The Color of Night

by David Lindsey

  “Nothing available, sir,” the clerk said, and Strand turned around.

  “Not anything?”

  “No singles or doubles, sir. We have only suites.”

  “One of those will be fine.”

  The clerk accepted this quiet extravagance with smooth alacrity.

  Strand quickly produced one of his forged passports and credit cards, and the clerk got busy putting together the necessary paperwork for the accommodation.

  CHAPTER 56

  Claude Corsier had an extended argument with the murderous Skerlic that was immensely frustrating and even, at times, comical in its absurdity, over Corsier’s insistence that he buy a proper suit and go to a barber. There were surveillance cameras, for God’s sake, Corsier had argued—he had no idea if there were—and if the Serb did not want to be conspicuous, he would bloody well dress like everyone else whether he liked it or not. He could not go into the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair looking like a refugee and expect not to be noticed. Skerlic was insulted, and as Corsier argued with him, he actually turned his head away like a child refusing another spoon of green peas.

  In the end he relented, and when he arrived at the Connaught carrying an oxblood leather satchel that Corsier had bought for him at Asprey, he did not turn a head. Corsier knew because he was watching from an armchair in the lobby.

  He waited nearly ten minutes before folding his London Times and following Skerlic up to his rooms. When he got there the Serb had peeled off his suit coat and had thrown it, turned inside out, onto one of the sofas in the reception area. He was standing at the windows, looking at the tripods and the binoculars.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to depend on the audio alone. I want to see who’s there, and I want to know what they’re doing.”

  Skerlic looked across Carlos Place. “He leaves the curtains open?”

  “In the second-floor room, yes. It’s a library, a space for viewing paintings and drawings. There’s good natural light.”

  “You can see everything over there?”

  “Very nearly.”

  “No privacy.”

  “It’s a place of business, and it’s far enough away that, without something like these”—he gestured to the binoculars—“you really can’t see much of anything.”

  Skerlic looked across as if to double-check that assertion, but the lights were out.

  “We still have to rely on the mike,” he said. “The mike is how I will know if his face is in the right place.”

  “I can see if that’s the case.”

  “You cannot rely on what you see. The perspective might be confusing. You could be wrong.”

  “Of course. I intend to watch nevertheless.”

  Skerlic regarded him as if he were a simpleton and shrugged. “Where are the pictures?”

  “In my bedroom.” Corsier nodded to the doorway on the right. “Your bedroom is over there,” he added, tilting his head the other way.

  “Get them.”

  Corsier went to his bedroom and returned with one picture, then went back for the other. Skerlic lifted each onto one of the sofas and began examining it, going over the elaborate moldings with his face close to the gilding. Then he turned them over and examined the backs.

  “Okay,” he said. He carried each of them across the room and leaned them against the wall, facing out. He looked around the room. “Okay. We pull that over there to over here.”

  Corsier helped him move a writing desk over to the windows so that it sat at an angle to the street. Skerlic removed all the hotel information from the desk, removed the lamp, then carried over the satchel and set it beside the desk. He opened the satchel and began taking out his electronic equipment, putting the pieces on the writing desk like a surgeon laying out his instruments.

  Corsier stood by uneasily. The equipment made him uncomfortable. Naturally he was entirely ignorant about it, but he had always had the impression that electronically activated explosives were highly unstable, even precarious. Not reliable. Touchy. He was aware that he was beginning to perspire as he watched Skerlic deal with the wires and the little plastic boxes with toggle switches and readout dials, both analogue and digital. Why was so much electronic equipment always black? He could smell the electrical wiring and the plastic. He noted with surprise that Skerlic was precise in the way he handled the equipment. He didn’t remember seeing any of that kind of deftness a few nights ago in the Harley Mews garage.

  Half an hour later Skerlic pulled two sets of headphones out of the leather satchel and plugged them into the side of one of the boxes. One set had very long wires attached to it.

