Severe Clear

by Stuart Woods

  “No room at even nearly the top.”

  “You got it. A friend of mine introduced me to the Beverly Hills Hotel operation, and it worked.”

  “But not in the restaurant end?”

  “The bar is in the restaurant end,” Gennaro replied.

  “What would your next logical promotion there have been?”

  “Maybe maître d’, but I’d have had to wait for the owner of that position to die—he would never have retired.”

  “So you applied for a bartender’s job at The Arrington?”

  “Not really. I was aiming for a managerial job.”

  “So you invented one for yourself.”

  “I showed them how I could be more useful in a supervisory position.”

  “So what’s your next promotion possibility here?”

  “Maître d’, if the owner of that job dies. He’s only fifty-six.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Sure, food and beverage manager. I mean, my boss isn’t going anywhere, but in a new hotel, things are fluid. He might get promoted.”

  “An astute observation. You have access to the wine and spirits storage room, don’t you?”

  “I’m in charge of it,” Gennaro replied. “Word is, you found something illegal in there.”

  “You might say that,” Rifkin replied. “Any idea what it was?”

  “I heard a guy came out of there in what looked like a diving suit. Lobsters?”

  Rifkin laughed. “I’ll bet you know what that suit was.”

  Gennaro shrugged. “I go to the movies, I watch TV.”

  “Tell me, Michael, you’re a bright guy—speculate for me how whatever he found in there got in there.”

  Gennaro tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling, then he looked back at Rifkin. “How big was it?”

  Rifkin held his hands out to demonstrate.

  “No bigger than a case of wine, then? My guess would be that a supplier’s delivery man brought it in there on a hand truck with several cases of wine or liquor.”

  “Any idea of which supplier?”

  “We buy from four suppliers: I give them a list of what we want, and they bid. I always take the lowest price for, say, a case of Absolut Vodka or Knob Creek bourbon.”

  “Same for the wines?”

  “Yes, but if we specify a wine and a vintage, all four might not have it. If I don’t get a low enough bid, then I go to the Internet before I accept, then the delivery would be made by UPS.”

  “What else do you do on the Internet, Michael?”

  Gennaro tilted his head to one side in thought. “Shopping for clothes, shoes, sex toys, household appliances. I use Google to look for stuff.”

  “E-mail?”

  “Yeah, but not so much.”

  “Why not?”

  “I guess I don’t have all that many friends. In this business you work nights. It doesn’t lead to an athletic social life. The cell phone works better for me.”

  “How many cell phones do you have?”

  A flick of an eyebrow. “Ah, just one, an iPhone.”

  “Like it?”

  “Yeah, it does a lot more than I know how to do with it.”

  Rifkin closed the file in front of him. “Well, I guess that’s about it. Thanks for your time, and I hope the job goes well for you here.” Rifkin held out his hand.

  Gennaro shook it, then got up and took a step toward the door.

  “Oh, Michael?”

  Gennaro stopped and turned around. “Yeah?”

  “What’s your religion?” Rifkin saw Gennaro’s jaw tighten.

  “Catholic,” he replied.

  “Thanks, Michael.” He gave the man a little wave and watched him go. Just before he closed the door he looked back.

  Rifkin turned to his two agents, who were sitting at a nearby table. “I want a membership list of every mosque in L.A., starting with Studio City and spreading out from there. I don’t care how you get them.”

  50

  Stone and Dino had breakfast on the patio beside the pool. “I don’t know what to do with myself today,” Stone said. “It’s the first time since we arrived that my mind hasn’t been full of what I have to do today.”

  “That sounds like a complaint,” Dino said.

  “No, just an observation. I don’t really want to leave the house today. All the guests are checking in, and it’s going to be chaos out there.”

  “Why chaos? People check into hotels all the time.”

  “Yes, but not all on the same day and with as much security.”

  “You have a point.”

  “The concert tonight will be great,” Stone said.

  “Viv and I are looking forward to it.”

  Peter and Ben appeared and joined them.

  “Where’s Hattie?” Stone asked.

  “I couldn’t get her up. I think she’s nervous about her performance tonight, and sleep postpones having to think about it.”

  “Hasn’t she done a lot of performing?”

  “Sure, but this is her first appearance in a professional setting. Before, it was all student stuff.”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  “Dad, Dino, Ben and I have some good news.”

  “Good news I can always use,” Dino said. “Pardon the rhyme.”

  “You’re pardoned, Pop,” Ben said.

  “So what’s the news?” Stone asked.

  “The three of us are going to have a production deal at Centurion,” Peter said.

  Stone looked alarmed. “When?”

  “Don’t worry, Dad, it’s for after we all graduate.”

  Stone relaxed a little. “What’s the deal?”

  “We haven’t worked that out yet,” Peter said, “so I’ll want your help on structuring the contract.”

  “You’re going to need showbiz help,” Stone said. “Let me talk to Bill Eggers about somebody in the L.A. office who does entertainment law. Leo Goldman is a nice guy, but he’s going to be a tough negotiator.”

