Maestro

by John Gardner

  “Richardson,” a voice announced at the Swiss end, the one name clipped out and sounding very British.

  “I’m sorry,” the Biwãba spoke slowly, as though he were bemused. “I am sorry. I think I have got a wrong number.”

  “Who did you want to speak with?”

  “An old friend of mine. A Dr. Akkur. A-K-K-U-R.”

  “Sorry, old chap. You have got a wrong number. Wish I could help you.”

  The man who had called himself Richardson put down the telephone. It was early afternoon, the sky was clear, and from where he sat, Richardson could clearly see the seven-thousand-foot triangular crag which is Mount Pilatus.

  For a moment he thought of the legends of Mount Pilatus—that, after Christ’s crucifixion, the devil flew into the mountain with Pontius Pilate, leaving his spirit to wander aimlessly about. The other story was that Pilate, overcome by remorse at sentencing Jesus, had come to this place, climbed the mountain and thrown himself down a deep abyss.

  Richardson did not like leaving his charming lakeside villa, but there was always the need to make more money in order to keep up his preferred lifestyle. He rose to his feet, stretched and returned to the house. Within three hours he was on a train that would take him to Geneva.

  Back in his villa, the Biwãba made another call, this time to Germany. He spoke quietly for several minutes to the female voice that answered. In turn, the young woman who had taken the call—in Munich, as it happened—punched out the country code for the United Kingdom, followed by the area code and the number of the farm in Oxfordshire.

  The two members of the Yussif team who were still alive had not understood why the military men and two of the officers they took to be part of the British Security Service had not taken them away and put them in a secure prison. When the telephone rang, they both realized why these people had held them in the farmhouse, fed them and been generally forgiving towards them.

  One of the officers took out an automatic pistol and asked which of them would normally answer the telephone. The older of the Yussif team nodded and pointed to himself, noticing, for the first time, that a tape machine and a pair of headphones had been attached to the instrument and that the other security officer was hurrying to put on the headphones.

  “No tricks,” said the one with the gun. “No messages. If you deviate from your normal practice, I will simply shoot you through the head.”

  The Arab reached out for the telephone.

  “One more thing.” The man with the gun put the barrel to the Arab’s head. “We know all your codes. We will know if you try to alert someone at the other end.”

  “Yes?” said the Arab into the mouthpiece after he picked up the handset.

  “Is that Yussif?” asked a female voice in English, but with a thick, not unattractive, German accent.

  “Sure. This is Yussif. Who …?”

  “I have a message from the Kingpin. My name is Legion. There has been an error. A box of the things which were to be used for that last experiment is waiting for pickup at Heathrow Air Freight. It has been sent to a Dr. Ali Duba for collection in London. It should have gone to Dr. Duba in Washington. Kingpin says you should go to the Heathrow Air Freight Office and deal with the paperwork. Have it sent to Dr. Duba for pickup at Washington National, via JFK, New York.” She then gave the air waybill number and broke the connection.

  “Do either of you know what this is about?”

  There was a long pause before the elder of the two men hesitatingly said that this consignment would be connected to the code words Magic Lightning. Earlier, they had both admitted to knowing the words but not comprehending their meaning. “It is the end game of the Intiqam operation,” the younger man had volunteered. “But we have not been told what this entails.”

  The two Yussif men were taken into another room while the Security Service people spoke to their Head Office. The outcome was twofold. Within the hour they began to pack up and leave the farmhouse. The two Arabs were hurried to a detention center near Wimbledon, usually referred to by MI5 as Centre Court. There, they would be under a constant watch and, later, a marathon debriefing inquisition.

  Also within the hour a modified Land Rover arrived at the Air Freight area at London’s Heathrow Airport. The rear section of the Land Rover was encased in thick armor plating, making a bombproof shelter on wheels.

  There was considerable activity at the Air Freight area, following a call from the Metropolitan Police Bomb Disposal Unit. The entire set of warehouses had been cleared, and the duty manager had marked exactly where the package from Switzerland was located.

  One member of the Bomb Disposal Team entered the warehouse containing the package. He wore the standard heavy anti-blast suit and helmet, making him look like an old-fashioned deep-sea diver. The package was placed inside a bomb blanket, carried to the Land Rover, locked into the secure blast-proof rear and driven away to a disposal and testing site five miles from Slough. To the cognoscenti, the place was known as the Friendly Bomb Complex—from the former Poet Laureate’s, the late Sir John Betjeman’s, poem that began, “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough.”

  They x-rayed the package in the large open, rough field behind the buildings and immediately discovered that there was no apparent explosive content. To be certain, they smelled it with electronic sniffers, and when the were certain it was free of anything that might go bump in the night, they opened it up.

  The twelve aerosols were padded and packed between foam egg crates, with extra foam taped around each one. The removal of one aerosol showed that it should contain BRUTUS—THE FRIENDLY HAIR SPRAY FOR UNFRIENDLY HAIR but they did not believe a word of it, except the legend that it was MADE IN SWITZERLAND

  After further examination it was decided that the entire twelve aerosols should be sent, immediately, for tests at the one Chemical Warfare Centre that remained in the U.K. The consignment was driven overnight. Testing started the next morning, though it would be some days before the full analysis came in.

