The Accident Man

72

It was hardly a formal interrogation. They were in a regular office, rather than an interview room. There was no tape machine or video camera. This wasn’t a conversation anyone wanted on record.

“What a very complicated man you are,” said Dame Agatha Bewley, casting an eye over several sheets of paper and a series of photographs bundled in a plain brown folder. “Your adoptive parents raised you as Paul Jackson – their surname and the one under which you served in the royal marines and special boat squadron. You were awarded a Military Cross and three Queen’s Commendations for Bravery, as well as numerous minor awards and campaign honors. A very distinguished career – I congratulate you.

“Your birth name was Carver. That, of course, is your professional identity today. The passports found in your possession, however, make no reference to Jackson or Carver. They name you as a South African called Vandervart, a Canadian called Erikson, and a New Zealander, James Conway Murray. That’s odd, because not one of these gentlemen has entered the United Kingdom at any time in the past month. Yet here you are, large as life. And here” – she picked up a sheet of fax paper from the table in front of her – “is a reservation on the two fifty from Gatwick to Geneva in the name of Mr. Murray. Interesting. Do you go to Geneva a lot? Were you there on Monday? Do you, perhaps, own property there?”

“I’d love to help, but I’ve got a plane to catch,” said Carver, trying not to display the anxiety and tension ripping through his guts and grasping at his throat. There was a clock on the wall. It had a red second hand that swept around the dial, pulling Alix farther away from him with every completed rotation.

“Dashing off to rescue your Russian girlfriend, are you? The KGB tart?” Grantham spoke without any of Dame Agatha’s pretense of polite, civilized inquiry. He was playing the bad cop.

Looking at him, Carver wondered whether it was really his style. Grantham could handle himself, that much was obvious. But he didn’t have the oppressive reek of excess testosterone that oozes like rank body odor from the kind of man who likes to throw his weight around. Grantham’s natural instinct would always be to use a stiletto rather than an ax, a sniper’s rifle rather than a blunderbuss. He wasn’t convincing as a bully.

“Miss Petrova,” Grantham went on. “Let’s talk about her. Let’s discuss what the two of you were doing in Paris on Saturday night.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Carver.

“I’m talking about the murder of the Princess of Wales.”

“Murder? It said on the news it was an accident. The driver was drunk. He was driving too fast. An accident.”

Grantham got up from his seat, walked around to where Carver was sitting, and bent down till his mouth was right by Carver’s ear.

“Don’t piss around, Carver. You’re just a squalid, loathsome murderer. You don’t care about anyone. If the money’s right, you’ll kill them in cold blood.”

Carver looked at him and smiled. “That’s a nice pen you’ve got in your jacket pocket,” he said, as if he were paying a compliment.

Grantham looked down, puzzled. His jacket was hanging open. There was a gold-capped Waterman in the right-hand inside chest pocket.

“You’ve seen my service record,” Carver continued. “Forget the handcuffs, I could have stuck that pen in your throat, straight through the carotid artery, at any time during your moving little speech.” He waited a beat, then added wearily, “But I didn’t, did I?”

Grantham stood up, straightened his neck, and buttoned his jacket. He looked down at Carver, opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind and stalked back around the table to his chair.

The second hand swept past twelve once again.

“Now…” Carver looked across the table at Dame Agatha. “You operate according to the laws of the United Kingdom.”

It was a statement of fact, not a question. She nodded in agreement.

“So a man is innocent until he is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That proof requires evidence – witnesses, forensics, a weapon. Is there any evidence whatever linking me to the death of the princess?”

This time it was Dame Agatha’s turn to stay silent.

“I thought not,” said Carver. “And even if there was, there’s never going to be a trial, not of me or anyone else. No one wants it. Everyone’s happy with the accident story. So there’s just one thing I want to say. I swore an oath to serve Her Majesty the Queen when I joined the royal marines. I took that oath seriously. I consider myself bound by it still. Do you understand me?”

Dame Agatha assessed the man in front of her through shrewd, narrowed eyes then said, “Yes, I believe I do.”

“Does the chimp?” asked Carver.

Grantham was breathing heavily. His anger wasn’t an act anymore. He was barely in control of his temper. Dame Agatha laid a hand on his arm, “Don’t let him provoke you,” she said, almost maternally, as if preventing a fight between two squabbling sons.

Then she spoke to Carver. “As you say, you have been very well-trained. You are familiar with covert operations. Let us imagine, purely for the sake of argument, that the tragic events in Paris were not an accident. Suppose foul play were involved. Why don’t you tell me, purely hypothetically, what you think might have happened?”

Carver shrugged. Fighting these people hadn’t achieved much. The only remote hope he had of getting out of this interview room anytime soon was to cooperate, as fully and quickly as possible.

“Well, if I were planning that operation, I’d want someone really good to do the job. Problem: No one reputable would knowingly accept it. Only a psycho would get a kick out of killing the world’s best-loved woman. But a nutcase like that would be too unreliable. So to get someone good, you’d need misdirection. You’d feed them a pile of crap about taking out a car carrying, say, a radical Islamic terrorist planning a major atrocity. Because that would seem like a job worth doing.”