  “See? That’s just the kind of advice we need.”

  “So, Ben,” Dino said, “you’re going to produce?”

  “Executive-produce,” Ben replied.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “There are often several producers on films, even several executive producers, but that’s mostly a billing argument. We’re going to run a leaner operation, but I’ll still want an experienced line producer to do the day-to-day production work.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “And, Peter,” Stone said, “you’ll write or direct?”

  “Both,” the boy replied, “though I can see just directing, if somebody comes to us with a good script already written.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “What’s really good is, Leo showed us Vance’s old bungalow, which has been empty since his death, and he’s going to redo it for us, to our specifications.”

  “That sounds wonderful!”

  “Yeah, but I don’t have any experience with that kind of space planning.”

  “Why don’t you talk to James Rutledge? He was trained as an architect, then he was with Architectural Digest, and now he does just the sort of thing you need. You were at the High Cotton Ideas party—did you like that place?”

  “Oh, wow, did I!”

  “Well, Jim was the designer on that. Get Leo to send you the plans, then send them to Jim for a look.”

  “He’s sending them over today, so I’ll call Jim as soon as we’re back.”

  “Can’t hurt to start early.”

  Hattie wandered onto the patio, looking sleepy, and sat down.

  “Good morning,” Stone said.

  “Is it?” Hattie asked, looking at the sky and squinting. “I can’t tell.”

  Stone laughed. “Trust me, it is. Are you all ready for your performance tonight?”

  Hattie looked alarmed. “I forgot about that. Don’t remind me.”

  “Relax, you’ll do fine.”

  A waiter a
ppeared and took everybody’s breakfast order.

  —

  Steve Rifkin had not slept well. He had doubled his crew for the overnight search of The Arrington’s theater, where the two presidents would hold their joint signing and press conference at ten A.M., and now he was up early and walking around The Arrington’s theater, having a final look for himself.

  His search detail leader approached. “Don’t worry, boss,” he said, “this place is clean.”

  “We’re missing two bombs,” Rifkin said.

  “I understand that, but I don’t think the other two even made it onto the property.”

  Rifkin looked around. “All right, seal this place—nobody in here that isn’t essential to the press conference. There’s a list—stick to it.”

  “Right, boss.” The man went away to do his work.

  —

  Hamish McCallister arrived at the theater, along with at least a hundred other reporters, each with his credentials hung around his neck. He found a seat in the fourth row of the theater, which was a structure half-embedded in the landscape on the north side of the hotel’s grounds. He stood in front of his seat and looked around the big room as his colleagues, many of them recognizable from television, filed into the theater. This, he reflected, would have made a wonderful target for one of his three small bombs, killing the two presidents and most of the media representatives present.

  But that was not a worry for Hamish. He didn’t need the other two bombs now, and the Secret Service had the other one. The device in the Vuitton steamer trunk would do the work of a thousand of the smaller bombs.

  Secret Service agents, a dozen of them with sniffer dogs, wandered the room, making a final check. The dogs hadn’t helped find the missing bombs because one was concealed in a place no one would ever look, and the other was in a vehicle that had already been searched several times.

  Half the reporters in the room were on their cell phones; the other half were scribbling in their notebooks. Hamish watched them, feeling relaxed and content. His plans were made, and they would be carried out. He took out his throwaway cell phone and sent messages to Wynken and Blynken. He had already made his travel arrangements. He would not need the Cessna Caravan; it was now his backup escape plan. He sent a text to the pilot, instructing him to be ready for takeoff at three P.M.

  Then a hush fell over the room as the president of the United States, accompanied by the president of Mexico, entered the theater from stage right and took their seats at a table at the center of the stage.

  51

  Stone and Dino were sitting with Mike Freeman, watching the presidents’ statements, when Steve Rifkin came in, mopping his brow.

  “Everything all right?” Mike asked.

  “So far, so good. I had to get out of that theater. Standing around waiting for something terrible to happen was just too much.”

  “Relax,” Mike said. “Those two bombs are not on the premises. I think we’ve satisfied ourselves of that. How’s it going down at the front gate?”

  “Nobody was supposed to arrive before noon, but they’re lined up, waiting to have themselves and their vehicles searched. Pretty soon, they’re going to start blowing their horns. What’s the president saying?”

  “This is good stuff,” Stone said. “The Mexicans have agreed to create a new border guard unit in their army that will patrol their side of the fence, and that will mean a doubling of the number of people looking for illegal crossings.”

  “Very good,” Steve said.

  Holly Barker came into the room. “How’s it going?” she asked.

  Stone brought her up to date.

  “May I use the study for a moment?” she asked.

  “Help yourself.”

  Holly went into the study, called the Agency’s London station, got Tom Riley on the line, and scrambled. “Anything new?” she asked.

  “We got a guy into the McCallister house posing as a gas worker looking for a leak in the neighborhood, but they wouldn’t allow him above the ground floor.”

  “Swell, so we still don’t know if Hamish and Mo are in the house?”

  “Our man did see the cook put a breakfast tray in the dumbwaiter and send it up.”

