Assassin

'I saw muzzle-flash,' one was saying.

'I have a location,' the other added, virtually simultaneously.

At the front of the crowd, the dignitaries nearest to the stage were desperately trying to get away and their panic had already begun to infect those around them.

Meanwhile the whore had barely moved at all, paralysed by indecision and fear. All was not yet lost. At least he could get her.

Tyzack pressed the red button on his display and the grenades were released. For a fraction of a second, as he launched the attack, his gaze had dropped to the iPhone. When he looked up there was another figure on the stage. A tall, spindly young man in glasses was racing towards the whore. He wrapped his arms around her, held her tight and then leaped off the front of the stage.

An instant later the grenades struck the stage at exactly the point where Lincoln Roberts had been standing. They detonated in a pair of orange and yellow fireballs that blasted superheated fragments of steel shrapnel through the air, shredding the screen that had withstood the gunshots, destroying the backdrop, ripping into the lighting rigs above and to the sides of the speaking area and killing several members of the stage crew, as well as a Secret Service agent who had not yet got offstage.

The main force of the blast, having exploded some ten feet above the ground, went over the heads of the crowd in the immediate vicinity, though several people further back were killed and many more wounded by shrapnel particles that travelled up to two hundred yards from the impact point. Tyzack's attention, however, was concentrated on the foot of the stage where the whore's body lay motionless on the ground, next to that of the young man who had tried to rescue her.

For a moment Tyzack felt a brief flutter of hope, a tiny scintilla of optimism amidst the bleak disappointment of the failed mission. But even that shred of good news was taken from him as the whore slowly pulled herself out from under the man's body, staggered to her feet and then, when she saw that the figure was utterly inert, started screaming with a desperate despair that seemed to Tyzack to echo his own feelings.

Perhaps he should put the silly bitch out of her misery.

There was nothing to stop him shooting her. It was a fiendishly tricky shot but there was no risk from the Secret Service. They knew that their President was safe. Tyzack could always claim to have aimed at a fleeing suspect.

He unholstered his weapon and then stopped as he heard one of the Americans say, 'I have a visual on the roof from which the shots were fired. There is a man down, repeat a man down. Another man appears to be vacating the area. He is approximately six feet tall, slim to medium build, dark brown hair, wearing civilian clothes: black pants, possibly jeans, and some kind of grey top.'

Carver, thought Tyzack with rancid bitterness.

Forget the whore. It was time to go. Tyzack wasn't afraid of being caught by any British or American security forces and he certainly wasn't scared of Carver. But the absolute certainty of Arjan Visar's displeasure, and its potentially fatal consequences, meant that he needed to disappear. Starting right now.

He walked towards the door that led to the stairway down to the top floor of the building. When he got there he turned and said, 'Bye, chaps.'

The two Secret Service men turned towards him, an automatic reflex, acknowledging his farewell. Tyzack killed them both with two single headshots. It was time, he decided, that he made sure witnesses were definitely, undeniably dead. Furthermore, it was always a delight, the sort of thing that only a true connoisseur could appreciate, to see the fractional look of surprise on the face of the second of two victims as they realized what had just happened to their companion an instant before it happened to them, too. And finally, he was seriously pissed off, and the sheer pleasure of inflicting death took the edge, at least, off his anger.

91

Just as he was about to get off the roof, Carver heard two shots from high up the tower closest to the stage. He looked up and saw a male figure on the roof; only the top half of him visible above the parapet. From that distance Carver was unable to make out his face. Nor could he see the distinctive flash of red hair. And yet he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that it was Tyzack. His outline, his movements, everything about him had become so familiar and their relationship had, in its own warped way, become as intertwined as a pair of lovers, so that awareness of his presence was automatic, instinctive. The location made sense, too. It was the highest, closest point to the stage, the perfect vantage point from which to direct a low-level aerial attack.

In his earpiece Carver was receiving a babble of frenzied chatter as different units reported in on the current position of the President and other VIPs, the state of the crowd and the arrival of emergency services at the stage.

Then he heard: 'All units be aware, we have reports that the initial shots were fired by a white male, height six feet, medium build, answering to the description of Samuel Carver, a civilian consultant on the security for this event. He is believed to be armed and extremely dangerous. Approach with extreme caution.'

Carver was racing downstairs now. He switched to transmit and said, 'This is Carver.' He was painfully aware how strange his voice must sound, his throat wrecked and his breathing ragged as he hurtled down the stairwell. 'Yes, I deliberately fired at the President's protective screens. But in case you morons hadn't noticed, I saved his life. I'd been trying to warn you he was about to be attacked and you refused to listen. What else was I supposed to do?'

'Carver, this is Assistant Commissioner Manners. Give yourself up, immediately. That's an order. If your story is true, you have nothing to fear.'

'Forget it. I'm going after Tyzack.'

'Tyzack? Give it a rest, Carver. He isn't here. To be honest, I wonder if he even exists.'

'Really? Then who planted two grenades on the stage you were tasked to protect? Who has shot at least one, possibly two people on the roof of that tower right by the stage? I heard the shots. I saw Tyzack. Go on, do a flypast with one of your drones. Tell me I'm wrong. But I'm not coming in.'

Carver had reached the ground floor of the building. He was halfway across the main foyer, heading for the front entrance, when a West Country voice came over his earpiece: 'We have a visual, two men down, as reported.'

'Is the drone still in the area?' Carver asked, pushing open the door. 'If so, do you see a man wearing black special forces combat uniform anywhere near the foot of the building? He's trying to get away, so he'll be moving fast.'

As he said the words, Carver was aware how absurd they sounded. All around him were tens of thousands of people trying to get away from Broad Quay, all moving as fast as they could go. This was like the scene inside the King Haakon Hotel, magnified a thousandfold. If Tyzack had half a brain he'd have done what Carver had not and left by a rear entrance, on to one of the back streets, away from the quay.

'Look to the east and south of the building!' he shouted. 'Got anything?'

Carver didn't wait for an answer. He was already fighting his way through the mass of people, moving past the tower where Tyzack had been positioned. Then he heard a crackle in his ear followed by, 'Yes! We have a possible sighting, moving south along King William Avenue in the direction of Queen Square.'

Carver thought back to the presentation Manners had given in Dame Agatha Bewley's office. Queen Square was somewhere to the south of where he was now. He looked up at the sky. It was midday. Wherever the sun was, that was south.

There was no sun. The sky was grey with low-lying cloud. But one patch of cloud looked marginally less dismal than the rest, as though some light was trying to force its way through. Carver ran in the direction of the light. He forced his way past another group of people and suddenly he was on a virtually deserted street. Ahead of him was a small pedestrian area, laid out in paving stones between patches of grass, that lay at the foot of a couple of office buildings. As he ran on, he saw that there was a gap between the buildings and at the end of it was the corner of a much larger open space, surrounded by trees. That must be Queen Square. He kept moving through the gap, across a road, up to the trees and then flung himself to the ground as he heard a crack of pistol-fire, followed by a stinging sensation on the right-hand side of his face as it was hit by splinters from the impact of a bullet on the tree-trunk right beside him.