‘You could say that. I’m a professional putter-up of backs. I’m just sorry that Nesta and Charlie had to pay the price for it.’
‘Is there one person’s back that you’ve put up more than any other?’
Adeola shook her head. ‘I think I’m equally disliked by just about every political faction I’ve ever dealt with – Iranians, Syrians, Israelis, Lebanese. The thing of it is, I bribe them with large charitable donations to stop slaughtering each other. Most of the time, they take the money, and they call a ceasefire. But it doesn’t stop them from hating their enemies as much as they always did – and me, too, for paying them to behave like civilized human beings.’
‘You’ve been talking to Denis O’Connell. I wonder what you and he could possibly have had to discuss.’
‘It was a private conversation.’
‘Amicable, would you say?’
‘Mostly.’
‘You wouldn’t have been putting his back up, then?’
‘I don’t think so. Not enough for him to want me killed, anyhow.’
Detective Garda Maguire sat and smiled at Adeola for a long time, but didn’t ask her any more questions about the shooting. Eventually, he said, ‘I gather you’re booked to fly back to the States tomorrow morning?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, you’ll keep in touch, won’t you? And if any ideas should occur to you, about who was trying to bump you off . . .’
‘Believe me, Detective, I’ve lost three of my bodyguards in less than a week, and they weren’t just bodyguards, they were friends, too. Whoever it was, I’m not going to let them get away with it.’
When Detective Garda Maguire had left, Rick came in. He had changed into a clean blue shirt and khaki chinos.
‘Are you ready to go?’ he asked Adeola. ‘I have a Land Cruiser waiting outside, and the cops are going to escort us to Cork.’
‘I feel so guilty about leaving Jimmy and Miko.’
‘Don’t worry, they’ll be OK. I just looked in on Jimmy and he’s really holding his own. There’s nothing more that we can do here, honestly.’
‘What about Nesta and Charlie?’
‘The coroner’s coming, day after tomorrow. The police are going to call me about the funeral arrangements.’
‘I need to call their next-of-kin.’
‘Wait till we get to Cork. I’m not at all happy about the security around here.’
‘You think they’ll try again?’
‘Sure of it. For some reason, those bastards really want you dead.’
With one white police car ahead of them and one behind, they drove along the undulating road that led out of County Kerry and into County Cork. Over the mountains, the clouds hung down like filthy grey curtains and it looked as if it were going to start raining again.
‘This is like a bad dream,’ said Adeola.
‘You always knew the risks. Why do you think DOVE employed five bodyguards for you?’
‘I knew the risks, for sure, but I never realized that anybody was going to be so determined to kill me.’
‘I think we may be making some progress with that,’ said Rick. ‘I took a photograph of the medallion and sent it to my old Secret Service buddy Bill Pringle. Bill’s an expert in terrorist splinter groups and assassination squads.’
‘Did he have any idea what it was?’
‘He wasn’t sure. But he thought the Roman letters K A Z I M I were somebody’s name rather than an acronym. Apparently Kazimi is a pretty common surname in Iran. The arrows aren’t arrows at all. They’re a kind of ancient writing which was used in the Middle East about five hundred years BC – cuneiform. He said that it shouldn’t be too difficult to translate, and he’s going to find out what it means and let me know ASAP.’
‘You told him about the other medallion – the one that suicide bomber was wearing, in Dubai?’
‘Of course. He’s going to download the picture and check it out. But more than that, he has very good contacts with Al Ameen, and he’s going to try to find out if the kid was wearing the medallion when he blew himself up – and, if he was, where it is now. He says it looks as if the arrow-writing is the same on both medallions, but he’s interested to see if there’s a different name on the other side.’
‘But he’s never seen any medallions like these before?’
‘Never.’ Rick checked his rear-view mirror to make sure that the police car was keeping close behind them. ‘Mind you – he says that they may not have any political or religious significance at all. Like, how many millions of people walk around wearing a crucifix, and that doesn’t even mean that they’re Christian, let alone religious fanatics. These medallions could be nothing more than jewellery.’