  Carole left the Dower House at around three that afternoon. She took two suitcases and a pair of briefcases with her. She drove her own car, one of the new Saab 900s, and within thirty minutes knew she was not alone. It was just as she had expected.

  On Herbie’s instructions, backed up by threats from Deputy CSIS Worboys, they played it very long indeed, using the relay tactic.

  Carole counted three motorcycles changing position every fifteen minutes or so. She even pulled down the sun shield on the passenger side to give herself an extra mirror, but knew, within the hour, that they would be waiting for her when she arrived at Heathrow.

  For the layman who watched this kind of thing on television and at the movies, an airport or a railway station was the easiest place to run a surveillance. You simply loitered around, and once the target had been picked up, it was a matter of child’s play.

  Maybe this was true of the unwitting target, but Carole was cognizant and had taken precautions. She checked in for BA 179 to JFK, New York, feeling the hot breath of a team very close behind her.

  They were still there when she went through security into the air side. After that, she vanished, but the team remained confident that she would soon be on her way, posting four footpads at the air-side security to be certain she did not come back into the ground side again. Carole had simply gone into the ladies’ rest room and disappeared.

  In the rest room she dumped one of her briefcases, turned her reversible raincoat, put on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, retrieved the blond wig from the dumped briefcase, set it in place and topped the whole thing off with a soft hat. She even passed one of the team as she came out into the concourse, and was not recognized.

  She had squirreled away an extra pair of passports from her time in the Service, and the one she now used carried her own name with a tarted-up photograph that showed her wearing the blond wig. She simply headed to the air-side desk for BA 179 and pulled her switch, as they used to say in the bad old days of the Cold
War, spinning a believable story in which she had just received a call that changed all her plans. Had they got room on the 5:45 P.M. Concorde to Washington, Dulles?—, knowing very well that there was at least one seat, for she had canceled a booking in the name of Hacking from an air-side telephone only a few feet from the Concorde lounge.

  Yes, they said, there was room available. They would even get her baggage brought over from BA 179—which took off on time, with the surveillance team wrongly assuming that Carole had to be on board. They called New York, alerted their people at that end, then went back to the Office satisfied that—though they had not actually seen her board the aircraft—Carole was on her way.

  When, several hours later, the news came back that Carole Keene had not arrived at JFK, there was fury at Vauxhall Cross. Some said they had never seen or heard Worboys in such a vile temper.

  When they finally checked and cross-checked, they came up with the answers, and one of Worboys’s aides called Kruger who had reached New York by then; but that was in the future.

  At about the same time as BA 189—SST to Dulles—was beginning its takeoff roll, the telephone rang in Jonathan Schtubble’s private apartment in Geneva. He was dressing prior to taking a spectacular redheaded girl out to dinner and what he hoped would be a more physical dessert.

  “Schtubble.”

  “Dr. Schtubble, I have something for you and your two colleagues.” The caller spoke in French, the language of choice in Geneva.

  “You have something for me?”

  “You and your colleagues. Mr. Kingpin is very pleased with your actions regarding the consignment that went astray. He has authorized me to hand over a bonus of one million dollars to each of you. In cash.”

  “He has?”

  “I have it here, and I’d like to deal with the matter as quickly as possible. Can you get your colleagues together now, tonight? I would suggest we meet at your laboratory, in, say, half an hour.”

  “Well, I’ll try to get them, but I don’t—”

  “I have to leave by a late flight, Dr. Schtubble. It would be most inconvenient for me to delay this matter. I do require signatures from each of you.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “And I will be at your laboratory in half an hour. I will wait for twenty minutes. If you haven’t arrived by then, I shall leave. I will not be back in Geneva for another six weeks.”

  “Wait. We’ll be there.”

  He caught his colleagues at their own apartments, and they both postponed plans in order to get to Schtubble Laboratory as fast as cars and taxis could carry them—greed is a great motivator.

  Richardson watched as they arrived. He sat quietly in the back of his rented Mercedes, parked some distance from the laboratory, and did not leave the car until he had counted them all in.

  He wore a smart dark business suit and carried a pigskin briefcase. His hands were encased in black, soft leather driving gloves. They let him into the building almost before he rang the bell.

  “I’m so glad you could all make it,” he told them. “It would have been inconvenient to have come back, even in six weeks’ time.”

  They all shook hands and Richardson put the briefcase onto a small table which he moved in front of the chair he had been offered. They were gathered in the small recreation room off the main laboratories.

  “Please, gentlemen, sit down. I am a notary public and will require signatures on certain documents I have here.”

  “A million each?” Jonathan Schtubble still sounded incredulous.

  “You used your initiative.” Richardson looked up and smiled at them. “Our friend Kingpin is a generous man who likes to repay good common sense.” He opened the briefcase and smiled again. Not even looking down, he lifted the weapon from its hiding place.

  The Ithaca Stakeout is a short weapon, only 13.23 inches in length but based on the Model 37M shotgun. It is easily concealed, has a pump action and comes in two caliber sizes—12-gauge and the more manageable 20-gauge. The Stakeout fires only shot-loading cartridges, as heavy slugs would make the recoil very difficult to handle.

