Confessor

by John Gardner

  “The fact you were using Cataract shook me rigid.”

  “It was meant to shake you, Herb. I knew you’d be the one doing the donkey work, so I left everything for you to find. Everything except Worboys, because I reckoned that would put you in real danger.”

  “How did you know it’d be me?”

  Gus fiddled with the old pipe he always carried, and did not look Herbie in the eyes. “Oh, I knew.”

  “More, Gus. Come on. How?”

  “There were indications. He began to threaten me. Subtle, but enough to scare me off. By that time I had lost all interest. In a way, Herb, I felt I’d wasted my life. You now know what my real passion is. You don’t know how many times I wanted to leave and make some kind of a life as a professional performer. It’s strange, how the two arts run together, the magic and the method. Smoke and mirrors. So, one day I sat down with Carole and we planned how I could do it by killing off the old Gus Keene and resurrecting a full-time Damautus.”

  “You still haven’t told me, Gus.”

  “Told you what?”

  “How you knew I’d be dealing with the case.”

  “Ah. Herb, it’s quite embarrassing. Tony himself said to me that, should I drop dead, there was one person he could rely on.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “You were on the booze, old love. You’d lost weight, you were cracking up. He decided you’d be ideal. You’d screw up.”

  Herbie nodded sagely. “He was right. He was quite right.” A pause of around a hundred years seemed to pass. “You know, Gus, your sudden death saved my life. Thought about it often. You’re such a good old friend that I became driven. Got back in line, started eating and working—Oh, and of course, I discovered the wonderful art of magic.”

  It was Bex’s turn to give a deep sigh. “He’s doing card tricks all the time, Gus.”

  “Better than boozing.” Gus nodded at her. “Much better, I promise you, Bex.”

  Herbie’s brow wrinkled. “Gus, if people like Declan Norton had Tony on a string, why’d he put out a contract on him with the Vengeance team?”

  “The usual. The frighteners. Norton would know that Worboys—once he knew—would move heaven and earth to get back in the FFIRA’s good books. Once that contract was out, nobody had any real control over the Intiqam. You saw what he did, Herb? Moved himself and his family into safety and stayed there.”

  “Letting people get killed in the process.”

  “It was his own skin he protected, Herb. He couldn’t have cared less about who else got wiped out as long as he was safe. My guess is that he made contact with Norton and offered to do anything to save his own skin. Last night he paid all debts.”

  “And he probably read between the lines of what I was doing. Worked out, like I did, that you were still alive, Gus.”

  “I’m sure he was on your back all the way. In the end, he would know that you had to go, and that I had to be rendered really dead.”

  Herbie nodded, then squinted up at Gus. “Let’s move on. You dramatized your own death, Gus. How’d you do that?”

  “Trade secret, Herb. To be truthful with you, Worboys put the frighteners on. Either I had to die or I had to die, if you follow. So, I chose my own time and place.”

  “Sorry, Gus. They’ll give you hell. How did you manage it?”

  “In the magic fraternity there are some big mouths, people who talk, even give away secrets. Luckily I know a few folk who are blind, deaf and dumb when it comes to secrets.”

  “Give me a for instance, Gus. That odd business at your grave.”

  Gus threw his head back and laughed. “The Broken Wand Ceremony. Hope you liked that. Yes, a couple of magic friends did that for me. I hear Worboys had an entire watcher team with cameras trained on the grave.”

  Kruger nodded. “That was my first hint that he was concerned. Wouldn’t leave it alone. Had the grave watched after the funeral. Silly, I believe he knew you were still alive. Thought you’d come back to see how they’d planted you. But your death, Gus. Give me another for instance.”

  “For instance, an undertaker who was willing to provide a body. Fellow roughly my age and build. He was cremated on the afternoon of my ‘death.’”

  “How the …?”

  “Well, he didn’t attend his own cremation, if you see what I mean. My undertaker friend and I popped his body in the trunk of my car. I’d rigged everything. I got the explosives, set the whole thing up. Did all the wiring, very kosher except that the mercury switch wasn’t attached to anything. I put in a remote and switched it on just before we actually blew the thing.”

  He and his undertaker friend had driven in separate cars. The undertaker had parked on the far side of where the explosion would take place. “Found an ideal spot. His car couldn’t be seen from the road. Really, we didn’t expect anyone to pass by us. That road’s usually as quiet as the grave at three in the morning.”

  “But you were seen.”

  “Yes, I gathered that from Carole.”

  “Nobody knew what to make of it. So, you pushed the car off the road, then what?”

  “Set the remote first, then heaved it off the road. It trundled a few yards and we went on to pick up my friend’s car. As you know, I’d salted the body. My old Rolex, the Zippo Carole gave me. My MIMC lapel badge. We got into my mate’s car and drove back. I hit the remote just as we went through Wylye. Bloody great bang. Had a car stashed away in Salisbury, several bits of ID and a couple of passports. I was in New York by that night.”

  “Carole did a good act. Hell of a good act. Confused me as well.”

  “Yes, I coached her a bit, but you have to be an actor to be an interrogator. I also told her to play around with people like Jasmine if it ever came up. Make out that Jasmine was a male, that she’d had a run around the park with him. She is very good, Herb.”

  “Sure as hell she is.”

  “I made only one bad mistake …”

  “The telephones?”

  Gus Keene nodded. “I committed the worst sin, Herb. Didn’t check up on the system. I truly thought the Dower House had been disconnected from the main house. Didn’t realize everything was logged. That how you got on to us?”

