The Concierge

by Gerard Gilbert

  Max brings his mouth to meet the spoon and sucks up the contents which are warm and blissfully tasty. He chews but finds it hard to swallow.

  “Water?” he asks.

  Omar leaves the room and Max and the boy look at each other. The boy is obviously petrified of Max.

  “My name’s Max,” he says, but the boy just shakes his head. He doesn’t seem to speak English.

  Omar returns, pulling the ring-top on a can of some sort of drink. Not Coca Cola, that’s for sure, which is what Max is craving at the moment. It’s a blue tin with Brisk written on the side in large cartoonish writing. Iced lemon tea. Omar motions for the boy to take the can and he brings it to Max’s mouth. It tastes tepid and sweet, neither iced nor tea-like, but there’s a hint of synthetic lemon.

  “Shukran,” says Max, having learned the Arabic for ‘thank you’ from his dealings with the Saudis.

  “Al’afw,” responds the boy. Omar barks something in Arabic, and the boy resumes spoon-feeding Max the vegetable stew. Max makes the same sort of greedily appreciative noises that he emits while having sex with Rachel.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  “Tariq… we believe there will be a sarin attack on Rome, but where? In the metro, like in Tokyo?”

  Tariq has been taken back to the hospital and allowed to sleep for three hours. But now Maurilio is back, accompanied by a handsome woman in her forties, with dark hair tied back to reveal a forcefully intelligent face. Maurilio had introduced her as Nadia Pizzuto of the anti-terrorist police.

  “I’ve been lying here trying to think,” says Tariq. “I can’t remember where they were going to let off the sarin, or if I even knew. Perhaps I wasn’t in on that secret. The boy I thought was maybe some sort of suicide bomber.”

  “He was,” says the woman, Nadia Pizzuto. “We found a vest packed with explosives in his hotel wardrobe.”

  Tariq nods slowly. “Okay… of course… but there must have been a change of plan.”

  “My thoughts entirely,” says Nadia Pizzuto. “We’ve identified all the dead men at the compound, by the way. One Libyan, one Iraqi and a Saudi national. The Saudi, it appears, might have been an agent for Al Mukhabarat, their secret service. Any idea about him?”

  “Yes, he was our minder,” says Tariq. Pizzuto’s eyebrows shoot heavenwards.

  “Well, he was there to look after the Saudi woman,” says Tariq. “He’s the one who helped her escape – her and the British men.”

  Maurilio and Pizzuto are looking at each other. They turn and say in unison: “The British men?”

  * * *

  A little under two weeks ago – it was a Tuesday evening, and an old friend had phoned me in a state of some distress. So I agreed to see him for a drink in our usual meeting place, a pub in Soho.

  His name is Harry Kimber and when I first knew him, about fifteen years ago, we were both struggling to get a foothold in journalism. Movies were Harry’s thing at the time, and we were both freelancers attending movie junkets and film festivals and picking up interviews with obscure directors and up-and-coming actors to sell to the nationals. We had a laugh together, and used to socialise some of the time, and I remember a funny, slightly shy bloke and I admit I quite fancied him at the time.

  I soon got tired of all those self-absorbed actors, lecherous directors and obstructive PRs and found my real metier with foreign news. I started subbing shifts on various national papers, before I took the plunge and worked as a stringer in Cairo and then Istanbul for a couple of years, returning to London and getting a full-time job on the foreign news desk of this newspaper. But that’s a different story. It certainly fucking is, Mary thinks angrily, to be made redundant and then hired back as a casual.

  Harry and I used to meet up every six months, or whenever I was in town, by which time he’d ditched journalism and become a banker.

  He began dressing very smartly and wearing expensive watches and generally looking completely out of place in our favourite Soho pub, but also on a deeper level he seemed to have changed. Our conversations became about money and property and stuff like that, whereas before money was never a topic because neither of us ever had any.

