by John Gardner
“Just lead us to your room, Hisham, old friend. He couldn’t have arrived here at a more opportune moment now, could he, Sean?”
29
BIG HERBIE KRUGER AND DCI Bex Olesker checked into the Grand Hyatt at five o’clock that afternoon. They had been given a two-bedroom suite, nicely decorated and furnished.
“I’m enjoying it while I can,” Bex said, doing an almost schoolgirlish twirl in the middle of the living room. “I’ll miss all this when I’m back in my sordid flat in Dolphin Square.”
“Dolphin Square’s not sordid. Dolphin Square’s good diggings.” Herbie plumped himself down into a chair.
They had remained with the Conductor team longer than originally planned because of the finding of the body in Alexandria. The door to the apartment had been left open, and a neighbor’s dog pushed its way in, then shot out again as though scalded, whimpering and with its hair standing on end. The neighbor had investigated and his 911 call was logged in at two-thirty.
Even with the damage the two bullets had done to the face, the homicide detectives recognized this as no ordinary victim. They called in what they suspected. Dick Hatch, Charlie Krysak, Herb and Bex had gone straight over.
“Always wanted to drive with the lights flashing and sirens going,” Herb confided to Bex.
“They call it riding the hammer.” Bex sounded almost supercilious.
“You, being a cop, would know that.”
“No, I read it in an Ed McBain book,” she replied with a grin.
There were no grins at the apartment building in Alexandria. The identity would have to be confirmed, but Herbie was one hundred percent certain the body was that of Walid Allush.
“So, we’re one down and two left out there,” he murmured as they departed from the crime scene.
They were checking out of the Willard when Sheila, the young woman from the Secret Service, came up to them at the desk.
“Sorry you’re leaving.” She had arrived, panther-footed, and even Herbie jumped slightly. “You’ve heard the latest?” she asked.
“Which latest?”
“They picked up the contact here in D.C. The American, Sid Hench. He’s singing his heart out. Christie and Dick Hatch’ve gone over to take a look at the other safe house they were using in Georgetown. The news is that there’s very little, if any, explosive left.”
“So, no more bombs?” Bex queried.
“I personally think they’ll be on the run. Our Sidney’s been able to account for all the dynamite, Semtex and C-4 they had around. Unless they’ve got some other supply, they’ve just about done. I think he said around twenty pounds of C-4 still unaccounted for. Even I’m off the case now. They’re putting me back on the President’s bodyguard team for tonight’s meeting at the Capitol.”
“You don’t really think …?”
“Don’t know, Herb. Stranger things have happened.”
So, they said their farewells and did not give the cabdriver any instructions until they were inside the vehicle.
They both felt the atmosphere as soon as they arrived at the Grand Hyatt. Young men and women were gathered in clusters with decks of cards, while older men and women looked as if they were blessed with the secrets of ages. In the suite, Herb suggested they go down and register for the convention, but Bex wanted to hold back. In reality she did not have any desire to be at the Magic Summit at all. “I’d rather be out there running the last two Vengeance people to earth,” she sighed.
“And my job—yours also—is to find Gus Keene’s killers,” Kruger reminded her.
There was a lot of unusual activity in the area of the suites when they left the room. Up the corridor three uniformed police were stretching crime-scene tape around one of the doors. When Bex and Herbie arrived at the elevators, they were just in time to meet Hatch and Christie arriving.
“What’s up?” Herbie sounded puzzled.
“Want to come and see?” Hatch gestured back along the corridor with his hand.
“We think there’s only one of them on the run now.” Christie pulled a face. “They’re dropping like flies.”
In a suite a short way up the passage, Hisham Silwani lay on his back across the bed. His face was bloated and blue, eyes bulged in a glassy stare of horror, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth. The cord around his neck had bitten deeply into the flesh.
“So, there’s only one of them out there now.” Hatch was examining the ligature around the Iraqi’s neck.
“And if she did this,” Bex added, “she has to be damned strong.”
