arms.
It began as a hug of consolation, but soon he pushed a little harder against her, and Lara found herself pushing back, although she could not say why. In all the times she had been with men, she had only ever given them what they wanted – no matter how much it disgusted her, no matter how badly it hurt – because the consequences of not doing so were even worse.
So was it fear that made her long to please the man who was taking her now? When he picked her up and carried her across the room, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled her mouth to his, so that he had to jerk away, laughing, just to see where he was going. And then, very gently, he lowered her down to the bed.
4
Lara lay with her eyes shut, expecting at any moment to feel Carver’s weight upon her, wondering if this would feel different to all the other times. It took her a few seconds to realize that he was not joining her on the bed. She opened her eyes to find him still standing, fully clothed, taking more money from a leather wallet.
‘This is for you,’ he said, placing the money on the bedside table. ‘Twenty thousand dirhams. Now I must go.’
It took a second or two for Lara to understand what he meant. He was leaving her. She had failed somehow. He was going to return her to Khat and demand his money back. She sat upright, terrified, pulling a sheet across her chest.
‘I no good?’ she asked. ‘No please you?’
‘You were very good,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m setting you free.’
‘But Khat, Mr Dey, if they find out-’
Carver held two fingers to her lips. ‘Shush, don’t worry, they won’t cause you any trouble. Do you understand?’
Lara did not. All she understood was the price she would pay for failure. Her tears had returned as he took a hotel Biro from the table and wrote on a scrap of headed paper.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘This is important. Are you listening?’
She nodded miserably.
‘Good. This is the address of a place called the House of Freedom. It’s a shelter for women who have been trafficked. That means forced to come here, forced to go with men. It’s in Jumeirah, not far from here. I want you to go there. In a few days, the police will come to speak to you. It’s nothing serious, they just want to check you really were trafficked. But don’t tell them about me, OK? That’s important. Say that you escaped from your owner. Say that you want to go home. They will help you.’
Lara looked at him in bleak desperation. ‘Can’t go home. My family will say I am bad girl, I am whore.’
‘Here,’ said Carver, pulling more notes from his wallet. ‘That should help change their mind.’
Lara wiped the tears from her eyes and the snot from her nose. Then she asked the question that had been troubling her since they first met in the nightclub. ‘Who are you? Why you do… all this?’
Carver smiled. ‘I can’t tell you what I do, or why,’ he said. ‘But my close friends call me Pablo. Why don’t you do that?’
‘Don’t go, Pablo,’ she said. ‘Please…’
‘I’m sorry, I’ve got work to do. But you can stay here for a while if you like. Have a shower. Get something to eat. Don’t worry about the bill. But don’t stay more than one hour. In sixty minutes, you go, OK?’
Lara nodded. ‘One hour, maximum.’
‘Good girl.’
He walked over to the door, half opened it, then paused. ‘Goodbye, Lara,’ he said. ‘And good luck.’
Before she could say, ‘Goodbye, Pablo,’ he was gone.
Over the next few hours, Tiger Dey was gripped by violent stomach pains. These were the first effects of ricin poisoning. The 1-milligram dose – several times the estimated minimum required to be fatal – had been concealed within a sugar-coated pellet less than two millimetres across, designed to melt at human body temperature. This, in turn, was secreted inside the maraschino cherry given to him by an assassin he knew as Carver.
Ricin acts by breaking down proteins within cells, causing them to cease to function. There is no antidote to the poison, which is swiftly metabolized in the body, leaving no trace. It is, however, identifiable by its effects, which are incurable. In Tiger Dey’s case, these progressed to repeated vomiting and bloody diarrhoea. Within two days his kidneys, liver and spleen would all collapse.
Dey’s semi-legendary status, the controversy that surrounded him and the gruesome predictability of his demise attracted the kind of blanket media coverage that Dubai’s rulers do not particularly enjoy. Outside the hospital, cameramen and reporters jostled for position. Inside, Dey’s doctors tried their best to ease his pain. That aside, there was nothing they could do. There are few good ways to die, but this is arguably one of the worst.
Khat, whose given name was Kajoshaj Bajrami, met a swifter, more merciful end. He was shot in the back of the head, at point-blank range, when he went to collect his car in the lot behind the Karama Pearl hotel. No one heard the silenced shots or saw his assailant. His wallet was missing, however, and several witnesses testified to the fact that Khat had spent the evening at the bar in the basement club, boasting to anyone who would listen that he had just taken fifteen thousand euros in cash off Tiger Dey for a whore he’d bought for less than three thousand and was past her best earning days. The motive for his murder was therefore obvious, even if the culprit was, as yet, unknown.
At around 1.55 a.m., the man who had called himself both Samuel Carver and Pablo stopped by a dumpster behind a fast-food restaurant in the Deira district just north of the airport. He deposited a brown wig within the dumpster, making sure that it was well covered by a thick pile of stinking waste. He had already flushed his green contact lenses down a lavatory and swapped his white shirt for a black one. Back with his natural colouring of deep red hair and icy blue eyes, he made his way to Dubai International. Having checked in online and carrying only hand baggage he was in plenty of time to walk straight through security and on to the 2.45 a.m. Emirates flight to London. His ticket had been issued in the name of Damon Tyzack.
Tired by his hard work, but delighted by its outcome, Tyzack settled himself into a first-class private suite, lay back and soon fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
5
Several thousand miles away to the west, Samuel Carver was hurtling across the night sky like a human dart. With every second that passed he travelled 175 feet forwards through the air, and fell 50 feet closer to the surface of the earth.
For six weeks, Carver had been planning and training, gradually dropping out of sight, going off-grid. Nobody who knew him knew where he was. The people who had encountered him lacked any clue to his true identity. The chartered De Havilland Twin Otter aircraft from which he had just jumped, almost five miles up, was routed from Richmond, Virginia to the island of Bermuda, several hundred miles out to sea. The crew were men who worked on the same principles as Carver. They did the job, took the money and kept their mouths shut. They did not know or want to know what he intended to do once he left their aircraft. They got him to a specified point at the time required, and then they flew away.
Now he was lying face down with his back straight and his head tilted slightly downwards to streamline his shape and encourage maximum velocity. His arms were extended behind him at forty-five degrees from his body and his legs were wide apart. Thin membranes of rip-stop fabric formed wings that stretched between his arms and his torso, and from his crotch down to his ankles. There were four minutes to go before he hit his drop zone. But there were a myriad ways he could die before he got there.
The higher you go, the colder it gets: a little less than two degrees centigrade for every thousand feet of altitude. Speed merely adds to that problem by generating intense wind-chill. Carver faced roughly the same risk