  We met up about month ago and Harry told me how he and his partner in a Mayfair hedge fund had started servicing rich Arabs – one wealthy Saudi in particular – choosing property and diamonds for him and creaming off the profit. He called it ‘concierge’ work, and said that he and Max, his friend and co-partner at the hedge fund, were going to start self-financing these deals instead of piggy-backing on other people’s money, but frankly I wasn’t that interested. Sadly, I decided that the friendship had run its course and that we had nothing in common any more. I felt that Harry sensed that too, and that would be the last I heard of him.

  And then I received this distressed phone call. It turned out that Harry had sold his house and liquidated most of his other assets so that he and Max could buy a beautiful diamond from a dealer in Geneva. They were going to sell it on to the Saudi, pocket a million pounds profit each, which would finance the next ‘concierge’ deal. And so on and so on until they were filthy rich and never had to work again.

  But then it had all gone horribly wrong, he told me. They bought the diamond for several million pounds – I can’t remember how much exactly now, but it was a lot of money. They were then summoned to a hotel in Geneva, ostensibly by the Saudi. Invited upstairs to a suite of rooms that his party had apparently booked out, and were allegedly met by his daughter who asked for the diamond to show her father.

  Already behaving unconventionally and somewhat recklessly – they would never usually show a diamond off like this, it was usually in the ultra-secure offices of their gem dealer in the centre of Geneva – Harry and Max had grave misgivings at handing the diamond over to the daughter, a woman in her twenties who they knew only by sight. She had accompanied her father to a meal to celebrate a house purchase in Mayfair that Harry and Max had brokered.

  This woman had insisted that she would show the diamond to her father, who was in the next room, and, despite their unease, Harry and Max had handed her the gem and, in effect, their whole worldly wealth. In fact the whole operation was, he said, an elaborate sting, and she had vanished with their diamond.

  The police weren’t interested once it was established that the Saudi woman enjoyed diplomatic immunity. And this was the situation when I agreed to meet Harry for a drink.

  The only practical advice I was able to give Harry was the information that the father – some sort of diplomat or spy – had a country home in the UK, where he spent most weekends. His daughter, whose name I had by this stage learned, supposedly lived in the house with him there…

  It wasn’t going to win the Pulitzer Prize, but as a first draft of the situation, plainly stated, it wasn’t bad. She could spruce it up later. Charlotte had told her to write a thousand words, but to let it run over if necessary. Mary glanced up at the clock on the pillar by the foreign desk, and continued to write.

  I can’t say what happened in the eleven days since I met up with Harry, but this afternoon the news broke that he had been arrested as he flew back to London Gatwick from Geneva. He’s currently being held in Sussex under the Terrorism Act. His friend and diamond co-owner is on the run and wanted by Swiss police in connection with a multiple murder at a ski chalet in Verbier belonging to a British foreign exchange dealer by the name of Simon Fellowes, who is one of the victims.

  The other victims are an unnamed British woman of about twenty years of age and two Swiss policemen. The truth of what happened in that chalet will no doubt emerge in the coming days and weeks, not least if and when Harry is released from custody and is able to tell his side of the story. My guess is that it will involve a Saudi woman and a missing diamond.

  Not the most elegant report she has ever written, but Mary emails this draft to Charlotte, who picks it up at once and starts to read.

  “Lovely, Mary,” she says without removing her eyes from her screen. “That’ll d
o nicely. I’m going to send this over to the lawyer as it is, and then I’m going to tighten it up in a couple of places. But, thanks, darling, that’s great. Do you think we can find any pictures of Harry anywhere? What about his company website?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Max wakes from a dreamless sleep and can’t tell whether the low drumming sound is in his head or on the outside. The light in the room is on, a strip light that hurts his eyes. He’s still handcuffed with his arms behind his back, but his legs have been untied, so he sits up and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

  A powerful ache in his forehead spreads down behind his eyes, a wave of nausea passes and returns, and Max throws up all over the thin mattress that he has been laid down on. By Omar presumably. Lumps of potato and red pepper – last night’s stew – are spread out in front of him like evidence of some sort of obscure crime he can’t remember committing.

