Severe Clear sb-24

by Stuart Woods

  “Sure,” Holly said, “come on in.” Felicity took a seat next to her on the sofa. “I think there’s some brandy over there,” Holly said, nodding toward a bookcase. “Can I get you one?”

  “A small one, please,” Felicity replied.

  Holly walked across the room and poked around a row of books until a panel came down, revealing a fully stocked bar. She returned to the sofa with a bottle of Remy Martin and two snifters. She set them on the table. “You decide what a small one is.”

  Felicity poured herself a stiff cognac, and Holly followed suit. “There’s something in the air,” Felicity said. “Anything I can help with?”

  Holly took a sip of her brandy. “Now that you mention it, yes. Can you call your service and see what, if anything, you have on a Mohammad Shazaz, called Mo?”

  “Certainly,” Felicity said, reaching into her handbag for her phone. “Just give me a moment.” She pressed a button. “Architect here,” she said. “Director of records, please.” After issuing instructions, she hung up. “There. Shouldn’t take long.”

  “We haven’t had much of a chance to talk,” Holly said.

  “Busy, busy, both of us.”

  “I was looking forward to a little R amp;R when the agreement was signed, but now I don’t know.”

  “I suspect you’re talking about the discovery of the bomb earlier today, and about Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.”

  Holly nodded. “My best guess is that one of them is connected to the bomb and that the other two are lurking somewhere nearby.”

  “That seems a logical conclusion,” Felicity said. “But after today’s search of the property, it would seem that they haven’t got the other two on the property. Yet.”

  “You think they’re going to try?”

  “One would suppose.”

  “Your people at GCHQ picked up some of the same e-mails as NSA did, didn’t they?”

  “That is so.”

  “You know what bothers me about that?”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s too easy.”

  Felicity took a sip of brandy. “How so?”

  “I mean, if you were running three operatives in a foreign location, would you pick easily connected names for them? Say, Tom, Dick, and Harry?”

  “Or Wynken, Blynken, and Nod? That would be rather poor tradecraft, wouldn’t it?”

  “It’s so stupid, it would have to be deliberate,” Holly said.

  48

  Holly and Felicity had nearly finished their cognac when Felicity’s phone rang. “Yes?” She listened intently. “You’ve checked every database? Thank you.” She hung up and turned to Holly. “We don’t know him.”

  Holly sighed. “How has this person, who we know exists, eluded both our services’ attention until the past couple of weeks?”

  “Holly, there are zillions of people on earth that we have no record of. Maybe in the next century or two we’ll know everything about everybody, but not yet.”

  Holly’s phone rang. “Barker.”

  “It’s Tom Riley. Scramble.” They both scrambled.

  “Okay, shoot,” Holly said, putting her phone on speaker so Felicity could hear.

  “A Bentley Mulsanne registered to Hamish McCallister is parked outside a house on the Chelsea Embankment, with a neighborhood parking permit stuck to the windshield, also registered to McCallister. A housemaid entered and a couple of tradespeople have been seen to come and go. We sent two operatives to the front door, posing as Mormon missionaries. The door was answered by a uniformed butler who said that Mr. McCallister was not at home, which in butlerese means he might be there but isn’t receiving callers. Our ‘missionaries’ tried to engage the butler further, but he closed the door in their faces.”

  “So we don’t know who’s in the house, besides a butler and a housemaid?”

  “We called the house, which has an unlisted number, posing as alumni relations from Christchurch College, Oxford, and asked for Hamish. The butler said he was not at home. That’s it. If we want to know, fast, who’s in the house, nothing short of phoning in a false fire alarm is available, and that might get more of Mr. McCallister’s attention than we want.”

  “Anything on the presence of Mo on the Isle of Murk?”

  “One of our people phoned the post office on the isle, posing as a Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs official, and inquired about mail deliveries to the house. The postmistress said that the post delivered had seemed routine for the past month, nothing addressed to a Shazaz. The most interesting delivery to the house was a package from Paxton amp; Whitfield, a well-known London cheese shop, marked ‘Perishables enclosed. Kindly deliver without delay.’ The evidence will probably have been consumed by now.”

  “So we don’t know if Mo was there or if he wasn’t?”

  “Correct.”

  “Did you find out anything at all about the man?”

  “A birth certificate, records of graduation from Eton and Oxford, a British driving license, no photograph. His address is the same as his brother’s, no employer stated on his tax returns, so he must have a private income. We haven’t been able to locate a photograph since he left Eton-none at Oxford-and he’s never made the papers or been arrested, except for two speeding tickets on the M4 motorway, four and seven years ago, both promptly paid. He’s a member of Annabel’s, Mark’s Club, Harry’s Bar, and George, all founded by Mark Burley, deceased, now owned by his heirs. He has charge accounts at Harrods, Fortnum amp; Mason, Kilgour, French amp; Stanbury tailors, Turnbull amp; Asser shirtmakers, and John Lobb bootmakers. Clean credit record. All this adds up to an overprivileged upper-class twit, except that his father was Syrian and his mother Egyptian, both deceased.”

  “Good job, Tom, thank you. Please stay on locating Mo and call with any news.”

