No Survivors

51

Grantham had one of his men waiting by the door of the car. Another was behind the wheel. They drove only a few hundred yards to a little old-fashioned hotel. There was a small lounge off the main reception area: a sofa and a couple of armchairs, ringing a fireplace; an ornate chandelier hanging from the ceiling; a tapestry on the wall; a coffee table in front of the chairs.

One of Grantham’s men handed him a laptop, which he placed on the table. Then the man joined his colleague standing a few yards away, keeping an eye on their boss and, by their very presence, discouraging anyone else from coming into the room.

“Pull up a chair-make yourself comfortable,” said Grantham, beckoning Carver closer.

“So what’s your big news?” Carver asked.

Grantham opened his laptop and clicked on a PowerPoint file. The screen was filled with a formal photograph of a U.S. Army officer in full dress uniform.

“His name is Kurt Vermulen,” said Grantham. “Until a few years ago, he was a three-star general in the U.S. Army.”

He gave a quick rundown of the general’s military career.

“Captain America,” said Carver.

“Something like that.”

“So why do you want me to kill him?”

“I didn’t say we did.”

“Why else would you come all this way?”

“Depends,” said Grantham.

“On what?”

“On what he’s really up to…”

Grantham opened a new page. It showed a series of grainy color photographs of Vermulen, now dressed in civilian clothes. Some were lifted from closed-circuit TV footage, others had been shot by photographers. He was in the crowd at a fancy theater, walking by a Venetian canal, standing by a crossing on a busy city street.

Carver looked at them all with equal indifference.

“Well, good luck with that,” he said. “I’ve got other business to take care of.”

“I know,” Grantham said. “Just like old times, isn’t it? But before you go, there’s something else you should see.”

“I don’t think so.” Carver got up to leave.

Grantham remained unruffled. “I’d stay if I were you. You’ll want to see this.”

Carver looked at him. Grantham had the calm of a man who was absolutely sure of his hand. The only way to see what he had was to call him on it.

“Okay,” said Carver, still standing. “Show me.”

“Take another look at these,” said Grantham, flicking through the shots of Vermulen once again.

“I told you already-I’m not interested.”

Grantham smiled. “Now watch,” he said.

He opened a new file. Up popped the same set of photographs, but this time the frames of the pictures were wider. They revealed the figure who had been cropped from the first set, the woman who was standing next to Vermulen in a satin evening dress at the Vienna opera, who was with him, and a black couple, outside the Hotel Gritti in Venice, who was sightseeing with him in Rome. And then, in a final sequence of new pictures, they showed Vermulen and the woman on a yacht; him in white Bermudas and a polo shirt, her in a bikini, sunglasses pushed up into her blond hair. The shots were grainy, extreme long distance. The couple was standing under an awning near the stern of the boat. In the first shot they were talking. Then she put her hand on his chest. Carver couldn’t work out if she was playing, or trying to ward the man off. By the third frame his hands were on her upper arms. In the fourth he was leading-or was it dragging?-her into one of the yacht’s staterooms. And they were gone.

“You shit,” hissed Samuel Carver.

“Yes,” said Jack Grantham. “Thought that would do the trick.”