Carver - By Tom Cain Page 0,41

celebrities to be spotted, no royal box to gawp at. Zorn could not have cared less. Oscar Hernandez was the established player, but Quinton Arana was a nineteen-year-old qualifier on a mission. The son of a blue-collar family from a Pennsylvania mining town, he’d already taken two seeded scalps in the first week, and he was gunning for a third. Zorn watched a couple of ultra-competitive rallies, filled with fizzing ground strokes, applauded both players as they chased down seemingly lost causes, gave a loud, ‘Yeah!’ of delight, and declared, ‘Now this is what I call tennis!’

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CARVER HEARD EVERY word. His seat was to the side of the court, ideally placed to observe Zorn and his party in the front row, behind the nearest baseline. The collapsible umbrella on his lap concealed a directional microphone. The khaki canvas fishing bag next to it contained a hidden camera. It had not been detected in the derisory bag-check to which he’d been subjected at the entrance gate, nor had there been any body-search or scanner, a fact that would make his life a great deal easier later in the week. The camera was sending pictures back to the iPad that was also in the bag, along with a rolled-up copy of that day’s Herald Tribune newspaper, a V-neck cotton sweater from J. Crew, and a packet of throat lozenges. Carver was dressed in an all-American summer uniform of stone-coloured chinos, pale-blue Ralph Lauren shirt, and dark-blue, single-breasted Brooks Brothers blazer. He had padding on around his abdomen to give him a softer, fatter gut, and his normally clean-shaven chin and short, dark hair were now hidden beneath somewhat longer, wavy blond hair and a beard to match. Aviator shades covered his eyes. All the while that he kept Zorn under surveillance he kept turning the same questions over and over in his mind: asking himself what Zorn was really up to in London, and why someone wanted him dead so badly. He had nothing against Zorn, personally. In fact, he was impressed by Zorn’s disdain for the smart seats. It spoke well of him as a man. On the other hand, Carver had paid more than three thousand pounds for his Centre Court ticket. It seemed a pity to waste it.

Zorn seemed to feel the same way. After an hour on Court Two he relented and, to smiles of relief all round, led his party back to Centre Court. As he walked into the most famous tennis arena in the world, Carver was struck by its intimacy. The stands held fifteen thousand spectators, yet the players on court seemed almost close enough to touch. It was easy, too, to pick out individual spectators, Zorn included, in the crowd. From an assassin’s point of view, Centre Court was a gallery full of sitting ducks. That very intimacy, however, meant that it offered precious few positions where a marksman could lurk unseen and take his shot unobserved.

Another practical problem struck Carver the moment he walked into the stands. The gangways between the rows of seats were accessed by entrances, each of which was guarded by two armed forces personnel – one from the army and another from the navy – to make sure that spectators only entered or left the court during breaks in play. These guards were unarmed, but they were, nevertheless, trained fighting men, and their presence only added to the difficulties that Centre Court posed.

Zorn and his guests, meanwhile, were no more aware that Carver was surveying them there than they had been on the walk out to Court Two. At four o’clock they went to the Courtside Restaurant, reserved for debenture ticket holders, for afternoon tea. Tables at the restaurant were limited to six guests. Razzaq slipped away so that Nicholas Orwell could take the final place at the table. The security chief left the group, Carver thought, with the relieved air of a busy man who was glad to be able to get back to work.

Sitting alone, Carver appeared to bury himself in his newspaper, which he was holding in front of him at the table, angled upwards to make it easier to read. The paper concealed the iPad on which Carver was scrolling through the pictures he had taken that morning. Zorn, he noticed, had been wearing an earpiece. That wasn’t necessarily suspicious: he had every reason to want to keep discreetly in touch with his business affairs. But there was something else Carver spotted, and