“That means we’ve got to be discreet. I suggest a small, dedicated team, backed by the full resources of all our agencies. This team must be tasked to search for any clues to who’s got these bombs, where they are, and who still knows how to make them explode. But they’ve got to do this quietly—and I mean really, really quietly.”
42
T
he first morning, Carver stumbled over the finish line of his three-mile course like a newborn foal on an ice rink, unable to control the skis and poles on the end of his thrashing, twitching, uncoordinated limbs. He lay facedown in the snow, his chest heaving, his throat gagging until Thor Larsson reached down, grabbed the collar of his windproof jacket, and dragged him, coughing and wheezing, to his feet.
“Keep moving,” growled Larsson. He hit Carver hard across the backside with a ski pole, just to underline the order.
“I said move,” he repeated.
Carver raised his goggles onto his forehead and stared at Larsson with an expression that combined exhaustion and loathing in equal proportions.
“Thought this was the end,” he finally croaked, dragging icy air into his lungs between each word.
Larsson shook his head.
“Move,” he said for a third time, wielding his stick again. “Now!”
Carver spat emphatically into the snow, just inches from Larsson’s skis. He yanked his goggles back down and set off again along the municipal trail that snaked through the countryside around Beisfjord, a small town near Narvik on the northwest coast of Norway, inside the Arctic Circle. Spring might be blooming across the rest of Europe, but up here winter had yet to relax its deep-frozen grip.
They barely hit walking pace past stands of stunted, bedraggled birch trees. Carver struggled for rhythm as he lifted his heels and slid his metal-edged, military-specification Asnes mountain skis forward, all the while driving his poles into the hard-packed snow.
Larsson had been cross-country skiing since he was in kindergarten. He’d received winter training during his national service as an intelligence officer in the Norwegian Army. He effortlessly glided ahead, always ensuring that no matter how hard Carver tried to catch up, he was always tantalizingly out of his reach.
They’d gone about another half-mile when they came to a rifle range, located by the trail so that biathletes could practice their shooting and skiing in competition conditions. Carver followed Larsson into the range, pulled off the Anschütz Fortner target rifle strapped across his back, and flopped down on his belly by one of the firing positions.
“Five shots, quick-fire,” said Larsson. “You have twenty-five seconds.”
Carver tried to aim his gun at the target: five white discs set against a black background. His muscles were overloaded with lactic acid, making his aching arms shake in protest as they tried to hold the weapon still and straight. Sweat was pouring into his eyes. It took him forty seconds to get his shots away. By the last one, he barely had the strength to pull the bolt back to load the next round. And the only target he hit was next to the one he was aiming at.
“Not good enough,” said Larsson. “Fire another clip.”
There were three more five-shot magazines in a holder on the right-hand side of the gun, a few inches in front of the trigger. Carver reloaded, fumbling like a new recruit.
“Twenty seconds,” said Larsson. “And this time, get your shots away inside the limit or you do another course.”
Larsson’s voice made it plain that he was utterly indifferent to the prospect of Carver’s suffering if he had to go around again. It reminded Carver of other voices, at another time and place. He remembered the twenty-mile runs he’d endured at Lympstone Commando Training Centre, on the way to his marines beret, and the ferocious workouts amounting to institutional sadism that were handed out by the instructors who supervised his selection for the SBS.
They’d not broken him, and he wasn’t going to let this overgrown computer geek make him look like a noddy now.
He got off the next five shots in a fraction over nineteen seconds. He hit two more targets.
Carver rolled over onto his back to take the weight off the elbows and biceps that had been supporting his upper body and the gun.
Larssson looked down at him with a contemptuous curl of the lip. “You have another twenty seconds to get back into position, reload, and hit the remaining two targets. Same deal. You fail, you ski.”
Ten years earlier he could have done it in five seconds. Throughout the Cold War the Royal Marines had been the U.K. armed forces’ Arctic-warfare specialists. As a young lieutenant, Carver had been up to Beisfjord for winter training with 45 Commando. Even now, he was wearing his old leather ski march boots, as unyielding as iron when they’d first been issued, but gradually worn in to fit the exact contours of his feet and ankles. Carver had even tried out for the marines’ Olympic-standard biathlon squad before the SBS came calling. But now . . .
