Mike’s mother had been prepared for a quick departure from the USA for decades. Although everything had been running extraordinary well ever since she had arrived with a two months old baby boy and the equivalent of five million euros in New York more than fifty years ago, she had always known that decades of peace would be no guarantee that there couldn’t be an outbreak of war tomorrow. All their investments were listed in the names of various companies and trusts and managed by other companies, trusts and people who knew nothing about the real owners. It was highly unlikely that the people who were trying to kill Mike knew anything definite about her and Mikes distributed wealth and network of companies and contacts. Natalie Richard was a financial and managerial genius. With the help of Steven, Vanessa and Sarah she had developed systems and structures that allowed them to change their identities and move to other parts of the world from one day to the next. New York had been a good home but this was not to say that there were no other homes.
They had moved into the hotel where they had spent the night late yesterday. They were scheduled to be driven to Newark international airport by taxi later today and then depart in a hired private Gulfstream jet from New York to Rome via Paris. They had managed their exit from Natalie’s modest mansion unobserved via a secret tunnel. Anyone watching the building would have every reason to be convinced that they were still inside the house. The house looked occupied. It looked alive. An automatic system ensured that the lights and TV sets went on and off in the same manner in which they would go on and off if six people actually lived inside.
In a week’s time a real estate and property management company would arrive, empty the mansion, clean it and put it on the market. The furniture would be auctioned off and the money obtained distributed amongst several charity organisations. The arrival and the activities of the real estate and property management company would be the first sign telling an observer that the house was no longer occupied. By that time the six occupants would already feel at home in another mansion in a suburb of Rome. Being very wealthy has advantages, especially if you also have the skills to manage your wealth in a way that it serves you and not in a way that it causes you stress.
They were having breakfast and talking amongst themselves. They knew what they had to do and what the hours ahead would be all about. The administration of Christina’s American assets had also been taken care of. Most of it could continue the way Christina had set it up, some of it would have to be changed, perhaps integrated with the administration of Mike’s assets, to ensure that there was no way that anybody could trace Christina’s location in Rome via her assets. Mike’s mother and her three partners and friends had everything well prepared. Their departure from New York felt more like a well planned evacuation exercise and not like an escape from a life threatening situation.
The only one who felt slightly anxious was Christina. “Shouldn’t we perhaps think through everything we have to do once more,” she asked, “just to make sure we haven’t missed anything?”
“Good idea. You can’t check and double check things too many times,” Mike’s mother replied. She listed step by step everything that had been taken care of and every step and task that was still ahead of them during the coming days. She took her time and it took her nearly thirty minutes to cover the two hundred or so tasks that she was referring to. It was all etched into her mind; she didn’t need a list and she didn’t need the assistance of Steven, Sarah or Vanessa. Christina could see that the people around her ware paying attention and in their own minds analysed, compared and checked everything Mike’s mother talked about. Sometimes they nodded, sometimes they commented on something with one or two words, sometimes they just glanced at each other for confirmation that another related issue had also been taken care of. Christina realized that the five people sitting with her at the breakfast table worked together like the modules and sub-modules of an extraordinarily well programmed computer system or an extraordinarily well designed and built machine. The power of one mind, she thought, is exactly that: the power of one mind; however, the power of five minds, as in this case, is not just the power of one mind multiplied by five; it is an awful lot more; it can represent a several hundredfold increase in mind power for which no mathematical formula has yet been developed.
The only one of the five who paid less attention was Mike. Every now and then he glanced towards the TV set. It seemed that he was listening with one ear to what his mother had to say and with the other ear to the news.
Suddenly he got up and said, “Listen to this.” He walked to the TV set, took the remote control and turned up the volume; then, with another push of a button, he switched on the DVD recorder.
The CNN news report presented a story about an attempted assassination of an artist in a five star hotel in Paris. A few seconds earlier it seemed to Mike that the report had shown the face of a man who seemed familiar to him. He hoped they would show the man’s face again.
The report showed paintings by Picasso, Kandinsky, Dali and other famous artists that were no longer alive. Fake paintings, as it turned out. The report showed the portraits of three painters in their forties. Murdered painters! There were details about when the murders had taken place and what the police investigations had established so far. Very little. Mike registered that the crimes had taken place prior to the murder of the publisher in the bar in New York, but he couldn’t see a link between the events.
The CNN people did their best to stretch the story and make it interesting and spectacular without totally forgetting that three people had been killed. They interviewed people who had been interviewed by the police. Nobody could understand why the three artists, who were respected and had remained modest despite their success, had been murdered. The crime was most certainly committed by an organization with substantial resources, a police inspector said. A single person could not kill three people at three different locations at the same time. That was impossible, the reporter said. Not really, the policeman disagreed, but he admitted that it was very, very unlikely. The reporter looked surprised and said nothing.