  “A tray for one or two?”

  “He thinks for one.”

  “So one of them isn’t in the house?”

  “Or one of them doesn’t eat breakfast. Take your pick.”

  “Tom, do a search of everything for the name Algernon.” She spelled it for him.

  “In what context?”

  “In any context at all. We’ve got an al Qaeda operative calling himself Algernon.”

  “Okay.”

  “Call me when you’ve got something.” She hung up and went back into the living room.

  “The president has finished, and now Vargas is having his say,” Stone said. “You look a little stressed. How come?”

  Holly turned and walked out onto the patio without replying. Stone got up and followed her.

  “What’s going on, Holly?”

  “I’m missing something, that’s what’s going on,” she said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you understand that we’re under siege here in this hotel? There are at least two bombers out there, determined to do their worst, and nothing we’ve been able to do about finding them has worked.”

  “You sound like Steve Rifkin,” Stone said. “Leave it to the Secret Service, they’re the experts here, not you.”

  “I’ve got a contact in London who I think is lying to me, but I can’t prove it.”

  “I should think you’d get lied to a lot, in your business,” Stone said.

  “I feel out of my depth,” Holly said. “I’m accustomed to playing offense, not defense.”

  “I wish I could help,” Stone said. “Why don’t you talk with Felicity? Maybe she can help.”

  “We had a long chat last evening,” Holly said, “and she’s working her side of the pond.”

  “Have you done everything you can do?”

  “I’ve done everything I can think of, which may not be the same thing.” Her phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said, and walked away a few yards.

  “It’s Tom. Scramble.”

  Holly scrambled. “Shoot.”

  “We haven’t got much: There’s a hotel in South London by that name, could be a drop. There’s Algernon Moncrieff, a character in The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde, and there’s a short story and then a novel called Flowers for Algernon, made into a movie called Charly that starred Cliff Robertson. He got an Academy Award for his performance. That’s it. Nobody here can think of anything in either work that would relate to al Qaeda or spying or anything else.”

  “Okay, Tom.”

  “We’ll keep at it.”

  “Sure, call me.” Holly hung up and went back to where Stone had sat down.

  “Anything new?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  52

  Hamish opened the closet door and took the key to the steamer trunk from his pocket, opened it, and swung open the door. The finely machined panel glowed in the light from the overhead bulb.

  Hamish inserted his T-key into the slot at the top of the panel and turned it ninety degrees to the right. With a click, the clock was powered, displaying a row of zeros. Hamish checked his wristwatch, added the number of hours until eight-thirty P.M., then carefully tapped the hours and minutes into the keypad. He took a deep breath and let it out, then he pressed the enter button, and the clock began its downward march to zero.

  The concert would begin at seven P.M., perhaps a few minutes later. It was scheduled to run until eight-thirty, so the device would detonate at about the time of the last number in the concert, or, perhaps, during an encore. Even if the detonation came late there would still be fifteen hundred people in the Arrington Bowl, among them the presidents of the United States and Mexico. All the others—movie moguls, movie stars, entertainers of various skills, the cream of
Los Angeles society, business leaders—would simply be cannon fodder for the greatest lethal attack on the United States ever recorded. Upward of a million people would die in an instant—many more of their injuries or radiation sickness in the months and years to come.

  The loss of the great Osama bin Laden would be avenged. Any evidence of the perpetrators would be vaporized in the initial blast, so no one would ever know who had caused it, until the announcement was made worldwide on the Internet. Neither he nor Mo nor Jasmine nor any of the people who had helped them would ever be known to the authorities. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod would be dead.

  Hamish checked his watch again: he would leave The Arrington at three P.M.; his flight from LAX would depart at five P.M. and arrive in London after a nonstop flight at midmorning the following day. He would drop off his luggage at his house, then have lunch at his club.

  He closed the trunk and locked it, then put the two keys into his pocket. He would have time for a nice lunch at the patio restaurant; he had already booked the table, late, for two P.M.

  He packed his two Vuitton cases with his clothes and set them near the front door for collection by Hans, then he showered, shaved, and began to dress for lunch.

  —

  Holly Barker returned to the presidential cottage with the president and the first lady after the press conference. The president seemed in a particularly good mood, and so did the first lady.

  “Lunch in half an hour,” Kate Lee said, and at that moment, Holly’s phone rang.

  “Holly Barker.”

  “It’s Tom Riley: scramble.”

  She scrambled. “Yes, Tom?”

  “I don’t know why we took this long,” Riley said sheepishly. “We should have had it last night.”

  “What, Tom?”

  “Algernon.”

  “Yes?”

  “When we ran the search on Mo, we got his birth certificate; we got Hamish’s, too, in his birth name of Ari Shazaz. What we didn’t pick up on was the deed poll.”

  “Tom, what the hell is a deed poll?”

  “It’s the legal procedure used when the name of a British subject is changed. Ari Shazaz’s name was changed at the age of nine, after his parents’ divorce. His full name became Hamish Algernon McCallister.”