  “These are yours,” Skerlic said, extending them to Corsier. “Put them on and sit over there.” He motioned to another chair.

  Corsier moved the chair over, sat down, and held the headphones in his hands as Skerlic looked around the reception area and spotted a radio on a lamp table. He unplugged it and put it on the floor about five feet away from the paintings. He turned it on and reduced the volume to a near whisper. Corsier could barely hear it. Skerlic put on his set of headphones, gesturing for Corsier to do the same, and turned on the dials of the two black boxes. Needles moved on the analogue dials. Red numbers flew by rapidly on the digital one. In moments Corsier heard the radio, classical music, at first low, then louder and quite clear. For the first time since Corsier had known him, Skerlic managed a tight-lipped smile.

  Suddenly he flipped off the switches, removed his headphones, and turned to Corsier.

  “Now, the schedule tomorrow . . .”

  “I take the pictures to Knight between eight and eight-thirty. We’ll chat awhile in his library so that you will have time to modulate the reception or frequency or whatever you do. Then I come back over here. Schrade is supposed to be there around ten o’clock.”

  “What if something happens and he comes earlier?”

  “Even so, I don’t think he would come earlier than eight-thirty.” He paused. “What about the second frame?”

  “The second frame?”

  “If you get Schrade with one, what about the second one?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? You just leave it? You will be giving investigators a guidebook of evidence, wiring signatures, explosive source . . .”

  Skerlic snorted. “You have been watching too many spy programs on television. Bomb makers know all about signatures. Besides, they have never seen this woman’s work before.” He scratched his head, uninterested. “Now, after the detonation I will pack everything and leave. Within forty-eight hours I will message your e-mail address with instructions for the final deposit.”

  “Fine.” The maneuvering was just about at an end. It had taken him a long time to get to this point.

  “There is nothing else to do until tomorrow, then,” Skerlic said, standing. “Don’t touch any of this shit.”

  He turned and walked out of the reception and into his bedroom. He left the door open. Corsier heard the television come on, and that was that for the evening.

  Corsier turned off the lights. He stood at the windows and looked down into the intersection that circled the small island of plane trees. The bronze statue of the nude woman glistened in the rain. No one sat on the benches beneath the trees. A few black cabs were parked at the curb across the street, and occasionally a car came and went along Carlos Place, going into or coming out of Mount Street.

  It was a very strange evening for Claude Corsier. For the past several months, during his methodical planning of Schrade’s assassination, it was an abstract, an academic exercise. It had become a little more real with each passing week, and then with each passing day. Now it was down to hours. An imaginary act was about to become a reality, an irreversible one with critical consequences. He felt at once oddly powerful, almost euphoric, and at the same time trepidant. Despite all his planning, a great deal still could go wrong. He would spend the night worrying.

  CHAPTER 57

  Left alone in
his suite, Strand turned off the lights and threw back the curtains. The suite looked out to the Italian embassy on Davies Street, along which he had just walked. He could see the trees in Grosvenor Square. On the other side of that, a few streets away, was Ma Micheline.

  Looking into the hazy London night, he double-checked his perspective. Other than Mara, not a soul on earth knew what he was doing. Even professional assassins had to share their secrets with one other person—the one who hired them. It couldn’t get any tighter than that.

  Yet it really wasn’t tight at all. Mara’s contact with Carrington was a gaping hole. However, only the intelligence services were likely to see it, and even that would be obscured once Strand unleashed his files on the media. It was highly unlikely that any of the agencies would pursue what they knew. After all, they were among the few entities on earth that feared light more than darkness. There was no turning back on this.

  If Schrade’s reservation was for eight-thirty, Strand would do well to be in the foyer by seven, an hour and a half from now. Schrade might go to the restaurant from the hotel, or he might fly in from Berlin, go to the restaurant, and then to the hotel. Strand couldn’t do anything about that. But if Schrade left from Claridge’s, Strand wanted to see if he was accompanied by a chauffeur, if he was accompanied by the second person, if he took a cab. It would even help to know how he was dressed. He had test fired the pistol into the bathtub, but he was still apprehensive about the pellet’s ability to penetrate the amount of clothing Hodge had assured him it would.