  Richardson started on his left, and fired three 20-gauge cartridges at high speed as he moved, shot, pumped, moved, shot, pumped, moved and shot again. There was very little left of the faces and chests of the three victims, and the room reeked of smoke and blood. Calmly he walked to the exit, being careful to step over any blood splatters. In the laboratory he removed the other item from his briefcase. A device the size of a beer can. He tapped in the timer so that it would explode in fifteen minutes, spreading a napalm-like flame that would engulf the laboratory within seconds after detonation.

  He then returned the shotgun to his briefcase and quietly left the building.

  At the railway station he found that he had half an hour to spare, so he used a card-operated public telephone to call the man he knew as Akkur. In a few hours he would be back in his villa on the shores of Lake Lucerne. By that time the distinctive short-barreled shotgun would be at the bottom of the lake, and he would be a million dollars richer. It was good doing business with Akkur. You always knew exactly where you were with him. The money would be in his Zurich numbered account by the morning.

  Jasmine, as arranged, telephoned Claudius late that evening.

  “It’s going down this week, beginning on Tuesday,” Jasmine told him.

  “It’s going to be tight. The Labor Day holiday comes up at the end of the week.”

  “They say that’s why it has to start on Tuesday. They want people to be as jumpy as neurotic fleas, and it’ll probably force a special session at the Capitol.”

  “Well, I’ll no doubt see you there. Good luck.”

  They never stayed on any telephone line for longer than a minute.

  Declan Norton had slipped into England unnoticed, via the Isle of Man. He wore a very simple disguise, and nobody looked at him twice.

  The Active Service Unit had made their way, singly, back from Scotland and were waiting for him at the new safe house he had arranged for them in Camden Town: a five up and five down desirable little detached place with a small garden and a row of four poplar trees at the far end.

  The weather was mild and they had the windows open as they sat around after their evening meal, talking strategy.

  “What’re the targets, then, Declan?” Sean asked. Sean O’Donnel was young and full of the fire of enthusiasm.

  “If it’s bombs you’re talking, you can forget about it.” Declan knew exactly what he wanted out of these three. “That Eye-rackian lot had about as much terror in them as a spider has to a whore in her bath. I wanted to get them to do the real job and finish the people who were behind the business in ’84, but they botched the whole damned thing. They got one of them, and that clever bugger Keene got his before any of us started. Now we might have to go further afield.”

  “But isn’t that more in the line of your own private settling, Declan?” Fergus was the oldest of the bunch and carried a lot of old-style Provisional IRA baggage with him.

  “Now, see here, Fergus.” Declan had about him that thick toughness born of the years of struggle and anguish. “There were men and women in the Provos that I made a pledge to when I came in with you boys. They felt the Provos hadn’t extracted revenge for those deaths during Kingmaker. That was to have been the spectacular of all time, and what happened? They got nowhere. Four young people shot down like dogs, then the thing covered up by the bloody Brits. I stand by my original promise. We have to do away with the last two. The feller Worboys and that fat German oaf, Kruger.” He looked around him, as though challenging anyone to test him or make yet another objection. Nobody moved to speak.

  “So, Worboys is still here at his damned great house out in Harrow, but the German’s off and running. We know he’s in America. New York, we suspect. I’m waiting for one of our lads there to get a fix on him. In the meantime, I think we should make sure of the man Worboys.” He hunched forward to explain exactly what he thought would
be the best way.

  In New York, Walid, Khami and Hisham ate dinner together in a pleasant little restaurant on West Fifty-sixth Street.

  As they reached the end of the meal, Walid told them that they would be on the road tomorrow. He slid an airline ticket across the table to Hisham, and added that they would have to move very fast. “We’re booked into an exclusive hotel. The Willard.” He dropped his voice. Walid had been searching the restaurant with his eyes since the minute they had sat down. He saw nothing to alarm him and the place was very popular. It was as if, he thought, there was a wall of noise around them. People talked and gesticulated, laughed and called to one another in a friendly atmosphere.

  “We go by different flights. The thinking is sound. Certainly the authorities will not be looking for us in such an expensive place.” He leaned close to Hisham. “I will be paying your account when you check out. The hotel knows this. You take the shuttle, then there is one more thing you must do as soon as you get into the hotel. When we get back to the Parker Meridien tonight, there will be a message for you at the desk. It is a pickup waybill for a package you must bring to the Willard from National Airport. I will do the other jobs. At least this part of Intiqam will work.”

  Five minutes after they paid the bill and left, an elderly man wearing a hearing aid picked up his briefcase, fiddled with the lock and left. He walked towards Sixth Avenue and hailed a cab. Fifteen minutes later, he was with Big Herbie, Bex Olesker and two FBI men in the service apartment in Trump Tower.

  “It’s going down” were his first words as he opened the briefcase to disclose a maze of electronic equipment. It was one of the latest surveillance tape machines with a very high-powered directional microphone in the handle. Together they listened to the conversation among Walid, Khami and Hisham. The equipment filtered out all extraneous noise, so they heard the entire conversation clearly.