Hatch looked up and shook his head. “I doubt if this is the work of a woman.”
“If it’s not a woman, who the hell’s taking these people out?” Bex daintily nibbled on a jumbo shrimp. They had gone straight down to eat, and Herbie had said, “Leave it to the pros.”
Now, as he sat demolishing a dish of pasta, he looked very concerned. “You realize that was Hisham, aka Ishmael? He was supposed to be on the side of the angels, one of Five’s assets.”
“The one who did the deal with the splinter group from the old IRA.” Bex nodded.
“For me, it’s unhealthy here.” He forked another tangle of pasta into his mouth and chewed.
“If you go on eating like that, it’ll remain unhealthy.”
“Sure. You want to hear my theory?”
“I know it already, my dear Herbie, and I think we should call in the cavalry.”
“No. We call in nobody. The FFIRA sentenced four of us to death, and the Intiqam team in England fouled up. Young Worboys is still in London, so he’s easy meat. They can take their time with him. But I think whoever killed Hisham is here to do me. Me, myself and I, plus, maybe, one other. Keep your eyes open, Bex, and don’t get distracted. There’s a killing team on the loose in this hotel.”
Finally, they went down to the convention area below the hotel, and into a new world. Herbie was in a different kind of heaven, and seemed completely unaware that his life was on the line. They registered, met the pleasant young woman to whom he had talked on the telephone, Jane Ruggiero, who introduced them to her husband, Nick, and her father, Les Smith, who they quickly gathered was a famous illusion builder.
Bex, who was all nerves, alert, watchful and ready to move at the slightest sign of trouble, wondered at Big Herbie Kruger and his untroubled manner. They attended lectures, watched various performers in a competition of close-up magic, some of which had even Bex mystified.
Herbie, she thought, was like a schoolboy in a toy shop. Many of the rooms in the convention area were given over to magic dealers demonstrating their wares. Herb began buying on the first day. He approached a tall, friendly man who was selling an impressive array of magic books, some of which were old and rare. Bex looked at the prices of the older books and was rocked on her heels. There was more to this magic business than met the eye, she decided.
Herbie, having announced that he was a neophyte to the art, came away happy with four standard works the bookseller recommended. From another dealer he purchased cards and a plastic eyeball with a large bandanna, with which Bex became quite irritated, for in the privacy of the suite Herb demonstrated the magic properties with monotonous regularity: asking her to keep an eye on the eyeball, resting it on her hand and covering it with the bandanna, telling her to say “Eye Go” and whipping the cloth away to show that the eyeball had vanished.
“You’re not really going to fool many people with that,” she told him after he had performed the bit of business for the thirtieth time.
“Practice”—he grinned—“is the prime rule. Three rules, first two are practice, third is practice again. This is what Nick told me. Bex, I found a new outlet for my spare time.”
She noticed that he was also constantly asking the nice Jane Ruggiero about when Claudius Damautus was going to arrive, only to be told time and again that he was not getting in until just before the big show on Saturday night.
Bex was struck by the friendliness of the people they me
t, apart from one famous British magician who appeared to mix only with the obviously professional and well-know Magi.
On the Friday night, they sat through a banquet, which was the usual kind of meal followed by speeches and presentations, then a cabaret, which made Herb the happiest man there as he applauded and guffawed at each new miracle.
“You’re not actually keeping a low profile, are you?” Bex said in a finger-wagging voice.
“Why should I? They’re here.”
“Who?”
“The FFIRA.”
“You’ve seen them?”
“I seen one of them. Not at the magic convention but he’s in the hotel, and when spring is here, summer’s not far behind.”
“Why Mr. Worboys, Gus, Blount-Wilson and yourself?” she asked that same evening.
“Why indeed?”
“Come on, Herb, don’t be an oaf. Tell me about it.”
