Honour Among Thieves (6 page)

Two
sets of footsteps entered and left while she was undressing. During that time,
Hannah sat hunched up on the lavatory seat, continuing only when she was
confident she was alone.

The
exercise took her nearly twenty minutes. When she emerged, she checked herself
in the mirror and made a few minor adjustments.

And
then she prayed, but not to their God.

Hannah
left the ladies’ room and made her way slowly up the stairs and back into the
lobby of the hotel. She handed over her little case to the hall porter, telling
him she’d collect it again in a couple of hours. She pushed a pound coin across
the counter, and in return she received a little red ticket. She followed a
tour party through the revolving doors and seconds later was back on the
pavement.

She
knew exactly where she was going and how long it would take to reach the front
door, as she’d carried out a dry-run the previous day. She only hoped her
Mossad instructor was right about the internal layout of the building. After
all, no other agent had ever been inside before.

Hannah
walked slowly along the pavement towards the Brompton Road.

She
knew she couldn’t afford to hesitate once she reached the front door. With
twenty yards to go, she nearly decided to walk straight past the building. But
once she reached the steps she found herself climbing them and then boldly
knocking on the door. A few moments later, the door was opened by a bull of a
man who towered a full six inches over her. Hannah marched in, and to her
relief the guard stepped to one side, looked up and down the road and then
slammed the door closed.

She
walked down the corridor towards the dimly lit staircase without ever looking
back. Once she reached the end of the fading carpet, she slowly climbed the
wooden staircase. They’d assured her that it was the second door on the left on
the first floor, and when she reached the landing she saw a door to the left of
her, with peeling brown paint and a brass handle that looked as if it hadn’t
been polished for months. She turned the handle slowly and pushed the door
open. As she entered, she was greeted by a babble of noise that suddenly
ceased. The occupants of the room all turned to stare at her.

How
could they know that Hannah had never been there before, when all they could
see were her eyes?

Then
one of them began talking again, and Hannah quietly took a seat in the circle.
She listened carefully, and found that even when three or four of them were
speaking at once she could understand almost every word. But the tougher test
came when she decided to join in the conversation herself. She volunteered that
her name was Sheka and that her husband had just arrived in London, but had
only been allowed to bring one wife. They nodded their understanding and
expressed their disbelief at British Immigration’s inability to accept
polygamy.

For
the next hour, she listened to and discussed with them their problems. How
dirty the English were, how decadent, all dying of AIDS. They couldn’t wait to
go home and eat proper food, drink proper water. And would it ever stop
raining? Without warning, one of the black-clad women rose and bade her
friends
farewell. When a second got up to join her, Hannah
realised this was her chance to leave. She followed the two women silently down
the stairs, remaining a few paces behind. The massive man who guarded the
entrance opened the door to let the three of them out. Two of them climbed into
the back of a large black Mercedes and were whisked away, while Hannah turned
west and began to retrace her steps to the Norfolk Hotel.

T.
Hamilton McKenzie spent most of the night trying to work out what the man with
the quiet voice could possibly want. He had checked his bank statements. He
only had about $230,000 in cash and securities, and the house was probably
worth another quarter of a million once the mortgage had been paid off- and
this certainly wasn’t a sellers’ market, so that might take months to realise.
All together, he could just about scrape up half a million. He doubted if the
bank would advance him another cent beyond that.

Why
had they selected him? There were countless fathers at Columbus School who were
worth ten or twenty times what he was – Joe Ruggiero, who never stopped
reminding everybody that he owned the biggest liquor chain in Columbus, must
have been a millionaire several times over. For a moment, McKenzie wondered if
he was dealing with a gang that had simply picked the wrong man, amateurs even.
But he dismissed that idea when he considered the way they’d carried out the
kidnap and the follow-up. No, he had to accept that he was dealing with professionals
who knew exactly what they wanted.

He
slipped out of bed at a few minutes past six and, staring out of the window,
discovered there was no sign of the morning sun. He tried to be as quiet as he
could, although he knew that his motionless wife must surely be awake – she
probably hadn’t slept a wink all night. He took a warm shower, shaved, and for
reasons he couldn’t explain to himself, put on a brand new shirt, the suit he
only wore when he went to church, and a flowered Liberty tie Sally had given him
two Christmases before and which he had never had the courage to wear.

He
then went down to the kitchen and made coffee for his wife for the first time
in fifteen years. He took the tray back to the bedroom where he found Joni
sitting upright in her pink nightgown rubbing her tired eyes.

McKenzie
sat on the end of the bed and they drank black coffee together in silence.
During the previous eleven hours they had exhausted everything there was to
say-He cleared the tray away and returned downstairs, taking as long as he
could to wash and tidy up in the kitchen. The next sound he heard was the thud
of the paper landing on the porch outside the front door.

He
dropped the dishcloth, rushed out to get his copy of the Dispatch and quickly checked
the front page, wondering if the press could have somehow got hold of the
story. Clinton dominated the headlines, with trouble in Iraq flaring up again.
The President was promising to send in more troops to guard the Kuwaiti border
if it proved necessary.

‘They
should have finished off the job in the first place,’ McKenzie muttered as he
closed the front door. ‘Saddam is not a man who works by the book.’

He
tried to take in the details of the story but couldn’t concentrate on the
words. He gathered from the editorial that the Dispatch thought Clinton was
facing his first real crisis. The President doesn’t begin to know what a crisis
is, thought T. Hamilton McKenzie. After all, his daughter had slept safely in
the White House the previous night.

He
almost cheered when the clock in the hall eventually struck eight. Joni
appeared at the bottom of the stairs, fully dressed. She checked his collar and
brushed some dandruff off his shoulder, as if he were about to leave for a
normal day’s work at the university. She didn’t comment on his choice of tie.

