Carver

18

Carn Drum Farm, the Cambrian Mountains, Ceredigion, Wales

Dave Smethurst plunged his hand into a large plastic bin filled with icing sugar. He lifted it up again, letting the bright white grains slide through his fingers. ‘Almost any kind of weapon you can think of can be improvised if you know how,’ he mused as he looked at his now empty palm. ‘That’s why that whole demilitarization process in Northern Ireland was such bollocks. PIRA were laughing their heads off.’

‘PIRA?’ asked Brynmor Gryffud.

‘Provisional IRA. They knew, and we knew, they could make everything again for themselves the next day. Take this icing sugar. Bags of energy in it, and exceptionally small particles, see? That means it actually coats that stuff over there, the ammonium nitrate,’ he nodded at a pile of garden fertilizer bags, ‘in a very fine powder. That aids the reaction between the two of them. If we mix this properly, you’re going to end up with an explosive more powerful than military-grade TNT.’

Smethurst was not an idealist. This was just another job to him, a means to make a few bob from the skills he had acquired as an ammunition technician, Class 1. That was the unassuming name given to any soldier who was qualified to test and maintain all forms of army ordnance — from rifle clips to anti-aircraft missiles — and, more importantly, to deal with all types of explosives. After six months of initial training at the Army School of Ammunition, followed by an upgrading course two or three years later, an AT Class 1 knew everything worth knowing about all the various ways of making things go bang. He was equally qualified to make a bomb of his own, or dispose of someone else’s. In a twenty-year career in the forces Dave Smethurst had done his time in the streets of Belfast and Basra before spending his last six months in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, disarming Taliban bombs with the sweat streaming down his back and bullets smacking into the dirt tracks and stone walls all around him. The way he saw it, he’d given his country everything he owed it, and then some. From now on he was looking after number one.

He and Gryffud were standing in an old hay barn on Carn Drum Farm, thirteen hundred acres of bleak but spectacularly beautiful Welsh uplands about ten miles south-east of Tregaron, in the county of Ceredigion, that had been in the Gryffud family for generations. The land hereabouts was traditionally used for sheep farming, forestry and field sports. There were black and red grouse nesting on the hillsides, and salmon, sea trout and brown trout in the rivers and pools that watered the valleys between them. More than one local businessman had told Gryffud that he could double his income if he opened the farm up for corporate shooting and fishing parties.

Gryffud had always refused. He was adamantly opposed to blood sports, and would not even keep sheep, preferring to let the grazing land revert from grass to the heather that naturally flourished there. He funded the estate with a combination of environmental grants, holiday lets of the old farmworkers’ cottages, and guided walking tours for ramblers and birdwatchers: the red kites that soared above the landscape with their beautiful russet, black and white plumage always had the twitchers purring with delight.

The recent arrival of a party of eight guests had caused no comment from any of the locals who had happened to see them driving towards Carn Drum. They were only too happy if Big Bryn could make some money from his farm. Better it stay in the hands of a local boy, even if he did spend far too much of his time in London, than be bought by a foreigner. They might have felt rather differently, however, had they known what was going on there on this particular weekend.

The group’s three female members were hard at work, mixing the sugar and fertilizer with which Dave Smethurst had been toying. They were following two different recipes, each involving slightly different proportions of the two ingredients. One was designed to burn as an extremely high-energy fuel. The other was the explosive. The work was delicate. A single spark would be enough to blow the barn and everyone in it sky-high. So the three women had been working in an atmosphere of fierce, near-silent concentration, an atmosphere that was shattered as one of the trio looked up at Gryffud, grinned, and said, ‘Hey, baby, have you been talking about how to spend my money?’

Her name was Uschi Kremer. The heiress to a Swiss industrialist’s vast fortune, she was both the source of the group’s funds and the motivating force that had taken them from conventional acts of protest to the brink of violent action. Her gentle but relentless pressure had steered Gryffud away from his traditional, harmless acts of attention-seeking towards something far more extreme. And when the final decision to act had been made, she had even managed to persuade him that it had all been his idea. Her behaviour, though, was casual to the point of in difference. This morning, for example, she had appeared twenty-four hours after everyone else, without apology for her late arrival, secure in the knowledge that they literally could not afford to do without her.