“Yes,” said Dame Agatha. “I can see that.”

“Now you’ve got another problem. If this professional ever finds out what he’s really done, he’s going to be seriously pissed off. No one likes being lied to, right? So you’ve got to kill him before he knows what’s really happened.”

“A double cutout,” said Grantham. “Eliminate your own operative.”

“You got it,” said Carver. “But if the man’s any good, he might get away. He might do serious damage to the people who’ve been after him. And he might protect himself by, say, taking a computer that has details of the entire operation stored on it and putting that computer somewhere safe, so that if any harm comes to him, the computer’s contents can be made public.

“That’s the sort of thing that might happen. You know, hypothetically. Now, can I catch my plane?”

“Not yet,” said Grantham. “There’s something else. I lost two of my agents in Geneva.”

“I’m sorry about that. But I had nothing to do with their deaths.”

“I know,” said Grantham.

“So you’ll also know that the man who killed them was a Russian named Grigori Kursk. He was working for another Russian, Yuri Zhukovski. And on Zhukovski’s orders, he abducted what you called ‘the KGB tart.’ Her name is Alexandra Petrova. And yes, she’s the reason I’m flying to Switzerland.”

“How do you plan to get her back?” asked Dame Agatha.

“An exchange: her life for my computer.” He smiled. “My hypothetical computer.”

“And you trust this man?” Grantham did not bother to keep the disbelief out of his voice.

“Of course not,” said Carver. “But I trust myself. I can cope.”

“That’s not all, though, is it?” said Dame Agatha, thoughtfully. “You took a woman’s life, whether you intended to or not. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Now you want to save another woman’s life, even if you lose yours in the process. Some sort of redemption, isn’t that it?”

“If you say so. I’d rather think of it as a standard recovery mission. But I can’t complete it unless I catch my plane.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Dame Agatha. “It can always develop engine problems and leave a little bit late. Happens all the time.”

Carver looked from one spy to the other. “So you’re letting me go. Why?”

Dame Agatha spoke first. “As you said, MI5 operates by the laws of the land. And you’re quite right, no one wants a trial. We could kill you, of course, outside the law. But that would be problematic. These things are hard to keep under wraps. Sooner or later, someone always talks. So we’re prepared to be accommodating… if you do a favor in return.”

“Such as?”

“Tell us what you know about the people who planned the assassination.”

“Were you watching Percy Wake’s house?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, you saw me go in there with Lord Malgrave. Start with them. Ask yourself how a former KGB agent like Zhukovski ever knew a British intelligence asset like Wake, how he had enough power over him to order a job like this. And call the coast guard. Check if they’ve found a body floating in the Channel – a bloke with a great big, smoking hole in his face. He used to be Lieutenant-Colonel Quentin Trench, once of the royal marines. He ran the operational side of the group.”

Dame Agatha jotted down a couple of notes on a leather-bound pad. Then she asked, “So what was the reason for Paris?”

“Wake told his people it was vital to preserve the monarchy.”

“Yes, he said the same to me, at length,” said Grantham. His manner was calmer now, his self-control restored. But there was still an edge of hostility in his voice.

“That’s not why he ordered the hit, though,” Carver continued. “The whole thing was bought and paid for by Zhukovski. Does he give a toss about the fate of the British monarchy? I don’t think so.”

Grantham frowned. “So what was his motive?”

“Well, I reckon Zhukovski paid the consortium several million pounds. He’s a businessman. He must have thought he could turn a profit.”

“How?”

“Look at the guy’s interests. Zhukovski’s a player in the Russian arms trade. Well, I’m not big on the royals. But even I saw the princess on TV, talking to all those kids with their arms and legs blown off.”

Grantham frowned. “What are you getting at?”

“Land mines. Russia’s one of the world’s major producers of land mines, and mines are one of the world’s most tradable commodities. They’re tiny, weigh nothing, and they’re made of plastic. You can shift them as easily as cigarettes, and everybody wants them. Governments, terrorists, good guys, bad guys – everyone needs land mines. And what do they cost to produce – fifty quid each?”

“More like twenty-five,” said Grantham.

“And what do they sell for?”

“On the black market, around two hundred pounds.”

“Well then,” said Carver, “there’s your motive. Land mines are a billion-dollar business. But they’re also evil little buggers. So plenty of people want the business shut down. They start antimine campaigns…”

“I know. I’ve got the files on them,” murmured Dame Agatha, wryly.

“But those campaigns never got anywhere because politicians don’t care about mutilated kids in Africa or Kosovo,” Carver went on. “Not until the world’s most photogenic female turns up and starts cuddling babies. Then they take one look at the opinion polls and suddenly everyone’s drafting international treaties against land mines. That’s very bad for a man who makes the bloody things. Suddenly people don’t want to buy his products. All those billions are disappearing right in front of his eyes. So what does Zhukovski do? We know he has no problem with taking human lives. He wouldn’t make land mines if he did. So he spends a few million to make the problem go away. You could call it a motive. To him, it’s just a sensible investment.”

