The two men had developed a routine. They got up no later than five-thirty and ate a breakfast that set them up for the day: porridge and fruit, boiled or scrambled eggs, cold meats and cheese, toast and jam—sometimes all of them—washed down with gallons of orange juice, coffee, and (Carver insisted) strong, sweet tea.
While the food was digested, Larsson worked on Carver’s mental fitness: memory tests, spot-the-difference puzzles, anything that boosted his ability to take in information fast, notice patterns or anomalies, and recall what he had just seen. Next time he checked out his surroundings, or walked into a new environment, he’d have his wits about him.
Midmornings were spent on the ski trails and rifle range. In northern Norway, the winters are dark, with only a few hours a day of gloomy blue light before the sun finally rises over the mountains at the end of January. But by the last week in March the sun rises at 5 A.M. and doesn’t set until 7 p.M., and the light on the snow can be dazzlingly clear and intense. The landscape is raw, but spectacular: the white snow, blue skies, gray-black rocks, and deep-green sea all colliding as the mountains plunge into the fjords, where the waters of the North Atlantic mount their eternal, erosive assault.
As time went by, Carver realized that although there was never a ski session that did not involve a steadily escalating quantity of pain, inevitably building up to a grand finale of tortured muscles and burning lungs, it took longer every day for the agony to kick in. Little by little he actually began to enjoy the process. He took pleasure in his increasing fitness and pride in his rediscovered proficiency on the rifle range. He was able to appreciate the majesty of his surroundings. Some days, he even managed to complete an entire course without once wishing to kill Thor Larsson.
That, though, was never a good sign. Larsson always noticed any lessening of Carver’s hatred. The next day, he would go that little bit further, pressing harder and faster, just to crank the pain and the fury back up to the proper level.
Lunchtimes, they replaced lost energy with pasta, potatoes, or brown bread. Protein came from chicken, fish, or, if Ebba was feeling indulgent, lean, intensely flavored cuts of moose and reindeer. His stomach full and his body shattered, Carver collapsed into bed for a couple of hours’ rest, only to be raised again for an afternoon of weights, weapons training, and unarmed combat in one of the farm’s outbuildings. Guns are legal and relatively easy to come by in Norway, compared with much of Europe. Within ten days, Carver was stripping and reassembling a rifle and pistol as fast as Larsson, and easily outsparring him. His body was gradually returning to its natural shape: 175 pounds of muscle and bone, a balance of endurance and strength. He felt like a fighting man once again.
Three weeks in, the temperature was regularly several degrees above freezing, and down on the lower ground the snow had started to melt. Finally, at the end of an eighteen-mile ski, Larsson told him, “Okay, now you are ready. Tomorrow we prepare our equipment. The day after, we leave.”
“Leave for where?” Carver asked.
Larsson turned to his right and pointed up into the mountains. “Up there, four nights. We’ll carry everything we need. Now we find out just how fit you really are.”
45
T
he customer-relations executive could barely contain his enthusiasm as they walked toward the aircraft. A fortnight beforehand, Waylon McCabe had asked for some unusual modifications to be made to one of his executive jets, for a charitable project he had in mind. The corporation’s Special Missions Department thought about it for a couple of days, just to see if his requests were technically feasible, but there was only ever going to be one answer. For the past five years, having switched his supplier after the Canadian disaster, McCabe had bought all his jets from their range. They keenly appreciated his business. They had no intention of losing it.
“I just want to say, on behalf of our whole team, that we think what Mr. McCabe is doing is just great,” said the suit, pausing at the foot of the stairs that led up to the cabin. “Airlifting medical supplies to the starving people of Africa—you know, it’s a privilege to be able to contribute to something like that. It sure is a pity we couldn’t tell Mr. McCabe in person.”
McCabe had sent his lawyer to take care of the handover.
“Sadly, he’s a little indisposed at this time, but I’ll pass on your good wishes,” said the lawyer, who didn’t know what his boss planned to use the plane for, exactly, but it certainly wasn’t Africa.
