Carver - By Tom Cain Page 0,42

when he saw it, he immediately went back through every other picture he had taken to make sure that he had not just been fooled by a trick of the light. The answer was no. This was no trick – not of the light, at any rate.

Carver slipped the iPad back into his bag with a smile of deep satisfaction on his face. He had just worked out why he had been hired to kill Malachi Zorn. Now it was just a matter of deciding what, precisely, he was going to do with the discovery he had made. By the time he got up from the table to follow Zorn and his party back to their seats he had formulated a plan of action. He now knew the time, location and method by which he would hit Malachi Zorn.

When Zorn left Wimbledon shortly after five thirty, apologizing to his guests that his business commitments made his departure unavoidable, Carver was fifty metres behind Zorn’s dove-grey Bentley on a motorbike. He had by now learned all that he needed to know, but it never hurt to go the extra distance when preparing for a job, so Carver followed his target all the way back to Wentworth.

It had not crossed his mind to be concerned that the multinational crew of waiters and waitresses had included a young Chinese woman among the Poles, Australians and Spanish. Nor had he attributed any great significance to the fact that a couple of times during the day the faces in the crowd, either watching the tennis or trying to make their way from one part of the All England Club to another, had included a slightly older Chinese male, respectably dressed in a lightweight summer suit and tie. Carver’s mind was focused on his job as the perpetrator of one killing. He was not thinking of himself as the target of another.

23

* * *

Whitehall, London SW1

SIR FREDERICK GREENHILL, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, looked around the table. ‘So, any other business?’

The question was a formality. The agenda for the meeting had been completed. A couple of the senior intelligence officers and civil servants who comprised the committee membership began gathering up their papers. But then Cameron Young, the Prime Minister’s political advisor, and his personal representative on the JIC, spoke up: ‘Yes, there is one thing, actually.’

Young did not look much like the slick corporate types, with their sharp suits and self-satisfied expressions, who constituted the majority of the Prime Minister’s closest associates. He had pale-ginger hair, a fleshy face, and a bushy drooping moustache – which gave him the slightly morose, doggy air that had long ago inspired his nickname: Fred Basset. This particular hound, however, had claws and teeth worthy of a Dobermann. Young had qualified as a barrister before becoming a political operator. He possessed intelligence and ambition in abundance, not to mention an independently wealthy American wife who had become one of London’s leading political hostesses. He was not a man to be crossed.

‘As I’m sure you’ll be aware, the American financier Malachi Zorn is formally launching a new investment fund in London at the end of this week,’ Young continued. ‘Many of the world’s richest and most influential individuals have placed very large sums of money in this fund, and will be attending the launch party, as will the PM himself. He sees this event as a tremendous vote of confidence in the government and in UK plc, and he wants the world to know about it.’

‘Is that wise?’ asked Sir Charles Herbert, the Foreign Office’s man on the committee. ‘Some of the individuals in question are not necessarily people with whom the PM would want to be associated. The provenance of their fortunes is not always as respectable as one might wish.’

‘I’m sorry?’ asked Young with a frown.

‘He means the money’s dirty,’ snapped Jack Grantham, whose duties as Head of MI6 included attendance at JIC meetings.

‘Then we will make sure that the PM is not photographed standing next to any of them,’ said Young, with an almost imperceptible air of impatience. ‘But he has to make an appearance. There’s just going to be too much money and too much power in the room to ignore. And of course, Mr Orwell will be there.’

‘Well, we wouldn’t want him hogging the front pages while the PM sits at home at Number 10 …’ Grantham mused.

‘No, we certainly would not,’ Young agreed. ‘The question that concerns me, however, is this: what are