  “Mainly. It was difficult. In the end, it was the telephone calls that did it. If we followed the theory that you were alive, then the calls did the final trick.” Herbie sighed, then cracked out, “Why? Why all those calls, Gus? Salisbury, the motorway stop, Heathrow and then New York. Why in hell did you compromise yourself?”

  “For Carole. She knew I was staging my own death. It frightened her. She was going to be called upon to act like hell. She was taking on the part of a shocked and grieving widow. Carole needed to know I was really okay, otherwise …Well, she might think I really was dead. She asked me to phone at regular intervals. It was a natural thing for her. I didn’t like the situation, but she made me promise. I understood why.”

  “Okay, Gus, now what about Jasmine?”

  “What about her? I ran her, and I ran that oaf Ishmael for the Security Service. Got a terrible shock about Jasmine. We had no prior knowledge of the Intiqam business, so that just blew up—if you’ll forgive the pun—after I had shuffled off this mortal coil.”

  “They’re going to want a lot more than that when they debrief you.”

  “They’ll get some nice stories. When it’s over, Carole and I are really going to have a go. See if we can make it with the magic. Great retirement scheme really.”

  “Wish I had your skill. Just have to pray they don’t send you to pokey, Gus. You been a very naughty boy. Wasted police time, nearly got yourself killed.”

  “Yes, one of the people that got offed at the time of Cataract was Norton’s fiancée, Anne Bolan. I thought I’d get away from him as well. In fact, my future wasn’t very bright while I was doing the book.”

  Herb thanked him, said he would see him around when things began buzzing back in the U.K. Then, as though he had just thought of it: “Hey, Gus. The Delacourt
girl!”

  “What about her?”

  “What about her?”

  “Well, did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “In those notes you left. You said you yum-yummed her?”

  Bex gave a snort of laughter.

  “So?” Gus looked straight-faced, unruffled.

  “Well, did you?”

  “That’s for me to know, and you to find out, Herb. Be well.”

  “So, what’s next for you, Herb?” Bex Olesker asked as they crossed the Atlantic at around thirty-nine thousand feet.

  “For me? Back in retirement. Got to find somewhere to live.”

  “You could always stay with me in Dolphin Square—until you’ve bought the kind of place you really want, of course.”

  “Sure, of course. You want me as a houseguest? Really want me to stay for a while, Bex?”

  “Why not? It gets pretty lonely at times. Just me and a dozen or so terrorists. Oh, and the daughter of a very famous magician lives almost next door.”

  “Okay. Only on a temporary basis, though, Rebecca. Yes. Yes, I’d like that.”

  “You’re on, then, Herb.” She looked at his big rugged face and saw the glint in his eye. “You’re definitely on.”

  Epilogue

  THE GARDEN WAS WARM and pleasant, and it was good to be away from the heat and bustle of Baghdad.

  There were about twenty of them. All well-trained and well-trusted men and women who had been selected from some two hundred possibilities. Now they sat in a wide semicircle around the Biwãba, who looked at them with a benevolent smile.

  “My children,” he began, “you are about to leave here on a glorious adventure. You are the vanguard of our Leader’s revenge upon the unbelievers who took it upon themselves to deny us our rights.

  “You follow in the footsteps of those who have been martyrs. Men and women who will never be forgotten. Your duty will be to avenge their deaths and bring horror from the very hands of our Leader. You, my children, will rain fire, destruction and sudden death on those nations who, in their pride, barbarity and gross immorality, look down on us and see our Leader and our people as dirt. We shall teach them in many ways. They will learn by sudden death. Death by fire, death by water, death by bullet and by knife. Especially, they will learn by a great and terrible weapon which we shall call the Scourge of Allah.

  “This weapon will be feared by you also, my chosen ones, but you shall go forth and use it with courage and in the knowledge that from the end of these nations will come the beginning of a new life. A new time. A new richness and prosperity. These nations will learn when they feel the Scourge of Allah rip into their flesh. Go forth, my children. Use your weapons well.

  “Through you, we shall triumph.”

  Author’s Note

  THIS BOOK COULD NOT have been written without the assistance of Jeff Busby, A.I.M.C., who ironed out many wrinkles in my own magic knowledge, and gave up a great deal of his own exceptionally busy life to make suggestions and offer opinions.

  I apologize to my friends Nick and Jane Ruggiero, Rich Bloch and Les Smith—all of Collector’s Workshop—for setting their World Magic Summit in Washington, D.C., many months after it actually took place, and for ruining it in this book with madness and mayhem.

  Also, for the general reader I must make one important statement. There are a number of magical performances described in this book. Please, be assured that every trick, illusion and routine can be, or is, performed by magicians throughout the world. It would have been easy to make up mysteries with no thought of actual performance. I know that some TV viewers watching magicians on television are convinced they use camera tricks. In the main, they do not. By the same token, I could have used word tricks with this book, but I did not. What you read is what you can get live, close-up or onstage. Everything within these pages is possible—including the appalling acts of terrorism.

  JOHN GARDNER

  Virginia, 1995

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The extract from Bart Whaley’s Who’s Who in Magic is reproduced by permission of Jeff Busby Magic, Inc. The extracts from the Broken Wand Ceremony, taken from The Rev. Dr. John Booth’s Dramatic Magic are reproduced by permission of Dr. John Booth and the International Brotherhood of Magicians. The extracts from John Betjeman’s Myfanwy are reproduced by permission of John Murray (Publishers) Ltd.

  Copyright © 1995 by Whithington Books, Inc.

  cover design by Jason Gabbert

  ISBN 978-1-4804-1866-0

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