Carver - By Tom Cain Page 0,19

the characteristically canny ways in which she’d managed to convey a sense of absolute authenticity, while leaving out any unduly revealing insights into how the job was actually done.

It was very nearly an enjoyable experience, spoiled only by the thought that niggled and itched at the back of his mind. The Malachi Zorn investigation was bothering him. By any logical analysis of the threats facing the United Kingdom, Grantham had been right to make it a low priority. Still, that throwaway remark about Zorn bringing down Lehman Brothers Bank as a rehearsal for a far bigger stunt wormed away at him, making it impossible to relax.

Grantham tried to distract himself by looking at the news. A TV production company, working on some kind of Candid Camera-style reality show, had caused a riot at a restaurant on the Greek island of Mykonos by staging a fake attack by a couple of gunmen. By pure chance – in no way connected with the TV people’s desire for global publicity – a passing tourist just happened to have been filming the scene using a high-definition video-camera.

Grantham glanced up at the sound of gunfire and watched as two men appeared, blew the head off a live pelican (the bird’s death, the newsreader solemnly intoned, had caused outrage and controversy around the world), and then appeared to kill a woman in cold blood. Grantham watched the panic that ensued, while the voice-over described how a British tourist had been injured in the melée and was now threatening to sue both the restaurant owner and the TV company. Grantham was just about to switch channels when something caught his eye.

He rewound the scene, then watched it again twice more. On the second time through, he froze the image at a particular point. Several hours earlier he had done exactly the same thing with the feed from Malachi Zorn’s Italian party and spotted Alix. Now here was another face with which Grantham was all-too familiar: her ex-boyfriend Samuel Carver. And however much trouble she brought into Grantham’s life, Carver brought infinitely more.

‘That’s all we need,’ Grantham muttered to himself. He ran through the scene a couple more times, just to make sure that his instinctive reaction to it had been correct. Yes, there was no doubt: Carver had tried to make his escape and been pursued by the gunmen. Grantham couldn’t believe Carver would ever have consented to clown around for the benefit of a TV camera. He was genuinely running for his life.

‘Well, so what?’ Grantham told himself. Carver was no more a concern of his than Malachi Zorn. And yet, like Zorn’s ‘rehearsal’, Carver’s image on that TV screen kept gnawing away at him.

He spent a moment or two wondering what, if anything, he should do, then called the office. A junior officer, assigned to night-duty, picked up the call.

‘This is Grantham,’ his boss informed him. ‘Get me passenger manifests for all flights in and out of Mykonos, Greece, in the past, oh … seventy-two hours. Ferry traffic, too, if you can get it. And CCTV footage. Then cross-ref it with our databases: names and faces. I want to see if anyone we’re interested in has paid a visit there recently.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And if you find anything, call me. I don’t care what time it is. Call anyway.’

Grantham put down the phone. He gazed at the frozen image on his TV screen, then turned off the set. He put the book down on the side-table next to the now-empty whisky glass. Then he hauled himself off up to bed.

11

* * *

Kensington Palace Gardens, London

AS SHE STOOD at her bathroom mirror wiping the make-up from her face, Alix knew that she had just lost the argument that would almost certainly end her relationship. But at least no one could say that the subject-matter had been trivial. She and her current partner, Dmytryk Azarov, had not fought over some insignificant domestic quibble. They’d been debating what to do with a billion dollars.

Azarov intended to borrow the money against the value of his massive agricultural, food-processing and supermarket holdings in Eastern Europe. The exact figure he had in mind was $1.35 billion, all of it intended for Malachi Zorn’s new investment fund. The contracts had been drafted and awaited his signature. His bankers were arranging the transfer of funds. The entire deal would go through within twenty-four hours.

And Alix had done everything she possibly could to stop it.

Two weeks earlier, Azarov had been ecstatic when the invitation to join