  “Will do.” He hung up.

  Holly pressed the end button. “I’m surprised your people didn’t have any of that,” she said to Felicity.

  “You asked what we had, not what we could find out,” Felicity replied archly. “Still, your people did very well in the course of a single brandy.”

  “They did, didn’t they? I’m pleased.”

  “You should be-that would have taken my lot half a day.”

  “Algernon,” Holly said.

  “What?”

  “The signer of the e-mails. He’s running Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, and he doesn’t care if we find them, as long as it takes our eye off the ball-off him, Algernon.”

  “In that case, you’re unlikely to find the trio alive.”

  “Are you thinking suicide bombs?”

  Felicity shook her head. “The only suiciders al Qaeda has used in the States are the 9/11 hijackers. I think it’s more likely that Algernon will erase the three himself when he’s done with them. If caught, they might identify him.”

  “It bothers me that we haven’t found out who brought in the bomb found in the wine storage room.”

  “I expect the Secret Service are working that very hard. They’ll be interviewing the restaurant and kitchen staff.”

  “I suppose it could have been brought onto the premises by somebody delivering wine or booze,” Holly said. “Which will make him harder to find.”

  “I don’t know,” Felicity said, “I think it might more likely be an inside person, who brought the item in and hid it. Otherwise, some worker might have stumbled on it while unpacking bottles.”

  At that moment, Special Agent Steve Rifkin was sitting in The Arrington’s main restaurant with two of his agents and a list of food and beverage staff. “And you’ve interviewed all of these?” he asked, holding up the list.

  “Every one,” an agent replied.

  “How did you classify them?”

  “We didn’t. We just talked to everyone, in alphabetical order.”

  “Let’s take another look at this,” Rifkin said. “I think that whoever brought the device in is more likely to be in a supervisory position, because he knew where to put the bomb where it w
ouldn’t be found before he needed it.”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  “All right, then,” Rifkin said, handing the man back his list, “eliminate all the waiters, bartenders, busboys, dishwashers, and cooks from your list, and let’s see who we have left.”

  The two men divided the list between them and went to work, crossing out names. After a few minutes, they handed back the list to Rifkin. “We’re down to a dozen,” one of them said.

  “Now, let’s eliminate everyone who does not deal directly with wines and spirits.”

  That took another minute. “In this building, three,” he said. “The restaurant manager, the headwaiter, and the chief bartender, who oversees all the bars.”

  “Read me a profile of each of them,” Rifkin said.

  “All right,” an agent said, consulting his notes. “Restaurant manager, Enzo Pagani, born Naples, fifty-six years ago, came to New York at eighteen, worked his way up from busboy to maitre d’ over twenty-odd years, worked two years in that position at a Las Vegas casino, promoted to restaurant manager, then hired out of there by The Arrington.”

  “Did he apply?”

  The agent looked at his notes. “No, they approached him.”

  “He’s not our guy,” Rifkin said. “How about the headwaiter?”

  “Pierre du Bois, born Marseilles, forty-nine years ago, came to U.S. as a child, to New Orleans, long career in restaurants there, then hired from Commander’s Palace by The Arrington.”

  “Not our guy,” Rifkin said. “Who is the other one?”

  “Chief bartender, Michael Gennaro. Born U.S. of Italian parents thirty-eight years ago, worked in his family’s restaurant in Studio City since childhood, doing pretty much everything. Applied to the Beverly Hills Hotel eight years ago for a bartender’s job, then came to The Arrington, answered an ad in a restaurant trade magazine for a bartender’s job, got hired as chief bartender.”

  “That’s interesting,” Rifkin said, “that he got hired for a bigger job than they advertised for. I don’t think he’s our guy, either, but find out more about him fast. Start with the guy who hired him. And find out what his religion is.”

  “How are we going to do that?” an agent asked. “They can’t ask for that information on an employment application.”

  “Ask Michael Gennaro,” Rifkin said.

  The two agents got up and left the room. Rifkin looked at his watch; he was hungry. He got up and went in search of food.

  49

  Steve Rifkin had already talked to the food and beverage manager; now he was staring across the table at Michael Gennaro, the chief bartender. Rifkin looked for trembling, rapid respiration, sweat on the brow or lip, and rapid blinking. Nothing: cool, calm, and collected. He gave Gennaro a little smile. “Good morning,” he said.

  Gennaro returned the little smile. “Good morning.”

  “My name is Steve Rifkin. May I call you Michael?”

  “Sure.”

  “Your boss has given you a glowing report,” Rifkin said. “First, he liked the way your job interview went, then he liked the way you’ve done the job he gave you.”

  “I’ve hardly done it yet,” Gennaro said. “Our first guests are just arriving, and nobody’s asked for a drink, so far.”

  “I guess not,” Rifkin said, chuckling appreciatively. He looked at Gennaro’s employment application. “I guess you know just about everything about restaurants, don’t you?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “Why did you leave the family business?”

  “I had two older brothers who wouldn’t go first.”

  “No room at the top, huh?”

  “And my father is still running the place.”

  “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 maitre 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?”

  “Maitre 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.”