Candleburn (12 page)

It
all added up.

“Prince
Harry...” he repeated. “Prince Harry – you swear?”

“Da,
da. No more, please. No more.”

A
sudden change swept over Blake. Reality set in. He was staring down at some poor man, bleeding out on his carpet, whom he was slowly killing.

Truth
be told, he didn’t like torture. He’d worked alongside many people who had. They were the kind of men and women who as children gleefully pulled the legs off insects and, once grown up, had simply graduated on to pulling limbs off people instead.

Blake
always found he paid a cost for using it – an emotional hangover.

He
also believed that in most cases, it was used inappropriately.

Information
gained under duress was always suspect – in the end, people would say anything to make it stop. Torture was good for getting broad brush strokes but only a true sadist could persist with it until they got the individual atoms that made up the sweep of every dash of paint.

The thin pool of blood underneath the Russian was gradually expanding to the soul of Blake’s shoe.

“Please,”
the Russian begged. “Please help me.”

Blake
hesitated, caught in shock as he realised the monster from the past that had been awakened.

The
Russian sobbed.

Blake
swallowed hard.

“Please…”
the Russian begged.

Blake
pulled the trigger.

Abram’s
face froze in agony as the bullet passed through his skull, spattering bone and fluids against the white lounge skirting board.

Blake
tucked the weapon in his belt and went straight to the cupboard under the stairs. He removed the cat carrying case and a small leather holdall. He pulled the zip on the bag.

Empty.

As he ran up the stairs with the case and holdall in one hand, he began searching his contacts on his phone. He pushed call.

Ringing.

He put the bags on the ground and extracted Jeffrey from underneath the farthest corner of the bed.

“This
is the US embassy 24-hour emergency assistance number,” a robotic recording began through the phone’s speaker. “For lost passports, press 1. For...”

Jeffrey
protested as Blake pushed him into the carrying basket and locked the door tight. He turned his attention to the phone. He pressed a long sequence of numbers containing stars and hashes.

More
ringing.

He
began pulling open his clothes drawers.

Three
pairs of everything – socks, tee-shirts, pants...

“US
Embassy, how may I direct your call?” a sprightly voiced woman with a Mid-Western accent asked.

“I
need to talk to Constantine White,” Blake replied.

The
sound of furious tapping at a keyboard.

“May
I ask who’s calling?”

“His
swimming pool repair man.”

No
more questions. The phone began ringing again.

Blake
went to the bathroom medicine cabinet. He removed a screwdriver from the top shelf. Jeffrey began to ‘meow’ in protest at his incarceration. Blake found himself breathing heavily as he opened the bedroom door wide, stepped outside the room and examined the back frame. Here there was a small brass plate.

He
began to unscrew it.

“Constantine
White’s office.”

Montana
accent. White male. Late twenties.

“I’m
afraid Mr White is not available at present. Can I ask who is calling?”

Blake
took the screws from the plate and dropped them on the floor. It didn’t matter if anyone knew his hidey-hole now. Inside, he’d hollowed out an eight inch wide space. It contained two passports, one Norwegian, the other Canadian, a credit card and $5000 in $100 bills.

“Cavallo,”
Blake said bluntly.

Typing.
Silence. More furious typing.

“My
apologies sir,” the boy at the other end of the phone said, slight quaver to his voice. “Can I just confirm the designated department you’re calling from?”

Blake
sighed.

“Rubicon,”
he growled.

Words
he’d not said in a decade.

He
bowed his head in shame.

“Absolutely,
sir,” the boy continued. “Mr White will call you back immediately, sir.”

The
phone went dead.

25

Asp entered Chrome’s penthouse headquarters expecting the lights to be off and the desks empty. He should have known better. Two of his best operatives were still busily discussing a case in amongst a pile of half-drunk coffee cups and computer printouts.

“Paul,
Michelle – what’s new?” Asp asked, nodding to his colleagues.

“Hey
boss,” Michelle replied, offering him a plastic folder. “This is the latest on the Salexco situation.”

“Is
it resolved?” Asp asked, taking the file.

Paul
rubbed the back of his head in irritation.

“We’ve
hit a complication,” Michelle said. “They want to buy land in northeast Africa for a new cotton plantation and factory. Yesterday, Connors hinted that if the election in Egypt results in the extremist party gaining power...”

Two years ago, after 3 terms of Democratic presidents, the United States had taken a swing to the political right.
President Connors had ridden on a wave of evangelical support into office.

L
ess than nine months after being elected he had successfully managed to both diminish international support for the country and boost his popularity at home. His speciality was loud rhetoric about regaining America’s pre-eminent place in the world.

After more than a decade of recession, his appeal was understandable.

“Right,” Asp agreed, “He’ll slap sanctions on foreign investment into the country...”

“Exactly,”
Paul said. “So, I’ve been trying to explain to Michelle that our best course of action is to tell Salexco to look elsewhere. There are good opportunities for what they want in Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. They should give north Africa a miss until it settles down.”

Paul
was twenty-two, bright and eager – two qualities Asp prized highly. However, while there was nothing wrong with his analysis on paper, Asp often found it lacked human insight – where knowledge of personalities and how to play their foibles could lead to a desired outcome.

