Revenger

77

Alix sent Carver a text as she walked across the park: ‘Plan Z (no other option): “3rd-rate” wanker from DC. St J’s Wood. Ax’. There wasn’t anything very cryptic about that location, but it would have to do. There were a lot of flats in St John’s Wood. It would be impossible for anyone to find her unless they knew which particular wanker she was referring to. And speak of the devil… less than a minute after Alix got to the rendezvous point, the black Range Rover swung off Park Lane. She recognized Peck looking impossibly preppy and all-American behind the wheel. He pulled in by the side of the road and she ran across to the car. A door swung open as she approached.

‘Get in,’ Peck said. There was no trace at all of his playboy persona in the brusque, impersonal way he greeted her. This was a very different, much more businesslike Trent Peck. He gave Alix a moment to put on her seatbelt. He checked the road was clear, pulled away, eased into the rush-hour traffic, then swung round in a U-turn at the bottom of Park Lane and headed up the other lane, going north. Peck suddenly floored the accelerator as a gap opened up in the traffic ahead of him and raced ahead, moving from lane to lane as he dodged in and out of the traffic. There was a flash of light behind them from the speed camera opposite the Grosvenor House Hotel.

‘Don’t worry,’ Peck said. ‘They can’t get me… Diplomatic plates.’

The car slowed as the traffic thickened again and Peck looked across at Alix. ‘Suppose you tell me what the hell this is all about. And do me a favour. Make it real.’

Alix sighed. ‘There’s someone in my life — someone I care about very much — and he’s in trouble. I need to get out of the way… for his sake.’

‘You mean the guy I met that time in DC… what was he called? Sam Carver, wasn’t it?’

She nodded.

‘So what kind of trouble is he in? Has he done anything criminal? This is serious, Alix. I’m a US Foreign Service officer. I can’t afford to get mixed up in any kind of illegal activity.’

‘Well, the police are after him… but I don’t know that what he did was really illegal. And I’m certain it wasn’t wrong.’

‘Why don’t you just tell me the facts?’

‘I can’t… I just… I can’t…’

‘Well, maybe then you could tell me why we’re being followed.’

‘What do you mean?’ Alix said.

‘Grey VW Passat saloon. It’s about three cars back of us right now. But when I hit the gas it stuck with me all the way.’

‘I have no idea. I really don’t. It can’t be the police. I’m sure they didn’t see me leave the hotel.’

Peck looked at her in a way that suggested he’d explore the implications of what she’d just said in more detail later. For now he just asked, ‘Do you have a phone?’

‘Of course…’

‘Could you give it to me, please?’

‘Why?’

‘Just give it to me. Give it to me or I stop the car and kick you out right here.’

She looked at him for a moment and saw that he meant it.

Peck took the phone. Up ahead the traffic was moving again. Peck darted forward and manoeuvred the two-and-a-half-ton car as nimbly as a hot hatchback until he was positioned directly in front of a double-decker bus. Then he opened his window and dropped the phone out on to the road, where it was crushed beneath the bus’s wheels.

‘What did you do that for?’ Alix cried, immediately fearful that Carver would be unable to contact her.

‘Because that phone is one of the finest tracking devices ever invented. And if you’re in as much trouble as you say you are, you sure as shit don’t want the whole world knowing where you are.’

Alix glared at him furiously. Peck ignored her. ‘So what was it Carver did?’ he asked.

‘He got mixed up in something… completely by accident. I mean, it was a million-to-one chance. He was having a quiet drink and a riot broke out and—’

‘You have got to be friggin’ kidding me… Your boyfriend is the Second Man?’

Alix nodded in admission as Peck gave a long, soft whistle. ‘Jeez… Well, I can see why you’re confused about the rights and wrongs. But as an officer of the Senior Foreign Service, then I have to point out to you that both you and I are obliged to respect the laws of this country and… excuse me a minute…’

They were just going round Marble Arch. Peck was still driving with a controlled, expert aggression, forcing his way through the traffic as he turned down Oxford Street, before cutting across the inside lane of traffic, provoking a furious barrage of horns, and turning left, back on to his previous northbound course. He looked in the mirror, clearly concerned that he was still being followed. Then he turned his attention back to Alix and carried on as if nothing had happened, ‘I have to advise you that the best course of action for both you and me would be for me to accompany you to the nearest police station and stay with you to ensure that your legal rights are upheld while you give a formal statement to the Metropolitan Police.’

‘No,’ Alix said. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘And suppose I say that for the sake of my career, and because it’s my actual duty, I am going to be obliged to inform the police of our conversation over the past half hour?’

‘Then I will say that, as you know, I have many good friends in very high places who could cause even more damage to your career if you did not help me. And I will add something that you might not know. Sam is on President Lincoln Roberts’s Christmas card list…’

‘Him and about a hundred thousand other people.’

‘No, he gets a personal card, signed by the President — the same one who invited us to Lusterleaf at the weekend.’

‘You’re kidding… how come?’

‘Because he saved the President’s life and Roberts has never forgotten it.’

‘OK… I can see that this is going to require a little thought. Let me just ask you this, just to ease my nerves a little… Where were you last night, at the time of the riot?’

‘At the O2 Arena. I had an appointment to meet Mark Adams. It was a business meeting. Mr Adams, his wife and many other people could testify that I was there, and that I went to dinner with the Adamses afterwards.’

‘So, you had no knowledge of the riot as it was happening?’

‘No.’

‘And you first found out about it… when?’

‘When Sam told me some time after midnight.’

‘And why didn’t you report that information?’

‘Because I love him.’

‘Maybe, but that’s not what you tell the cops, when they ask. What you say is, you were frightened of him, scared shitless of what a man like that might do to you if you ever betrayed him.’

‘That’s a lie, and I’d be betraying him by telling it.’

‘It’s a lie that keeps you safe. Trust me, that’s what he would want.’

Peck kept driving the same way, making apparently random turns, racing forward whenever possible, running red lights.

‘OK,’ he said eventually. ‘As you can see, we’re taking the scenic route. The irony is, if you’re not trying to shake off a tail, it’s pretty much straight up Park Lane and Edgware Road all the way to my place. I live on Abbey Road, by the way.’

‘Like the Beatles record?’ Alix asked, happy to keep the conversation light.

‘Exactly. I can actually see the zebra crossing — the one on the cover — from the terrace of my apartment. It’s ridiculous, I know, but that’s pretty much the reason I rented the place.’

Alix smiled. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘Sure.’

‘Have you had your picture taken walking across it?’

Peck laughed. ‘Guilty as charged!’

‘And can I ask another question?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Where did you learn to drive like that?’

Peck looked at her with a knowing half-smile. ‘Oh, I don’t know… pretty much the same kind of place, I guess, where you learned how to escape from that hotel.’