Extraordinary Powers

by Joseph Finder

  “Why?”

  “Too far. Much too far. The helicopter’s way too slow.”

  “Montreal.”

  “Likely. Not definitely, but I’d calculate that there’s a high probability the helicopter is taking him to Montreal, where he’s either stopping for a while—”

  “Or getting onto a plane for Washington. If we check all scheduled flights from Montreal to Washington—”

  “Sure,” I said impatiently, “if he’s taking a commercial flight. More likely, he’s chartered a plane.”

  “Why? Wouldn’t a commercial flight be safer?”

  “Yes, but a private plane is much more flexible and anonymous in its own way. I’d charter a plane. All right. Let’s assume the chopper’s taking him to Montreal.” I looked at my watch. “Probably he’s there by now.”

  “But where? Which airport?”

  “Montreal’s got Dorval and Mirabel. That’s two airstrips, not to mention any number of small unnamed airstrips between here and Montreal.”

  “But there must be a limited number of airplane charter companies listed in Montreal,” Molly said. She pulled a telephone book from the floor, near the couch. “If we call each one—”

  “No!” I exclaimed too loudly. “Most of them won’t be answering the phone at this time of night. And who’s to say your father made arrangements with a Canadian charter company? It might have been any of thousands of U.S. companies!”

  Molly sank to the couch, her hands flat against her face. “Oh, God, Ben. What can we do?”

  I looked at my watch again. “We don’t have a choice,” I said. “We have to get to Washington and stop him there.”

  “But we don’t know where he’s going to be in Washington!”

  “Sure we do. The Hart Senate Office Building, Room 216, at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings.”

  “But before that! We have no idea where he’s going to be before that!”

  She was right, of course. The most we could hope to do was to show up at the hearing room and—

  And what?

  How in the world could we stop her father, protect him?

  The solution, I suddenly realized, was in my head. My heart began to pound with excitement and fear.

  A few moments before he was so gruesomely killed, Johannes Hesse, alias “Max,” had thought that another assassin would take his place.

  I couldn’t stop Harrison Sinclair, but I could stop his assassin.

  If anyone could, I could.

  “Get dressed,” I said. “I’ve got it figured out.”

  It was just after four-thirty in the morning.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  Three hours later—at almost seven-thirty on the morning of the last day—our small plane touched down in a small airport in rural Massachusetts. Less than twelve hours remained, and although it was an unbroken stretch of time, I feared (with good reason) that it wouldn’t be enough.

  From Lac Tremblant, Molly had contacted a small private airplane charter company called Compagnie Aéronautique Lanier, based in Montreal, which had advertised the availability of twenty-four-hour emergency call service. Her call had been routed to the firm’s on-call pilot and had awakened him. Molly explained that she was a physician who needed to be flown to Montreal’s Dorval Airport on an emergency basis. She furnished the exact map coordinates of her father’s helipad, and a little over an hour later we were picked up in a Bell 206 Jet Ranger.

  At Dorval, we had made arrangements with another charter firm to fly us from Montreal to Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Massachusetts. Given a choice of planes—a Seneca II, a Commander, a King Air prop jet, or a Citation 501—we chose the Citation, which was by far the fastest, capable of flying at 350 miles per hour. At Dorval, we easily cleared customs: our false American passports (we used Mr. and Mrs. John Brewer, which still left one virgin set if ever we needed to become the Mr. and Mrs. Alan Crowells) were barely inspected, and in any case, once Molly explained that it was a medical emergency, we were rushed through.

  At Hanscom we rented a car and I drove the thirty miles or so as quickly as I dared, at precisely the speed limit. Once I had fully explained my plan to Molly, we sat in grim silence. She was terrified, but probably saw no logic in quarreling with me, since she was unable to devise any less risky plan to save her father’s life. I needed to clear my mind as much as possible, to consider every possibility of failure. I knew that Molly would have appreciated some reassurance now, but I had none to offer, and besides, it was all I could do to think my plan through to its end.

