Maestro

by John Gardner

  The young women also did a subtle piece of second-guessing, based on the fact that the number had been tapped by the Security Service from the moment it was traced. They knew—so they said—that there were constant monitoring calls made from Germany and Switzerland. They indicated that they also possessed all the code words used between Yussif and their monitors.

  The pair of men who were now the only link Intiqam had left in Britain complied with all the requests made by the inquisitors. For them it was humiliating to be questioned like this by women, but the alternatives offered to them—such as public humiliation, or word passed to the Leader of their country, together with their live bodies—were more terrifying.

  From that moment everything was done by the book. Local people did not detect anything wrong. They did not even see any troops in the area. Life went on as placidly as usual.

  What nobody knew at that point was a meeting between Claudius and Jasmine had taken place early that afternoon. Part of the coded ad in the London Times had indicated a four-to-five-day wait before any contact should be made.

  They met outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral and walked together across the street and down to the crowded area in front of Rockefeller Plaza.

  Jasmine gave Claudius a detailed account of the state of play, including the fact that there was a possibility they would be moving to Washington, D.C., very soon. “Then it’s really going down?” It was a rhetorical question from Claudius.

  “It looks very like it. If you have a number, I can call you once we have the complete information. You’ll need to know the exact times and the nature of Magic Lightning.”

  Claudius gave Jasmine two numbers, to be used only in an emergency.

  The entire meeting lasted twenty minutes. Then Claudius wandered off, while Jasmine stayed a little longer bathed in the sticky heat and watching the rollerblading going on below. In a couple of months’ time this would be a skating rink. Jasmine wondered if death or worse would come between now and then.

  American Airlines flight 107 landed at JFK ten minutes early, at eight twenty-five on a clear warm evening. At the jet way they were met by one of the Embassy people from Washington, D.C., and a pair of FBI Special Agents, who hurried them through the usually interminable immigration and customs checks, helped with the small baggage and then drove them into Manhattan. On the way through the airport they checked the arrivals monitors and saw that Hisham’s British Airways flight was on time. He would be going through the endless routines with Customs and Immigration in around half an hour’s time, which meant they could not expect his call-in for around an hour.

  They were to stay in an apartment in the luxurious Trump Tower, often used by the British for short-stay diplomats. Their own people from D.C. had readied the large and comfortable flat that afternoon, putting in extra telephones, color-coded so that they could immediately know which direct and safe line they were on—one to Vauxhall Cross, another directly to the Resident’s office in D.C., while a third and fourth were local, for dealing with the people on the ground.

  The first call came in just as they had chosen rooms, unpacked and generally settled in. The man from the British Embassy was still with them, as he had been instructed to stay until they knew all the equipment was working properly.

  The call was from a section of listeners, holed up in a cramped apartment off East Fifty-seventh. Hisham had followed orders to the letter. The two remaining members of the American team were, it appeared, living in style as Mr. and Mrs. Walid Jaffid at the Parker Meridien Hotel. He had been instructed to check in and contact them in their suite—6102. Hisham had also confirmed that the number he had been given was definitely the telephone number for the Yussif team in the United States.

  “So, we’re off and running,” the man from the Embassy said. He received a curt nod from Herbie, who was not about to pass on any extraneous information to anyone outside what he considered to be a charmed circle.

  As soon as the Embassy contact left to take the shuttle from La Guardia back to D.C., Herbie put in a call to Vauxhall Cross. He was patched through to Worboys, who was at home. They spoke for some fifteen minutes, after which Herb decided they should get some food sent up. They had been lodged in one of the service apartments, which gave them access to such things as maid and room service.

  “What you fancy, then, Bex?” he asked, giving her the big open smile.

  “About sixty hours of sleep.” She looked as though she had been run ragged. “Then I’d like to go out and splurge on clothes and stuff I’d never even think of in England.”

  “Maybe your day will come. Seriously, no food?”

