‘Of course, anything.’
‘Then we’re on.’
At Malaga airport, walking between the chopper and the private jet, Tyzack made a phone call. He gave a set of specific instructions, then listened impatiently, his face clouding over with anger, to what the other speaker had to say.
‘Are you quite finished?’ he said at last. ‘Right, then, let me make myself clear. I don’t give a damn if you’re busy, or you have other things to think about. This is what you’re thinking about now. I need that design, so remember those pictures I sent you? Think about them. Think about the people you love. Now go away and do what you’re told.’
Tyzack was still fuming as he ran up the steps, barged past the pretty, smiling flight attendant standing at the aeroplane door and slumped down sullenly in the nearest seat.
The attendant turned to look at the co-pilot, who had been watching through the open cockpit door. She raised her eyebrows, widened her eyes in mock-horror, gave an exaggerated sigh and mouthed the words, ‘What’s got into him?’
At his villa, Visar put in a call to the Albanian embassy in Washington. ‘Get a message to Kula,’ he said. ‘I need him to create an application for an iPhone, a guidance system. The precise specifications will be sent to him soon. Tell him this is a job that will gain him great favour.’
‘Consider it done,’ said the diplomat on the other end of the line.
28
On their first afternoon in Paris, they got Carver a suit for the wedding. The next morning Maddy went clothes shopping by herself. She said she wanted to give him the morning off. He tried to believe her. A voice in Carver’s head told him Maddy wanted to get rid of him so she could meet a contact or speak to her handler, but he was determined not to let his paranoia wreck their trip. If he made himself live in the moment and not think about anything else, several hours at a time could go by without him wondering whether the woman next to him was lying with everything she said and did.
Carver hadn’t brought a laptop with him, but there was a computer downstairs in the hotel lounge. He decided to log on to a few news sites and drink a cup of coffee while he worked out how to spend the morning.
The front page of The Times carried the usual mix of economic misery and political bluster. The only news that caught Carver’s eye was the announcement that Lincoln Roberts was planning a flying visit to Bristol to speak at an anti-slavery conference. At the bottom of the story there was a link to a related feature. Its headline read: ‘Pablo the sex-slave Pimpernel, and…’
Carver grinned: Pablo. It had been a while since he’d heard that name.
He clicked on the link and a page opened up with the full headline. The final words were, ‘and a mysterious death in Dubai’.
Well, he could see why people were making that the number-one story. Sex, crime, death, an exotic location and a bloke with a funny name – what more could anyone want?
Carver started reading Jake Tolland’s story. It described Lara’s enslavement, her rape and her trafficking to Dubai. Then it followed her to a dingy nightclub, where she met an Englishman who was looking to buy a girl of his own. Through Lara’s eyes, Tolland described the man. He was slim, not conventionally handsome, but attractive. He had dark hair and green eyes – strange green eyes, said Lara, though she could not describe what precisely was wrong or unusual about them.
By now, Carver was no longer reading for entertainment. As his eyes raced over the following paragraphs, the ache in the guts that he had felt when he first suspected Maddy – and that had hung around him, on and off, ever since – now gripped him more tightly than ever. His throat felt constricted. He felt a stab of pain in his jaw and only then noticed that he had been grinding his teeth so hard that his mouth was virtually clamped shut.
Tolland told how Pablo had freed Lara Dashian, given her money, told her to go to the women’s shelter, and then disappeared entirely off the face of the earth. But Lara’s pimp had been found shot to death in the hotel parking lot, and Tiger Dey – one of the masterminds of the people-trafficking trade in the whole Gulf region – had been taken to hospital hours later with a fatal attack of what appeared to be ricin poisoning.
‘Do you know how it was administered?’ Tolland had asked a senior Dubaian police officer.
‘Not for certain, no,’ the detective had admitted. ‘But we believe that the killer may have hidden a small pellet of poison in a cocktail cherry. Mr Dey was very fond of them and ate several while he was in the club that night. We also have witnesses, including Miss Dashian, who testify that the man called Pablo gave Mr Dey a cherry. That may have been the way it was done.’
‘But you cannot be certain?’
‘No.’
‘So you cannot build a definitive case against Pablo?’
‘Not at this point,’ said the policeman. And then Tolland described the cop as he stubbed out a cigarette, looked up at the reporter and said, ‘But I will tell you one thing, Mr Tolland. I believe that this man is a cold- blooded killer, almost certainly a professional assassin. It is my opinion, and that of my superiors, that he represents a significant danger to the security of Dubai and its citizens. And it is my job to protect the people of Dubai. By whatever means necessary.’
29
Carver closed the laptop and leaned back in his chair, staring blankly at the ceiling. He thought about the name Pablo, and the people who knew its significance for him. He took another look at all the phrases used to describe a man whose identifying features were so similar to his own. He checked the date the story gave for that night at the Karama Pearl Hotel. It was a few days before he did the job at Lusterleaf, the job that he could not mention to anyone, and would be denied by anyone and everyone close to the President. Not that it would make any difference what Bahr or even Lincoln Roberts himself might say. When the mysterious Pablo had been in Dubai, Carver had been deep undercover, living off the grid, leaving no trace of his presence anywhere… and thus creating no alibi.
Maybe it was all pure chance. But Carver didn’t think so, and nor would other people who knew him and would immediately link him to Pablo. He was being framed for another man’s hit. It struck Carver that the corny old bumper stickers had got it right. Just because he was paranoid didn’t mean someone, somewhere, wasn’t out to get him.
He needed someone to talk to. He called Thor Larsson in Oslo and told him what was going on. ‘Am I going crazy here? That whole Pablo thing, I don’t know, maybe it’s just coincidence.’
Larsson was his normal, unflappable, Scandinavian self. ‘It’s got to be. Look at the odds. How many people call you by that nickname any more, or even know about it? And how many Pablos are there in the world? Picasso, Escobar… and lots more no one’s ever heard of. It could be any of them.’
‘But what if someone really is copying me? That’s not good.’
‘What’s that saying you have in England?’ Larsson asked. ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Take it as a compliment. You’re so good at your job that people want to make cheap copies, like a Rolex watch or a Louis Vuitton handbag.’
‘Thanks, that’s a big reassurance,’ said Carver with a humourless chuckle. ‘I’m being set up. There are policemen in Dubai pretty much saying they want to kill me.’
Larsson seemed untroubled by the threat to his friend’s life: ‘But you’re not going to Dubai. You’re coming to Oslo. We’ll chill out and let this all blow over. Look on the bright side. At least you’ll be free of this crap soon. I’m getting married for ever.’
‘Ha! Let me tell you, if I had to choose between a lifetime with Karin or a single meeting with that Middle Eastern copper, I’m taking the gorgeous Norwegian blonde every time. Believe me, Thor, it’s only my deep respect
