moving towards us, fanning out.’
‘Are they armed?’
‘I can’t be sure, but they certainly could be. Under those jackets
… sure.’
‘Take my hand,’ Carver said. ‘They could be coming for you, not me. Let’s see how interested they really are.’
Gripping her tightly, he turned on his heel and started walking towards St Mary’s Walk, the path that cuts right through the Wimbledon site from north to south. It begins at the top of Aorangi Terrace, and plunges downhill all the way to the far end of the club grounds, passing virtually every court and building of any significance as it goes.
Carver and Alix moved quickly, with the purposeful strides of people with an urgent appointment to keep, forcing their way past slower movers with brusque words of warning or apology. They reached St Mary’s Walk at a point about two-thirds of the way along it. To their left, it continued down past the new mini-stadium of Court Number Three, and a gaggle of outside courts, to a tented village of shops and eating places. Carver went the other way, up a steep flight of stairs. Here the path ran like the floor of a canyon between the looming bulk of Centre Court on one side and the zigzag facade of the Millennium Building on the other. This was where both the press and the players had all the facilities they needed to work and relax, and the mini-theatre where both sides met for pre- and post-match interviews.
Carver stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back. The three Chinese were heading his way, forcing their way past the people at the foot of the steps thirty or forty metres away. He tightened his grip on Alix’s hand. ‘Let’s go.’
Ahead of him the crowd became even thicker. A knot of fans stood immobile in the middle of the path, clutching cameras, video recorders and phones, and gazing up at a covered footbridge that ran over their heads between the Millennium Building and Centre Court. They were waiting to see a star player walk along it, going to or from a match, and they glared crossly at Carver as he forced his way through.
He heard a gasp from Alix.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Up the hill… more of them.’
Carver grunted to show that he’d spotted three more Chinese, one of them female. They might be completely innocent, but he couldn’t afford to risk it. He and Alix were caught almost exactly halfway between the two groups. He glanced at one, then the other, before giving a sharp tug on Alix’s hand.
‘Change of plan,’ he said.
He turned towards the Millennium Building and made for a gap in its facade, past the plate-glass windows behind which the world’s tennis journalists were sitting at their desks, splitting their attention between TV and computer screen as they filed their latest reports. Now Carver came to a small courtyard, hemmed in on all sides by high white walls. He felt Alix flinch as she took in their claustrophobic surroundings. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Through here.’
He made for a door in the far corner of the courtyard, that opened on to a stairwell.
‘Down,’ he said. ‘We’re going underground.’
70
One good thing about looking the way Schultz did: if you sat down at one end of a park bench, no way was anyone else going to sit at the other. Certainly not without asking very politely.
He heard a voice in his ear. It was Cripps. ‘You need a hand with the fireworks, boss?’
‘No worries, Kev, I’ve got this fucker well sorted.’
Schultz had delved into the B amp;Q bag and taken out the squat grey plastic tube, the shallow copper cone and a locking ring. He placed the cone at one end of the tube, the point facing inwards so that the external surface was concave. Then he screwed the locking ring on to the tube until it pressed tight on the copper, to keep it securely in place. Then he turned the tube over so that the open end was facing him.
Next Schultz got out the bag of Polyfilla and undid the clip that had been placed over the open corner. He then held the bag upside down, over the grey tube, and poured out the contents of the bag — in actual fact, high- explosive RDX powder — tamping the floury white particles down as he went, to make sure they were tightly packed into the tube. When the bag was empty, he placed the plastic disc over the open end of the tube as a backplate, and secured it with the other locking ring. The looped wire was now on the outside of the backplate.
Schultz now had a closed canister, not much bigger than a beer can, filled with explosives, with a fuse wire at one end and copper at the other. This was a Krakatoa, a weapon that arguably produced more bang per buck than any other on the planet. It struck Schultz that this was essentially a smaller, smarter version of the mortars that had been used to attack the refinery. Good to think that the man behind the attack would be getting a taste of his own medicine. It was just a pity Carver’s orders had been so specific: hit the engine, not the passenger compartment. Schultz would have liked to atomize the bastard. But orders were orders, even when they were crap.
There were four small open tubes on the side of the newly formed canister. Schultz took the four plastic sticks from the bag and inserted them in the tubes. Now the canister had legs to stand on.
Schultz undid the wire tie holding the loops of the fuse wire together, and unwound it. Holding one end of the wire in his hand, he placed the canister on the ground, lining it up with the pegged string.
‘Oi, Crippsy! Wake up, you idle bastard!’ Schultz said.
There was a laugh in his ear. ‘What do you want, boss?’
‘Take a look out your passenger window. Can you see the Krakatoa?’
Cripps grunted as he shifted his position. ‘Hang about… Yeah, if I look for it I can see something through the grass, and obviously I know what it is, right? But no other fucker’s gonna have a Scooby.’
Schultz chuckled. ‘No, not till they get it right up the Aris. Then they’ll fucking know all about it.’
71
One thing you can count on in any combat situation is that nothing will go exactly according to plan. The ability to adapt to changing circumstances, and improvise accordingly, is therefore vital. Derek Choi was no soldier, but he was well versed in the need to think on his feet. Carver had slipped his original trap. But now he might have run right into another.
For Choi, too, had been studying plans and photographs of the All England Club and its surrounding area. When he saw Carver disappear into the media centre stairwell, and then take the stairs heading down, he knew exactly where he was heading. He snapped out a series of orders to his most trusted subordinate: a thickset, shaven-headed tough called Lin Zhuang. ‘You and the others will be the hunting dogs and I will be the hunter. Follow Carver and the woman. Drive them towards the unloading bay. I will be waiting to snare them. If you kill them first I will not be displeased. Understand?’
Lin nodded.
‘Then go.’
Lin and the other four agents raced away down the stairs. Choi turned on his heels and went the other way. He ran about a hundred metres, and then he, too, headed down into the depths of the earth.
72
