Maestro

by John Gardner

  “Okay. Let’s open the hood and look at the wires. Will you get the lock inside?”

  “With pleasure.”

  Jeff put the key into the driver’s side lock and turned. It was the last thing he ever did. The slight nudge of the locks opening tipped the mercury switch that had been balanced precariously directly behind the dashboard. The mercury switch completed the circuit, which was run off a 9-volt battery. The bare wires carefully laced into a detonator glowed red-hot. The detonator popped off, blowing a one-pound block of Semtex, which, in turn, ignited a long plastic straw, which encased yet another set of wires leading to another ball of Semtex lying inside a four-gallon flat metal can of gasoline, which, again in turn, sent a charge into the gas tank of the Range Rover. Matthew, who always prided himself on being a professional, had one last thought, which pulsed through his brain before it was swallowed up into darkness. That’s bloody clever, he thought. Wish I could see this from a distance.

  Indeed, it was spectacular. A rumble, followed by a whoosh and a second rumble and another whoosh. Gallons of gasoline were shot, aflame, into the air, so that the whole thing looked like a fountain of fire with the ground shaking underneath it.

  Worboys, saddened by the whole thing, was very quiet as he was driven to the Chemical Warfare Centre.

  Hisham checked out of the Parker Meridien, just as instructed. Yes, indeed, they told him at the desk, Mr. Jaffid was taking care of his account. Mr. Jaffid had, in fact, left a note for him.

  Hisham went out to the waiting cab. He did not open the envelope and read the note until the cab drew away, starting its journey to La Guardia.

  Dear Friend, the note began—

  I have made a slight change to the itinerary prepared for you. Instead of staying at the Willard Hotel in D.C., we shall all be checking into the Grand Hyatt. All reservations have been made, and they will be expecting you. We shall join you later in the day. Everything else stays as it is. Do not forget the pickup from Washington National. Please destroy this note.

  Hisham burned the note in the gentlemen’s rest room at La Guardia and flushed the ashes down the bowl.

  After doing as he was told, he went to the nearest bank of telephones. He wondered if there was any place to which he could run. Leaning against the side of the telephone booth, he dredged a number from his brain.

  Slowly he stripped the credit card and punched the get-out code, followed by the get-in code for a number in Belfast. A man, he thought to himself, has to have all the insurance he can possibly get.

  27

  HERBIE AND BEX WERE picked up on time. Neither looked tired, though they had both remained awake through the rest of the night, talking of possibilities and the likelihood of Herb’s what-if theory regarding Gus. In fact, they had become quite comfortable together on the sofa. “This is just a friendly cuddle, you understand,” Bex had said around five in the morning, giving Herb the hint of a wink as she spoke.

  “How could it be anything else?” Herb had growled.

  Apart from the driver, they were accompanied by two senior FBI Special Agents from the Counter-Intelligence Unit, Dick Hatch and a tough, attractive female—if you liked crew-cut blond hair and a boxy figure—who insisted upon being called simply Christie. “Same as the crime writer, Dame Agatha,” was her only comment.

  They were out of New York and thundering along I-95 when Hatch mentioned something about Intiqam’s sting being pulled.

  “Sting?” Herb must have looked bewildered.

  “What sting?” asked Bex.

  “Oh, you won’t have heard.” Hatch smiled, then launched into the story of the aerosol canisters discovered at Heathrow. “We’re waiting for an analysis now,” he concluded. “The general opinion is that they contain some kind of nerve gas, so to be on the safe side, our people checked out packages waiting for pickup at Union Station, Dulles, and Washington National. We hit pay dirt at National. There was an identical parcel there. It’s been moved to one of our own military labs.”

  “What if they try to collect?” Bex asked.

  Hatch chuckled. “They’ll find one there. Our people mocked up an identical package—same waybill and everything. It contains a dozen aerosols with exactly the same labels, but with one difference. The ones at Heathrow and National are sealed and have fake spray tops. Your experts pointed out to us that the design of the top of these things includes grooves and a kind of locking channel to which some timing device can be fixed. We’ve copied this but the sprays are genuine, so we’ve filled them with water under pressure. If the jokers try to fit any device on top of the spray, it will simply give out a fine mist of water.”

  Herbie gave a snort. “Put fear of God into them if they know it’s dangerous.”

  “Panic in the streets,” Bex commented. “We’ve no idea what’s really in the things?”

  “None.” Christie was a woman of few words.

  The Chemical Warfare Centre is still one of Britain’s best-kept secrets. Members of the Cabinet know of it, as do a select number of senior Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force officers. Even those in the know only refer to it as Dalch—though it lies nowhere near that Welsh town, the name of which means “black stream.” Those responsible for coding the place felt that Black Stream was an apt name.

  Everyone who works at Dalch is an expert in his or her field, and locally it is thought to be a research laboratory for the Department of Agriculture. These days, the biochemists and chemists who live on the site are more concerned with the ways and means of destroying chemical weapons, yet there is still research being done on samples of material brought in from the old Eastern Bloc, the new Russia and the Middle East.