  “No food. Seriously. I need sleep.”

  “Then I think I’ll have a Reuben on rye with fries and some coffee. Maybe also apple pie à la mode.” He turned the room service menu upside down and reached for the phone.

  “Just a snack, eh?” Bex gave a winning little laugh and tottered toward her bedroom.

  In the Parker Meridien, Walid and Khami were indulging in their favorite indoor sport when the telephone rang with a message from Yussif saying that help was on the way, very near at hand.

  “There is an English saying,” Walid groaned as he gave Khami the news. “Two is company. Three is a crowd.”

  “He won’t actually be sharing this suite, will he?” She sounded panic-stricken.

  “Not if I have anything to do with it. You want the handcuffs off?”

  “No, my prince. Just have your evil way with me …Please, Walid! Please!”

  Hisham had done everything they had told him to do. Now he took a cab to the Parker Meridien, where there was a room reserved for him under the name of Dr. Sa’dun Zaidan.

  They showed him his room and he thought, ‘This is the greatest luxury to which I have ever been exposed.’ He then put a house call through to suite 6102.

  “My old friend, Walid,” he said. “This is just to let you know I am here, in the hotel. Have you any plans for this evening?”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to be tied up for most of the evening. But we do have things to talk about, so perhaps we could breakfast together.”

  “Certainly. What time?”

  “Let’s say noon, Sa’dun. Noon would do nicely. I fear we do not have much time left in New York. I think we will soon have to leave for Washington.”

  “Really? How soon?”

  “I suspect either tomorrow evening or the day after.”

  “I have never been to Washington.”

  “There’s plenty to do there, my friend.”

  “So I’ve been told. Tomorrow, then.” Hisham replaced the receiver, then lifted it again and punched in the number he had spoken to after making the obligatory call to Yussif from New York’s JFK Airport.

  Down in the vast marble lobby of the hotel, an FBI Special Agent was talking privately to the duty manager. “No, no, there’s nothing to be alarmed about,” the Special Agent responded to an anxious question. “The Jaffids are very close to the royal family of their country and they, in turn, have been concerned about their well-being. They get jumpy, these very rich Arabs, and it appears that they disapproved of the Jaffids being in New York without the usual bodyguards.”

  The duty manager was checking through the Jaffid account and the staff notes. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said, still sounding a shade uncertain. “The bell captain did put a query in to management. It says here that the bell boy who dealt with their luggage drew attention to the fact that it all seemed to be brand-new and had no trace of an airline tag on it. In fact, no tags at all.”

  “Probably their security advisers.” The Special Agent sounded unconcerned about the matter. “Some security experts think it is best to remove all traces of tags and labels from luggage. Anyway, sir, do not be alarmed if any of my people come into the hotel to keep a discreet eye on them. We don’t want to alert them. I dare say they wouldn’t take kindly to their relatives poking their noses into what is really Mr. and Mrs. Jaffid’s own business. A
fter all, they’re paying us, so we should stick around.”

  “It won’t go further than this office.” The duty manager rose and extended his hand.

  That same night a carton which had obviously been packed with professional care arrived at JFK from Geneva. The instructions were for forwarding to Washington National to await pickup by a Dr. Ali Duba. The carton was not heavy, but it was well labeled: MEDICAL SUPPLIES. DO NOT OPEN, DO NOT SUBJECT TO X-RAYS. It had been cleared from Geneva and bore an official stamp of Schtubble Laboratory, Rue de Lyon, Genève. The Customs authorization claimed the contents included material that could be damaged by exposure to the air.

  An hour earlier, a call had gone to London’s Heathrow Airport from a Dr. Jonathan Schtubble, of Schtubble Laboratory, Geneva, and was forwarded to the Air Freight Office. Dr. Schtubble was obviously agitated, and wanted the status of a similar package. He quoted the waybill number and impressed upon the manager of the Air Freight Office that the package was extremely important.

