96
Carver heard the gun blast, drew the Sig Sauer from inside his jacket, and ran pell-mell up the next flight of stairs and along the corridor on the floor above. Whatever had just gone off, it was a lot more than a conventional rifle. And from the direction the noise had come from, on the western side of the building, it had been fired in the direction of the Goldsmiths’ Hall. There were five hundred people crammed in there, but Carver only cared about one of them: Alix. He prayed that she was still stuck in traffic. Or that the security people were taking their time letting her in. Or that she was stuck down in the basement, fixing her face in the ladies’ room. Anything would do, just so long as she hadn’t made it to the party.
The noise had come from somewhere along this corridor. The lights weren’t on up here, but someone was certainly home.
Carver took a second to take a breath and calm his racing pulse and heaving chest, then eased open the door to the main conference room and went in, his gun out ahead of him, seeing nothing but the dark shapes of the display panels boasting of Bandekar Technologies’ achievements and the lighting rig above them. There were no lights on here, either, and all the blinds were down. But as his eyes acclimatized to the dark, Carver could detect a door open at the far end of the room, and that the room beyond it was very slightly brighter than this one. At least one blind was open. And that, Carver knew, was where the shooter would be. He made his way forward, trying to combine speed with stealth as best he could. He had no idea that there were two dead bodies lying on the floor, half-hidden behind the panels… not until he tripped on Ashok Bandekar’s outstretched arm, and stumbled and bumped into the side of one of the panels. It wasn’t much noise, just a body against a metal frame, and a slight, involuntary grunt at the shock of the impact. But in that dark and silent room it sounded to Carver like an avalanche.
The routine was easy. Acquire the target, allow the fire-control system to set its range and… what was that? Braddock couldn’t hear much through his ear protectors, but some soldier’s instinct, honed over years of combat, was warning him of danger. He paused for a moment and frowned. Zorn was motionless, his rapt gaze entirely focused on the chaos visible through the shattered window of the Goldsmiths’ Hall. No, the threat was outside the room.
Braddock lowered the Punisher and turned his head in the direction the sound had come from, peering towards the open door to the conference room. He could see the black silhouettes of the display panels, but there was no sign of anything or anyone else. He was half-tempted to fire a grenade through the door, set to explode inside the conference room. That would soon solve the problem, if there was one. But he only had four rounds, and they were all needed to do the job on the Goldsmiths’ Hall. He looked hard for another second, lifting one of the protectors off his ear to listen for any sound on the far side of the door. But he saw and heard nothing. He gave a sharp twitch of irritation, then turned back to the window, raising the gun again. He’d lost several precious seconds, and every one of them represented a fraction less time to get away when the job was done.
Braddock lifted the gun again and pointed it at the second window. The distance was set. He just had to add in the three-metre delay.
That was done. He was ready to fire.
From behind the display panel, Carver saw a man holding a stubby weapon that looked like an overweight sub-machine gun peering in his direction. He tried to stay completely motionless, holding his breath until he saw the man turn away from him and move into a firing position, aiming through a half-open window. Another man was crouched beside him, gazing out of the window. From his silhouette, he looked like the elusive waiter.
Carver came out from behind the panel and dashed for the door, his gun out in front of him.
Braddock turned and pointed his weapon towards Carver, who was already diving for the floor, rolling to one side, hitting the ground as the gun went off. He felt the round punch through the air above his head. It sped through the open door and exploded at the back of the conference room, blasting the wall behind him with a hail of metal fragments. The wall held firm, sheltering Carver and the other two men. Their respite only lasted a matter of seconds.
Carver came to a halt on his stomach, his arms out in front of him, pointing towards the window, both hands still clasping the Sig.
Braddock was getting to his feet, his gun still aiming in Carver’s direction.
Carver fired four times, ignoring the waiter, aiming only at Braddock. The range was no more than five or six metres. The rounds went right through Braddock’s torso and into the window behind him, shattering the glass.
Braddock staggered backwards, dropped the Punisher, lost his balance, and fell backwards through the window, taking the blind, wrapped around him like an impromptu funeral shroud.
Carver took two more steps forward, keeping his gun on the waiter. ‘On the floor!’ he shouted. ‘Face down, arms and legs wide. And don’t move or I’ll blow your fucking head off.’
Carver was expecting a plea for mercy or a desperate cry of, ‘Don’t shoot!’ Instead the words he heard were calm, controlled and completely unexpected: ‘Pick up the grenade launcher.’
He was so taken aback, he could only say, ‘What?’
‘Pick up the damn grenade launcher. Aim it at the window opposite this one. Then fire it. I’ll give you a billion dollars.’
97
‘ You must be Malachi Zorn,’ said Carver. ‘Roll over. Up against the wall. Sit on your hands.’
Zorn did as he was told. Then he looked at Carver. ‘I mean it. I’ll give you a billion dollars if you just put a couple more rounds into that hall across the way. But, uh, you’d better do it quick. I have a way out of here, but it won’t stay open long.’
Carver shrugged. ‘Sorry, but I’ve got better things to do. I’m Carver, by the way. I’m the guy you paid to kill you.’ Keeping the gun in his right hand, with his eyes still fixed on Zorn, he put his wrist up to his mouth again: ‘This is Carver. I’m in the Wax Chandlers’ Hall. The shooter is down. I have Zorn. Give me five minutes.’
A voice cut in on the line. ‘You know what you have to do.’ Carver did not have to be told that it belonged to Cameron Young.
He put both hands back on the gun and looked directly at Zorn. ‘Your old friends don’t like you any more. They want you dead. Sounds like they’d rather deal with the fake Zorn than the original.’
‘They won’t feel that way when they realize all the money has gone. There’s over a hundred billion, you know, maybe more after tonight. Depends on how many we got with that first grenade.’
‘Yeah, I heard all about the money. I got the full rundown. And here’s the thing: I couldn’t give a shit.’
Zorn laughed. ‘Me neither… I never cared about the actual dollars and cents. They were just a means to an end.’
‘Which was?’
Zorn sighed. In the half-light from the window he suddenly looked washed out, exhausted: a man whose supplies of adrenalin had just evaporated. He sounded, too, like a man who needed to confess.
‘I just wanted to screw the people who’d screwed me. To get my revenge for my mom and dad. To show the world that all these masters of the universe who run the banks and the hedge funds are just a bunch of crooks — greedy, stupid, arrogant crooks. And the only way to do that was to take their money. They don’t understand anything else. I mean, they screwed the whole world, wrecked the economy, took trillions of dollars from all the regular people they treated like dirt…And even when everyone knew what they’d done, they didn’t say sorry. They didn’t admit they’d got it wrong. They just went right back to ripping the whole world off, all over again. So I wanted to rip them off… and I did.’
‘You also killed hundreds of people. What’s that got to do with getting your revenge on rich bankers?’
‘What’s it ever got to do with anything? Every new religion, every revolution, people always die. It’s unavoidable.’
‘That’s every terrorist’s excuse. Those deluded idiots you got to blow up that refinery probably said just the same thing. But don’t kid yourself. This had nothing to do with changing the world. It was all about money.’
‘What can I say? I needed to be certain of what was going to happen.’
