Assassin (5 page)

Carver hit the ground, ducked into a forward roll and made it alive to the wall of the house. The French windows were just ahead of him. A shaped charge was in his hand, ready to blow them open, and then the gunfire and bells both stopped, instantaneously, and his ringing ears heard a voice shout, ‘Drop your weapons, now!’

Carver did as he was told. Slowly, without giving anyone any cause for alarm or reason to shoot, he placed the gun and the explosive charge on the stone flagstones at his feet.

‘Now place your hands behind your head.’

Again, Carver obeyed the instruction.

‘Turn around. Nice and easy.’

Carver turned and came face to face with Special Agent Tord Bahr. There was a hint of a smirk playing round the corners of his mouth. And there was a look of real pleasure in Bahr’s eyes as he raised the pistol in his right hand, aimed it directly at Samuel Carver’s unprotected chest. And fired.

Carver spent the small hours on a bunk in the estate’s staff quarters, his chest unharmed by the blanks that had been fired at it. At six thirty in the morning, after three hours’ sleep, he was in the dining-room, with one hand round a mug of strong coffee and the other holding a steak sandwich, the bread richly infused with blood and melted fat.

The Secret Service had fixed Carver up with a dark blue T-shirt and a pair of athletic grey sweatpants. They’d given him a toothbrush but no razor, nor a hairbrush. He was looking pretty much the same as any other man on a Saturday morning after a hard Friday night. That was the way he liked it, appearing so normal as to be almost nondescript.

Carver wasn’t especially tall, just a fraction under six feet. He didn’t ripple with muscle, or exude the air of physical menace that characterized so many men who dealt in violence for a living. He was happy to blend into the crowd and go about his business unnoticed. Only the most sharp-eyed observer would spot the controlled athleticism of his walk, the set furrow of his brow or the way his eyes, so clear and so green, snapped into focus when his concentration was engaged. Right now, though, the only thing they were focused on was his sandwich.

On the other side of the table Tord Bahr was eating a bowl of granola with skimmed milk and sliced banana. He was already dressed in a suit and tie, his earpiece and wrist-mike in place, showing no sign whatever of the night’s exertions. The only scintilla of human weakness Bahr allowed himself was the expression, dangerously close to an actual smile, that conveyed his deep satisfaction at the way the dummy attack, designed to test his men’s readiness, had panned out. From Bahr’s perspective, the night had been a total success. Carver had provided a tough test, but then lost.

‘The wing-suit,’ he said, having first made sure that his mouth was completely free of granola pieces, ‘what gave you that idea?’

‘Process of elimination,’ said Carver. He was now leaning back in his chair, side-on to the table, looking out of the dining-room’s open French windows. ‘I thought about conventional HAHO and HALO insertions, but then … hang on …’

Carver got up and walked over to the windows. The
Lady Rosalie
was out on the water, heeling over in the fresh breeze, her sails dazzling white in the low morning sun. There were two speedboats flanking her, a helicopter hovering above.

‘Who’s taken the yacht out?’ he asked.

‘The President,’ Bahr replied. ‘He’s been here all night.’

‘The President?’ Carver tried hard not to splutter meat and coffee all over the floor. ‘What do you mean, he’s here? I thought this was just a training exercise. Is that regular procedure, having him on-site?’

‘No, it is absolutely not regular. It’s beyond irregular. We have a training division with its own facility. Anything we need to train for, we can pretty much do it right there. But the President had his own views and of course we, ah … we respected those.’

Carver said nothing. He turned back to the window and watched for a few seconds, before looking back at Bahr. He seemed to be on the verge of saying something.

‘You got something on your mind?’ asked Bahr.

‘Come here,’ said Carver.

‘Lemme just finish my granola.’

‘No, I think you should come here.’

Bahr sighed, shook his head, then got up from the table and began walking towards where Carver was standing. He had only taken a couple of steps before an explosive crack split the air.