  He had a sharp pain in his stomach, just below his sternum. Disappointed, he pressed his fingers into it. He had thought he was handling the tension better than this. It scared him. How the hell could he be sure of his judgment?

  Turning away from the windows, he removed his coat and maneuvered around the furniture to the bed. He tossed his coat on the foot of the bed, untied his shoes, and lay down. He tried to relieve the tension in his stomach by breathing deeply. The shadows in the suite were murky, no sharp distinctions, no clear margins or boundaries. From the window across the room a blue gray light washed over the furniture, the color of night. Christ, he wanted this to be over.

  For the next hour—he kept looking over at the face of a clock on the table at the side of the bed—he concentrated on rehearsing several variations of the same scenario. He approached Schrade coming out of the restaurant, jammed the pistol into his side, and fired, catching the slumping figure. He approached Schrade in the lobby of Claridge’s, jammed the pistol into his side, and fired, catching the slumping figure. He approached Schrade on the street, jammed the pistol into his side, and fired, catching the slumping figure. He approached Schrade . . .

  He began to worry about how many opportunities he would have before ten o’clock the next morning. Obviously it would be best to finish it tonight. Even if it didn’t work out as he imagined it, if the pellet didn’t penetrate, if he fumbled the pistol, if Schrade screamed, if . . . if . . . it would be a hell of a lot easier to flee into the darkness. Another reason why a street-side approach was best. If something went wrong inside, getting away would be much more difficult.

  He began to worry about Schrade’s dinner guest. Was it a woman, and would she accompany him back to Claridge’s? That would make it more difficult. If she was with him, she would be close enough to see that Strand’s brush-by was more than that. The milliseconds between the contact, the muffled slap, Schrade’s reaction, and Strand’s own response could say volumes to her. Her impressions would be instantaneous and would be largely formed by Strand’s own behavior in those seconds after Schrade’s reaction to being shot. If the saxitoxin didn’t work fast enough . . .

  The next time he glanced at the clock he was startled to see that it was eight o’clock. He swung his feet off the bed and flipped on the light. Eight o’clock. God. What had gone on in his mind to make an hour pass so quickly? Immediately his stomach clenched. He swore, put on his shoes, and stood. He undid his trousers and smoothed down the tail of his shirt, then fastened his belt again.

  Walking into the bathroom, he turned on the light and then looked in the mirror. He had the sensation of being a voyeur, as though he were behind a two-way mirror. The latex was holding up well. Nothing had changed. He smiled. The man smiled. There was no hint of resistant tissue. Everything moved naturally, as it was supposed to. He firmed up the knot in his tie. He wanted to wash his face. He turned out the light.

  In the dimly lighted suite he put on his suit coat, grabbed his raincoat and umbrella, and left.

  Strand was relieved to find that the foyer and the front hall were fairly busy, more generally active than he ever remembered them being, with people milling about the marble floors, moving in and out through the arches that led to the foyer. There was no bustle, no sense of collegial acquaintance among any of the guests.

  He took a seat as out of the way as he could manage and still see the vestibule. He put his hands on the curved handle of his umbrella and sat back to wait and watch. Senior employees of the hotel stood about usefully but unobtrusively in dark suits while liveried staff glided to and fro across the polished marble floors in their scarlet tailcoats and white stockings.

  Strand had no luck. At eight-twenty Schrade had not appeared. He was nothing if not punctual, so Strand could only assume that he was going to the restaurant from somewhere else. He walked out of the vestibule and got a cab in front of the hotel.

  • • •

  Ma Micheline was something new for sedate Mayfair, a result, perhaps, of Tony Blair’s insistence that Great Britain should begin thinking positively, reminding itself and the world that it was a modern, progressive, twenty-first-century commonwealth, a place of possibilities and bright futures.