He sighed deeply. “Let’s say it’s a long story that goes back to the middle ’80s. It has to do with a pretty deep, and very dark, secret connected to four members of an old Provisional IRA Active Service Unit. They got blown away when they weren’t carrying anything more lethal than a pencil. The fact that they were in the last stages of planning what, in those days, they called a ‘spectacular’ had nothing to do with it. The shoot-to-kill policy did. Gus led a pretty amazing cover-up. I helped, so did The Whizzer and Worboys. My theory is that this splinter group contains a relative of one of the people who got killed.
“Like the Intiqam teams, these guys are out for revenge. Not the same kind of revenge on such a dramatic scale as we’ve seen from the Intiqam folks, but something more personal. Let’s leave it there, Bex. It’s very personal and, to tell the truth, I’m pretty frightened.”
On the Saturday night, all delegates of the World Magic Summit were bused to a nearby theater for the big convention show. Outside, on the steps leading to the glass entrance doors, Herbie’s eyes became restless, flicking around like those of a chameleon. As he held a door back to admit Bex, he glimpsed a car pulling up across the street and thought he could make out a familiar face in the driver’s seat, then wondered again. Was he simply jumping at shadows?
They waited in the foyer, letting everyone else get into the theater, so that they ducked in at the last moment, just as the performance was starting.
Herb waved an usher away, whispering that he did not want to disturb anybody. They would go to their seats in the interval. The usher did not seem to be concerned. “Over there,” Herb whispered to Bex, nodding towards a familiar figure sitting at the end of the back row. “If he moves, follow him. I’ll be right behind you.”
“That’s …?”
“I think so. Shush.”
The first four acts produced both hilarity and mystery, but Herbie was obviously waiting, tense and twitchy. Bex could feel the anxiety building inside the big man. Then he suddenly stiffened as Nick Ruggiero announced that they had a special treat in store. The first half of the performance would end with a guest who had only just arrived.
“You don’t get a chance to see this legend perform every day,” he said with pleasure. “Ladies and gentlemen, the fabulous Claudius Damautus.”
The curtains parted to show a table set downstage, on which sat a crystal decanter half full of red wine, and three glittering silver cups stacked one on the other. To the right was a small stand on which stood a polished, carved box. And a newspaper was lying on a chair. Manuel de Falla’s “Ritual Fire Dance” from Love, the Magician came thumping out of the sound system, and on walked Gus Keene. His dress and makeup were the same as he had worn for the first tape they had seen—the performance at the Magic Circle: Levi’s, soft moccasins, white silk shirt, his hair gray-streaked and falling to his shoulders, his height an inch or so taller than in real life.
Applause gushed from the audience. This was obviously a great moment for many of them. Bex glanced up at Big Herbie and saw, to her surprise, that tears were forming in his eyes. He put his hand up and wiped them away, then glanced towards the seat he had pointed out earlier. She noticed that as he returned his gaze to the stage, it was as though he were experiencing great relief.
“Risen from the dead?” Bex whispered.
Herb nodded. “It was always on the cards. The trick will be keeping him alive.”
Gus walked slowly to the table, acknowledging the applause, then he moved from the table to center stage and moved his hands, gesturing silence.
“Reports of my death—which I know has been rumored—are greatly exaggerated.” Laughter and more applause. Then: “Most of you are magicians, so I must tell you that I shall be working at speed. I want your attention and concentration, for I am about to give you the history of magic in about twenty minutes—well, maybe thirty, but who’s counting? You should all know that this history will not be performed in chronological order.
“First, remember the great illusionists—Philippe producing his giant bowl of water; Robert-Houdin, father of modern magic, with his fishbowl; Ching Ling Fop and Chung Ling Soo and Long Tack Sam; Fu-Manchú; and the Great Lafayette and his huge bowl of water, containing enough to be poured into several buckets. Countless magicians down the ages have sought to produce water.”
He flicked a large white silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and draped it over the palm of his right hand, smoothing it across the flat of the hand. Then he lifted it with the finger and thumb of his left hand and dropped it again. A shape had formed under the silk. Gus smiled and whipped the silk away to show a tumbler full of water.
