The Camelot Code (25 page)

Tess and Chris Wilkins appear to be your typical childless couple. Married for twelve of their fifteen years together, they’ve put on a little too much weight and grown lazy with age. Their money comes from a modest business that involves collecting, refilling and reselling ink-jet cartridges and it’s successful enough to afford a semi-decent four-bed in a semi-decent LA suburb.

San Francisco is a place they know and love. In the past, they’ve done all the touristy things from driving the Bay Bridge to sailing out to Alcatraz and watching the sun go down while eating the world’s best shrimp gumbo on a deck at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Chris has dark, hippy biker hair and a big curly beard. He’s thirty-nine years old, stands six-two and crushes the scales by three hundred pounds. Tess is three years younger, five inches smaller and a hundred pounds lighter. She was once a cheerleading blonde who could do the splits, but those days have long gone. Her hair is now a frumpy charcoal colour, needs layering and a good four inches cutting off. She tells friends she’d do it but Chris is a bit of a caveman and likes her to keep it ‘long ’n’ natural.’

Taylor Swift plays on the radio of the six-berth RV they rented at the airport. They’ve brought a lot of stuff with them: snacks, drinks, a whole closet of clothes. The twenty-seven-footer is just about right for their many needs.

Chris pops another couple of pieces of gum as the six-litre V10 roars up a long San Franciscan hill. ‘We anywhere near, yet?’

His wife screws the cap back on the bottle of Coke she’s been swigging and checks the sat-nav stuck to the windshield. ‘Another mile or two before you turn off, then about the same again.’ She pulls at the top of her pink T-shirt and fans air down into her cleavage. ‘You think the air-con is working in this thing?’

‘I put it on hot, so you’d have to take your top off.’

She laughs at him and rolls it up just below her breasts. ‘I take this off while you’re drivin’ we’re gonna end up in a ditch.’

‘Sounds good to me.’ He wobbles the wheel playfully.

‘Dead I mean.’

‘Now that don’t sound so good.’

‘Seriously, can you get any more chill out of those vents?’

Chris thumbs the fan button but it’s as high as it’ll go. ‘There’s somethin’ wrong with it. May as well wind down the window and let the wind blow back that fine hair of yours.’

She gives him her sexiest smile, lowers the passenger door glass and leans back against the headrest.

Chris enjoys a glance at her long locks being wind whipped off her pretty little cheeks. He wants to pull over and jump her right here, right now, with the big RV blocking the highway and everyone honking their horns in a ten-mile tailback.

‘Eyes on the road, darlin’,’ she says from behind big black shades. ‘Drive nicely and as soon as we get parked up, I’ll sort out that little pecker problem you have there.’

Mitzi tips the doorman. She worked hotels in her teens and remembers all too well how much she depended upon the generosity of guests to beat the minimum wage.

She enters the coolness of the hotel and walks past the front desk to the lifts. Her mind is on making arrangements to get over to Wales as quickly as possible. As soon as that’s done, she’s going to wrap things up and head home.

‘Excuse me, Mrs Fallon,’ says a fat-faced man in a smart suit. ‘I am the hotel manager, Jonathan Dunbar.’ He hands her a business card as the elevator announces its arrival with a ding. ‘Please, after you.’ He gestures for her to enter the box of polished steel and mirrors. ‘Let me accompany you to your room.’

She steps in and studies him suspiciously. ‘I’ve been here over twenty-four hours, I know where my room is.’

‘Of course you do.’ He presses the button. ‘I would just like a
discreet
word with you, if possible.’

The elevator jerks its way up. ‘I don’t do discreet,’ says Mitzi. ‘Discreet can be translated in all languages to mean cover up, fuck up or shut up. It’s my least favourite word in the whole world. Except maybe “overdue”, that’s probably a full shade shittier than discreet.’

Dunbar sees his own face in the mirrored walls and it’s full of apprehension. This woman is going to be trouble when he tells her what he has to tell her.

The lift pings. Doors slide open. He puts a hand through the gap and smiles. ‘Here we are.’

‘Is that an affliction that you’ve got?’ She steps past him.

‘Pardon?’

‘Your habit of stating the freakin’ obvious. Is it some kind of disease you’ve picked up?’ She jams a keycard into her door slot and pushes it open. ‘Look,
here we are
, again.’

‘May I come in for a moment?’

She sees he’s genuinely worried about something. ‘Sure. But don’t even think about giving me some crap about charging a higher room rate, or say my credit card’s been declined.’

‘It isn’t that. Not at all.’ He shuts the door behind him. ‘I’m afraid the mistake is entirely ours. Mine, to be more precise.’

‘Really?’

