The Key to Midnight (31 page)

“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.

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.

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.

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.

Alex and Joanna ignored all the exotic merchandise as well as most of the mundane stuff. They purchased only two sturdy umbrellas and a set of plain but well-made steel cutlery.

In the privacy of a stall in the ladies’ room, Joanna unwrapped the package of cutlery. She examined each piece and chose a wickedly sharp butcher’s knife that she concealed in her coat pocket. She left the other knives behind when she departed.

Now both she and Alex were armed. Carrying concealed weapons was a more serious offense in London than it would have been almost anywhere else in the world, but they weren’t concerned about spending time in jail. Walking unarmed into Tom Chelgrin’s hotel room would have been by far the most dangerous course they could have taken.

Outside Harrod’s they hailed another cab and followed a winding, random course through rain-slicked streets, until Alex was certain that they were not being followed. They got out of the cab three blocks from the Churchill.

Using the umbrellas to hide their faces as much as to shield them from the rain, they approached the hotel from its least public aspect. Rather than barge through the front entrance and across the Regency-style lobby, where they were most likely to be spotted by a lookout, they used an unlocked rear door meant for hotel deliveries, and they quickly found a service stairwell.

“Better leave your bumbershoot here,” Alex said. “We’ll want our hands free when we get there.”

She stood her umbrella beside his, in the corner at the bottom of the stairs.

“Scared?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Want to back out?”

“Can’t,” she said.

Though they were whispering, their voices echoed in the cold stairwell.

He unbuttoned his coat and withdrew the 9mm pistol that had been jammed under his belt. He put it in an overcoat pocket and kept his hand on the grip.

She put her hand on the butcher’s knife in her pocket.

They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.

The corridor was brightly lighted, deserted—and too quiet.

They hurried along the hallway, glancing at room numbers. In spite of the elegant decor, Alex couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in a carnival funhouse and that a monster was going to spring at them suddenly from a door or out of the ceiling.

Just before they reached 416, Alex was stopped abruptly by a vivid premonition: an intense vision like the brief but commanding burst of a camera’s electronic flash. In his mind’s eye, he saw Tom Chelgrin spattered with blood. Never before had anything like that happened to him, and he was shaken both by the weirdness of it and by the wet, red vividness of the image.

Joanna stopped beside him, gripped his arm. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s dead.”

“What? The senator? How do you know?”

“I just... I do. I’m sure of it.”

He took the pistol from his coat pocket and continued along the corridor. The door to 416 was ajar.

“Stand behind me,” he said.

She shuddered. “Let’s call the police.”

“We can’t. Not yet.”