“I should have done that while executing a somersault.” He took a long sip from the glass.
“There is a famous old trick,” he continued, “in which a glass and bottle change places when covered by cylindrical tubes. It’s old. You all know it backwards. I shall do something more miraculous.” He gestured to the decanter half full of red wine, dropped the silk over the glass again, then once more gestured towards the decanter. In the time it took to make the hand movement, the wine had turned to clear water; and lifting the silk from the glass, he revealed that the wine was now there where the water had been.
He lifted the glass as though to toast the audience, then threw the silk handkerchief over it, lifted them both into the air, threw them up and clapped his hands over what had been the handkerchief-covered glass. Nothing. Both had vanished.
Once more he gestured towards the decanter. Now the white silk had appeared within the bowl, and the water had disappeared.
Again, the charm and the smile as he reached for the decanter, grasping it at the neck and mouth. The crystal melted away in his hands, with only the bowl of the decanter left on the table, as he appeared to make the glass neck into a malleable substance, rolling it between his hands to finally form a large crystal ball. From this he seemed to tweak off rough pieces of glass; then closing his hands around it, he broke the large ball in two, rolling and producing another ball, then another, ending with three clear crystal balls.
He placed two of the balls onto the table, still rolling the third between his hands until the color changed and he displayed a ruby glass ball. The same actions again with the second clear sphere, changing it into an emerald ball.
With his right hand, he lifted the three stacked and polished cups, saying, “The oldest trick in our vast lexicon of magic. The cups and balls.”
The house was silent as Gus vanished the colored crystal balls from under the cups, only to find them again under one of the cups. Once more he separated them to one under each cup; but when the cups were lifted, they had gone, finally to reappear together under one cup. Then, again, ruby, emerald and clear balls were placed under each cup, rattled to prove they were there. The cups were lifted and shown empty. A second later, the cups were picked up and out of each rolled a large glass ball three times the size of the original—ruby, emerald and clear—each ball so large that it seemed impossible for the cup to have contained it. The applause rose as he stacked the cups and plac
ed them to one side.
The charismatic, mysterious smile as Gus picked up the clear ball, lifted it over the bowl of the decanter and seemed to melt the crystal back to restore the neck and mouth.
He took up the emerald ball, raised it above the decanter, making it obvious that the mouth of the vessel was impossibly small for the ball to pass through; then, with a clunk, the ball flashed green and fell into the bottom of the decanter, leaving him with the ruby ball, which he rubbed against the decanter’s bowl so that the ball melted away in his hand and a rich red clear circle appeared on the side of the decanter.
As before, the audience reaction was massive applause. A few people even started a standing ovation, but Gus motioned them to sit down. “You can get more than a drink out of a little glass.” He reached across to the stacked cups, lifted them to reveal another glass ball, which he began to roll between his hands. Everyone appeared to be focused on what he was doing, but from the corner of his eye Herb saw the recognizable figure move slowly from the back row and slip out of the door.
“Go,” he whispered to Bex, who nodded, gave it a couple of seconds and then exited through the door.
Onstage, Gus was rubbing the new glass ball between his palms until it changed, visibly, into an egg. Herbie watched, though part of the poetry of what Gus was doing up on the stage was now lost to him. His concern lay in what was happening outside the auditorium.
Bex stood for a moment, inside the foyer of the theater, watching one of the big glass outer doors still swinging after the man she was following had made his exit. She had just caught sight of him moving to the left. Reaching inside the short jacket she was wearing, she withdrew the Beretta given to her for the Conductor operation. Slowly she went out into the street, moving left but sweeping the scene in front of the theater.
The buses waited for the audience, the drivers gathered together, talking and smoking. She saw a small black car across the street but could not make out if there was anyone in it. Quickly she turned, finding herself at the corner of the building. A narrow passage ran alongside, leading, she presumed to the stage door.