Chaos Theory (10 page)

Rick thrust the garrotte into his pocket and came over to help Adeola up.

‘My God,’ she exclaimed. ‘You killed him! I can’t believe it. But thank you.’

‘Didn’t have much of a choice,’ said Rick.

‘Of course not. Of course you didn’t. Look at me, I’m shaking like a leaf.’

Rick took off his coat and hung it over her shoulders. ‘Come on, we need to get you out of here. I bet all hell’s broken loose, back at the hotel.’

‘Nesta, and Charlie . . . It’s terrible. I hope Jimmy and Miko are OK.’

Rick bent over the young man’s body. ‘I wonder who the hell he is, and why he wanted to kill you.’

In the distance, Adeola could hear police sirens. ‘We should just leave him here. I can square this with the Gardai, I’m sure.’

But Rick was deftly rifling through the young man’s pockets. ‘No papers. No passport. No driver’s license. No wallet. Three clips of ammunition and four or five hundred euros, but that’s all.’

‘Come on, Rick. Let’s go. I’m really not feeling so good.’

‘Hey, you’re in shock. It’s understandable.’

He pulled open the buttons of the young man’s combat shirt. He reached inside and lifted out a heavy silver medallion.

‘Leave him,’ said Adeola. ‘Let’s go.’

But Rick unfastened the medallion’s chain and held it up. ‘Where have you seen one of these before?’

‘What? I don’t understand.’

‘A medallion like this, with these markings on it. That guy who tried to blow us up in Dubai, he was wearing one.’

‘I never saw it.’

‘His picture was in
Time
magazine. I showed it to you but maybe you didn’t really take it in.’

‘Well, I kind of remember, but I don’t remember any medallion.’

‘Exactly like this. With these arrows on it.’ He turned it over. ‘Look – there’s Roman lettering engraved on it, too. K A Z I M I.’

‘Ms Davis!’ called out an Irish voice, somewhere in the woods. ‘Ms Davis! Armed Gardai!’

‘I’m here!’ Adeola called back. ‘I’m OK!’

Rick stood up. He held up the medallion for a moment, and then stowed it in his pocket.

‘You’re not going to show that to the Gardai?’ asked Adeola.

‘You think the Kerry cops have the capability to find out who these people are? I’ve just lost two people, Adeola, and that’s supposing they didn’t hit Jimmy and Miko, too. I need to know who we’re dealing with here.’

Adeola thought about it, and then she nodded. ‘OK. I need to know, too.’

Rick put his arm around her, and helped her make her way back up the path. As she hobbled over the stones and the roots, the sun came out, and shone between the trees, like the sun shining through the window of a great cathedral.

 

T
here was a knock at the door and a short, red-faced man appeared, wearing a crumpled green suit.

‘Ms Davis? Detective Garda John Maguire. How are you feeling now?’

‘Much better, thanks. Any news of Jimmy and Miko?’

‘The Japanese gentleman has just come out of surgery, so they tell me, and they’re expecting him to make a full recovery. The other gentleman was hit only once in the thigh, but he lost a powerful amount of blood, so I’m afraid it’s a little bit touch-and-go with him. Serious, they said, but stable. Or maybe it was the other way about. Whatever – this is a very fine hospital, and I’m sure they’ll pull him through for you.’

He went to the window and peered out, frowning, although there was nothing to see in the gardens of Kenmare Community Hospital but a skinny boy with a wheelbarrow, listlessly hoeing the rose beds.

‘Your other friends,’ he added, without turning around, ‘I’m very sorry for your bereavement.’

‘Thank you.’

He came away from the window and sat down close to her. His breath smelled of onions. ‘This was a very unpleasant business, altogether.’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘There’s no doubt in my mind that your man was hired to kill you. And if your own fellow hadn’t had his wits about him, he would have succeeded.’

‘Rick was a special agent for the US Secret Service before he came to work for me,’ said Adeola. ‘He used to run close protection for Vice-President Gore.’

‘Yes, he told me that. He and I, we’ve already had quite a chat. He was telling me that he didn’t like to speculate as to who might have been wanting to kill you. Could have been anybody, so he said. Seems you’ve been putting up people’s backs the whole world over.’

‘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 feet-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.’