  In that vein, Ma Micheline was a wonderful mixture of sophistication and understated adventure. It was located on a quiet street of Edwardian architecture near Park Place, and as Strand approached he saw its softly lighted interior through large plate-glass windows, the pale ice blue linen tablecloths shimmering as though floating freely in the receding, tenebrous expanse of the large dining room. Once inside, Strand entered the warm, polished world of belle epoque decor, subdued lighting, smartly dressed diners, huge paintings along the walls above the wainscoting reminiscent of Picasso’s blue period.

  There was an abundance of serving persons of two kinds. The first were waiters in tuxedos and glittering white shirts with wing-tip collars who did most of the work; and the second were a generous number of young women dressed identically in black, water-thin cocktail dresses, a single strand of pearls, their hair identically bobbed, with straight bangs. They all had blue eyes. They were the only introduction of eccentricity, but they were striking, and they waited on the tables with a somber, detached efficiency.

  While the maître d’ located his reservation, Strand quickly scanned the dining room. Schrade was not there, but something caught his eye; he came back to a table and looked at a man sitting alone, in three-quarter profile. Strand tensed. Bill Howard was buttering a piece of bread.

  Strand almost wheeled around, then caught himself. It took every bit of his self-control to allow the maître d’ to lead him through the aisles of tables to one five or six tables away. It was in a good location. Howard would have had to turn his head to see Strand’s table.

  With his heart working hard to maintain some semblance of a rhythm, Strand ordered a bottle of wine, which arrived instantly. As one of the young women began opening it for him, Wolfram Schrade made his entrance.

  Strand had not seen him in nearly five years, but Schrade had not changed. He was neither older nor heavier nor thinner. Even from where he sat, Strand could see Schrade’s strange clear eyes, and as he approached, following the maître d’, Strand reacquainted himself with the straight, narrow nose, the wide mouth with its thin upper lip and full lower lip, the thick, coarse hair the color of the vellum pages of old books. Schrade carried himself with an erect, straight-backed posture that was saved from being
military by his abundant self-assurance, evident in the way he moved with a loose elegance that Strand had never seen matched anywhere.

  Strand was not prepared for the rush of emotions that flooded over him as he heard Schrade’s deep voice, his heavily accented English. Strand bent his head to his menu and shifted his eyes to one side to watch them. He was suddenly seized by a loathing for Schrade that surpassed any animus he had felt in the past. He watched as one of the black-draped young women poured Schrade’s wine; he picked up the glass and drank without even looking at her. He portrayed no expression whatsoever as he talked to Howard. Strand remembered the arrogance he had always thought Schrade’s lack of expression conveyed. Schrade picked up his menu, glanced over it once, and then tossed it down, knowing what he wanted from the complicated entries without giving it a second thought, a dismissive gesture that demonstrated his world-weary hauteur in a way that Strand detested.

  Watching Schrade, Strand slowly, deliberately dredged up the painful images he had carried with him like secret reliquaries: the harsh light on Romy’s wild face as she looked back over her shoulder, horrified, desperate, the rear of her Land Rover sinking slowly into the cold tidewater; Ariana’s naked, bloody body stuffed under the bed in the Metropole Hotel in Geneva; Dennis Clymer’s headless, limbless corpse being fished out of the Canal de Charleroi in Brussels; Meret’s charred skull amid the smoldering rubble of his home in Houston; Claude Corsier.

  “Monsieur?”

  Strand ordered the first thing that caught his eye.

  Goddamn Bill Howard. Had Schrade been dining with a woman, or any person other than Howard, Strand would have had a chance on the sidewalk after dinner. But Howard would see right through Strand’s clumsy procedure. It would work only among the unsuspecting, the uninitiated. Howard’s world of betrayals and dirty business was far too cynical for him to witness such an act and be fooled by it.