to enjoy Ali Karim’s interview with the author, which includes some background on “Bloodsport.” The final part of this story will appear tomorrow on this page.)“Bloodsport” © 2009 Tom Cain
Carver was high up an oak tree. He’d been there for three days, remaining as motionless as humanly possible, rendered invisible by the combination of thick summer foliage and a shaggy, camouflaged ghillie suit that broke up his outline and blended him into his surroundings.
The oak grew beside a lake in Cumbria. Carver had his back to the water. In front of him was an open expanse of grass, which ran as far as a road that ran north-south, parallel to the eastern shore of the lake. For the past 30 minutes there had been no traffic along the road, nor would there be for another 30 to come. Manned police barriers, approximately 200 yards apart, both clearly visible to Carver, had made sure of that.
Directly opposite Carver’s position there was a turning off the road, which formed a semi-circle of tarmac, ringed by the high brick walls of a large property. This semi-circle was where the media were massed. Their assorted cars, vans, and trucks, now parked along the road on either side of the semi-circle, and the police cars that had accompanied them, had been the last vehicles allowed past the barriers.
The walls were lined with trees and shrubs and bisected, right in the middle of their arc, by a gate. Behind it a tarmac drive led up to the Victorian villa that had been rented for the prime minister’s holiday accommodation. Carver was watching the PM and his wife walk down that drive towards the gate, the waiting media and, though they did not know it, to him.
The official schedule for the next few minutes had been very tightly scripted. Every move that the prime ministerial couple would make, and every word they would say had been accounted for. They’d walk up to the gates, apparently engrossed in happy conversation and pleasurable contemplation of the property’s well-manicured grounds and delightful lake views. The gates would open. The couple would walk through them and pose with the gestures of enforced normality that distinguish pictures of politicians, regardless of race of ideology, attempting to look like normal human beings. Carver felt reasonably certain that this would involve the prime minister pointing off towards the middle distance while the missus followed his finger with a look of adoring fascination plastered on her face. He had never seen any normal human beings do this, but somehow it was expected of our leaders and their spouses.
A few bland questions would be asked, avoiding any reference to contentious political issues and concentrating instead on the general desirability of a family holiday amidst the glories of the British countryside. The prime minister would assure his people, with a cheery smile, that he was enjoying himself enormously.
More pictures would be taken and then proceedings would draw to a close, and the loving couple would walk back through the now-closing gate and up the drive again.
Whoever had scripted the whole charade had cast the stars, brought in the extras and even found a delightful set. The one thing they had not counted upon was the special effects. Samuel Carver would be providing them.
Or would he?
Now that the time was drawing near, he suddenly felt afflicted by doubts and misgivings. The whole thing had been almost too easy up to this point. Carver had contacts from his old days in the forces scattered throughout Whitehall, the private security industry, and even the media--nothing said “credible defense analyst” like actual combat experience. They had managed to find out everything he’d needed to know. He had been careful not to tell them exactly what he had in mind, if only to save them from any legal retribution later. But his general intentions had been clear enough. Yet between them they gave him everything they needed: schedules, locations, security protocols, shift patterns (because the most vulnerable moment for any security operation is the handover between one shift and another), even the precise gap between the couple and the rope holding back the photographers. And then, when he’d asked for one, last personal favor, every one of them had willingly complied. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised. Feelings were running high.
So he had emerged from the lake at 4:00 a.m., three nights earlier, taken up his position, and begun his long wait. And all the while a thought had been growing in the back of his mind, a niggling seed of doubt that had steadily expanded until now it seemed to fill his whole consciousness. For whatever he had done and how many sins he had committed, Carver believed himself to be, if not a good man--there were too many deaths on his conscience for that--certainly a man of honor and integrity. Many years ago he had sworn to serve his Queen and country, and he still felt bound by that obligation.
He was certainly not a psychopath. He had a conscience and a profound sense of right and wrong. And so, as he lay in that oak tree, he kept asking himself, “Can I really go through with this?”
(To be continued)
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