Revenger (5 page)

‘Yes, I’m a political lobbyist. He’s a politician. It’s my job to meet people like him.’

‘And work for them?’

‘That depends on what he expects my company to do for him, what he is willing to pay, and whether I think he is the kind of client we want to work for.’

‘He isn’t,’ said Grantham. ‘Take it from me.’ He looked at Carver. ‘So are you going to Adams’s night rally, too?’

‘No, Alix has got work to do. I’d only get in her way. I’m having a drink with an old mate instead.’

‘Very sensible. Anyone I know?’

‘Snoopy Schultz.’

‘Ah yes . . . the one that helped you carry out the hit-that-wasn’t.’

‘That’s him . . . So, what’s your problem with Mark Adams?’

‘It’s not a problem. It’s a simple observation of fact. He’s an exceptionally nasty, dangerous piece of work. As foolish, incompetent, corrupt and generally useless as ninety-nine per cent of our politicians undoubtedly are, they’re still a thousand times better than Mark Adams.’

‘You sure about that?’ Carver asked. ‘Have you seen the state they’ve reduced this place to? Maybe you haven’t noticed, living here. But coming back after a couple of years away, it’s a real shock. Those politicians you’re talking about did that.’

‘Them and the bankers, the regulators, the euro-fanatics, the Iranians, the Israelis and, if we really want to point the finger, all
the
voters in all the countries who thought they were entitled to health and welfare systems, and pensions, and new cars, and foreign holidays, and bigger houses and God knows what else – all without ever paying the bill,’ Grantham countered.

‘So maybe that’s why you need someone new, with a different attitude, to come in and knock some sense into people,’ Carver suggested.

‘Someone, maybe . . . just not this one.’

Alix knew that the two men had a complicated, highly combustible relationship: they were two alpha males who couldn’t resist butting heads, challenging one another, constantly trying to do the other down. And yet beneath it all they had a fundamental trust in one another that came from working together under extreme pressure, when lives were on the line and the fate of nations was at stake. Neither man had ever broken his word, or disappointed the other, and though they would never even have considered, let alone admitted it, Alix felt certain that neither had a better friend in the world.

‘Look,’ she said, wanting to resolve the situation. ‘I’m sure you have very good reasons for saying all this, Jack. And I know that you have access to information that we certainly don’t have. But I’ve told Mark Adams that I will meet him, and I’m going to keep that appointment. I don’t know what will happen after that, but I can absolutely assure you that I have no intention of working with anyone who is, as you say, a nasty piece of work. I have my own reputation to protect. And I certainly don’t want to be opening doors in Washington, just so an evil man can walk through them.’ She reached across, laid her hand on Grantham’s wrist, looked him in the eye and said, ‘Can we agree on that?’

Grantham sighed. ‘If you insist, yes, we can. But I’m advising you both as the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service and as someone who has known you both a very long time: have as little to do with Mark Adams as humanly possible. Ideally, have nothing to do with him at all.’

6

IN PARIS ANOTHER
eminent, middle-aged man was having a hard time persuading a determined woman to see his point of view. ‘I’m sorry, Madame Novak, but I really cannot have this discussion at the moment.’

Jean-Jacques Levistre rose from his family dinner table, holding his mobile phone in one hand and making exasperated gestures with the other which, along with the exaggerated look of annoyance on his face, were meant to indicate to his wife, sitting opposite him, just how much he did not want to take this call. ‘Look, I will go into my office so that we can talk confidentially, but I must insist: no more than five minutes, maximum.’

‘I fail to understand why you won’t see me,’ said Celina Novak. ‘I have money, lots of it. Are you seriously telling me you don’t want to be paid? I don’t believe it. No one turns their back on cash these days. No one!’

‘Of course I want to be paid. I have a family to feed. But I also have professional ethics that I must observe and a conscience that
I
must live with. What you are asking of me offends both those principles. I’m sorry, but I cannot do it.’

‘But you have to! Can’t you see that? I insist! You have to do this for me!’