‘You think so? It seems like too much of a coincidence to me.’
‘Well, me too. And Bill’s the first person to admit that he doesn’t know every single splinter group that might be affiliated to Hamas or Al Qaeda or Hezbollah. Some of these terrorist cells, they’ve been around for decades, assassinating politicians they don’t like and setting off bombs, but because they never seek publicity for what they’re doing, nobody knows who they are. Some other group takes the credit, but they don’t care. They’ve killed the person they wanted to kill, or done the damage they wanted to do, and for them that’s enough.’
Their three-car motorcade wound down through the mountains and into the small market town of Macroom, and then along the flatter roads beside the River Lee. A very fine rain began to fall, sweeping across the river valley like a succession of grey ghosts.
As they approached Cork City, Adeola said, ‘I’ve been trying to think of who might want me dead – I mean who might want me dead to the point that they’re prepared to sacrifice the lives of their own people to make sure that they kill me.’
Rick turned to look at her. His eyes were the same grey as the rain. ‘And?’
‘All I can say is, it must be somebody who hates the idea of the world being at peace.’
They stayed that night at the Ambassador Hotel on Military Hill, overlooking Cork from the north. The Ambassador was a fine, red-brick Victorian building that had once been a British Army hospital, but the Gardai recommended it because access to its main entrance was limited, and Adeola could have a suite at the end of a long corridor, which was easily defensible.
Rick ordered leek-and-potato soup and steaks on room service, although Adeola insisted that she wasn’t hungry. They sat at a small round table in Adeola’s room, with a thick Irish linen tablecloth, under a painting of the Punchestown racecourse.
‘What time do we fly out tomorrow?’
‘Ten o’clock, connecting in Edinburgh. We should be back in New York at six forty-five Eastern time.’
‘Rick—’ she said, reaching across the table and laying her hand on top of his.
‘I know,’ he interrupted her. ‘I didn’t expect us to carry on the way that we have been, not after this.’
‘I feel very strange. I never felt this way before. I feel so angry, like the inside of my brain is boiling.’
‘It’s called vengefulness. You’ve seen it enough times, in the people you negotiate with.’
‘Seen it, yes. But never felt it.’
Rick put down his fork, wiped his mouth and stood up. ‘I’m going to logon – see if Bill’s come up with anything yet. You should eat some more of that steak. It’s going to be a hell of a long flight tomorrow.’
‘Rick, I love you, and I need you. Thank you for taking care of me.’
He kissed her. ‘Somebody has to.’
Adeola slept badly that night, even though she took sleeping pills, and she kept seeing Nesta’s face as the gunman’s bullet blew off the side of her head. Rick came in to wake her at 7 a.m., sitting on the side of her bed and gently shaking her shoulder.
‘Good morning. It’s a grand day, as they say here in Cork. The sun’s shining and we’re on our way home.’
‘Urggghhh . . . I feel like I’ve been dragged fee
t-first through a sewer pipe.’
‘Nothing that a good strong cup of coffee won’t put right. By the way, I’ve heard some more from Bill Pringle.’
Adeola sat up. She was wearing a red satin scarf tied around her hair, so she looked more like an African princess than ever. ‘Could you pass my robe, please? Thanks. What did Bill have to say?’
‘He checked on the cuneiform writing on the medallion. According to the most authoritative database he could find, the characters are emu ki ilani. That means “to become like the gods”.’
‘“To become like the gods”?’
‘Don’t ask me. Bill said it was kind of a philosophical ideal of the Babylonians, back in the days of King Nebuchadnezzar, around six hundred BC.’
‘So what does that have to do with somebody trying to kill me in 2008?’
‘I don’t have any idea. And Bill doesn’t know of any terrorist organization called Emu Ki Ilani, or any group that uses that phrase as its watchword.’
Adeola climbed out of bed and went to the dressing table. ‘God, I look like shit.’
‘No, you don’t. You look great, considering what a shock you’ve had.’