A tiny figure in the cockpit of the
Lady Rosalie
rushed to the stern as the boat turned into the wind, its sails flapping uselessly as it slowed almost to a halt. The speedboats were already racing towards the yacht.

‘What the fuck—?’ shouted Bahr.

He raced the last few feet towards the window, and then kept going till he was standing on the grass outside. Carver saw him put a finger to his ear and bark into his wrist-mike.

‘I don’t get it,’ he was saying. ‘What are you saying? What do you mean the sea has turned red?’

Up in the helicopter the pilot was looking down on a crimson stain spreading out around the
Lady Rosalie
.

‘It’s like blood, man, like the whole frickin’ ocean is turning into blood.’

Bahr turned back to the staff quarters and glared wide-eyed at Carver. ‘Don’t you go anywhere!’ he yelled, his composure shattered. ‘Consider yourself under arrest!’ Then he started running towards the dock.

Carver stood in thoughtful silence watching the chaos as the President was helped off his yacht on to one of the speedboats. His place at the
Lady Rosalie’s
helm was taken by a black-uniformed figure and then the speedboats turned and raced for the shore, shadowed by the helicopter.

‘Step away from the window.’

Carver turned and saw a young Secret Service agent standing by the internal door to the dining-room pointing his gun right at him. The agent looked as though he was having a hard time holding on to his composure. His nerves were fraying. If they snapped, he might do something foolish. With the minimum possible fuss, Carver did as he was told.

‘Now sit down at the table, hands on the table-top, palms down.’

‘Sure,’ said Carver and once again obeyed.

For a while, nothing happened. From where he was sitting, Carver could look past the agent, through the door and into the corridor. So, when footsteps sounded outside the room, he was the first to see the tall, commanding figure dressed in jeans and a windcheater with the presidential insignia on the left breast standing framed in the doorway.

Automatically Carver got to his feet.

‘Sit down!’ screamed the agent, his head suddenly jerking to one side as he realized that his President was in the room.

‘Take it easy, son,’ Roberts said.

Tord Bahr was following right behind the President. He went up to the agent and said a few words in his ear, sending him from the room.

Lincoln Roberts turned his attention to Carver. He stood still, saying nothing, just weighing him up. Finally he said, ‘Sit down.’

Roberts strolled over to the coffee jug and poured himself a cup, nice and easy, just as though this were a casual social visit between friends. After all that had just happened there was something almost unnatural about his aura of calm self-control. His drink fixed, he sat down opposite Carver in the chair that Bahr had been occupying no more than ten minutes earlier. He moved the bowl of cereal out of his way, leaving the table clear between him and Carver. Bahr very deliberately remained on his feet, evidently determined to reassert his unbending sense of duty.

Roberts took a sip of coffee. ‘Mmm, that’s good,’ he said appreciatively. ‘Your sandwich OK?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Carver wasn’t a man who often felt awed by anyone else’s presence. But then he’d never sat down for coffee with a US president before, let alone one he was willing to risk his life for. Most politicians he’d met, he wouldn’t have jumped from a plane at 25,000 feet just to test their security systems. He’d have chucked them out of it, instead, see how that worked.

Roberts, though, had something different about him. When he talked about trying to change things for the better he sounded as though he truly meant it. Maybe he was just a better actor than the rest of them. What was that saying? If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made. That could be his secret, though Carver hoped it wasn’t. Time would tell. Meanwhile, Carver resumed chewing on his steak, waiting to see what the President wanted to say.

‘You like my yacht?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ Carver replied. ‘She’s a beautiful boat.’

Roberts nodded over his coffee mug. ‘I agree. She’s thirty years old, you know, got a Brazilian hardwood hull. I had her restored a while back. When I get her out on the water, feel the wind in her sails, breathe in that salt sea air … well, I guess that’s when I’m most at peace with the world.’

The President leaned forward and looked Carver in the eye, and now he wasn’t anyone’s friend. He was a man who had the ambition, the drive and the ruthless focus required to work his way from obscurity to the most powerful job in the world.