‘Come
straight home,’ she added, as she always did.

‘Of
course I will,’ he said, kissing his wife on the cheek and leaving without
another word.

As
soon as the garage door swung up, he saw the flickering headlights and swore
out loud. He must have forgotten to turn them off the previous night when he
had been so cross with his daughter. This time he directed his anger at
himself, and swore again.

He
climbed in behind the wheel, put the key in the ignition and prayed. He
switched the lights off and, after a short pause, turned the key. First
quickly, then slowly, he tried to coax the engine into action, but it barely
clicked as he pumped the accelerator pedal up and down.

‘Not
today!’ he screamed, banging the steering wheel with the palms of his hands. He
tried a couple more times and then jumped out and ran back to the house. He
didn’t take his thumb off the bell until Joni opened the door with a
questioning look on her face.

‘My
battery’s flat. I need your car, quickly, quickly!’

‘It’s
being serviced. You’ve been telling me for weeks to have it attended to.’ T.
Hamilton McKenzie didn’t wait to offer an opinion. He turned his back on his
wife, ran down the drive into the road and began searching the tree-lined avenue
for the familiar yellow colour with a sign reading 444 4444 attached to the
roof. But he realised there was a hundred to one chance of finding a cab
driving around looking for a fare that early in the morning. All he could see
was a bus heading towards him. He knew the stop was a hundred yards away, so he
began running in the same direction as the bus. Although he was still a good
twenty or thirty yards short of the stop when it passed him, the bus pulled in
and waited.

McKenzie
climbed up the steps, panting. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Does this bus go to
Olentangy River Road?’

‘Gets
real close, man.’

‘Then
let’s get going,’ said T. Hamilton McKenzie. He checked his watch. It was 8.17
a.m. With a bit of luck he might still make the meeting on time. He began to
look for a seat.

‘That’ll
be a dollar,’ said the driver, staring at his retreating back.

T.
Hamilton McKenzie rummaged in his Sunday suit.

‘Oh,
my God,’ he said. ‘I’ve left...’

‘Don’t
try that one, man,’ said the driver. ‘No cash, no dash.’

McKenzie
turned to face him once again. ‘You don’t understand, I have an important
appointment. A matter of life and death.’

‘So
is keeping my job, man. I gotta stick by the book. If you can’t pay, you’ve
gotta debus ‘cause that’s what the regulations say.’

‘But
-’ spluttered McKenzie.

‘I’ll
give you a dollar for that watch,’ said a young man seated in the second row
who’d been enjoying the confrontation.

T.
Hamilton McKenzie looked at the gold Rolex that had been presented to him for
twenty-five years’ service to the Ohio State University Hospital. He whipped it
off his wrist and handed it over to the young man.

‘It
must be a matter of life and death,’ said the young man as he exchanged the
prize for a dollar. He slipped the watch onto his wrist. T. Hamilton McKenzie handed
the dollar on to the driver.

‘You
didn’t strike a good bargain there, man,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You could
have had a week in a stretch limo for a Rolex.’

‘Come
on, let’s get going!’ shouted McKenzie.

‘It’s
not me who’s been holding us up, man,’ said the driver as he moved slowly away
from the kerb.

T.
Hamilton McKenzie sat in the front seat wishing it were he who was driving. He
looked at his watch. It wasn’t there. He turned round and asked the youth,
‘What’s the time?’ The young man looked proudly at his new acquisition, which
he hadn’t taken his eyes off for one moment.

‘Twenty-six
minutes after eight and twenty seconds.’

McKenzie
stared out of the window, willing the bus to go faster. It stopped seven times
to drop and pick up passengers before they finally reached the corner of
Independence, by which time the driver feared the watchless man was about to
have a heart attack. As T. Hamilton McKenzie jumped off the steps of the bus,
he heard the clock on the town hall strike 8.45 a.m.

‘Oh
God, let them still be there,’ he said as he ran towards the Olentangy Inn,
hoping no one would recognise him. He stopped running only when he had reached
the path that led up to reception. He tried to compose himself, aware that he
was badly out of breath and sweating from head to toe.

He
pushed through the swing door of the coffee shop and peered around the room,
having no idea who or what he was looking for. He imagined that everyone was
staring back at him.

The
coffee shop had about sixty cafe tables in twos and fours, and he would have
guessed it was about half full. Two of the corner tables were already taken, so
McKenzie headed to the one that gave him the best view of the door.

He
sat and waited, praying that they hadn’t given up on him.

It
was when Hannah arrived back at the crossing on the corner of Thurloe Place
that she first had the feeling someone was following her. By the time she had
reached the pavement on the South Kensington side, she was convinced of it.

A
tall man, young, evidently not very experienced at shadowing, bobbed rather
obviously in and out of doorways. Perhaps he thought she wasn’t the type who
would ever be suspicious. Hannah had about a quarter of a mile in which to plan
her next move. By the time the Norfolk came in sight, she knew exactly what
needed to be done. If she could get into the building well ahead of him, she
estimated she only needed about thirty, perhaps forty-five, seconds at most,
unless the porters were both fully occupied. She paused at the front window of
a chemist’s shop and stared at the array of beauty products that filled the
shelves. She turned to look towards the lipsticks in the corner and saw his
reflection in the brightly polished window. He was standing by a newspaper stand
at the entrance to South Kensington tube station. He picked up a copy of the
Daily Mail – amateur, she thought -which gave her the chance to cross the road
before he could collect his change. She had reached the front door of the hotel
by the time he had passed the chemist. Hannah didn’t run up the steps, as it
would have acknowledged his existence, but mistakenly pushed the revolving door
so sharply that she sent an unsuspecting old lady tumbling onto the pavement
much sooner than she’d intended.