Assassin

89

Damon Tyzack felt just fine about what he was going to do. If there was one thing he really hated, it was pompous, sanctimonious moralizing. This President Roberts was the worst kind of preachy, self-righteous politician. It would really be doing the world a favour to get rid of him. And… ah, perfect! Here came little Miss Dashian, looking very nicely scrubbed-up and respectable. He thought of the whore he'd carried to his hotel bed in her high heels, micro-skirt and painted tart's face.

You don't fool me, my dear, Tyzack thought. You'd still be anybody's for five hundred dirhams.

He looked down at the iPhone. Its screen displayed a map of the Broad Quay area. A moving, flashing dot showed the position of the drone that Geary and his men had launched from the playing fields. It was moving towards the stage, its precise location tracked by a pair of ever-changing co-ordinates at the bottom left of the screen. After yesterday's practice runs, Tyzack knew precisely where the drone had to be, at what altitude, and at what speed it had to be travelling to ensure the delivery of its payload to the precise spot where the President and the whore were standing.

And now she started to talk. 'My name is Lara Dashian…'

'Well, that does it,' murmured Tyzack, his finger hovering over a digital 'Fire' button displayed at the screen's bottom right.

The drone had settled on a course that aimed it directly at the stage. It was moving in.

Just a few seconds to go now. Carver had been reduced to screaming down the microphone, 'Get him off the stage! Get the President off the fucking stage!' But the people at whom he was shouting either could not or would not hear him.

Lara Dashian had begun to speak. This, Carver realized, was the perfect moment for Tyzack to strike. He must think Christmas had come early, being able to get rid of his prime target, the President, and an inconvenient witness to a past crime.

There was only one way to stop this.

Carver stepped right up close to Grantham and yelled in his ear, 'Give me your gun!'

Grantham shook his head.

'Give me the bloody gun!'

Grantham turned and pushed Carver away.

Carver stepped back, away from Grantham's hand, fractionally adjusted his balance and then sprang forwards. As he moved he swung the heel of his right hand, slamming it into Grantham's face, just to one side of his chin. The blow caused Grantham's head to jerk round, wrenching the tendons of his neck and sending his brain bouncing off the inner walls of his skull like a pea in a whistle. Grantham was lifted off his feet and flung back across the roof until his body slammed to a halt against a raised air-conditioning vent.

Carver walked across and removed Grantham's gun from its shoulder holster. SIS must have taken advice from the Special Forces because the gun was a SIG-Sauer P226, precisely the same model that Carver himself always used. That would make life easier.

Something had to, because what he was about to do was verging on the impossible.

He stepped to the edge of the roof and looked over the parapet to the stage, at least one hundred yards away. The distance was at the very furthest limit of the gun's effective range. He was shooting downwards, into and across a stiff breeze coming in off the river behind the stage.

But he had no alternative.

Carver raised his gun, aimed it at Lincoln Roberts, President of the United States, and fired.