Gryffud forced a smile. ‘Have no fear, Uschi, we won’t waste a penny of your cash.’

‘I don’t care if you do.’ She laughed. ‘It was all made by thieves and bastards anyway!’

‘If you don’t give it one, I fucking will,’ Smethurst muttered beneath his breath.

Gryffud gave a grunt of disapproval. There was no denying Kremer was as hot as the fiery red hair that was now all but hidden by her simple cotton scarf. There wasn’t a scrap of make-up on her face, and she was dressed in a simple khaki T-shirt and jeans. But the way those cheap clothes clung to every one of her body’s long, slender curves was as revealing as the most elegantly cut designer gown. Her freckled skin glowed with a tan acquired on a short break in the Mediterranean. ‘I took the family jet,’ Uschi had teased, knowing how annoyed Gryffud would be. ‘But don’t worry. I bought a few more thousand hectares of jungle to make up for it.’

Every man on the farm was affected by her presence at a primal, pheremonal level. They worked that bit harder, spoke more assertively and laughed more loudly in her presence. The other two women knew, and resented it. The result was an atmosphere of sexual tension that was dangerously volatile: a potentially fatal distraction from their mission.

‘Keep up the good work,’ Gryffud said distractedly, and went off with Smethurst to the tractor shed, fifty metres away across the farmyard, where the four other male group-members were at work.

The shed had been split into three discrete zones. In one a collection of thirty-two high-pressure gas-cylinders had been lined up in two groups. Fourteen of the cylinders were the size of large domestic calor-gas tanks: roughly 120 cm tall with a 36 cm diameter. The other eighteen were small enough to fit inside them. One of the men was working with a plasma torch, cutting off both ends of the larger cylinders so as to transform them into open tubes. The smaller cylinders merely lost their bases.

At the next workstation two group-members were constructing a crude steel framework, split into twelve compartments — four long by three wide — like an oversized wine rack. Each compartment was big enough to take one of the large cylinders, with a little room to spare. The whole structure was about as big as a coffin, but twice as deep.

The fourth member of the group was perched on the roof of a white Toyota Hiace camper van that looked far older than its X-registration plates suggested. He, too, had a plasma torch, and was using it to cut a large rectangular hole in the vehicle’s roof. The concrete floor behind the van was piled with the cupboards, bed, cooking gear and chemical toilet that had been stripped from its now-empty interior. Only the old window curtains remained, discreetly drawn to prevent anyone looking in.

Every single one of the Vehicle Identification Number stickers and tags scattered about the camper van had been located and either removed or rendered illegible. The plates belonged to a completely different car that had been bought at auction two weeks earlier, disposed of, and then reported stolen.

‘This is another old PIRA trick,’ said Smethurst, looking at the scene before him. ‘The way they hit 10 Downing Street is the way we’re going to blow a large hole in Pembrokeshire.’

Back at the hay barn, Uschi Kremer sighed theatrically. ‘I need a cigarette,’ she said.

‘Not here!’ one of the other women cried in alarm. ‘You’ll kill us all.’

Kremer laughed. ‘Thanks, but I’d already worked that out for myself! Don’t worry. I will make sure I am much too far away to set fire to anything here. Would either of you care to join me?’

The other two grimaced. Neither woman smoked, and if there was a choice between watching Uschi Kremer have a cigarette or having a good talk about her behind her back, they both knew which they preferred.

Kremer knew it, too. ‘Please yourselves,’ she said with a sly smirk.

Five minutes later and four hundred metres away, she got out her phone and speed-dialled Derek Choi’s number. ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to let you know that everything is going well.’

‘Are you confident that these people are capable of executing their plan?’

‘Yes. The planned initiative far exceeds what would be required to create the desired effect. If we only achieve a twenty-five per cent success-rate, that will still have a major effect. If the rate is one hundred per cent… well, then there will be a fireworks display that the whole world will see.’