He glowered at the executive, who didn’t seem to be moving.
“So, can we take a look at the plane?”
“Sure, sure, of course, my pleasure. Our chief engineer will show you around.”
The executive stepped aside, and the engineer led the way up the stairs, bending his neck as he stepped into the cabin. Take out the fancy decorations and the high-tech accessories, and the main body of the plane was nothing but a metal tube with an internal diameter of less than six feet. There wasn’t a lot of room. The men formed a single line, the engineer leading, as they made their ungainly way through the cabin.
“You gentlemen are all familiar with one of these, right?” asked the engineer rhetorically. “Okay then, up ahead of us, at the rear of the cabin, there’s a closet and a restroom, and aft of that a small baggage hold. The regular bulkhead at the back of that hold offers structural support to the rear of the aircraft. Well, we took that bulkhead out and moved it forward, right up against the side of the restroom. That opened up the whole of the rear section of the fuselage, so’s to make more space for loading up whatever it is you’re going to be dropping. As you can see, we’ve put a hatch, kind of like on a submarine, right there in the bulkhead.”
He stood by the crude undecorated wall that now blocked off the end of the cabin, with the oval hatch beside him.
“We didn’t want to compromise the strength of the bulkhead, so we had to make the hatch kinda snug, but there’s just about room to step through into the new, bigger hold we made there.”
The engineer opened up the hatch. Through it, the empty rear end of the aircraft was dimly visible.
“It’s pretty tight, so you gents might want to take a look one at a time. You’ll see, in back, on the floor of the new hold, there’s a door. It’s hinged at the front, so that it opens downward, like a ramp, with the open side at the rear. It’s hydraulically operated from the pilot’s cockpit, or you can see a handle, like a pump, right there on the floor next to it. That’s the manual option. We fixed up a rig you can put your load in, so’s it can be dropped when the door is opened. Or there’s just room for one person to be in there, do the job himself. We fixed up a safety line there, so he won’t fall out.”
“Glad to hear about that,” said the lawyer. “Wouldn’t want a lawsuit from a grieving window.”
There was a peal of sycophantic laughter from the executive, more of a grunt from the engineer.
“Hope that’s what you were looking for, anyway,” the engineer concluded. “Mr. McCabe gave specific instructions. I believe we were able to follow them pretty much to the letter.”
“Yes,” said the lawyer. “I believe you did.”
Back home in Texas, McCabe now knew that he had a plane capable of dropping a bomb over Jerusalem. Even now, despite everything, when he thought about what he had in mind, McCabe still asked himself if he was really doing the Lord’s will. He wasn’t too sure how you could be certain about a thing like that, but he decided it would soon be clear enough. The doctors had told him the tumors were getting worse. They were begging him to undergo chemotherapy, but McCabe had said no. He knew what those chemicals did and he didn’t see the point in buying a few extra weeks if it meant puking like a dog after every treatment and watching his hair fall out. He’d rather be his real self when he came to face his maker. If he lived to see Armageddon, he’d know that God had been on his side. If he died before then, he’d expect a warm welcome in hell.
Either way, it was going to be soon.
46
C
arver was feeling like a normal human being again. He wanted to act like one, too. The night before their four-day trek, he and Larsson skipped the training diet and went into Narvik for a few cold beers, hefty portions of steak and chips, and some flirtatious banter with the waitresses.
Driving home, Larsson asked, “What if she doesn’t want you back?”
Carver laughed. “She’d have me back, all right. Not sure about yours, though.”
“Not her,” said Larsson. “Alix. What if you go to all this trouble, and you find her, and it turns out she didn’t want to be found?”
Carver frowned. The possibility hadn’t occurred to him. But maybe Larsson was right. Maybe Alix had left because she couldn’t stand being around him anymore.
“Christ, that’s a depressing thought,” he said, his good humor suddenly vanishing. “I don’t want to think about that. Anyway, you’re wrong. She’d want me to come after her. She did last time. Why would it be any different now?”
