Ark Angel - Anthony Horowitz [76]
Drevin lowered his nose into the glass and breathed in deeply.
“I am, as you mentioned just now, a rich man. One of the richest men on the planet. I employ a team of accountants who work for me full-time all the year round, and even they are unsure quite how much I am worth. You have no idea what it’s like, Alex, to be able to have anything you want. I can walk into a shop to buy a suit and decide instead to buy the shop. If I see a new car or ship or plane in a magazine, it can be mine before the end of the day. At the last count I had eleven houses around the world. I can sleep in a different country every day of the week and wake up in yet another little bit of paradise.
“Of course, as you’ve probably been told, this wealth did not come to me in a way that you might describe as honest. Such terms are of no interest to me. I am a criminal; I freely admit it. I have killed many people personally and countless more have died as a result of my orders. Many of my associates are criminals. Why should this trouble me? There’s not a successful businessman alive who has not at some time cheated or lied. We all do it! It’s just a question of degree.
“I have been hugely successful for the past twenty years, and I fully intend to become richer and more successful in the years to come. However” – Drevin’s face grew dark – “about eighteen months ago I became aware of two small problems, and these have forced me into a particular course of action. They are the reason why you are here now, Alex. They are problems that could all too easily destroy me and which I have spent a great deal of time and money seeking to overcome.”
“Why are you telling me all this if you’re planning to kill me?” Alex asked.
“It is because I’m planning to kill you that I can tell you,” Drevin replied. “There will be no danger of you repeating what you hear. But please don’t interrupt again, Alex, or I shall have to ask Magnus to hurt you.”
He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, he was fully composed.
“The first problem,” he said, “concerns the State Department of the United States, which decided to investigate some of my financial dealings, particularly those involving the Russian mafiya. Of course, I have been aware right from the start that they were building a case against me. I have always been a careful man. I avoid written evidence and make sure there are no witnesses who might incriminate me. But even so, it would not be possible to act on the scale that I do without leaving some trace of myself, and I knew that the Americans were squirrelling away the bits and pieces, talking to anyone who’d ever met me – and that sooner or later they were planning to bring me to court.
“The obvious solution to this seemed to be to destroy the US State Department and in particular the men and women whose job it had been to meddle in my affairs. It occurred to me that in one respect they were actually being quite helpful. They had gathered all the evidence together: a case of putting all their eggs in one basket! With a single, well-aimed missile, I could kill all the investigators and destroy all the tapes, files, scraps of paper, telephone records, computer printouts – everything! I could begin again with a completely clean sheet. The more I thought about it, the more grateful I became to the Americans for what they were doing.
“Of course, it wasn’t going to be easy. Because, you see, the investigation was based in one of the most secure buildings in the world – the Pentagon in Washington. The place is nothing more than a huge slab of concrete – and much of it underground. It employs an anti-terrorist force that operates twenty-four hours a day. Every form of monitoring device you could imagine can be found there, and since 9/11, no commercial plane can get anywhere near. The Pentagon is thoroughly protected against chemical, biological and radiological attack. I know, because I considered them all. But even a brief examination showed me that any such approach was doomed to failure.
“And now, if you’ll permit