Confessor (49 page)

For a moment his brain could not take in the carnage. Then he reacted with horror. Walid lay half in and half out of the bedroom, his face almost gone where the bullets had struck him; his quashed and riddled features lolled in a pool of blood.

Hisham called out twice: “Khami! …Khami!”

No reply, just the hint of an echo around the apartment. Hisham moved slowly forward, pressing against the wall to avoid stepping in the dead Walid’s blood. Who could have done this? Why?

He remembered that both Walid and Khami had their personal weapons tucked into the waistbands of their jeans before Walid attempted to set the timer. He now saw that one of the automatic pistols was lying on the kitchen table. Next to it was Walid’s briefcase, open, still with hard cash bundled in hundred-dollar bills. Not as much there as he had seen on the previous evening when Walid had been checking on their IDs.

Hisham went from room to room, now holding the pistol from the kitchen table. His heart was beating heavily and he could hear it in his ears as it pumped blood through his body.

Allah save me, he thought to himself as he entered each of the rooms, not knowing what to expect on the other side of the door. Maybe some stranger who had been surprised by Walid when he entered the place. He knew that could not be right. Any casual burglar would have taken everything, including the spare weapon.

When he had checked each room and every closet, Hisham sat down at the kitchen table. He felt exhausted; could not get his brain to work; did not know how to proceed. The smell of Walid’s blood was a stench in his nostrils, and the sight of the body lying so near revolted him.

Where should he go? What should he do? Then he remembered whom he had seen during the short stay at the Grand Hyatt and a plan slowly started to form in his mind.

He must have sat there in the kitchen for the best part of an hour before all the pieces came into place. Carefully he removed two of the thick rolls of hundred-dollar bills and put them in the pockets of his jeans, together with a completely new set of ID and credit cards in the name of Wilson Sharp. Then he placed the pistol next to the rest of the money in the case and snapped it shut. Within ten minutes he was out on the street, flagging down a cab and asking to be put down at the shopping mall near Pennsylvania Avenue, which is called simply The Shops.

It took him around two hours. Shirts, socks, shoes, ties, two suits (which luckily fitted him well) straight off the rack. Casual slacks and a light blazer, sports shirts. A name-brand toilet set. Everything the well-groomed man required. In one of the men’s shops he changed into a white open-necked shirt and a pair of light blue slacks, finishing it off with the blazer and a pair of brand-new trainers.

He bought a matching suitcase, garment bag and overnighter, piled all he had purchased into the various cases. After that, he went into a barber’s shop, got a shave and had his hair cut in a conservative style.

At one of the public telephone booths he called the Grand Hyatt and asked if they had any rooms for the weekend. They told him only suites, which had the added bonus of the use of small coffee bars with snacks, open from seven each morning until ten at night. He said he would be checking in shortly.

The Shops contained several pleasant restaurants, so Hisham lined up at one of these and ate a simple meal of bean soup and a tuna salad. They treated him with respect and even put his cases in a safe place.

It was early afternoon when he came out into the sunlight and waited for a cab to take him to the Grand Hyatt. By two thirty he had unpacked and was ready to go in search of the person who might just give him a way out.

He walked down the passage and realized there were already two men standing in the little lounge area next to the elevators. He did not even look at them until one of them spoke.

“Well, that’s a surprise, so. Meeting my old friend Hisham Silwani here in Washington. We haven’t seen one another since we spent a night at
Les Misérables
in London, so. I think we’d better change our plans and go for a nice private talk.” Declan Norton moved in and grasped Hisham’s arm, while the other man stepped behind him. Together they made their way back along the passage.

“Just lead us to your room, Hisham, old friend. He couldn’t have arrived here at a more opportune moment now, could he, Sean?”

B
IG 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 met, 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?