“I don’t know,” Larsson admitted. “I mean, she was definitely still crazy about you the last time I spoke to her.”
“Right—so why do you think she’d change her mind?”
“I don’t. I was just asking a question. Hypothetically.”
“Well, don’t,” said Carver. “I’ll assume she wants me to come get her, until she tells me otherwise. And bollocks to hypothetical.”
“Oh, shit!”
Larsson was looking in the rearview mirror. He shook his head in disgust and pulled over to the side of the road. Only then did Carver notice the white Volvo with the flashing lights pulling in behind them and the cop getting out of the driver’s door.
Larsson wound down his window and started talking to the policeman in Norwegian. Carver couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but it didn’t sound good. He knew from his Royal Marines days that Norwegian cops could be tough, unforgiving buggers, a million miles removed from the British image of Scandinavians as laid-back, liberal types.
Larsson was asked to leave the car and escorted around to its rear, where another brief exchange took place. Then he was made to take a Breathalyzer test. The policeman entered Larsson’s details in a handheld terminal, then finally waved them on their way with an irritated look on his face.
“What got him so pissed off?” Carver asked.
“I was under the limit,” Larsson replied. “He couldn’t bust me for drunk driving, so I’ll keep my license. But he got me on a broken rear light; I’ll have to pay a fine.”
They drove back to Ebba’s farm. And as they did, a computer trawling ceaselessly through the world’s network systems came across a name to which it had been programmed to respond, and flagged the data to which that name was attached. And a few hours later, at the start of the working day, a man walked into his boss’s office and said, “Guess who just turned up in Norway.”
APRIL
47
A
rriving with Alix at the Excelsior Hotel in Rome, Vermulen found a postcard waiting for him: a picture of a hill village in the South of France with the words
Tourrettes-sur-Loup
written over it in fancy script.
On the back there was a message. It read,
I told you I’d find somewhere great! You MUST try this place: Bon Repos, Chemin du Dauphin. It needs work. For a good contractor try Kenny Wynter . . .
A phone number followed and then a signature,
Pavel.
“Novak again,” said Vermulen with a grin, when Alix asked him about it. “That man, he never stops trying to sell stuff.”
That had been two days ago. Now Alix was in the hotel steam room, letting the heat and humidity relax her muscles and sweat the toxins from her body.
There was one other woman in the room. She caught Alix’s eye.
“Just like home, enjoying a Turkish bath!”
The words were spoken in Russian.
Alix smiled. “Except in Moscow we wouldn’t have to wear bathing suits. We could be naked—so much more comfortable.”
“What do you expect? This is an American hotel.” The woman shook her head in mock sorrow. “Crazy people.”
“Careful,” said Alix. “My boyfriend is American.”
“Maybe he is an exception!”
The woman looked around, confirming that they were still alone. Then she spoke again, not so chatty anymore.
“So, your boyfriend, what has he been doing?”
“He had a meeting yesterday, with an Italian, he would not say who. But I know they met in a park, on the Aventine Hill. He said it had a magnificent view of St. Peter’s. Maybe there are cameras nearby that you can check. Also, he had a message from Novak. I do not know the significance, but it concerned a particular house, in France.”
She passed over the details. The woman did not seem impressed.
“This is not enough—a meeting, but you do not know who with; a house, but you do not know its significance. Moscow will expect more than this.”
“I’m sorry. I’m doing my best.”
“In any event, I have a message from the deputy director. She regrets to inform you that your friend in Geneva passed away. As a consequence, payments to the clinic have been stopped.”
Alix gasped. She looked wide-eyed at the other woman before bending over, her head in her hands, the sobs shallow at first, then convulsing her whole body.
The other woman made no attempt to comfort her.
“You must understand,” she said eventually, “this makes no difference to your mission. You are to continue as before. That is an order.”
She got up to go.
“Enjoy the rest of your bath.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Vermulen when Alix got back to their suite.
Now there was a good question. Alix was distraught, unable to hide the pain from her eyes. But when she asked herself why, the answer was more complicated than a simple matter of loss.