Assassin

84

Damon Tyzack heard the explosive crack echo around the rolling Cotswold landscape and watched as a puff of orange smoke billowed up into the air. He cursed under his breath. The dummy explosion had detonated on a patch of grass at least ten yards from its target, a crude structure built from scaffolding, planks and hay bales. It stood at one end of a field far from any public roads at the heart of an estate in Gloucestershire owned – via a complex series of intermediaries – by the Russian mafia leader Naum Titov. The loan of his field was Titov's contribution to the death of Lincoln Roberts. To Damon Tyzack, however, the simultaneous removal of Lara Dashian was at least as important an objective.

He spoke into a walkie-talkie. 'Let's do that again. This time I want more height at the point of release, and a longer delay on the fuses. See if that achieves the desired result.'

Tyzack had been hard at work for several hours, calibrating his equipment and checking that the combination of stolen goods, back-street engineering and software mailed in from the far side of the Atlantic could do the job for which it was intended. Not yet, was the answer. But it would, even if he had to stand in that damn field all night. The only weapon he would be taking into the killzone tomorrow would be the iPhone on which Bobby Kula's custom application was installed. He watched the screen one more time, hit a button, waited a few seconds… Crack! This time the smoke rose from a point just beneath the foot of the stage. They were getting closer.

'And again,' he said into his handset.

As he waited for the next run, Tyzack thought about the events of the previous night. He had to admit, he'd got a hell of a shock when he'd looked through the Transit's windscreen and seen Samuel bloody Carver getting out of a Jag thirty yards up the road. The man was supposed to be dead. What in God's name was he doing alive and well outside Bill Selsey's house?

Tyzack had ducked his head just in time, thanking his lucky stars that his face was partially hidden by his cap. Carver's arrival had significantly altered the odds and made the attack on Selsey unacceptably risky. If that was all he had to do, Tyzack might have gone ahead, just to take on Carver and put him down for good. But with so much else at stake, that was one pleasure he would have to deny himself, for now at least. He'd shouted at his driver to keep going, then told Geary to abort the mission.

And it had not been an entirely wasted effort. Tyzack now knew a lot more than he had before. MI6 had obviously not only broken Selsey, they had also used him as bait. Selsey did not know who had hired him, but Carver would have worked it out in an instant. Tyzack went over what he had told Carver about the Roberts hit. No name had been mentioned, but he'd certainly given enough clues. He'd wanted Carver to work it out and be tortured by the thought that there was nothing he could do to stop it.

That had been a mistake, Tyzack had to admit. But again, he had learned something, too. They were expecting him. That was useful to know. Especially since there was absolutely nothing that anyone could do to stop him. About thirty miles to the south-west, a slender blue-grey and black XSR48 speedboat was cruising at a fraction of its potential 100-mph top speed upstream along the river Avon. Its destination was a berth on a pontoon at a boatyard located off The Grove in Bristol. The man at the controls had no idea why he was making the delivery. That was none of his business. His orders were to get the boat to where it was meant to be, make sure it was refuelled and ready to go, then take a cab to Bristol Temple Meads station and get on the first train to London. He carried those orders out to the letter. In Bradford, Foster Lafferty, sitting in a Bangladeshi curry house on his interracial diplomacy mission, was equally clueless as to what any of it was about. Not long ago Tyzack had wanted him to teach the Pakistani gangs a lesson. Now he was supposed to offer the same men a hundred grand just to do Tyzack a favour. Lafferty had never known the boss let anyone off the hook like that before. But he'd been around a long time, and both his instincts and his experience taught him that the best thing to do was say, 'Yes, sir,' and leave the thinking to the high-ups. When the deal was finally concluded, he heaved a sigh of relief and ordered a couple of onion bhajis, a chicken tikka bhuna (extra hot) and a pint of Kingfisher. That, at least, he understood.