Dictator

47

Early on the Monday morning, Carver flew back to England. Before he left Geneva, he stood by his kitchen island and reached into the wine rack that had been installed along one side. In the second row from the top, three spaces along, there was a hidden switch. He pressed it, then waited while the centre of the island’s granite worksurface rose, revealing a metal frame containing a large plastic toolbox divided into six trays of varying depths.

Carver ignored the bottom tray, which contained his personal firearms: with a number of flights between now and the Gushungo job there was simply no point in bringing them along. In any event, he did not plan to do any shooting. Instead, he opened one of the shallower trays and removed an apparently random selection of items: a piece of wood, about six inches square, with a number of holes drilled through it; a set of AA batteries; and an assortment of nuts, bolts, washers and wires attached to crocodile clips.

From the kitchen he went to his bedroom wardrobe, took down a suitcase from the top shelf and picked out a couple of accessories he thought would come in handy: a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles with plain glass lenses and a short grey wig. When he was in the Special Boat Service, Carver had known another officer, not much older than him, who went prematurely grey in his early thirties. The officer’s face, as if to compensate, remained unusually youthful and unlined. These contradictory signals made it very difficult for anyone who did not know him to judge his age. Carver was aiming for a similar effect.

All he needed now was an assortment of passports, driving licences, credit cards and SIM cards. He was ready to go.

He came in through Gatwick this time, rented a car at the airport and drove five miles to the West Sussex town of Crawley. On an industrial estate not far from the town’s station he found a specialist suppliers called Vanpoulles and explained his particular requirements to a sales assistant, who was happy to go through Carver’s list and recommend which of the various items he should purchase. Neither a chasuble nor a patten would be necessary, he was told.

Carver also mentioned that he was looking for a very particular kind of case to carry everything in, preferably second-hand and well worn-in. The salesman conferred with a colleague and mentioned an old customer who had just retired and might be able to supply just what Carver was looking for. He was down in Kent, not far from Tunbridge Wells.

The journey there and back took the best part of three hours, but was well worth the diversion. While he was there, Carver took advantage of Tunbridge Wells’s reputation for being populated by elderly conservative gentlefolk. He went to a charity shop and found a lightweight dark-grey suit, tailor-made but just beginning to get a hint of that gloss around the elbows, knees and backside that comes from regular use. The trousers were cut for a man who ate more and exercised less than Carver, but a half-decent Hong Kong tailor would sort that out easily enough.

By late afternoon, Carver was battling the rush-hour traffic on the M25, heading up to Campden Hall. The tedious crawl round the eastern perimeter of London was enough to try the patience of a far more saintly man than him, but despite it Carver still felt that his day had been very well spent.