The Key to Midnight

by Dean Koontz

  Alex found it difficult to believe that less than twenty-four hours ago, he’d experienced the greatest ecstasy of his life.

  At the hotel they unpacked none of his suitcases and only part of one of hers. The rest could wait until morning.

  She had brought two handheld hair dryers. One was a lightweight plastic model, and the other was a big old-fashioned blower with a metal casing and a ten-inch metal snout. A small screwdriver was in the same suitcase, and Alex used it to dismantle the bulkier of the two hair dryers. Before leaving Kyoto, he had stripped the insides from the machine and carefully fitted a gun into the hollow shell: the silencer-equipped 9mm automatic that he had taken off the man in the alleyway more than a week ago. It had passed through X rays and customs inspection without being detected.

  He took a large tin of body powder from the same suitcase. In the bathroom, he stooped beside the commode, put up the lid and the seat, and sifted the talc out of the can, through his fingers. Two magazines of extra ammunition had been concealed in the powder.

  “You’d make a great criminal,” Joanna observed from the doorway.

  “Yeah. But I’ve done better being honest than I’d ever have done on the other side of the law.”

  “We could rob banks.”

  “Why don’t we just buy control of one?”

  “You’re a regular stick-in-the-mud.”

  “Dull,” he agreed. “That’s me.”

  They ate a room-service dinner in the suite, and at ten o’clock London time, they crawled under the covers of the same bed. This time, however, before they slept, they were too exhausted to share more than a single chaste goodnight kiss.

  Alex had a strange dream. He was lying in a soft bed in a white room, and three surgeons—all in white gowns, white face masks—stood over him. The first surgeon said, “Where does he think he is?” The second surgeon said, “South America. Rio.” And the third said, “So what happens if this doesn’t work?” The first surgeon said, “Then he’ll probably get himself killed without solving our problem.” Alex grew bored with their conversation, and he raised one hand to touch the nearest doctor, hoping to silence him, but his fingers suddenly changed into tiny replicas of buildings, five tiny buildings at the end of his hand, which then became five tall buildings seen at a distance, and then the buildings grew larger, became skyscrapers, and they drew nearer, and a city grew across the palm of his hand and up his arm, and the faces of the surgeons were replaced by clear blue sky, and the city wasn’t on his hand and arm any more but below him, the city of Rio below him, the fantastic bay and the sea beyond, and then the plane landed, and he got out. He was in Rio. A Spanish guitar played mournful music. He was on vacation and having a good time, having a very good time, a memorable and good, good time.

  At seven o’clock in the morning, he was awakened by a loud pounding. At first he thought the sound was inside his head, but it was real.

  Joanna sat up in bed beside him, clutching the covers. “What’s that?”

  Alex strove to shake off the last shroud of sleep. He cocked his head, listened for a moment, and said, “Someone’s at the door to the hall, out in the drawing room.”

  “Sounds like they’re breaking it down.”

  He picked up the loaded pistol from the nightstand.

  “Stay here,” he said, getting out of bed.

  “No way.”

  In the drawing room, dim gray daylight seeped in at the edges of the closed drapes. The writing desk, chairs, and sofa might have been sleeping animals in the gloom.

  Alex felt for the light switch, found it. He squinted in the sudden glare and held the gun in front of him.

  “There’s no one here,” Joanna said.

  In the foyer, they found a blue envelope on the carpet. It had been slipped under the door.

  As Alex picked it up, Joanna said, “What’s that?”

  “A note from the senator.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He blinked at her. Even after nine hours of sleep, he was still fuzzy-minded.

  “How?” she persisted.

  The envelope was unmarked by typewriter or pen, and it was sealed.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Instinct, I guess.”

  46

  London was rainy and cold. The bleak December sky was so low and heavy that the city seemed to huddle beneath it in expectation of being crushed. The tops of the tallest buildings disappeared into gray mist.