  The vomiting helps ease the headache, but now his neck feels painfully stiff from where he has been lying with hands behind his back. His right shoulder has seized up as well, and hurts when he tries to sit upright. He props himself up against the wall, neck bent like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and remains still with his eyes closed.

  There is definitely a rumbling noise, and it seems to be coming from the other side of the wall, which he can now feel vibrating slightly. He opens his eyes and notices the boy with his back to him, fast asleep on a similar mattress to the one Max has just been sick on.

  Max doesn’t remember falling asleep. The boy had fed him the rest of the stew, and Omar had taken the empty bowl and left, leaving Max and the boy staring helplessly at each other, unable to communicate in each other’s language. He remembers feeling suddenly tired and fighting to keep his eyes open. And now this. What time is it? Is it night or day? How long has he been asleep?

  The rumbling noise stops, and Max can just make out the sound of Omar clumping about next door. Something is being dragged across the floor, a scraping noise, and then the rumbling noise resumes. Another wave of nausea hits him, but he manages not to throw up this time.

  God, he hasn’t felt this bad since the morning after his stag do all those years ago, a twenty-four-hour drink and drugs extravaganza that featured the usual dangerous sports and strippers. Had Simon arranged it? God, Simon. Poor Simon. His best mate probably. A truer mate than Harry.

  Max spits out a chunk of vegetable.

  Rachel hadn’t shown him any mercy with his hangover. She insisted he take her out to lunch at the Wolsey, and Max had been sick in the toilets. She laughed when he told her and said it served him right. He thinks she went to Ibiza for her hen weekend; he can’t remember now.

  The rumbling stops again, and Max tries to work out how Omar managed to untie him from the chair, untether the ropes from his legs, and lie him down on a mattress without waking him. The stew must have been drugged. That must be the slightly chemical aftertaste he has in his mouth now. Oh, well, probably for the best. He wouldn’t have slept otherwise.

  There is a key turning in the lock and the door opens, and Omar is standing there, his shirt patched with sweat and his face puce. He looks at Max, impossible to read as always, except that one time in the chalet when Max had said ‘So this is war’, and Max had felt something akin to fellowship. Omar frowns and Max sees that he’s looking at the vomit-covered mattress.

  He walks over to the boy and kicks him hard in the bottom. The boy jerks up and looks around blearily with half-closed eyes, unable to shake off the drugged sleep.

  “Come… it’s morning,” he says, followed by something in Arabic, and the boy, re-orientated, gets to his feet and follows Omar out of the room. By pressing his back and shoulders in the wall, Max also manages to writhe up to his feet, which he stamps on the ground to try and get some feeling into them. His forehead starts throbbing again, so he stands with his eyes closed. Another wave of nausea comes and goes.

  The boy returns and he’s holding a red enamel mug out in front of him and a hunk of bread, nervously like he’s feeding a wild beast. The mug, Max can smell, contains coffee. Black coffee. He brings his lips to it and drinks, and then spits the scalding liquid back into the cup.

  The boy backs away, but Max motions to him that it’s okay, and mimes the fact that the drink is too hot by making blowing noises. The boy seems to understand, and offers him the bread instead. Max nods and clamps his teeth into it. It’s hard and stale. His mouth still tastes metallic.

  In this fashion he manages to drink the coffee and eat some of the bread, but more importantly, he feels, to build some trust and understanding with the boy. By the time he’s finished this paltry breakfast, a bond of sorts has been created.

  Omar reappears. He’s been splashing water on his face, his hair is combed back and he has a fresh shirt on. He wouldn’t exactly gain entry to the smarter restaurants in Mayfair, but he looks a good deal better than he did a few minutes ago. He also has his gun once more to hand.

  “Okay, let’s go,” he says, indicating the direction of travel with the muzzle. Max follows him through the office he remembers from yesterday, through another door, through which he notices a small kitchen where Omar must have cooked his narcotic stew, and into a huge space where is parked a large olive green truck.

  “You drive this?” Omar asks.