‘We Chinese invented fireworks, of course,’ said Derek Choi.

‘I promise you never saw fireworks like these,’ Uschi Kremer replied.

Beverly Hills, California: five months earlier

In the luxuriously appointed office of his surgical suite, its walls lined with framed certificates proclaiming his medical proficiency, and large colour photographs illustrating his artistry with a scalpel, Dr Arpad Karvakian was dictating a letter to his personal assistant Sherilyn, who was herself a walking advertisement for his work.

‘ I am sure you will agree that the operation has been a complete success,’ he said. ‘Do not be alarmed… no, forget that, it’ll only alarm him… do not be concerned… yeah, that’s better, concerned that, ah, there is considerable bruising under the eyes and swelling to the forehead, nose and jaw. This is an inevitable result of surgery, and will subside considerably over the next six weeks. Any remaining swelling… no, any small amount of remaining swelling, will disappear entirely within four to six months. The surgery involved some reduction of the bossed area of the skull across the brow, implants to the cheekbones and also reshaping of the jawbone and chin. These procedures, as well as the mid-facelift, may impact upon nerves in the affected areas, causing a degree of numbness. Again, this is completely normal, and the regular range of sensations will gradually return over time. In general, the healing process appears to be going exactly as I would expect, and provided that all the protocols I have suggested are observed there is no reason to be concerned in any way. I hope you agree that the results are everything you desired. Yours… etc. Got that?’

‘ Uh-huh,’ Sherilyn replied. ‘But I still don’t understand. This was the guy with the cancer, right…?’

Karvakian nodded in confirmation.

‘ So what’s he doing having his face fixed, when he’s not going to live long enough to enjoy it?’

‘ I don’t know, sweetheart. Maybe he’s hoping that death won’t recognize him when the time comes.’

Sherilyn giggled. ‘Or maybe he just wants to look cute at the funeral.’

6, Gresham Street, London EC2: the following day

The Wax Chandlers’ Hall has stood on the same site in the City of London since 1501. Originally built as the home of the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers — the merchants who sold the fancy beeswax candles used in royal palaces and aristocratic stately homes — it was burned down in the Great Fire of London, bombed out in the Blitz and rebuilt five times in total. The wax chandlers don’t shift so many candles these days, but they do good business renting out their hall for business meetings, product launches, parties and receptions, along with every type of food and drink any client could require, from elevenses to a banquet.

On a freezing afternoon in late January, with the pavements crusted in hard-packed snow and more falls forecast overnight, an elegantly dressed Indian businessman arrived for an appointment with a senior member of the hall’s management staff. His card gave his name as Sanjay Sengupta. He explained that he represented the interests of a very prominent, but very discreet Bangalore-based industrialist, specializing in computer manufacturing and software, who was interested in establishing a European base in London. A firm of City headhunters would soon be hired to find candidates for key executive positions in this new venture. They would come up with a shortlist of individuals whom Mr Sengupta’s client would interview in person in late June or early July, when he was in any case planning to be in England for social reasons. To this end, he wished to hire the entire Wax Chandlers’ Hall for three full days, evenings included.

‘ My principal will not be requiring more than very light refreshments for himself, his assistants and the interview candidates,’ Mr Sengupta explained. ‘He appreciates, however, that this will cause you considerable loss. He is therefore willing to compensate you. Let us assume that the profit margin for yourselves and your caterers is thirty per cent. We will pay you, in addition to the hire cost of the building itself, thirty per cent of the full cost of food and drink, lunch and dinner included, for one hundred people.’

There is, of course, no such thing as a free lunch, particularly in the catering trade. So when a slick operator acting for an unnamed client suggests a deal of improbable generosity, requiring minimal effort from those who will be paid, suspicions are bound to be aroused. Sengupta, however, was able to provide copious references in India, the UK and the US. When he paid half the total cost up front, the money went through without any problems at all. After all, the days when India required British aid were long gone. Indian entrepreneurs today owned Jaguar and Land Rover cars, Typhoo tea and almost all of the UK’s steel production. If one of their number wanted to hire a City hall, who could possibly object?