It
was a problem Asp was discovering with increasing frequency among people under the age of twenty-five. They’d been brought up practising solo pursuits – listening to iPods through headphones, playing games consoles and using the Internet. The intelligent ones just didn’t quite get how social interactions affect results.

“And
you don’t agree?” Asp asked Michelle.

“Can
I speak frankly?” she asked.

“Always,”
Asp said. “You know I encourage it. We’re all adults here.”

“Connors
is a dick.”

Asp
laughed.

Europeans
in particular held a dim view of the new President. That only boosted his standing at home. Depending on your political persuasion, he was most often described as George W Bush mark II, the spiritual successor of Ronald Regan or an evangelical reincarnation of Truman.

The
one name left off the list was the one Asp most clearly identified with – there was a narrowness to his eyes that always made him think of Richard Nixon.

“That’s
not really relevant,” he said.

“Actually,”
she said, “it is. He shoots from the hip. He’s a populist. He’s a blowhard. He’s also a manipulator, it’s amazing everyone seems to know all these traits about him and yet he’s so popular.”

“I
don’t see how that negates Paul’s argument,” Asp replied.

“I
think we should proceed with looking at the parcels of land we’ve analysed around the upper Nile,” Michelle said. “One of two things will happen. Either the extremists aren’t elected, which right now looks like a coin toss. In that case, Connors’ threats don’t matter. By continuing to research Egypt, we win. In the other case, the extremists do get into power. Then, there’s another coin toss. Connors either follows through with his threat, or he doesn’t.”

“You’re
saying the risk profile is that you’ll only lose 25% of the time by continuing to research Egypt?”

“And
maybe even less than 25%,” Michelle replied. “If we get extremists and we get sanctions, there’re always routes around that. Salexco could make the investments through one of their Italian or Brazilian subsidiaries, for instance. It’s win-win.”

“Why
take the chance?” Paul asked. “We could have zero problem if we simply look at Kazakhstan.”

Asp
formed a steeple with his fingers.

“I
like your thinking, Michelle,” he said. “I don’t have time to read your report right now. Email it to me, I’ll give you answer tomorrow afternoon. And Paul, good work from you too – do a prelim background sketch on feasibility for doing the project in Tashkent. Nothing fancy, just the basics.”

Asp
left the two of them and hurried to his office.

He
had a new route to get to the bottom of the murders.

***

Blake was a hundred metres from Abram’s Toyota when he pressed the unlock button on the key ring he’d liberated from the dead Russian’s pocket. There was only the remotest of outside chances that the vehicle would explode in a Hollywood-esque ball of pyrotechnics but it cost him nothing to be cautious.

Instead,
he was relieved to see the car’s indicators flash a single time in the rapidly darkening night. He pulled on a pair of marigolds lifted from his kitchen and opened the driver’s side door.

The
floor was a mess.

Burger
wrappers, chewing gum packets, empty water bottles and the ubiquitous UAE signature: sand. He pulled a torch from his pocket and after brief examination, tossed the litter on the back seat.

They
were all multinational brands, nothing useful there.

But
the sand – now that was different.

Blake
put his nose down close to the tight-looped, boot-worn carpet.

Although
comparatively small by international standards, Blake had quickly noticed that the UAE’s seven emirates weren’t simply a historic facet of tribal differences and allegiances, or merely linked to nomadic movements over the seasons.

There
was a deeper connection between who owned which land. In short: the seven different emirates had seven different shades of sand.

Panning
the torch back and forth, there were at least three distinct colours hidden deep in the weave of the floor rug. But to his eye, under the distorting factor of electric light, it wasn’t as easy to identify the origins as he’d hoped.

One
had to be Dubai – by definition, since that’s where they were. One was the fairest shade of yellow, which meant Abu Dhabi.

But
the third... where was the third from?

He
pulled at the carpet. It was a petrol station bought protective rug that came away easily in his grasp. He couldn’t be sure he’d have time to examine the sand closely in a lab, still, better to take it and not need it.

A
swift examination of the door pockets and glove compartment revealed nothing.

He
popped the boot.

Here,
there was something more interesting: an airline bag. He opened it, expecting to find little more than some gym kit. He was surprised. A gag, a hood, a length of rope, a reel of duct tape and an FN P90 with three spare ammunition clips.

“Okay...”
Blake said slowly to himself.

The
P90 was more than simply a hell of a weapon, it was a ridiculous amount of firepower to be carrying around the streets of Dubai – even for professional thugs.

Sure,
P90s were standard issue to the armies who’d been in Afghanistan and Iraq – but just because you could get one easily, didn’t mean you should, and even less so said that you would be stupid enough not only to get it but also to bring it into Dubai.

Forearm-length,
the Belgian-made half-rifle was designed to NATO’s requirement for a powerful, light, short and easy to hold weapon that could be wielded as quickly as a pistol, but packed the punch of a machine gun. It could be used for marksmanship, in a pinch.

Because
it was so powerful, and stood alone from almost anything else that had come before, that there were still arguments about what to call the gun. Some experts labelled it a sub-machine rifle, others put it in the class of assault weapons or machine pistols or any one of about five different categories. Eventually, it more-or-less defined a new class: PDW – Personal Defence Weapon.

Blake
took the bag and stuffed everything into it.

He
walked back to his own Audi, started the engine and drove away from his home for the last time.