  They had been given due warning concerning the aerosols, which were kept in a stable environment within an area where leaks could not spread. Though they had started work on discovering what these canisters contained, the facts of the horrific explosion and deaths at the Swiss laboratory that was supposed to have prepared the samples had not escaped their notice.

  Two highly experienced biochemists and one skilled laboratory technician had begun work on extracting the contents under secure conditions.

  One of the aerosols was placed in a padded vise so that it could not move during the process of transferring the contents from its pressurized container into a second, unpressurized sealed drum. A line, like an IV drip, ran to the drum, affixed to its top by a completely leakproof rubber cup, while a similar seal was fitted to the side of the aerosol. This latter seal was larger and contained a mechanism that looked like a hypodermic syringe, so that a Y-shaped angle lay inside it. Activating the syringe would, technically, puncture the aerosol, the contents of which, under pressure, would be released and so run from the aerosol into the air and watertight drum.

  This was fully explained to Worboys and officers from MI5, who had driven down that morning to be present at the tests. They stood now behind glass, watching the scientists, who were dressed in fully protective clothing, including masks and breathing apparatus, similar to those worn by divers. In the cumbersome suits and skintight helmets, with air tanks on their backs, they moved as slowly as astronauts in a hostile environment. Every spoken word was heard by those watching from behind the glass, for the three men wore headsets and throat microphones under their helmets, and their words were relayed through amplifiers.

  “We’re going to penetrate the aerosol at the count of five,” one of the biochemists said calmly. All three men were bent over the apparatus on a steel workbench in the center of the room.

  They counted down through the five beats, and the watchers saw the slight movement made by the expert as he plunged the needle through the side of the aerosol.

  “Fine,” one of the other scientists spoke. “It’s a fine spray that appears to be liquefying as it runs into our container. Moving very fast …Done. The aerosol is technically empty, though there are bound to be traces. We’re going to seal it off before we remove the tubing. Then we’ll do the same to the catchment co
ntainer.”

  It all took a good hour before they could breathe any sighs of relief, though the next step would take longer. The liquid from the spray now had to be analyzed and it was not until after seven in the evening that they got the frightening news that the aerosols had been filled with highly toxic Strep A containing the deadly enzymes which would produce the necrotizing fasciitis condition.

  “The flesh-eating mystery virus,” Worboys said when he called in to the Office.

  The information was flashed to London and Washington, where it was immediately understood by the agents in the field. The final intention of the Intiqam teams had obviously been to release the deadly bacteria through air-conditioning or heating ducts in the House of Commons and the Capitol, and so paralyze the governments of at least America and Britain. The original plan had almost certainly included the Italian and French governments also. One of the specialists maintained that, had this succeeded, he would have expected to lose fifty to sixty percent of the Members of Parliament, and the same number who might be sitting in the House and Senate in the Capitol.

  In Washington it was felt that no further chances should be taken. The three terrorists they knew about should be arrested immediately, but when Herb, Bex and their two companions from the FBI arrived to check in at the exclusive Willard Hotel, they were informed by a waiting Counter-Intelligence officer from Langley that Walid, Hisham and Khami were no-shows.

  The suite that had been taken for Herbie and Bex had been organized so that it could double as an operational headquarters. Now all of those who were considered part of what would be known as Conductor—as in lightning conductor—sat down to discuss exactly how they should proceed.

  They knew the names under which the three Iraqis were traveling—Dr. Sa’dun Zaidan, together with Mr. and Mrs. Jaffid—so they worked the telephones, checking every hotel within a ten-mile radius of Washington.

  They worked until late that night, backed up by agents in the Hoover Building, Washington’s FBI Headquarters. The no-shows seemed to have disappeared into thin air, so they started again. This time with descriptions.

  By early afternoon on the same day, several FBI officers, accompanied by a SWAT team, had gathered in and around a wooded area in the Hudson Valley, some twenty miles from the old and picturesque town of Rhinebeck.

  They were concentrating on a lonely cottage, once the retreat of a famous painter, now leased to three men who had been described locally as “A-rab looking.”

  The team watching the house were certain that its occupants were from the Middle East. They had done just what their British counterparts had achieved in Oxfordshire. From the information passed by Hisham, they traced the telephone number and knew the cottage was the site occupied by the American Yussif group.

  Finally, they went in at four in the afternoon, surprising the Yussif trio as they watched television. Not a shot was fired and the arrests were made with no media involvement. The trio were driven away to a very secure house not far away, close to Hyde Park, once the seat of the Roosevelt family. They had played it by the book, even bringing in a local resident judge to hear the charges brought against the men, and sign an order allowing them to be held without bail or a court appearance for as long as necessary.

  In the now empty cottage two FBI agents manned the telephone, connecting it to both a recorder and a fast Caller ID unit, able to trace a number anywhere in the United States within ninety seconds.

  The call came in just after five, and one of the agents picked up the telephone but said nothing. From the distant end a voice asked, “Yussif?”

  Busking it, the Special Agent simply replied, “Yussif. Yes?”

  “We’re in Washington, but we’ve had to change our location. We have the goods and will begin activation tomorrow.”

  “Good. Give me your present position.”