  The taxi driver who picked up Alex and Joanna in front of their hotel was a burly man with a neatly trimmed white beard. He wore a rumpled hat and a heavy green cardigan. He smelled of peppermint and rain-dampened wool. “Where can I take you this morning?”

  “Eventually,” Alex said, “we want to go to the British Museum. But first you’ll have to lose the people who’ll be following us. Can you do that?”

  The driver stared at him as if unsure he had heard cor- rectly.

  “He’s perfectly serious,” Joanna said.

  “He seems to be,” said the driver.

  “And he’s sober,” she said.

  “He seems to be.”

  “And he isn’t crazy.”

  “That remains to be seen,” said the driver.

  Alex counted out thirty pounds to the man. “I’ll have thirty more for you at the other end, plus the fare. Will you help us?”

  “Well, sir, they tell you to humor madmen if you meet one. And it seems especially wise to humor one with money. The only thing that bothers me—is it coppers watching you?”

  “No,” Alex said.

  “Is it coppers, young lady?”

  “No,” Joanna said. “They’re not good men at all.”

  “Sometimes neither are the coppers.” He grinned, tucked the bills into his shirt pocket, stroked his white beard with one hand, and said, “Name’s Nicholas. At your service. What should I be looking for? What sort of car might they be using?”

  “I don’t know,” Alex said. “But they’ll stay close behind us. If we keep an eye open, we’ll spot them.”

  The morning traffic was heavy. Nicholas turned right at the first corner, left at the second, then right, left, left, right.

  Alex watched out the back window. “Brown Jaguar. Lose it.”

  Nicholas wasn’t a master of evasive driving. He weaved from lane to lane, slipping around cars and buses, trying to put traffic between them and their tail—but at such a sedate pace that his passengers might have been a couple of frail centenarians on their way to their hundred and first birthday party. His maneuvers were not sufficiently dangerous to discourage pursuit. He turned corners without signaling his intent, but never at even a high enough speed to splash pedestrians standing at the curb, and never from the wrong lane, which made it easy for the Jaguar to stay with him.

  “Your daring doesn’t take my breath away,” Alex said.

  “Be fair, sir. It’s London traffic. Rather difficult to put the pedal to the metal, as you Americans say.”

  “Still, there’s room for a bit more risk than this,” Alex said impatiently.

  Joanna put one hand on his arm. “Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare.”

  “Yeah. But I want to lose these people quickly. At the rate we’re going, we’ll only lose them after eight or ten hours—when they’re too tired to bother with us any more.”

  A London taxi was not permitted to operate if it bore any mark of a collision—even a small dent or scrape. Obviously Nicholas was acutely aware of that regulation. The insurance company would pay for repairs, but the car might be in the garage for a week, which would be lost work time.

  Nevertheless, even at his stately—not to say snail’s—pace, he managed to put three cars between them and the Jaguar. “We’re going to lose them,” he said happily.

  “Maybe. As long as they play fair and stop for lunch at the same time we do,” Alex said.

  “You have a funny man here, miss,” Nicholas told Joanna. “Quite a sense of humor.”

 
To Alex, it appeared that Nicholas was being allowed to lose the tail. The driver of the Jaguar wasn’t handling his car as well as he had at the start.

  A surveillance unit only willingly detached itself from a target when it was confident that the target’s ultimate destination was known. It was almost as if the men in the Jaguar knew that Alex and Joanna were going to the British Museum to meet the senator and were tailing them only so they could gradually fall back and ultimately appear to have been shaken off.

  They came to an intersection where the traffic signal had just gone from green to red, but Nicholas screwed up enough courage to round the corner illegally. The tires even squealed. A little.

  The cars behind them stopped, and the Jaguar was boxed in. It wouldn’t be able to move again until the light changed.

  They were on a narrow street flanked by exclusive shops and theaters, amid fewer cars than there’d been on the main avenue. Nicholas drove to the middle of the block and swung into an alley before the Jaguar had a chance to round the corner after them. They went to another alley, then onto a main street once more.