  He has once, something similar, but a long time ago. A friend at school had been a farmer’s son and one summer when he was sixteen Max had helped with the corn harvest. This involved driving an old lorry, he remembered, although he can’t now remember why.

  “I think so,” he says. “Bit like driving a car, only slower.”

  “Good,” says Omar. “You drive.”

  “Drive where?” Max asks, and Omar holds up a satnav in reply. “This tell you where. I follow. You follow instructions.” And to emphasise the point, he waves his pistol.

  “I might need these taking off,” says Max, holding up his wrists. He’s feeling weirdly cocky.

  Omar walks up to him and strikes Max across the cheek with the back of the pistol. Max falls to his knees and thinks he can taste his own bone. Something weird anyway, cartilage from his nose perhaps? Then Omar’s boot lands in his stomach, winding Max, who rolls onto his back, wondering where the next blow will land.

  It doesn’t arrive. Instead Omar is leaning over him and unlocking the handcuff from one wrist. Max’s hands, newly liberated, feel alien to him. He shakes his arms as if they belong to someone else, the handcuffs jiggling from the end of his right arm.

  “Stand up,” says Omar, and Max rolls over on his side, and using the hand that is his but not his, he pushes himself into an upright position. He notices the boy looking at him. Scared.

  “It’s all right,” he says to the boy. “We’re going for a drive. That’s all. A drive.” The boy stares back at him dumbly.

  Once Max is standing Omar shoves him in the small of the back towards the truck.

  “Get in,” he says.

  Max clambers up into the driver’s seat.

  “Put your hands on the wheel,” commands Omar, and Max obeys. With a swift movement, Omar secures the open handcuff to the steering wheel, and there he is – attached to the truck. “Until death do us part,” he says. Omar stares at him for a moment, almost another recognition of humanity, like back in the chalet. But then he’s gone, and the boy is climbing up into the passenger seat.

  Max looks down at the aluminium box sitting to the right of the gear lever. It has four buttons, a gauge and a joystick, like some sort of homemade model aeroplane kit.

  He can see Omar fiddling with the satnav. Seemingly satisfied, he now jumps up next to the boy and places the satnav on the dashboard, next to what looks like a small TV screen.

  “Okay, let me tell you what’s going to happen,” says Omar, before pointing his pistol at Max. “You are going to drive into Rome following the instructions on the satnav. I will be right behind you, and any deviation will end in your deaths. Do you understand?”

&nb
sp; Max says, “Yes.” The boy seems transfixed by the aluminium box.

  “When the satnav tells you that you have reached your destination, then the boy will set off the water cannon. The people it’s aimed at won’t be harmed – perhaps a few minor injuries if they slip over. This is simply an exercise in humiliation. No one will be killed. Understand?”

  Max nods, but feels confused. Why would this man, who shows absolutely no hesitation in killing people, be wanting to hose them now with water? Is this his terrorist master plan, to soak a load of strangers? To force them to go home and take a change of clothing?

  “Why?” he finds himself saying.

  “The people you will be firing the water cannon at are devout Catholics gathered in St Peter’s Square to hear the Pope. This great act of sacrilege will be on global TV.”

  You’re mad, he thinks. Why not shoot them dead, like in Paris? Or just drive into them, as in Nice?

  “Okay, we’re going to soak a load of old nuns and priests,” he says.

  “Yes,” says Omar. “And tourists.”

  “And tourists…”

  “But you mustn’t start until the satnav tells you that you have arrived.”

  “Understood,” says Max, who is wondering how any armed police stationed at the Vatican might react to a water cannon arriving in St Peter’s Square and blowing people over with a jet stream, even if they managed to get that far. There’s a steel mesh over the windscreen and he noticed earlier what looked like a sort of snowplough attached to the front. Some protection at least.

  “What if the police try to stop us before we get to St Peter’s?” he asks.

  “Just smash on through, remembering your families back home. And then pray.”

  Oh, I’ll be praying, thinks Max. But not to your God.