‘No, really I don’t,’ Levistre insisted. He did his best to summon up the soothing, reassuring tones that were one of the major reasons for his success. ‘Honestly, Celina, you should be happy with what we have already achieved. You have been remarkable. Your courage, your fortitude, your ability to endure the un-endurable – they have inspired me. But we must all know our limits. And we have reached ours. I am very sorry, but there is nothing more to be done.’

Levistre turned off his phone, took a deep, calming breath and then walked back to rejoin his family.

A couple of kilometres away in her hotel room, Celina Novak looked at herself in the full-length wardrobe mirror, running her eyes up legs that possessed not the faintest scrap of cellulite; a waist as slender as a girl’s half her age; breasts that had been so perfectly enhanced that most men now had to make a conscious effort to look her in her cool, grey-blue eyes; and hair whose natural length and volume had been boosted by extensions applied by the most expensive stylist in Paris. A great deal had already been done. But Levistre was wrong. There was more she could still do. There had to be.

Two days had passed since the incident with the child in the park. She should have got over it by now. All her life she had lied, cheated, seduced and killed without the slightest backward glance. She possessed a sociopathic indifference to truth, morality, conscience, compassion, empathy or pity. And that included self-pity. As a young child she had learned to fake unhappiness or distress as a means of getting what she wanted from adults. But she did not really feel those emotions. So why was this memory still haunting her?

Even that question itself angered her, since she regarded reflection and introspection as pointless wastes of time. Far better,
Novak
decided, to work off some of the rage and frustration that was gnawing at her guts. She rode her hired BMW F650GS motorbike out of the heart of Paris to the eastern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. The vast majority of its population were North African Muslims, who were now locked in a more or less permanent battle with paramilitary units of the resurgent Front National. The most combative of all the anti-fascists hung out at a mixed martial arts club that stayed open late. Novak turned up there and got in the ring, a head guard her only concession to personal protection. She started taunting the regulars, daring them to fight a white woman. It took a while before her first opponent stepped into the ring. But when the others saw the ferocity with which she fought, and the blows she was willing to take as well as deal out, Novak had no shortage of takers, and she did not leave that ring until the pain and exhaustion were enough to provide some relief, however temporary, from the furies raging inside her.

7

WEDNESDAY EVENING: ALIX
watched the blue flashing light of a police car reflecting off the puddles in the rain-slicked street as it came up Knightsbridge towards her, hurtled past the Hyde Park Palace Hotel, and then raced away towards Piccadilly. It was getting dark now, and the streets were starting to clear of cars and pedestrians alike. Even in an area as smart as this, people only went out at night if they had a very good reason to do so. And no one got in anywhere without first proving their right to do so. All new arrivals at this or any other major hotel, for example, had to pass armed security guards, bag- and body-scanners, and even the occasional body search before they could even check-in. Thereafter their room keys acted as pass-cards to get them through the entrance barriers. Once inside, it was like entering a separate dimension of luxury and indulgence, hermetically sealed off from the ever-increasing chaos and shabbiness of the world outside.

Alix found the effect to be more disconcerting than reassuring. As much as she had never felt a single second of nostalgia for the grim, depressing greyness of her Soviet childhood, there was still a
tiny
part of her that clung to some of the socialist idealism that had been drummed into her as a girl. The presence of this island of wealth, and others like it, amidst an increasingly rough sea of poverty and lawlessness disturbed her. It reminded her of Moscow in the years immediately after the fall of Communism, when the rule of the state and the secret police was making way for a culture of gangsters and oligarchs. One of those tough, ruthless men had kept her as his mistress, and she had learned first-hand about the way the world worked when the strong took whatever they wanted and the weak went to hell. She didn’t want to go back to that, either.

Thinking of the past only served to remind her how far back her memories went. Alix had long since come to terms with the fact that she was no longer the pretty young thing of days gone by. She was more at ease with the face and body she saw reflected in the mirror now than she had ever been in the past. Of course, it didn’t hurt her self-confidence to love and be loved by a man who made it perfectly obvious how much he desired her. She heard him now, coming in behind her, and turned to watch him as he walked across the room.