  As they continued to wind slowly from avenue to avenue through the slanting gray rain, Nicholas glanced repeatedly at the rearview mirror. Gradually he broke into a smile, and at last he said, “I did it. I actually lost them. Just like in those American police shows on the telly.”

  “You were marvelous,” Joanna said.

  “You really think so?”

  “Simply terrific,” she said.

  “I guess I was. I quite liked that. Not good for the heart on a regular basis, mind you, but an invigorating experience.”

  Alex stared out the back window.

  At the British Museum, Joanna got out of the cab and ran for the shelter of the main entrance.

  As Alex paid the fare, Nicholas said, “Her husband, I suppose.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Well, if it wasn’t coppers—”

  “Oh, no, not her husband.”

  The driver stroked his beard. “You aren’t going to let me hang like this?”

  “Indeed I am.” Alex got out of the cab and slammed the door.

  For a moment Nicholas stared at him curiously through the rain-streaked window, but then he drove away.

  Alex stood in the cold drizzle, shoulders hunched, hands in his coat pockets. He looked both ways along the street, studying the traffic, but he saw nothing suspicious.

  When he joined Joanna in the doorway, out of the rain, she said, “You’re soaked. What were you looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He was still reluctant to go inside. He surveyed the street.

  “Alex, what’s wrong?”

  “Getting rid of the Jaguar was too easy. Nothing’s been this easy so far. Why this?”

  “Isn’t it time our luck changed?”

  “I don’t believe in luck.”

  Finally he turned away from the street and followed her into the museum.

  47

  They were standing in front of an impressive array of Assyrian antiquities, to which Chelgrin’s note had directed them, when they were finally contacted. The senator’s representative was a small, wiry man in a peacoat and dark-brown cap. He had a hard face with eyes squinted in perpetual suspicion, and his mouth appeared to have been surgically sewn into a permanent sneer. He stood beside Alex, pretending to appreciate a piece of Assyrian weaponry, and then said, “Yer ‘unter, ain’t yer?”

  The stranger’s Cockney accent was nearly impenetrable, but Alex understood him: You’re Hunter, aren’t you?

  Occasionally Alex’s interest in languages extended to especially colorful dialects. Richer in slang, more distorted in pronunciation than any other regional usage of the English tongue, Cockney was nothing if not colorful. The dialect had evolved in the East End of London, but it had spread to many parts of England. Originally it had been a means by which East End neighbors could talk to one another without making sense to the law or to outsiders.

  The stranger squinted at Alex and then at Joanna. “Yer butchers like yer pitchers. Both of yer.”

  Alex translated: You look like your pictures. Both of you. The word “butchers” meant “look” by virtue of Cockney rhyming slang. A “butcher’s hook” rhymed with “look”; therefore, by the logic of the code, “butchers” meant “look” when used in the proper context.

  “And yer butchers bent ter me,” Alex said. “Wot yer want?” And you look like a less than honest man to me. What do you want?

  The stranger blinked, astonished to hear an American speaking the East End dialect with such confidence. “Yer s’pposed ter be a Yank.”

  “’At’s wot I am.”

  “Yer rabbit right good.” You talk very well.

  “Tar,” said Alex. Thanks.

  Joanna said, “I’m not following this.”

  “I’ll explain later,” Alex promised.

  “Yer rabbit so doddle ... ‘ell, nofink surprise me no more,” said the stranger.

  Sensing that the Cockney didn’t much like the idea of a Yank talking to him as though they were mates, Alex dropped the dialect. “What do you want?”

  “Got a message from a right pound-note geezer.”

  Alex translated: from a man who speaks real fancy, which usually meant a man with a la-de-da Oxford accent, though not always.

  “That doesn’t tell me much,” Alex said.

  “Geezer wif a double of white barnet.” A man with a lot of white hair.

  Barnet Fair was a famous carnival outside London. Since Barnet Fair rhymed with hair, the single word “barnet” meant “hair.”

  “What does this geezer call himself?” Alex asked.

