Revenger

67

Carver spent a couple of hours online, planning his escape strategy. He looked at a specific category of ‘For Sale’ ads, and watched YouTube for more than thirty minutes, taking notes on his phone as he did so. He downloaded and used an iPad app. He made a separate shopping list of items on his phone. As he worked, he ate his chocolate, laying down energy reserves for the day ahead.

Celina Novak had returned to her hotel. In due course she would be given the information she needed to carry out the hit on Carver. He was the prime target: so far as her employer was concerned, Alexandra Petrova Vermulen was a secondary consideration. That was not how Novak saw it, but for now she was willing to bide her time. And so, feeling a relaxed, luxuriant sense of anticipation about the day to come, she enjoyed one of her shortest, but best night’s sleep in a very long while.

At five o’clock in the morning, London time, it was six in Puerto Banus and eight in Moscow. Olga Zhukovskaya had decided that it was prudent to put in a call to the FSB, the security service of the Russian Federation that was, to all intents and purposes, the KGB under another, post-Soviet name. A situation had arisen in which one former agent might be killing another. She doubted that would cause any great concern in the FSB headquarters on Lubyanka Square, but it never hurt to make sure. In her time, Zhukovskaya had risen to the position of Deputy Director of the FSB. One of her immediate staff had been an ambitious young officer called Slava Gusev. Recognizing both his talent and his sharp elbows she had given him a series of speedy promotions. Today Gusev was the agency’s Director. He had not forgotten his former mentor, so when Zhukovskaya put in a call to his office he took it. And when she told him what Novak had been commissioned to do, named the targets, and revealed who had ordered the hit, she had his full attention.

‘I must admit that I had underestimated the ferocity of this power-struggle in London,’ Gusev said. ‘Clearly we must commit more resources to monitoring and if possible influencing the situation. For now, though, my only concern lies in the fact that Petrova is now an American citizen, and a very well-connected one at that. She and Carver are personal friends of President Roberts. Do we really want Roberts to think that we were responsible, even at one remove, for their deaths?’

‘I would look at it in another way, Slava,’ Zhukovskaya replied. ‘If they die in London, and their deaths were commissioned by a prominent Englishman, that will anger Roberts even more, driving a wedge between the British and Americans. And how many years have we spent trying to do that?’

‘An excellent point. Very well, then, how do you think we should proceed?’

‘As always, information is power. The more we know, the better we will be able to manipulate events to our advantage. And so, this is what I would propose…’

Zhukovskaya laid out a plan that avoided the need for an immediate commitment to any particular course, thereby retaining the FSB’s flexibility to respond to changing events and maximize opportunities as they arose. Gusev made a few small adjustments of his own and then declared himself satisfied. Within a matter of minutes the appropriate orders were on their way to the FSB’s London station.

Walcott only realized that he had fallen asleep when his telephone extension rang and he awoke to find that he was slumped on his desk with his head in his arms. He looked at his watch. It was ten to six. He picked up the handset. ‘Uh-huh…’

‘Is that Inspector Keane?’

‘Do I sound like a woman to you?’

‘Oh, sorry, well who am I speaking to, then?’

‘Walcott. I’m her DS. How can I help?’

‘Well, I’m calling from the incident line. I was just checking the messages and there’s a guy who says he saw that Second Man bloke yesterday evening. He’s a waiter, and one of his customers exactly matched the description.’

‘Give me his details then, and I’ll get someone to speak to him.’

‘I will… but before I do, there’s something else you need to know. The reason the waiter remembered this bloke is because he was sat with someone famous, having dinner.’

‘Famous? What, like a celebrity?’

‘Sort of… It was Mark Adams. You know, the politician. The Second Man was his guest at dinner.’

Walcott groaned. That was all he needed — the most controversial politician getting messed up in the investigation. Then a happy thought occurred to him. There was no way he could go charging off after Adams. This was way above his pay-grade. Even Keane wasn’t in any position to haul Adams in for questioning. It would have to go to Commander Stamford at the very least, almost certainly to the Commissioner of the Met, possibly to the Home Secretary himself. And from Stamford on up, none of them would appreciate being woken up just so they could be dumped in the middle of a political shit storm.

He’d wait till Keane got in, tell her and let her deal with it. And having come to that decision, Walcott laid his head back down on his arms. He told himself it was just for a minute or two…