‘Ah, there you are,’ said Carver, smiling as he caught her eye.

Even now, the sight of him could still make her heart flutter like a teenage girl’s. She loved his strong hands and forearms, the taper from his broad shoulders down to his narrow hips, the high, firm curve of his butt. She loved watching his clear green eyes. Their moods were as changeable as the sea: sometimes bright and sunny, sometimes stormy, sometimes as cold as Arctic ice.

She was almost certain Carver had no idea of the effect that his face and body had upon her. It was simply not an issue he even considered; he never for a moment thought of himself as something to be looked at or judged in the way that every woman in the world was constantly obliged to do.

They’d met more years ago that she really cared to remember, one summer’s night in Paris on the Left Bank of the Seine. It was a perfect setting for romance, but far from a conventionally perfect
introduction
. She’d pointed a loaded Uzi in Carver’s direction. He’d replied by smashing her face-first against a bus-shelter before she could open fire, knocking her to the ground, rolling her over and cuffing her hands behind her back. Then he’d sat her up against the side of the shelter and interrogated her; someone wanted him dead and he needed to know why. She’d been furious with Carver for the brutal, impersonal efficiency with which he’d rendered her helpless, furious with herself for letting it happen, furious with the whole damn world for the way it treated young women like her. But there’d been an immediate, overwhelming connection between them. No matter how hard she’d tried to deny it, she hadn’t been able to. It’d been obvious he’d felt it, too. And all these years later nothing had changed.

He had reached her now and circled her waist with his arms. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he asked, pulling her close to him.

‘Not you as well as Grantham?’ she protested.

‘We don’t need the money.’

‘Yes, but the people who work for me need their pay cheques. And that means I have to get new business. Anyway, I promised the President.’ She ran her fingers down Carver’s face. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to rush into anything. And I’ll know if Adams is telling the truth or bullshitting me. I’m not some innocent, naïve little schoolgirl.’

‘No, you certainly are not,’ Carver said, with a wicked grin, holding her even tighter, letting her feel his hardness. ‘So why don’t you show me just what a grown-up, experienced woman you are?’

Alix felt herself starting to melt. She had about five more seconds before he kissed her, and then any feeble attempts at resistance would crumble. It took every ounce of will she possessed to deny herself what she very badly wanted and pull herself out of his grasp.

‘No,’ she said with a certainty she did not feel. ‘I’ve got a car coming to pick me up in twenty minutes, and I’ve got to shower, change and get myself ready by then. You’re just going to have to wait.’

‘I don’t think I can,’ he said, taking a step towards her.

‘Well, you’ll just have to.’

Alix dashed to the bathroom, slammed the door behind her and locked it before he could charm his way in. At that moment she would happily have cancelled the meeting, let her business go to hell and spent the rest of the night with Carver. But there were people who depended on her, people with mortgages to pay and families to feed. And as much as she might have been tempted, she wasn’t going to let them down.

Carver stared at the bathroom door, feeling the throb of his frustrated desire. He wanted to take her so badly: on a bed, on the floor, up against the nearest available wall, he wasn’t choosy. It didn’t help knowing that she’d felt it too. In fact, it made it worse. How did women do that – say no to sex they obviously wanted? Let the driver wait outside for a few extra minutes, for Christ’s sake. It was only just past six o’clock now, and the main event wasn’t due to start till eight. There was plenty of time to make everybody happy.

Alix wasn’t going to change her mind now, though. He knew her well enough to be sure of that. He wandered off back to the suite’s living room and picked up his mobile phone from a side table. He pressed speed-dial and waited for the call to be answered.

‘Evening, Snoopy,’ he said.

‘Oi, show some respect, you cheeky sod,’ said the South London voice on the other end of the line.

Carver laughed. ‘All right then, I’ll start again . . . Good evening, former Company Sergeant Major Schultz. How are you?’

‘Getting by. And yourself?’

‘Not too bad . . . You still on for that drink?’