“Go!” shouted Larsson, looking at his watch.
Carver heaved himself back onto his front, grabbed the gun, ripped out the empty magazine, and groped for its replacement. Actions that had once been second nature now seemed entirely foreign. It all used to be automatic. Now he had to think everything through, one agonized motion at a time. His hands were quivering with cold as well as exhaustion. He could barely focus his aching, sweat-stung eyes on the target.
“Fifteen seconds left,” Larsson intoned.
Not one shot fired.
Carver gathered himself and aimed at the first standing target. He fired as he was breathing out, to help steady his aim.
And missed.
“Come on!” he muttered to himself as he pulled back the bolt.
“Ten seconds.”
Carver felt his stomach tense. That was good. Somewhere his body had found a last shot of adrenaline-fueled energy. There was no time left to think. He just had to go for it.
Pull . . . aim . . . breathe . . . fire.
A hit. One left.
“Five seconds.”
He shot again. Another miss.
Shit!
Pull . . . aim . . . breathe . . .
“Two.”
You bastard!
Fire.
Carver blinked, trying to clear his vision. He couldn’t see what had happened. He rolled over again in despair.
“Get up,” said Larsson. “Move it out.”
Carver was muttering under his breath, repeating like a mantra, “Don’t let him beat you . . . don’t let him beat you . . .”
Larsson looked at him as he slowly got to his feet. And this time there was a smile playing around the corner of his mouth.
“You hit the target,” he said. “So we’d better get back to the farm. Ebba will have lunch ready by now. And, Carver?”
“Uh?”
“Stop talking to yourself. She’ll think you’re totally crazy.”
“She won’t be wrong,” wheezed Carver, following Larsson as he skied away down the track.
43
C
arver’s recovery had caused almost as much discomfort in MI6’s London headquarters on the south bank of the Thames as it had in Moscow. The thought of a renegade assassin alive, well, and in full command of his senses gave Jack Grantham cold sweats. This new situation could easily turn into a disaster. Somehow he had to make it work for him.
“What’s the news from this bloody clinic?” he asked, not bothering to disguise his irritation.
His deputy, Bill Selsey, was unruffled by Grantham’s bad temper. He’d long since learned to let it wash over him. He asked nothing more from life than a secure job, a modest home in the south London suburbs, and a guaranteed pension at the end of his career. He knew the pressure his boss was under and he didn’t envy it one bit.
“Carver’s done a runner, leaving a body behind,” Selsey replied. “The corpse in question had a fake I.D., some bogus psychiatrist, but I’m pretty sure he is, or was, Vladimir Matov, known to his chums as Vlad the Impaler. He’s an experienced FSB hitman, used to work for the KGB back in the good old days. Bulgarian by origin, like a lot of their best killers.”
“So friend Matov was sent to sanction Carver, only to find himself on the wrong end of the operation?”
“Looks like it.”
“And there’s no one else who could have sent him—he doesn’t freelance for anyone?”
Selsey shook his head. “Not as far as we know. He’s a state employee, no moonlighting.”
“So why does Moscow want Carver dead? Specifically, why do they want him dead now? He’s been a sitting duck for months for anyone who wanted revenge for Zhukovski’s death.”
“Like his dear wife,” Selsey interjected.
“Right. But Mrs. Z. doesn’t do anything for six months until suddenly she, or someone equally high up, feels the need to take action. And then, how the hell did Carver beat this man? I thought he was supposed to be bonkers, no bloody use to anyone. What’s he doing taking out a pro like Matov?”
“Apparently, he got better.”
“You don’t say.” Grantham’s voice was drenched with acid sarcasm. “I managed to work that out for myself, thanks, Bill. But when did this miracle cure happen, and why?”
“I’ve got people looking into that, talking to doctors and nurses at the clinic. Should have the answers later today. But I think I may have a lead on why the Russians want him dead.”
“Do tell.”