‘Can you order me some coffee? And some prune juice, if they have any. If not, grapefruit.’
Rick watched her as she took off her scarf and shook her braids free. ‘Bill’s going to follow up some more leads today,’ he said. ‘I’ve told him that we have to find out who these jokers are, and quick. You can’t spend the rest of your life worrying if the person standing next to you is carrying a bomb, or if your head is in somebody’s cross hairs.’
Adeola smiled, but she didn’t feel like smiling. She had argued and fought against violence all of her life, but this was the first time that violence had ever made her feel truly afraid.
‘You will take care of me, won’t you?’ she said.
Rick stood behind her and laid both hands on her shoulders, looking at her face in the dressing table mirror. ‘Anybody who wants to harm you, they’ll have to come through me first. I promise you.’
Eleven
Noah usually started the day with nothing more than three cigarettes and two mugs of horseshoe coffee, but this morning Silja had prepared him a bowl of muesli and sliced bananas and dried apricots, and he didn’t have the heart to refuse it. He sat out on the terrace and tried to call Mo while he was eating, but all he heard was the same recorded message.
‘Maybe he had to go out of town,’ Silja suggested.
‘Maybe,’ said Noah, with his mouth full of oats and nuts. ‘But he never mentioned it, and he’s not answering his cellphone, either.’
A little after ten thirty, he called Mo’s office on Beverly Boulevard. The nasal voice of one of his production assistants said that Mo hadn’t yet appeared, but ‘you know, Mo is Mo. He comes and he goes.’
After he had finished his breakfast, Noah decided to drive over to Santa Monica to see for himself if Mo was at home. ‘He could be sick. Who knows?’
‘If he’s sick, his wife would answer the phone, wouldn’t she?’
‘I don’t know. I just have this feeling that something isn’t right.’
Silja put her arm around his shoulders. ‘I know that you have lost your Jenna, but you must not think that all the world has become bad.’
The weather had turned unseasonably hot, and by the time they reached Mo’s house on Lincoln Boulevard the temperature was almost up to 115 degrees F. Inside the Super Duty, the air conditioning was set to Nome, Alaska, but outside the sidewalks were rippling with heat.
Mo lived on a corner plot, in a pale blue split-level house that was typical of the development of the 1960s. It looked like the kind of place that Lucille Ball’s neighbours might have lived in. There was a sloping lawn in front of the house, most of it burned patchy brown, and a scrubby yew hedge around the veranda.
Mo’s thirteen-year-old Cadillac was parked in the driveway, a bronze Fleetwood with sagging suspension.
‘Looks like he must be at home,’ said Silja, as they pulled up outside.
Noah shook his head. ‘He doesn’t drive much these days, because of his eyesight. He says he’s so long-sighted he has to go next door to read the newspaper.’
They walked up to the front door and Noah rang the bell. There was no answer. He rang it again, but there was still no answer.
‘There, you see,’ said Silja. ‘He must be out of town.’
‘His office would have said so. He may not put in regular hours, but he still has to work to a tight production schedule.’
Noah walked along the veranda and tried to peer in through the living-room window, but the dark brown drapes were drawn and all he could see was his own reflection.
‘Mo!’ he shouted. ‘Mo, it’s Noah! Are you in there, Mo? Is everything OK?’
‘Maybe we should try around the back,’ Silja suggested.
They opened the side gate and went into the backyard. There was nobody there, only a sun-faded airbed floating in the middle of the circular pool. Noah looked in through the kitchen window. Three beefsteak tomatoes and a cucumber were arranged on one of the counters, as if somebody was right in the middle of preparing a salad, but the kitchen was deserted.
He tried the window of Mo’s den. Mo wasn’t there, either, although his desk was strewn with at least a dozen crumpled-up balls of paper, and his computer was still switched on. On the walls were Mo’s framed certificates from the Screenwriters’ Guild, and several autographed photographs – ‘To Mo from Dick Van Dyke’ – ‘To Mo, The Only Man Nearly As Funny As Me, Mel Brooks.’
‘We should call the police,’ said Silja.