The report showed a fourth painter. It seemed to Mike that he had seen the same man earlier from the corner of his eye, just a few seconds before he had seen the face of the man who seemed familiar to him. An attempt to kill that fourth painter was made in the café of a hotel earlier today, the presenter stated. The thought flashed through Mike’s mind that the time in Paris was six hours ahead of the time in New York. This could have happened in Paris at around the same time as it is now in New York, he thought.
The quick thinking and amazing action of an American tourist by the name of Tony Jackson had saved the painter’s life. Two men and one woman, perhaps struggling actors, Mike thought, demonstrated what had happened in the hotel at breakfast time according to the understanding of the reporter. One man pushed the other man off his chair. The man fell on the floor. (CNN didn’t include the scene where the waitress fell on top of the painter.) Then there was a bang. It sounded as if someone had hit a hammer on the table. The CNN people in Paris were probably in a bit of a hurry. If they had recreated the scene in America, they would have had no difficulty finding a gun and shooting in the air and the bang would have sounded more realistic. But the actor who grabbed the breakfast plate and made it fly through the air did a good job. They didn’t show how the plate actually hit the centre of the throat of the other actor. They didn’t go that far. But the reporter held the plate in front of the other person’s throat to demonstrate what had happened.
They showed a picture of Tony Jackson. The picture had been taken by someone with a cell phone a minute or two after the event. Tony looked composed. A bit like a man who had done what had to be done and now was satisfied with the result but would rather have been somewhere else, Mike thought. At the same moment he remembered whose face he was looking at.
“That’s the man who saved my life in the bar when the publisher was killed,” he said. A second later he turned to Steven, “Get on
to your contacts at CNN. It would be great if they could get us the address of this Tony Jackson. It’s probably the hotel where the shooting took place. They didn’t mention the name of the hotel. The hotel management probably had to pay them a bit to keep this piece of information out of the news. It is not good advertising if people get shot at in your hotel during breakfast.”
“They won’t be able to keep it out of the news for long,” Steven replied.
“Probably not,” Mike agreed.
“The hotel is The Westin Paris,” Vanessa said. “I am pretty certain about that.”
“How come?”
“I stayed there once for a few nights.”
“Okay,” Mike said, “let’s see how we go.” He went to the phone, dialled International Enquiry Services and obtained the number of The Westin Paris. A minute later he phoned the hotel and asked for Tony Jackson.
He listened.
“Yes, Mr Tony Jackson from New York,” Mike confirmed.
He listened for a few more seconds before he hung up and said, “Thank you.”
35
“This is almost like what happened in that bar New York,” Tony said, “only a lot, lot worse.” For a moment he felt like getting up, taking Nancy by her hand and walking away, but he knew that this would make a complicated situation only more complicated.
“You saved Jean’s life,” Nancy said. “That’s good.”
“I guess you’re right. But I hate publicity; I really, really hate publicity. In a few minutes the police will be here, the press will be here, any moment people will take photos with their mobile phones; in a few minutes you can see my face on facebook, on twitter … This is really, really bad for a man in my profession.”
Tony was still sitting in his chair. As he spoke, just loud enough for Nancy to hear him, his eyes scanned the room, just in case there was a second man with a pistol or in case someone was running away in a hurry. Glancing at Jean and the good-looking waitress a funny thought flashed through his mind: They were really beautifully entangled and looked like a couple from a comedy scene; hopefully one day I will tell some friends about this and we all can have a good laugh about it.
Somehow the scenario seemed unreal. There was a lot of screaming, people jumping up, running towards the exit, bumping into each other, chairs and even a table were knocked over, Jean and the waitress managed to get onto their feet while the man who only a few seconds earlier triggered a shot from a pistol was clutching his throat and slowly going to the ground; Tony and Nancy stayed calm. Tony kept scanning the room. Nancy looked utterly amazed; amazed and fascinated. Jean and the waitress stood beside each other, almost as if they had found each other. Jean said, “Shit!” He repeated the word twice. The waitress asked, “What happened?” It seemed like she was the only person in the room who didn’t know what had happened.
Tony got up and walked to the would be assassin. He realized that the man was unable to breathe and may only have another one or two minutes to live unless he received urgent medical assistance.
With a voice that brought everybody who was still in the room to a stop he yelled, “We need a doctor! Is there a doctor in here?! We need a doctor NOW!”
For four or five seconds nothing happened. The room was now so quiet, it was almost unreal. A woman in her early fifties, slightly overweighed and with a face that looked more like that of someone who had worked outdoors all her life and not like the face of a doctor, turned towards Tony and said, “I’m a doctor.” She spoke English with a French accent, just as Tony had yelled in English with an American accent.
“He can’t breathe,” Tony said and pointed to the man on the floor.
“Why can’t he breathe?” The woman walked towards the man. Probably like many people in the breakfast room, she had only heard the shot and then saw the entanglement of Jean and the waitress on the floor, but had not seen the plate that followed the bullet within a fraction of a second, albeit flying in the opposite direction.
“A plate hit his larynx.”
“How can a plate hit his larynx?”
“Does it matter?” Tony replied. “The real question is, can you help him or are you going to let him die?”