  I knew, too, that it would be a disaster to be stopped for speeding. I’d rented the car with a false New York State driver’s license and counterfeit Visa credit card. We’d gotten by the car rental agency, but we would not survive the routine license check by a Massachusetts state trooper that inevitably accompanies a speeding ticket. There would be no record in their interstate computer data bank of my license, and the entire game would be over.

  So I drove carefully through the morning rush-hour traffic to the town of Shrewsbury. At a little before eight-thirty we drove up to the small yellow ranch-style suburban house that belonged to a man named Donald Seeger.

  Seeger was, to be honest, a calculated risk. He was a firearms dealer, the owner of two retail gun shops on the outskirts of Boston. He provided firearms for the state police and, as necessary, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (whenever the FBI needed to procure particular weapons quickly without going through cumbersome bureaucratic channels).

  Seeger occupied a peculiar gray area of the legal firearms market, somewhere between the gun manufacturers and retail customers, who for one reason or another require such great discretion that they cannot deal directly either with distributors or the traditional retail outlets.

  More important, though, I knew him just well enough to trust him. A law school classmate of mine had grown up in Shrewsbury and knew Seeger as a family friend. Seeger, who rarely dealt with lawyers, and (like virtually everybody, it seems) despised the lot of them, needed some quick (and free) legal advice on dealing with a disgruntled small-arms manufacturer, my law school friend told me. It certainly wasn’t my area of expertise, but I had an associate dig up the answer for him. Seeger was duly grateful, and took me out to a thank-you dinner at a good steak house in Boston. “If I can ever do anything for you,” he told me over filet mignon, hoisting his mug of Bass ale, “you just give me a call.” At the time, I figured I’d never see the guy again. Now, however, it was time to collect.

  His wife answered the door in a faded housedress decorated with tiny blue cornflowers.

  “Don’s at work,” she said, squinting at us suspiciously. “He usually leaves between seven-thirty and eight.”

  * * *

  Seeger’s office-cum-warehouse was a long, narrow, unmarked brick building on a busy main strip a few miles away, near a Ground Round. To all outside appearances, it might have been a public storage facility, perhaps a dry-cleaning plant, but the security system within was quite sophisticated.

  He was naturally surprised to see me when I rang, but rushed toward the door with a broad smile. He was in his early fifties, physically quite fit, with a bull neck. He wore his blue blazer, which was about a size too tight on him, unbuttoned.

  “The lawyer, right?” he said, ushering us past metal shelves stacked high with boxes of guns. “Ellison. What the hell you doing in this neck of the woods?”

  I told him what I wanted.

  Seeger, who is basically unflappable, paused for an instant, shrewdly assessing me.

  He shrugged. “You got it,” he said.

  “One more thing,” I added. “Would you be able to obtain specifications for a Sirch-Gate III Model SMD200W walk-through metal detector?”

  He looked at me for a long, long time.

  “I might,” he said.

  “It’s important.”

  “I figured as much. Yeah. I got a friend who’s a security consultant. I can get him to fax them
over in a couple of minutes.”

  * * *

  I paid in cash, of course. By the time we had finished our transaction, the medical supply house in Framingham, ten miles or so down the road, was open for business.

  The shop, which specialized in equipment for invalids, had quite a few wheelchairs on display. Most of them I could rule out at once. Once I explained that I was purchasing one for my father, the salesman immediately recommended that I choose one of the lightweight chairs, which were easier to lift into and out of a car. I told him, however, that my father was particular and not a little eccentric, that he preferred a chair made of as much steel, and as little aluminum, as possible. He wanted something sturdy.

  Eventually, I settled on a good, solid, old-fashioned wheelchair made by Invacare. It was extremely heavy; its frame was constructed of brazed, tubular carbon steel, chrome-plated. But most important, the arm tubing was of sufficient diameter for my purposes.

