny of it ever again.’
‘Of course. Hell, the damn money doesn’t really exist to begin with. There’s no pile of gold, no giant suitcase of cash. It’s just digits, you know, bits of data that get switched from one server to another. It can vanish into the ether any time.’
‘And so can you,’ said Razzaq. ‘So my advice is, do it now. Disappear. Go. Vanish.’
‘Well, that’s good advice. Don’t get me wrong, Ahmad, I appreciate your concern, and I can see the sense of it.’
‘But…?’