‘You want to tell me what you thought you were doing wrecking that peace?’

‘Keeping you alive, sir - making sure you never became another Mountbatten,’ Carver replied. ‘In 1979, the IRA killed Lord Louis Mountbatten, Prince Charles’s “Uncle Dickie”, by blowing up his yacht. Last night, I attached a dummy device to the hull of the
Lady Rosalie
, right beneath the cockpit, about sixty seconds before I ran like a lunatic across that lawn out there. There was a sensor attached to it that measured boat-speed through the water, wired to explode once the boat reached eight knots. Nothing serious, just a great big bang and a lot of red dye, but I think it made my point.

‘Of course, if I’d been a real assassin, I wouldn’t be sitting here opposite you now. I’d have sneaked back out of your dock, the same way I came in, swum down past the boundary of your property and come ashore. Then I’d have got into the sand-coloured Saturn Astra that’s parked in the lot at the Knotts Island Market, just a mile or two down the road from here, driven to the nearest airport and got a ticket out, bound for any destination on earth. I’d be gone before you even knew what I’d done.’

‘So why attack the house?’ asked the President.

‘I wanted to make a point, sir. Special Agent Bahr asked me to stage an assassination attempt as an exercise to test his agents’ readiness. So I gave them a very obvious assassin, right there in everyone’s face. Once he’d been taken out, they all thought the exercise was over. I don’t blame them: it’s only natural. This morning, they were relaxed, feeling good. The last thing anyone expected at that point was the actual hit. But that was the point: if anyone does this for real, it’s going to be unexpected. Maybe in movies you see nut-jobs posting threatening letters, making the hero run round the streets chasing messages on payphones, letting everyone know there’s a killing on the way. But the guys at the top of this business just come in quietly, do the job, and half the time no one ever knows that there even was an assassination. They think it was an accident.’

‘You sound awfully like a man who’s talking from experience.’

‘Let’s just say I was very well trained, Mr President, and I served in various units with a wide range of duties.’

Roberts did not reply, just drank his coffee. He swallowed, grimaced and murmured, ‘Hmm …’ Then he got up from the table and held out a hand. As Carver shook it, the President said, ‘It’s been very interesting meeting you, Mr Carver. You gave me a lot to think about. You mind if I give you some advice in return?’

‘Of course not, Mr President.’

‘Those things you said about assassinations …’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I’d advise you very strongly not to put any of your ideas into practice.’

‘No, sir, my work these days is based entirely on keeping people safe from harm. I sleep better that way. One thing I learned from active service was that every time you cause someone else to be killed you kill a bit more of yourself. Gets to the point where there’s barely anything left. It’s not a good place to be.’

Roberts frowned. ‘Goodbye, Mr Carver,’ he said. ‘Have a safe journey home.’

The President left the room, but Bahr stayed behind. When the two of them were alone, he told Carver, ‘No one ever finds out about this, do you understand? No one. Ever. As far as we’re concerned - far as the whole world’s concerned - the President came down here, had a peaceful weekend, just like any other. You are way off the record. You want my advice, you’ll keep it that way.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Carver. ‘Can you get me a lift to my car?’

Carver drove back up to Richmond, getting there just in time for a ten o’clock flight to Chicago. He was feeling good about the way the Lusterleaf job had gone. He’d decided to ride his luck, see if it worked for women as well as presidents.

As he sat at the departure gate, he was looking at a text message on his phone. It read: ‘Hey you! 2 long. How come no call?! Maddy xox’.

It had come in three weeks ago, automatically and untraceably rerouted from his standard contact number. Carver thought about the first time she’d left him a message, a scrap of paper left on a bedside table at a hotel in the South of France that read, ‘If you’re ever in Chicago …’ with a number and the same sign-off, ‘Maddy xox’. He’d found it when he woke up and discovered he was alone in his bed. The night before, Madeleine Cross had just about saved his life.