“There’s a Romanian in Venice, name of Radinescu, does some low-level work for the FSB, basic courier stuff, nothing fancy. We’ve been tossing him a few bob to copy us in on anything he gets.”
“And?”
“And he just passed on a message to Moscow from an agent who happened to be passing through Venice, a female agent. The woman in question was a bit of a looker, so Radinescu followed her for a while . . .”
“Bloody perv.”
“Maybe, but while he was stalking this woman, he took a couple of photos and when he sent us a copy of her message, he chucked in a picture of the girl, hoping we might pay him a bonus for uncovering a Russian spy.”
“He’s got a nerve.”
“Don’t be so sure. You might think this is worth standing Radinescu a drink.”
A plasma screen at one end of the room sprang into life. A series of color images appeared, showing two women—one black, the other white—wandering the crowded Venice streets.
“Good Lord, that’s the Petrova girl,” said Grantham. “But what’s she doing in Italy?”
“Well, she’s staying at the Cipriani with a man called Kurt Vermulen—separate rooms, before you ask.”
Grantham frowned.
“Vermulen? That name’s familiar . . .”
“American, ex-army, did some time in the DIA, and spent a couple of years in Grosvenor Square as their defense attaché. You probably bumped into him then. Anyway, Moscow seems to have taken an interest in him. Presumably Petrova’s been told to get as close to him as possible.”
“Who’s the woman with her?”
“Her name is Alisha Reddin. She and her husband, Marcus Reddin, are staying at the same hotel as Vermulen and Petrova. And here’s an interesting thing: Reddin served under Vermulen in the U.S. Army Rangers.”
“Could just be a couple of old comrades meeting up,” Grantham observed.
“Could be, yes,” agreed Selsey. “But presumably the Russians think there’s more to it than that. Why else have they inserted Petrova?”
For the first time, Grantham’s mood seemed to lift a fraction. The merest hint of amusement crossed his face.
“So she’s gone back to her old trade, for her old employers. Dear, oh dear . . . Carver won’t like that. He’s convinced she’s a good girl, really.”
“He may not know what she’s up to,” Selsey suggested.
“I’m sure he doesn’t have a clue. And you’re right: That explains what Matov was doing—making sure Carver died in blissful ignorance. After all, if there’s one thing we know about Carver, it’s that he’ll do anything to get his bird back. The Russians know that, too; they learned it the hard way. So the last thing they want is Carver setting off after his one true love and blundering into Petrova’s mission, whatever that is.”
“Which means they’ll have another go at killing him.”
“If they can find him, yes. Meanwhile, we need to know what was in that message Petrova sent Moscow.”
“We’re working on it,” Selsey assured him. “Should have it decrypted by close of play today.”
Grantham looked a lot more cheerful than he had at the start of the meeting.
“See if you can hurry it up—there’s no time to waste. We need to find out everything there is to know about Vermulen. Where else has he been, with whom, and why? Keep tabs on him. And find Carver. We have to get to him before the Russians do. Then we’ll suggest that he find out what his blessed Alix is doing, tell her to stop it, and cause the maximum havoc to all concerned while he’s about it.”
“The Russians won’t like that.”
“I certainly hope not.”
“What about our cousins across the water? Should we keep Langley informed?”
“I don’t see why—not yet, at any rate.”
“Really? They are supposed to be our colleagues.”
“And so they are, Bill,” said Grantham. “But only up to a point.”
44
I
n the corps they’d have called it an “up-homer”; bunking with a local family, instead of roughing it with the rest of the company in one of the disused caravan sites hired by the Ministry of Defense. Carver and Larsson were staying with one of the Norwegian’s cousins, Ebba Roll, who was married to a local farmer. Six feet tall and strappingly built, Ebba was the kind of woman who could just as easily stick a child under her arm as a sack of animal feed. She had powerful maternal instincts, but she didn’t show them through gushing affection or teary-eyed concern. Instead they were expressed by the no-nonsense efficiency with which she made sure that her menfolk and offspring (all of whom she treated as lovable but essentially hopeless) were kept clean, warmly dressed, and well fed at all times.