Luke joined them quietly. Just as it was his turn to leave, he glanced back over his shoulder, ignoring the way the last few stragglers were jostling to get away. He could just see them, the three bodies in the aisle, alone in the massive space of the cathedral. Nobody was anywhere in the vicinity. Nobody was paying them any attention. No churchman was ministering to them. They just lay there, gruesome in death, and alone.
He remembered the face of the little boy. Chet’s boy. Now dead, like his father. The thought was a needle in Luke’s soul as he pushed out into the open air. The sound of sirens was louder, the chaos intense. Luke hurried down the stone steps and disappeared into the night.
TWENTY-TWO
8 December.
The Manhattan offices of the Grosvenor Group occupied the top three floors of a skyscraper on East 43rd Street. From the penthouse the towers of the city were visible all around: the Chrysler Building, the UN, the Empire State. The two men talking there remembered the days when the Twin Towers loomed over everything. They’d been in this very building when the planes hit. Along with the rest of Manhattan they’d rushed from the city in panic; unlike the rest of Manhattan, the events of 9/11 had brought an upward trajectory in their fortunes. War was always good for business.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the East River was sparkling blue and the bridges and buildings glittered in the low winter sun. The airspace above the city was buzzing with helicopters. Some were giving tourists a bird’s-eye view of the island; some were ferrying wealthy businessmen to work or play. Some, of course, were there for security. These two men knew there was never a moment when a gunship wasn’t hovering above New York City. It was one of their subsidiaries who supplied it to the DOD, after all.
A bald-headed man with a shiny scalp and tanned skin sat in a comfortable executive chair with his back to the East River and his feet parked on the solid wooden desk in front of him. He listened calmly to the ranting of his colleague: a fat man, who sweated even when he wasn’t stressed out and whose voice had a strong South African accent. ‘The guy’s got us over a fucking barrel,’ he complained, waving his arms in the air to reveal dark patches of perspiration in the pits of his shirt. ‘He’s acting like some fucking Transvaal mercenary. I’m telling you, man, we shouldn’t be involved in this shit.’
The bald man smiled blandly. ‘You should learn to relax, Pieter. You ever get yourself a massage? I know this girl, comes from Stockholm, got a rack like a fucking balcony. I’m telling you — you could do Shakespeare off it.’
The suggestion only made Pieter more angry. ‘God damn it, Nathan. I’m not interested in your fucking hookers. You know what this could do to our company?’
Nathan swung his feet back down off the table, stood up and looked out over the East River. His bald-headed reflection smiled back at him. He knew his silence would infuriate someone of Pieter de Lange’s temperament. The pudgy South African CFO had a brain for numbers but a tendency to see shadows that weren’t there, or at least to see larger shadows than really existed.
‘I said,’ Pieter repeated, ‘do you know what this could do to our company?’
Nathan turned. ‘Sure I know,’ he said. ‘Double its market capitalisation value? Triple it, maybe?’
‘Ah, man,’ Pieter replied. ‘How much of that money do you think you’ll be able to spend in a Federal jail, eh? The only hookers you’ll find in there will be kaffirs with twelve-inch dicks.’
Nathan laughed. Pieter was a crude motherfucker when he wanted to be and the Grosvenor Group’s CEO quite enjoyed that. It made a change from the usual po-faced Brits he spent so many of his days with. But it wasn’t so much the guy’s choice of words that tickled him. It was the suggestion that either of them would face any kind of negative consequences for… well, for anything, really.
‘Tell me, Pieter, how long have you been with us now?’
‘Five years.’
‘Five years. And in those five years, how many former presidents of the United States have you dined with?’
Pieter shrugged. ‘Two,’ he said.
‘And members of the Senate? I bet you can’t even remember.’ Nathan could tell he was right, because Pieter didn’t reply. ‘How many share options in the Grosvenor Group have you drawn up for prime movers in Washington, Pieter? How many millions in dividends did we pay out to sitting members of Congress in the last financial year?’
‘Plenty,’ Pieter mumbled.
‘Yeah, plenty. You know how the world works, Pieter. You think any of those guys are going to let us go down when they know they could come down with us? Huh?’
Pieter shrugged.
‘I’ve been at this a long time. And I’ve juggled more slippery skittles than Alistair Stratton, believe me. He’s just a greedy little man who wants to fill his boots. You really think he’s going to go public about our arrangement with him? He’d be up in front of The Hague quicker than you can say “war crime”.’
‘Then why are you supplying him? Why are you giving him access to our intelligence networks?’
Nathan gave him a flat look. ‘Think of it as a speculative investment, Pieter. You accountants understand things like that, don’t you?’
‘Don’t patronise me, man. I just don’t see what’s in this for Stratton.’
‘Pieter, Pieter,’ Nathan smiled blandly. ‘You must trust me to handle Stratton.’
‘Ah, I don’t know, man. I don’t like it. I don’t like him.’
‘Come on, Pieter. Look what we made from Iraq while everyone else was worrying about oil. Stratton’s like war — good for business.’
He walked round to where the South African was standing and slapped his palm in a comradely fashion against the back of his sweaty shirt. ‘I’m going to get you that chick’s number,’ he said. ‘You look like you could use a good time. All work and no play makes Pieter a dull boy, and we really wouldn’t want that now, would we?’
RAF Brize Norton. 15.00 hrs.
A dull-grey C-17 Globemaster III sat on the tarmac. None of its four jets was yet in motion, but the aft door was open, revealing the massive belly of this packhorse of an aircraft.
Parked no more than twenty metres away were four white minibuses. They’d exited the barriers of Credenhill three hours ago. They were entirely nondescript. See them drive past and you might have thought they contained a local football team, or labourers on their way to a site. And a peek at the men inside wouldn’t have given you much else to go on, all of them dressed in civvies. And although they all wore sturdy boots, there wasn’t a speck of olive drab or DPM in sight.
At the back of the lead minibus, one man had stared out of the window as they left Hereford. There were bags under his eyes as he gazed into the middle distance, seeing but not registering the dingy suburbs as they headed towards the motorway. He should sleep, he knew that. But sleep wasn’t possible. Not with the events of the previous night spinning in his head. Luke Mercer was no longer shocked by death, though he didn’t doubt that the sight of Chet’s lad sliding in a pool of his own blood would stay with him for the rest of his days.
‘If that’s not a professional job,’ he had heard his neighbour saying when they were no more than a minute from base, ‘I’m a fucking Chinaman. Headshots, at that range, no sign of the shooter. You ask me, that’s agency work.’ Luke had turned to see Finn with a copy of the Sun open in front of him. He’d already seen the headline that morning — ‘murder in the cathedral’ — and a grainy telephoto shot of the scene that was so sharp in his memory. He hadn’t had the stomach to read any further.