Dame Agatha tapped her pen against the tabletop. “Yes, that’s a theory.”

“Can you think of a better one?” asked Carver.

“No,” said Dame Agatha. “But I don’t have to. I can say it was an accident.”

“Okay then, anything else? I need to be on my way.”

“Yes,” said Grantham. “If we let you walk out of this building, don’t think you’ve got away with anything. Dame Agatha may have her scruples, but I’m not so bothered by the idea of an execution. I’d shoot you right now and not think twice about it.”

“Why don’t you, then?”

“Because I’d rather own you. You have a debt against your name. A debt that can never be repaid. What you did cannot be undone. But you can make… let’s call them reparations. You can do things for me, for your country. If you get killed along the way, tough luck, I couldn’t care less. If you succeed, well, you’ve done some good to set against the harm. So there it is. I have you taken out to some landfill site, shot in the back of the head, and buried under several thousand tons of garbage, or you go to work…”

Grantham paused and looked Carver in the eye. Then, quite quietly, with just a twist of irony in his voice, he added, “Now who’s the chimp?”

Carver nodded, taking the shot. He’d started the pissing contest, Grantham was entitled to piss back. And he seemed like a decent bloke, underneath. Carver wondered what their professional relationship might have been if he’d stayed in the SBS: the soldier and the spook, both on the same side, both roughly the same age and with comparable ranks. They’d have worked pretty well together. It would be very different now.

“Okay,” he said. “Suppose I accept these terms. What’s the first job?”

“Zhukovski, obviously, but not because I care about you rushing off to rescue Moscow’s very own Mata Hari. You don’t strike me as a knight in shining armor. All you really care about is getting the Russian before he gets you. So get him. And get his sidekick Kursk. You’ll be doing us a favor.”

“Don’t suppose I get any backup,” said Carver.

“You must be joking.”

“Didn’t think so. What if I succeed?”

“Then you live to fight another day. Under the same terms as before. There’s no shortage of landfills.”

There was silence in the room. Then Grantham spoke again, a new note of conciliation in his voice. “Look, you used to be a good man, Carver. You did good work. This is your chance to do good work again. It won’t be public. There won’t be any medals. But you’ll know…”

Carver weighed Grantham’s words. He was offering him a chance at redemption, just as Dame Agatha had done. Looked like there’d be a lot of redeeming going on. That was probably just as well, all things considered.

“Don’t bother calling the airport,” he told Dame Agatha. “That plane can leave without me.”

She looked surprised. “Are you declining our offer?”

“No, but I need a flight that gets me there faster. So, if it doesn’t sound too much like backup, I need the use of your phone.”

Dame Agatha pushed it across the table. Carver dialed the operator.

“Get me Platinum Private Aviation. They’re at Biggin Hill…” He held a hand over the mouthpiece and said to Dame Agatha, “Also, I need my case back and everything in it: the gun, the passports, the video camera, and the money. Don’t worry, I won’t shoot.”

Grantham drew a gun from his own shoulder holster and pointed it at Carver. “Just in case you change your mind.”

Dame Agatha stepped outside the office. A moment later the door opened and she returned, accompanied by a secretary carrying the case. Carver gestured at her to bring it over. He was already talking to the charter jet company.

“You’re in luck,” said a friendly, efficient voice on the other end of the line. In British aviation, as in British medicine, it was amazing how much more helpful people became the moment you decided to go private. “We’ve got a Learjet 45 inbound from Nice. The crew overnighted in France, so they can still get you to Switzerland and back within their time limit for the day. I’d suggest flying into Sion. It’s a much smaller field than Geneva or Zurich, but closer to Gstaad: just a fifteen-minute helicopter ride across the mountains. Don’t worry, we’ll sort that out for you. Meanwhile, we’ll get the plane refueled, flight-planned, and ready to leave as soon as we can. Should have you on the ground at Sion in a little under three hours.”

“Great,” said Carver.

“Happy to help,” said the voice. “That will be 5,546 pounds, inclusive of all taxes and the helicopter charter at Sion. Can you give me a credit card?”

“Yes,” said Carver. “It’s an Amex, name of James C. Murray…”

After completed the booking, Carver told the two spies, “Right, I’ll be on my way.”

Dame Agatha watched him leave the room, then turned to her colleague from MI6. “You didn’t tell him about the girl.”

Grantham put his gun away. “No.”

“I think you’re wrong about his feelings for her, you know.”

“Well in that case, he’s wasting his time.”

“But we win, whatever happens,” said Dame Agatha.

“Yes,” said Grantham matter-of-factly. “That’s the general idea.”

It was now 2:40 p.m. in London, an hour later in Switzerland. There were just under five hundred miles between London and Gstaad, and Carver had two hundred minutes in which to complete them. Up on the wall, the clock continued its measured, relentless progress.