The way the woman looked at Tony it was obvious that she wasn’t entirely happy with his answer. However, she said nothing. She kneeled down to the man, opened his mouth as much as possible and poked her index finger as deep as possible into the man’s mouth and throat. When she didn’t achieve the desired result, she said to Tony, “Give me a spoon.” Tony took a spoon from a table and handed it to her. She repeated what she had done before, only this time she used the spoon instead of her index finger. Then, with the spoon still in the man’s throat, she threw herself with all her weight onto the man’s chest. This will kill him, Tony thought. But he was wrong. A hissing noise came out of the man’s mouth, the doctor removed the spoon and the man started to cough and breathe. “My lucky day,” the lady doctor said. “I didn’t think this would work, but I had to try something before cutting a hole in his throat.”
“Thank you. Very impressive,” Tony responded. He helped her to her feet. The man’s face recovered slowly from blue to white to red.
The police and the press arrived almost at the same time. A few minutes later commissaire Daniel Brice turned up. After he had inspected the scene and the would be assassin was taken to a hospital by an ambulance and under police guard, he asked the hotel manager for an empty conference room, which the manager was happy to provide. He clearly did not appreciate the presence of police officers in the café.
Sitting in the conference room, Tony told the commissaire what had happened. The commissaire’s assistant, a monsieur Chanler Corbin, Nancy and Jean were also present.
After Tony had finished his story, the commissaire asked him, “Can you please explain why monsieur Jean Simon is here? The police are searching all over France for him and he is having breakfast in a five star hotel in Paris with American tourists, somehow this looks very strange to me.”
“No need to be suspicious,” Tony explained. “Nancy and I have spent the last few days telling half of Paris that we were looking for Jean and that we are staying in The Westin. Somehow this message got through to Jean, he contacted us by phone this morning and we agreed to meet for breakfast.”
“Who else knew about this breakfast meeting?” the commissaire asked.
“Good question,” Jean said. “I didn’t tell anybody.”
“Neither did we,” Tony added. “I suspect the people who are trying to kill Jean heard about our interest in him and kept us under surveillance. When they saw that we were having breakfast together they made a snap decision and decided to use the opportunity to kill him.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“That’s right; maybe, maybe not. It’s is just conjecture.”
“Where did you learn to throw a plate like this?” the commissaire asked Tony.
Without hesitating Tony replied, “I saw it on TV.”
“I too saw it on TV, but I doubt that I could have aimed as well as you did,” the commissaire replied. He sounded slightly irritated and it was easy to see that he didn’t believe a word Tony had said.
“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Tony disagreed. “You have no idea what you are capable of in an emergency. I threw the plate and with a bit of good luck on my side the plate found the perfect spot.”
Turning to Jean the commissaire asked, “Can you please tell me exactly what happened when you were attacked in your apartment? I assume that you were attacked.”
“Sure,” Jean replied, and told the commissaire the same story he had told Tony and Nancy earlier.
“Interesting …” the commissaire mumbled. “They are looking for a recipe for eternal life. Are you sure that’s what they said?”
“Absolutely.”
“Tell me about the Englishman who had visited you the previous day?”
“What do you want to know about him?”
“Everything. Wh
at did he want? Tell me about the conversation you two had. What did he look like? What behaviour did he display? Was there anything unusual about him?”
“He was a polite, elderly gentleman; in his sixties, I would say. He was overweight and told me from the start that he was not interested in my paintings. He apologized for this. Paintings and music meant nothing to him, he said. His life, he continued, was all about words, not spoken words, but written words, preferably written a long, long time ago.
“I kind of liked the man from the start and was wondering why he had decided to visit me. He realized this and said that I was probably wondering why he was there. I told him that he was reading my thoughts. I added that to the best of my knowledge I was not in the possession of any old written words. I was thinking of books. The only written words in my apartment, I told him, were three novels: one written by a Henry Miller, one by an Ernest Hemingway and one by a more recent author, a Fred … Fred … something. Never heard of a Fred Something, the man said; but never mind, Miller and Hemingway’s word were a few decades old, but the words he was interested in were usually ancient.
“Of course, he continued, just by looking at words you can’t always see whether they were written yesterday or a thousand years ago. They may have been written a thousand years ago and somebody scribbled or typed them on a piece of paper yesterday and they look like brand new words. Even in a novel by Hemingway or Miller or what was the name of that other guy? … never mind, there could be hidden words that were written many centuries ago. One never knows. But he was quite confident that the words he was after were not hidden in the books by these three authors.
“But one of the three authors seems to be quite unknown to you, I interjected. True, but never mind, never mind, he said again, I am quite sure this Fred Something, or whatever his second name may be, has not hidden very old words in his book. Anyhow, what’s the title of his novel? I told him, The Invention of the Big Bang. Oh! Really. The Big Bang supposedly happened a long time ago. That could be interesting. On the other hand, I don’t believe in the Big Bang. Let’s forget it. Okay? Okay, I said.
An Almighty Conspiracy – A novel, a thriller, four people doing the unexpected Page 14