  I loaded it, enormously heavy in its cardboard carton, into the trunk, and dropped Molly at a nearby shopping mall to purchase a number of items: an expensive pin-striped blue suit two sizes larger than I usually wore, a shirt, cuff links, and a few other things.

  While she shopped, I proceeded to a small auto-body garage in nearby Worcester. The owner, a large, rotund ex-convict named Jack D’Onofrio, had been recommended to me by Seeger. He was temperamental, Seeger explained, but a master metalworker. Seeger had called ahead and informed D’Onofrio that I was a good friend of his, that he should take care of me and I’d take care of him in return.

  D’Onofrio, however, was not in good humor. He inspected the wheelchair irritably, distastefully, poking at the gray plastic armrests that were affixed to the steel arm tubing with Phillips-head screws.

  “I don’t know,” he said at last. “It’s not so easy trying to mill this kind of plastic. I could replace the armrests with teak. Make it a hell of a lot easier.”

  I considered for a moment, then said, “Go ahead.”

  “The steel shouldn’t be a problem. Cut and weld. But I’ll have to change the diameter of the front tubing.”

  “The join must not show, even at close inspection,” I said. “What about using a surgical hacksaw to cut the tubing?”

  “That’s what I planned to do.”

  “Good. But we need it in an hour or two.”

  “An hour?” he gasped. “You gotta be fucking kidding.” He waved his short, pudgy arms around the cluttered shop. “Looka this. We’re jammed. Totally raked. Up to our fucking eyeballs!”

  An hour, even two hours, was pressing it but not impossible. He was negotiating, of course. I had no time to waste, however. I pulled out an envelope of bills and flashed them.

  “We’re prepared to pay a premium,” I said.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  * * *

  The final meeting was the most difficult to arrange, and in some ways the riskiest. From time to time police forces, the FBI, and the CIA must call upon the services of specialists in undercover disguise techniques. Usually, they are trained in the theater, in makeup and prosthesis application, but undercover disguise is a highly specialized and rare art. The artist must be able to transform an undercover officer into someone else entirely unrecognizable, capable of withstanding the closest scrutiny. The techniques are therefore limited, and the artists few.

  Perhaps the best, a man who had done occasional work for the CIA (as well as a long list of movie and television stars and several prominent religious and political leaders), had retired to Florida, I discovered. Finally, after several telephone calls to Boston costume and theatrical companies, I turned up the name of an old vet, a Hungarian named Ivo Balog, who had done some work for the FBI, so he was familiar with the requisite artistry. He had, I was informed, enabled the same FBI undercover officer to infiltrate a Providence-based Mafia family not once but twice. This was good enough for me. He worked out of an old office building in downtown Boston, as part owner of a theatrical makeup company. I reached him shortly before noon.

  Since there was no time to drive into Boston and back, we arranged to have him meet me at a Holiday Inn in Worcester, where I had reserved a room for the day and night. In order to make time for me, he had to clear the remainder of his day; I let him know it would be more than worth his while.

  “We have to split up,” I told Molly when we reached the Holiday Inn. “You finalize the flight arrangements. Meet me back here when you’re done.”

  Ivo Balog was in his late sixties, with the coarse features and reddened complexion of a heavy drinker. It became apparent at once, however, that whatever Balog’s personal failings, he was indeed a wizard.

  Meticulous and acutely intelligent, he spent perhaps a quarter of an hour simply studying my face and form before even opening his makeup case.

  “But who will you be exactly?” Balog demanded.

  My answer, which I thought was perfectly reasoned out, did not satisfy him. “What does the person you wish to become do for a living?” he asked. “Where does he live? Is he wealthy or not? Does he smoke? Is he married?”

  We conversed for several minutes, concocting this false biography. Several times he objected to my suggestions, saying over and over again, his mantra, in his thickly accented English: “No. The essence of good design is simplicity.”

  Balog bleached the color out of my dark brown hair and eyebrows and then combed gray dye through them. “I can add ten, perhaps fifteen years to your age,” he cautioned. “Anything more will be dangerous.”

