Carver - By Tom Cain Page 0,49

She realized her pulse was racing. Her mouth was dry.

‘I need a drink,’ she said.

‘Sure.’

A waiter was passing by, his tray laden with glasses of champagne. Carver stepped over to him, took two and offered one to Alix.

She reached for it. Her fingers brushed his, and it was as if an electric circuit had been completed as the energy surged between them. It was all she could do not to drop the glass.

They looked one another in the eye and felt the connection again.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Carver said.

‘I haven’t had my champagne,’ Alix replied.

‘Don’t bother. It’s not the real stuff.’

‘Well, I always want the best stuff there is. Don’t you?’

‘You know I do,’ he said.

Less than a minute later they were hailing a cab.

30

* * *

Carn Drum Farm

THE WEAPON HAD specifically been designed to be as simple as possible. ‘The fewer parts there are, the less there is to go wrong,’ Smethurst had said. ‘People always try to get fancy, you know? Doesn’t matter if they’re the Paddies or the Pentagon, they can’t resist fucking it up with unnecessary complications.’

He’d made sure there would be none of that.

A metal plate had been welded to the base of each of the larger cylinders, with a small hole in the bottom for an electric wire. The wire was passed through the hole into the cylinder, and one of the igniters was attached.

Twelve of these cylinders were placed inside the metal framework, which had already been welded to the floor of the camper van. They were each arranged at fractionally different angles, according to instructions given by Dave Smethurst, who supervised the entire process and checked the results with extreme care. He had spent two hours test-firing shells from that remote cwm, far from prying eyes, then processed the results and determined an individual trajectory for each of his projectiles.

Only when the cylinders were positioned exactly as he wanted them were they filled about one-third deep with the fuel mix of icing sugar and fertilizer, just as an old-fashioned muzzle-loading cannon would have been filled with its load of gunpowder.

The result was a multi-barrel launcher, filled with propellant. All that was missing was something to propel.

That wouldn’t be long in arriving.

Under Smethurst’s direction, two of Gryffud’s men had removed the valves from a dozen of the smaller cylinders. The explosive mix was poured in through the hole where the valve had been, then the fuse and detonator assembly was inserted and the hole resealed.

The small cylinders were placed in the big ones, like one Russian doll inside another, so that the fuse wire from the bottom of the shells nestled in the fuel mix.

The wires from the bottom of each of the launch cylinders were connected to a junction box, along with a thirteenth wire which led to a large plastic jerrycan filled with petrol. The junction box was in turn connected to a timer located by the passenger seat.

The rear door of the van opened vertically. When the multiple launcher was complete and loaded, the door was lowered and welded shut. Then the open top of the camper van was covered with a large sheet of paper, lacquered to improve its strength and water-resistance, and sprayed white to match the van. It was sealed to the roof with clear vinyl tape. Only the closest inspection would reveal that anything had been done to the roof. Only a torrential downpour would break through the lacquered, painted paper. This, too, was another old IRA ploy.

The weapons had been made and loaded. The mission was ready to go.

31

* * *

London

GRANTHAM CALLED WHILE Carver and Alix were in the cab. ‘So, did you speak to your old girlfriend?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And …?’

‘And you were right. Magda Sternberg and Celina Novak are one and the same person. And she was just as tricky then as she is now: manipulative, sadistic, totally cold-blooded. “Celina can make you do anything,” was the way Alix put it.’

Carver put a hand over the phone and mouthed ‘Grantham’ at Alix, who shook her head with a rueful sigh.

‘Don’t tell me you’re getting lovey-dovey with her again …’ Grantham asked, almost as if he’d seen Carver’s gesture.

‘Not with Ginger, that’s for sure.’

‘You know that’s not who I meant.’

‘No comment.’

‘Unbelievable. Some people never learn … Well, if you don’t mind me interrupting your true romance, I have details of tomorrow’s operations.’

‘Fire away.’

‘You’re on the list for this absurd publicity stunt, sorry, this vitally important meeting on energy security. You’ll be Andy Jenkins, a