  After a short wait he was informed that the carton had arrived twenty-four hours earlier but had not been picked up. “I shall see what can be done,” the doctor told the manager of the Air Freight Office. “There has been a serious error. The package should have gone to a Dr. Ali Duba in New York. I’ll try to get someone to come down to you and sign the requisite documents so that it can be forwarded to New York.”

  The biochemist put down the telephone in his office at Schtubble Laboratory in Geneva.

  “What’ll be the best thing to do?” He looked at the other two men, also wearing white lab coats. “You realize this fellow who calls himself Kingpin gave us the okay to dispatch the packages. We’ve done all the work—”

  “And been paid a million each in American dollars,” added one of the three-man team. “I think we should at least try to get back to Kingpin. After all, Jonathan, both those parcels had this address and your name on them.”

  “I think we should definitely get hold of Kingpin.” The third man sounded even more anxious. “For heaven’s sake, that stuff is dangerous. A dozen special canisters filled with enough Toxic Strep A, heavily loaded with necrotizing fasciitis enzymes, to kill half the population of the U.K. are not the kind of things we can leave hanging around at Heathrow—especially with this address on it. Call Kingpin now. There’s no option. We have to talk to him.”

  25

  THE BIWÃBA WAS ANGRY. He did not vent his anger at either of the Intiqam teams or at those who handled them through Yussif. The Biwãba was a very fair man. He vented his anger on the one to blame—himself. He meditated on the problem and placed it squarely at his own door. He should have waited until both teams were absolutely ready. He had not even anticipated the complete collapse of the British team, but in his haste he had issued the orders to the Swiss scientists to go ahead, finish the items and dispatch them.

  The idea was sound, and had come to him through reading various medical journals and newspapers. The Biwãba was a considerable linguist. The newspapers had made much fuss and dubbed the bacteria as a “mystery killer virus which has the power to eat flesh.”

  As the entire reason for Intiqam was to destabilize the governments of Britain, America, France and Italy, he had reasoned that if you could expose them to the so-called mystery virus, it might just kill off some fifty to sixty percent of the people concerned. So, he had sent for a notable Iraqi doctor who had been trained in Edinburgh, Scotland. A man called Aziz Jibril, who laughed heartily when he talked of the mystery virus.

  “There is no mystery,” Dr. Jibril said. “In the West the medical profession has been aware of this since the 1730s. The problem is that the normal Streptococcus Group A lies in every human being and is sometimes capable of becoming deadly. There are several thousand strains, but only a minute percentage produce deadly enzymes. The relatively harmless strains produce unpleasant things like a strep throat infection or an ear infection. There is a link to scarlet fever and to what used to be called puerperal fever. They are also sometimes the cause of meningitis.

  “In Britain it is normal practice to hit any potential strep infection with powerful cocktails of antibiotics, but the real problem is diagnosis. We do not really know how the Strep A bacteria become infected, but when they do undergo a change, they work very quickly. They can produce enzymes of a gangrenous type called necrotizing fasciitis, which finally contribute to the destruction of fat and tissue. The bacteria do not eat flesh, they poison it, and if not diagnosed very fast can kill rapidly. Hence the use of large quantities of antibiotics at the first hint of a strep infection.”

  “Would it be possible to reconstruct this deadly type of Strep A?” the Biwãba asked innocently.

  “Very simple indeed,” the doctor nodded. “Original Strep A bacteria can have enzymes added in sterile laboratory conditions. It would be potentially very dangerous, but this can be done—probably is done for research purposes.”

  “I am concerned”—the Biwãba tried to sound offhand—“that this might be the kind of agent used in germ warfare by our enemies. Would it be possible to deliver this virus?”

  “Probably,” the doctor scowled in a concerned way. “It could certainly be put under pressure in a vacuum. Like an aerosol spray. I do not see it being of much use in conventional delivery systems, but the spray would work excellently if you could feed it into air-conditioning or heating ducts. Something like that would be very effective—and also very cruel, my friend. You could bring many enemies down onto your head. You’re not really thinking of experimenting with this, are you?”