  He had no idea why I was doing this, but he unquestionably sensed the tension in both of us. I appreciated his thoroughness and caution.

  He applied a chemical artificial-tanning lotion to my face, dabbing it on carefully to avoid any telltale lines. “This will take at least two hours to develop,” he said. “I assume we have that much time.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Good. Let me see the clothes you’ll be wearing.”

  He inspected the suit and highly polished black shoes, nodding with approval. Then he thought of something. “But the armor—”

  “Here,” I said, holding up the Safariland “Cool Max” T-shirt, made of ultra-lightweight Spectra fiber, which Seeger had assured me is ten times stronger than steel.

  “Nice,” Balog said admiringly. “Quite slim.”

  By the time the tanning creme had done its work, Balog had applied enamel paint to darken my teeth and had fitted me with a fully realistic-appearing, neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper-gray beard and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.

  When Molly returned to the room, she did a true double take, her hand to her mouth.

  “My God,” she said. “You fooled me for a second!”

  “A second’s not good enough,” I said, then turned to look at myself for the first time in the hotel room mirror. I, too, was astonished. The transformation was nothing short of extraordinary.

  “The chair’s in the trunk,” she said. “You’re going to have to give it a careful inspection. Listen…” She glanced at the makeup artist warily. I asked him to step into the hallway for a few moments so we could talk.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “There was a problem with the hearing,” she said. “Ordinarily, Senate hearings are open to the public, except for those designated specifically as closed. But this time for some reason—maybe because it’s being televised live—they’re admitting only members of the press and ‘invited guests.’”

  I replied calmly, unwilling to succumb to panic. “You said was. ‘There was a problem.’”

  Her smile was wan; something was still troubling her. “I placed a call to the office of the junior senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” she said. “I told him I was the administrative assistant to a Dr. Charles Lloyd of Weston, Massachusetts, who’s in Washington for the day and wants to see a real-live Senate hearing in action. The senator’s people are always delighted to do a favor for a constituent. A Senate pass is waiting fo
r you at the hearing room.”

  She leaned over and kissed me on the forehead.

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I don’t have any ID in that name, and there’s no time to—”

  “They won’t be requesting ID at the security check. I asked—I told them your wallet had been pickpocketed; they suggested you call the D.C. police about that. Anyway, they never request ID for admittance to open hearings—they rarely require passes, for that matter.”

  “And what if they check and discover there’s no such person?”

  “They won’t check, and even if they did, there is such a person. Charlie Lloyd is the chief of the surgical division at Mass. General Hospital. He always spends the entire month in the South of France. I double-checked. Right now Dr. Lloyd and his wife are vacationing in the Îles d’Hyères, off the coast of Toulon, on the Côte d’Azur. Of course, his answering service is instructed only to tell callers he’s out of town. No one likes to hear that their surgeon’s boozing it up in Provence or whatever.”

  “You’re a genius.”

  She bowed modestly. “Thank you. Now, about the flight—”

  I sensed immediately from her tone that all was not right. “No, Molly. There isn’t a hitch in the flight, is there?”

  She replied with a sudden edge of hysteria. “I called every single charter company within a hundred-mile radius. I could find only one that had a plane available at this late notice. Everyone else has been booked for at least a week.”

  “So you booked that plane, I assume…?”

  She hesitated. “Yes. I did. But it’s not nearby. The company’s at Logan Airport.”

  “That’s an hour away!” I thundered. I looked at my watch; it was after three o’clock in the afternoon. We had to be at the Senate before seven. That left us only four hours! “Tell them to have the plane meet us at Hanscom. Pay whatever they ask. Just do it!”

  “I did it!” Molly exploded in return. “I did it, dammit! I offered to double, even triple their rates! But the only plane they had—a twin-engine Cessna 303—wasn’t going to be available until noon or one, and then it had to be fueled and whatever else they—”