  “Tom. He gimme a poney ter bring yer a message. Seems ’ee’s stayin’ at the Churchill in Portman Square, and wants to see yer.”

  It was Senator Thomas Chelgrin who was waiting in a room at the Churchill Hotel. It could be no one else.

  “What else?” Alex asked.

  “’At’s all der was, mate.” The little man started to turn away, then stopped, looked back, licked his lips, and said, “One fink. Be careful of ‘im, ‘ee’s dodgey, that one. Maybe worse an dodgey—’ee’s shnide.”

  Dodgey. No good.

  Shnide. Slimy.

  “I’ll be careful,” Alex said. “Thanks.”

  The stranger pulled on his cap. “It was me, I wouldn’t touch him less ‘ee was wearin’ a durex from ‘ead ter foot of ‘imself.”

  Alex translated and laughed. I wouldn’t touch him unless he was wearing a condom from head to foot. He shared the Cockney’s opinion of the senator from Illinois.

  48

  From a public telephone at the museum, Alex called the Churchill Hotel in Portman Square.

  Joanna fidgeted beside him. She was frightened. The prospect of meeting her duplicitous father couldn’t be expected to fill her with joy.

  Alex asked the hotel operator for Mr. Chelgrin’s room, and the senator answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” Alex said. “I recognize your voice, so I figure you recognize mine.”

  “Is... she with you?”

  “Of course.”

  “I can’t wait to see her. Come on up.”

  “We’re not in the hotel. Still at the museum. I think we should have a nice long chat by phone before we get together.”

  “That’s not possible. The situation is too urgent. I don’t know how much time I have.”

  “We need to know a few things. Like what happened in Jamaica. And why Lisa became Joanna.”

  “It’s too important to discuss on the phone,” Chelgrin said. “Much more important than you can have guessed.”

  Alex hesitated, glanced at Joanna. “All right. Let’s meet just inside the entrance to the National Gallery in half an hour.”

  “No. That’s impossible,” Chelgrin said. “It has to be here in my room at the Churchill.”

  “I don’t like that. Too risky for us.”

  “I’m
not here to harm you. I want to help.”

  “I’d prefer to meet on neutral ground.”

  “I don’t dare go out,” Chelgrin said, and the uncharacteristic tension in his voice wound tighter. “I’ve taken every precaution to conceal this trip. My office is telling everyone that I’ve gone home to Illinois. I didn’t fly out of Washington because I could be traced too easily.” He spoke faster, running the words together. “Drove to New York, flew from there to Toronto in a chartered jet, then in another charter to Montreal, and in a third from Montreal to London. I’m wiped out. Exhausted. I’m staying at the Churchill because it’s not my usual hotel. I usually stay at Claridge’s. But if they discover I’ve come to London, they’ll know I’ve changed sides, and they’ll kill me.”

  “Who is they?”

  Chelgrin hesitated. Then: “The Russians.”

  “You need a better story, Senator. The Cold War’s over.”

  “Nothing’s ever over. Listen, Hunter, all I want is a chance to make up for what I’ve done, for the past. I want to help you and my daughter ... that is ... if she’ll allow me to call her my daughter, after what I’ve done. Together we can expose this whole dirty thing. But you’ve got to come to me. I can’t risk showing my face. And you’ve got to make damned sure you aren’t being followed.”

  Alex thought about it.

  “Hunter? Are you still there? My room number’s four-sixteen. Hunter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You have to come.”

  “We don’t have to do anything.”

  The senator was silent for a while. Then he sighed. “All right. Trust your instincts. I don’t blame you.”

  “We’ll come,” Alex said.

  49

  They took a taxi to Harrod’s. Even that early in the day, the huge, world-famous store was aswarm with shoppers.

  Harrod’s Telex address had long been “Everything, London.” In two hundred departments, the legendary store carried everything from specialty foods to sporting goods, chewing gum to Chinese art, from rare books to rubber boots, faddish clothes to fine antiques, nail polish to expensive oriental rugs—a million and one delights.