  “Of course not,” the Biwãba replied smoothly. “It would be diabolical.”

  During that time, he thought more and more of the possibilities. If the toxic form of Streptococcus A could be introduced, via specially constructed sprays, into the heating or air-conditioning ducts of the House of Commons in London, and the Capitol in Washington while the governments were sitting, there was a chance that a hundred percent of the men and women who were government members would quickly become infected. The further possibility was that around fifty to sixty percent would die in a matter of twenty-four hours.

  His main precaution would have to be making the introduction of the bacteria foolproof and untraceable back to Iraq. Money, he was certain, could buy the necessary technicians, but they would have to be dealt with at arm’s length.

  Money was no problem. The counterfeit hundred-dollar bills had already proved to be undetectable and the Biwãba had access to huge amounts in banks around the world. All he had to do was buy himself the people who could do the work under safe conditions.

  He chose Switzerland because of the Swiss reputation for secrecy, and it took only two weeks for his agents to discover the Schtubble Laboratory in Geneva. The biochemist who ran Schtubble was the grandson of the man who had originally started the business. He was also the man who had run the Schtubble Laboratory into the ground.

  To the passing tourist, Geneva is just a beautiful lakeside city, noted for the wonderful view of Mont Blanc’s shimmering white cap and for the famed Jet d’Eau, which rises some hundred and fifty meters from the lake. The city is also renowned for its great hotels and restaurants. Tourists may not realize that Geneva is also the prestigious last resort of many very wealthy families, making it a hotbed of class consciousness. The weekly trippers and packaged visitors do not even begin to scratch the surface of the varied strata of rich, famous and infamous who use Geneva as a playground.

  Society in what was once the center of Calvinism—with John Calvin running his own secret police, which included children informing on their parents’ lapses of morality—now has its clubs and cliques, its balls and parties, sometimes on a bacchanalian scale.

  It was Jonathan Schtubble who, for a short but memorable time, dug deeply into the profits built up over the years by his grandfather and father to become a playboy of this section of the Western world. Alas, he awoke one morning to discover that his current income from the modest laboratory w
as all that was left of a considerable fortune.

  The Biwãba’s agents unearthed this in a couple of weeks, for two of them were wealthy Iraqis with access to the highflying set of Geneva. The Biwãba was informed, and within a month one of his glib-tongued assistants sat with Jonathan Schtubble over lunch in the Parc des Eaux Vives, gently bringing him round to the matter of a toxic Strep A bacteria.

  At first Jonathan was appalled, and wanted to know why anyone would want to produce a toxic product such as this. He was told that new laboratories would soon be operating in London and New York as part of a research project concerned with the detection and fighting of necrotizing fasciitis. They were willing to pay a great deal of money for samples to be made up in droplet form within aerosol-type sprays.

  The word “money” brought Jonathan’s moral scruples toppling from the high ground. He would need at least two associates to create the correct sterile conditions in his laboratory, including clothing and incinerators. He would have to see exactly what kind of cash they were talking about.

  The Biwãba’s agent mentioned one million for each person involved, plus the outlay on whatever new equipment was needed. It was an offer Schtubble could not refuse. He knew the names of two associates who would do very well. Over coffee and a fine brandy he shook hands on the deal.

  Now it was all done and the aerosol canisters had been shipped in very secure packaging. Indeed, the aerosols would not even work, as they were sealed to the top of each unit and could be operated only by a special device being made by a company in England, a company that imagined it was assisting with AIDS research. The Biwãba’s problem was that the dozen units shipped to the United Kingdom were sitting, uncollected, at Heathrow. There were two things that needed doing and he dealt with the first by making a secure telephone call to Switzerland—not to the Schtubble Laboratory, but to a telephone number miles from Geneva. To a villa on the shores of Lake Lucerne.