‘Earlier today we were visited by two police officers who asked to search your room and Mr Bronty’s. They were from the terrorist unit – I mean the
counter
-terrorist unit – the police obviously don’t have a unit of terrorists. Only they weren’t.’

Mitzi looks confused. ‘They weren’t what? They weren’t cops, or they weren’t anti-terror cops?’

‘They weren’t cops. Police, I mean.’

‘So what were they, and why did you let them into our rooms?’ She glances around to see if anything has been stolen.

‘The real police say they must have been confidence tricksters of some kind. Very professional ones because they had official-looking ID.’

‘Jeez, that must have taken them all of twenty minutes to download from the internet.’ Her mind is on the memory stick sitting safely in her purse, but she checks her trolley bag to see if anything else has been taken. ‘If stuff’s missing, your face is going to end up a bigger mess than mine.’

He shifts nervously and watches her search the small bag.

Mitzi squashes clothes down and refastens it. ‘You got lucky; what little I have is still there.’ She looks at him like she does when one of the girls has pulled a brainless stunt and the other has snitched on her. ‘Didn’t you think of calling the station house and checking things out before you let them in here?’

‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t. Not until afterwards.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘For the record, Dumbo —’

He corrects her, ‘Dunbar, not
Dumbo
.’

She smiles, ‘No, I think I was right first time. For the record, Dumbo,
checking
only ever works as a precautionary measure. That means
before
something happens.’

He feels himself redden. ‘I know. I’m very sorry. To make up for your inconvenience I’d like to have some champagne sent to your room —’

Her mind is locked on the incident. ‘These so-called cops, they have names?’

‘Yes, they were DCI Mark Warman and DS Penny Jackson.’

She scribbles the names on a pad by the bed.

‘There really are officers with those names at Scotland Yard, but they weren’t in your room.’

‘You’re doing that thing again.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He smiles thinly. ‘Obviously they weren’t in the room.’ A thought hits him. ‘Did you have anything in the wall safe?’ He looks towards the open door above the mini-bar.

She nods solemnly. ‘Cartier bracelet. Rolex watch. Some diamond earrings I bought at the Elizabeth Taylor auction. Not much.’

Dunbar’s face is white.

‘Relax. I had nothing in the safe.’ She checks in the bathroom. Her toothbrush, paste, cleanser and pads are all still there. She shouts out to him, ‘You said they searched my colleague’s room – have you told him?’

The manager looks embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid he checked out while I was out of the hotel and we don’t have a forwarding number for him. Perhaps you could have him call me?’

‘I’ll talk to him later. Now, if it’s all the same with you, I’d like you to leave. I’ve gotta make some calls, then I’m checking out.’

‘I understand. I’m very sorry.’

‘You think you can keep strangers out of my room for the next hour?’

‘I’m sure we can.’

‘And you mentioned champagne.’

He relaxes a little. ‘I did.’

‘Make it whisky. The best you have and send cake with it, the most sinful and fattening your chef has baked.’

‘It will be our pleasure.’ He heads for the door, feeling relieved. ‘Thank you for being so understanding.’

‘Oh, I’m still a long way from understanding, so tell the front desk that when I check out, I expect a discount. The kind that will make me feel
discreet
all the way back to California.’

For several minutes, Zachra Korshidi stands in silence and watches her father sleep in the back room of their Bronx row house.

His rickety chair is positioned near the dirt-streaked sash window that overlooks the small yard where her mother tries to grow olives. It seems that the warm afternoon sun and the large meal he’s just eaten have conspired to send him into a deep slumber.

Zachra looks at the food splatter in his grey beard and on his white dishdasha and hates every inch of him, right down to the cheap rubber-soled shoes he has left in the hallway near the front door.

She has been sent to collect her father’s dirty plate and take it to the kitchen for washing. But her mind has turned to more important matters. In her pocket, she touches the tiny tracker tack. All she has to do is jam it into the heel of his shoe.

She listens closely to the rattle of her father’s snores and feels her heart tighten with anxiety as she leaves the room and heads over to the footwear. Her mother is running water in the kitchen, plates clatter on the metal drainer. She puts her father’s tray down and moves quickly. The tack is less than the length of her small fingernail and she almost drops it. One end is needle sharp, the other rounded.

The rubber heel on the brogues is rock-hard. Try as she might, she can’t force it in.

The floor of the hallway is made of old boards so she puts her foot in the shoe and uses her weight to press the tack into the rubber. The pin sinks in but the heel clacks noisily against the wooden board. Zachra takes off the shoe and looks at it. The tack is in.

‘What are you doing?’

Her father’s voice spins her round. He is in the doorway staring at her.

She picks up the other shoe and the tray. ‘I came to collect the dishes and on the way back saw your shoes were dirty.’