Noah nodded. ‘Maybe you’re right. This is very weird. Very unlike Mo.’
He walked back to the kitchen and tried the door. It was unlocked. He hesitated, and then opened it a little way and called out, ‘Mo? Anybody at home? It’s Noah!’
He stepped inside. The kitchen was unnaturally chilly. Not only was the air conditioning on full, but the refrigerator door was wide open. Noah closed it.
‘It could be that some thieves broke in, and attacked them,’ said Silja. ‘That happened to a friend of mine in Venice, right in the middle of the day. They tied her up and made both of her eyes black.’
Noah went through to the den. Mo’s brown leather chair was set at an angle, as if he had suddenly pushed it back and stood up. There were more crumpled-up balls of paper on the floor, and also a pair of spectacles. Noah bent down and picked them up.
‘It’s beginning to look like you’re right. Somebody did come in here and attack them.’
It was gloomy in the living room, with the drapes drawn tight. Silja tugged them open, while Noah looked around. There were no signs of a struggle – no chairs knocked over, no cushions on the floor. On the gilt-painted coffee table in the centre of the room there was a neat stack of Hollywood Reporters and a box of Caramel Matzoh Crunch.
They looked into the master bedroom. The king-size bed was covered in a pink satin throw with ruffles all around the edges, and two pink-and-white stuffed penguins were propped on the pillows, but again there was no indication of any violence.
‘This is like the goddamned Marie Celeste,’ said Noah.
They went into Leon’s bedroom. It was catastrophically messy, but only in the way of any other college student’s room, with DVDs and socks and discarded jeans all over the floor, and a wall covered with pin-ups of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and basketball pennants and photographs of Leon’s last trip to Israel.
Then Noah tried the bathroom. He had to push the door hard to open it because the bathmat was rucked up. ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Silja.
As soon as he saw the shower he knew at once that something terrible had happened here. The glass partition was decorated with a palm-tree-shaped pattern of dried blood, and there was a dark shape hunched in the shower tray.
He pushed the door wider. To his left, in the white bathtub itself, lay the pallid body of Mo’s wife, Trina. She wa
s naked, with her arms and legs twisted at awkward angles underneath her. Her throat had been cut so deep and wide that she had almost been decapitated, and her neck was hanging open like a huge, leering grin.
The bottom of the bathtub was an inch deep in brown, congealed blood, as dark as molasses.
‘Noah?’ said Silja. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Don’t come in,’ he told her, turning around.
‘What?’
‘Don’t come in. They’re here. They’re both dead. Somebody’s killed them.’
Silja covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Oh my God! Oh, Noah.’
Noah carefully crossed the bathroom floor. The small white tiles were covered in bloody handprints and bloody footprints, as if Mo and Trina had been playing a macabre game of Twister while they bled to death.
He opened the shower door. Mo was sitting there, staring at him with his eyes wide open. He was wearing only a grey turtleneck sweater, the front of which was black with blood. He had been emasculated, too. Between his hairy white thighs there was a nothing but a gaping wound, as dark as pigs’ liver.
Noah stood and stared at Mo for nearly half a minute, as if he expected him to say something. But then a blowfly landed on Mo’s lip, and started to walk across it, rubbing its proboscis together, and all Noah could do was turn around and leave the bathroom and close the door behind him.
Silja was in the kitchen, talking on her cellphone.
‘Who are you calling?’ he asked her.
‘The police. What else?’
‘Of course. You’re absolutely right, yes. Go ahead. God!’
‘Are you all right?’
Noah leaned against the counter. The kitchen seemed to shrink all around him, and Silja sounded as if she were talking to him from another room.
‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘Just give me a minute.’
‘You look terrible.’
He pulled out a high-legged stool and sat down. ‘I can’t believe this. First Jenna, now Mo and Trina. What the hell is going on here, Silja?’
‘Yes,’ said Silja, on her cellphone, ‘Lincoln Boulevard, Santa Monica – Noah, what number is it?’
Chaos Theory Page 8