  There was a lengthy silence at the other end, then the sound of a quick intake of breath, followed by the dial tone. It was obvious that the Special Agent had not conformed to some prearranged method of contact, but the line had been open for long enough. A Caller ID lit up on the LED. Within minutes they had traced it to a public telephone in Washington’s Georgetown. The police were alerted, but when they arrived in the area, they found only tourists, students and the usual people you would expect to find in that part of Washington.

  Earlier in the day, when Hisham had checked into the Grand Hyatt in the Westernized name of James Tait, he was shown to a room on the third floor. He washed, took the elevator downstairs again and went outside into the sticky heat of late-summer Washington. He took a cab to National Airport, going straight to the Air Freight collection area. The package was there, as were two FBI Special Agents on surveillance duty to report on the pickup. They managed to get a whole roll of film showing Hisham arriving at the collection point; Hisham handing over the waybill and retrieving the package; and even a couple of photographs of him getting into a cab.

  That was as far as it went. They had no orders to follow him. Their instructions were to get the pictures and then return to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, where the film was processed, ready to be checked by the various agents who were dealing with the current situation.

  Hisham stood in line for over fifteen minutes in the broiling heat to get a taxi back to the Grand Hyatt, where he paid the cab off and hurried back into the pleasant chill of the air-conditioning. Below the entrance level of the Washington Grand Hyatt there is an ornamental pool that laps around an open-plan restaurant. This can be viewed as you walk from the entrance to the bank of elevators, and Hisham was seriously thinking of dropping off the parcel in his room and returning for an early lunch.

  He glanced down at the couples and family parties already eating at the tables below him. Then his heart rate suddenly increased, and he felt his stomach lurch. He stopped dead and looked harder, just to be sure. The longer he looked, the more certain he was. There, below him, sipping a drink across the table from an elegant woman, was a face from his past. He even recognized the woman and could not believe what he saw.

  Quickly he moved away and walked to the elevators, his mind in turmoil. Once in his room, he placed the package carefully on the table beside the TV, went into the bathroom, sprinkled water over his face and wondered what he should do. What he had seen was unbelievable, and his one thought was to get out of the Hyatt as quickly as possible. It was not feasible, though; he did not even know what time Walid and Khami were due to arrive or what name they were to register under.

  He called down to room service for food and drink, then waited, not daring to show himself in the main body of the hotel. This place had now become completely unsafe. If he had been on his own, it would have been a different matter, but with the last two members of the Intiqam team still to arrive, he could do nothing but wait. He considered other possibilities. He could, if the situation were as serious as he thought, throw himself on the mercy of the authorities, citing the British Security Service as his masters. Finally, he decided this was too dangerous.

  It was not until almost four in the afternoon that the telephone rang and he heard Walid’s voice telling him they were here—Dr. and Mrs. Hendler—in room 416.

  “Get down to my room quickly,” Hisham said, keeping his voice as calm as possible. “We have a small emergency. I’m in 364. This is serious.”

  Within four minutes Walid and Khami were there.

  “We cannot stay here in this hotel,” he told them. Then he explained why, though he left out sections of the story that he could never share with either of them.

  Walid went pale, and Khami turned away and walked to the window, looking down at the traffic. “Where the hell do we go?” she asked in a small voice.

  “To somewhere completely safe.” Walid seemed to have recovered from his momentary concern. “Don’t worry, we were only going to stay here for a very short time anyway.” He then explained that during the planning phase of the operation, Yussif had organized two safe houses in Washington. On
e was in the Georgetown area, a nice apartment not far from the famous Georgetown Inn on Wisconsin Avenue. One telephone call and their local contact would open it up and leave the keys for them. There they would be safe, for this same contact was to deliver the explosives and the necessary timing devices for Magic Lightning.

  Walid acted swiftly and with great care. The last thing he wanted was to have the people on the reception desk remember them checking in and then leaving after being in the hotel for less than an hour. He made excuses about a death in the family, and had the two rooms charged to a credit card for one night.

  Within the hour they were settled into a four-room apartment overlooking the shops and restaurants of Wisconsin Avenue. Hisham was relieved. The people whom he had spotted were nowhere to be seen as they left the hotel. Now he was alone in this pleasant apartment, waiting while Khami shopped for groceries and Walid went out to use a public telephone to check in with Yussif.

  Khami returned first, her arms clutching brown bags of what little food they would need, for Walid had said he thought it would be quite safe for them to eat in one of the many restaurants along Wisconsin Avenue.

  She had only been back for some five minutes when Walid returned, his face grave and sweat visible on his forehead.

  “They’ve taken out Yussif,” he said baldly.

  “Taken …?” Khami began.

  “I didn’t recognize the voice that answered, but I’ve only spoken to two of that team until now. We talked for a few minutes, and then the code procedure broke down.”

  “How?”

  “Yussif asked, ‘Give me your present position.’ This is wrong. Very wrong. Yussif has one question regarding where we are. He should always say, ‘Are you at the same place?’ They’ve never made a mistake like this before. We’re on our own, which means that we have to begin first thing tomorrow. At least we can get on with it. The Semtex is here, in the refrigerator, with detonators and, of course, the timers for Magic Lightning. So everything is possible. We must do all we can.”