He moves towards her, his eyes full of questions.

Zachra studies his hands. Fists so familiar to her. ‘Please don’t hit me. You told me it is
sunnah
to keep one’s clothes and footwear clean. I was going to polish them for you.’

He knocks them from her hand. ‘Take the tray to your mother. Never touch anything of mine unless I tell you.’ He watches her move past him and then slaps her hard across the side of the head.

The blow makes her ear explode with pain and leaves it buzzing but she doesn’t cry. She won’t give him the satisfaction. Not now. Not ever again. Zachra hopes the Americans catch him. Catch him and kill him for what he did to Javid and what he would have let happen to her.

Coyote Point is a big spread of park and woodland, barely ten miles from the city airport, jutting proudly into San Francisco Bay.

Chris and Tess Wilkins set the RV down on an approved site. They turn on the radio, shut curtains and make their big old bus rock and roll for a full hour and a half.

Afterwards, they shower and while Chris barbecues steaks under the veranda, Tess clears a batch of paperwork and makes calls. They eat outside on a fold-up table and chairs saying hi to people drifting by, then they share a few beers with a couple of old-timers to the left of them, seniors from Wyoming who’ve been coming to Coyote for twenty years.

After dinner they walk through a grove of eucalyptus trees down to the edge of the water where otters and bobcats scuttle in and out of their habitats.

‘We get time, we should go see the zoo,’ says Tess. ‘The leaflet I picked up says they’ve got a big aviary there as well.’

‘You seen one zoo, you’ve seen them all. Besides, you know how I feel about cages.’

‘You shouldn’t. Bars are in your mind. Think you’re free and you are free.’

‘You ain’t never done time, little Miss Philosopher, so that’s easy for you to say.’

‘Well, you ain’t never doin’ time again, so you better learn how to start sayin’ it.’

‘Let’s start by not even talkin’ about this shit.’

‘That’s fine by me.’ She squeezes his hand. ‘I love you, baby.’

‘Love you too, sweetcheeks.’

‘You think we’ve been out long enough?’ She swings his hand up and down like a pendulum.

He sees a cheeky smile on her face. ‘More than.’ He unfolds his fingers from hers and grabs her ass. ‘Let’s make that bus rock some more.’

SSOA operatives Bradley Sullivan and Jessica Lanza are parked in separate cars at opposite ends of the street where Khalid Korshidi lives.

They’re both equipped with tracker monitors, following the movement of the target tack that Zachra inserted into her father’s shoe.

Sullivan is mid-twenties and dressed in denim jacket and jeans, Big Bang T-shirt and Jesus sandals. Lanza has shoulder-length dark hair and could pass as his mother. She’s in dark slacks, beige top and a long cardigan that hides her Glock.

Six hours pass before they get to communicate.

‘Eyeball one. I have target on the move and in my line of sight.’ Sullivan starts the engine of his old Buick Encore.

‘Eyeball two. Gotcha and ready to go.’ Lanza guns up her Toyota Avensis and puts her coffee carton back in the cup-holder on the dash.

Korshidi heads across the road to where he parked his battered Transit and within a minute is in the traffic heading south.

Lanza and Sullivan follow him out to the I-95 then down as far as Jerome Avenue, where they expect him to turn left onto East 161st and then head towards the Yankee Stadium, the area where Antun had been meeting Nabil.

He doesn’t. He hangs a right on 176th then dumps the vehicle in a corner lot and walks a few hundred yards to the metro station.

Sullivan gets caught in traffic but Lanza reads it better. She pulls over and by the time Korshidi is disappearing down the steps into the station, she’s only twenty yards behind him.

He heads straight for the Four train. As he steps into the carriage he glances back to make sure he’s not being followed.

Lanza pretends to adjust what looks like an iPhone in her hands but is actually a highly advanced tracker monitor. The carriage is packed and broiling. They ride for almost half an hour before he gets off at Utica Avenue.

Out on the street, Korshidi walks north. After a block Lanza’s pleased to see Sullivan’s Buick pass her and stop near the junction with Beverley Road. By the time she gets there, her partner’s out on the street and she’s able to slip into the unlocked car and take the weight off. More than anything, it’s a relief to turn on the air-con.

Sullivan’s foot follow goes on all the way past Tiden and down to Snyder, where Korshidi turns left and crosses the road. The whole area is populated by low rent stores. Everything is here, from second-hand clothing to stolen tools, phone unlocking and dope dealers.

Korshidi heads down some basement stairs near a barber’s shop and Sullivan hangs back to avoid being spotted by whoever might open a door for him.

Lanza passes him in the Buick and pulls up twenty yards away on the other side of the street. There they both vanish into the shadows.

The waiting game has begun.