Mara had had the unfailing good sense to make Strand’s new self unremarkable; he was neither handsome nor striking in any sense. He had no identifying mole or coloring or manner of grooming. He was not interesting to look at, and it was highly unlikely that anyone would remember him or be able to describe him after having shared an elevator with him. He had become every man and no man. Harry Strand had disappeared.
“Okay,” she said, sitting back, looking at him as though he were a drawing she had just finished. She smiled softly, leaned toward him, and whispered, “I liked the other guy a lot better, mister. A hell of a lot better.” She kissed him lightly on the lips. “No offense.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” Strand said. He looked at his watch: it was nearly four-thirty. “I’m going to forget the padding. I don’t want to fool with it, don’t want to have to worry about it.”
He checked the mirror one more time. She had done a remarkable job. Not too much latex. It wasn’t like a mask, but his nose was broader, brow heavier, jaws rounder, neck thicker. The stuff was sticking to him like a second skin. He did not have to be apprehensive about it coming off accidentally. In fact, he was just a little concerned that it might not come off at all.
“How does it feel? Any problems?”
“No, not at all,” he said. “It’s good. It looks great.” He stood and removed the paper from around his collar.
Mara didn’t say anything. She busied herself with cleaning up and putting away the cosmetics and little bottles and tubes and aerosol cans that were scattered out on the scaffolding table.
Strand walked over to the windows and looked out. A misty fog had rolled in, and the evening was growing dim and gloomy. He stretched his neck, twisted his head. Again he took a deep breath, couldn’t seem to get enough air in his lungs. Turning, he looked at Mara. She had stopped what she was doing and was sitting there, a tube of something in her hands, watching him. The expression on her face told him volumes about the complex of emotions that churned within her.
Strand came over to her, and she put down the tube of makeup and stood. He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them. He kissed her palms and folded her fingers and kissed them. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, brimming with tears.
“I love you,” he said. “Thank you for everything. For everything from the first moment.”
He kissed her eyes softly, first one, then the other. He felt the moist salt of her fear and affection against his lips, tasted it on his tongue. This one tender moment was all he would allow. It was all he dared allow.
Turning away from her, he went to the closet and put on his coat. He took out his raincoat and pulled it on, too, and then reached in and got his umbrella and closed the door. When he turned to look at her she had wiped her eyes and was standing with her arms crossed, one hip cocked. She managed a smile.
“Take care of yourself, Harry,” she said.
He nodded at her and walked out the room.
At the front door he stepped outside and paused to put up the umbrella. Then he pulled the door closed behind him. It was quiet outside except for the light rain. He went down the steps, through the wrought-iron grille, and across the street. At the corner of Charles Street he turned and looked back. She had turned out the lights. He knew she was standing at the window in the darkness, watching him. He turned again and started down the street toward Berkeley Square.
The light rain had slackened to a mizzle by the time Strand got to Berkeley Square, where he had intended to hail a cab. Now he changed his mind. The weather was not so bad that he couldn’t walk, and the walking helped him think. The street lamps came on as he turned north on the west side of the square. The plane trees in the park sagged under the moisture of the last several days, and the pathways that traversed the lawn were empty and dreary. The wet summer evening had settled over the city like a soughing breath that was at one moment too warm and then almost chill.
He tried to stop thinking about Mara. He knew his lack of concentration was dangerous, but he could hardly get the image of the darkened windows of their rooms out of his mind. Gradually over the last month, everything he was and did had become wrapped up in that woman. She had become his rationale for everything. When he planned and when he dreamed, he had
their
future in mind. He did not think of himself; he thought of
them.
He peered ahead, through the mist, up the hill toward Davies Street. He listened to his footsteps on the wet cement and to the footsteps of the people he passed: the long strides and plodding steps of men; the quick, rapid-fire steps of young women in smart clothes hurrying to their futures. All of them, shrouded beneath their umbrellas, moved along in the late day gloaming, microcosms of human hopes and disappointments.
Never, throughout the years of this deception, had it seemed more like an outrageous adventure than it did now. What had changed? Quite a lot, actually, not the least of which was the objective. Up until the last few days he’d had nothing more in mind than stealing stolen money, taking something that didn’t belong to the person who had it and returning it, not to those from whom it had been taken originally—which would be an impossibility, like trying to return a cup of water dipped out of the sea to the exact same place from which it was taken—but to others in need, to the
kind
of people from whom it had been stolen in the first place. The method had been complex, the scheme convoluted, the technology sophisticated, but at bottom he was only running away with a gangster’s ill-gotten profits. Stealing stolen money.
Now he was only hours away from killing a man. Did he really believe that Schrade would kill Mara—and himself—if he didn’t kill Schrade first? Yes… he
knew
Schrade would do that. Did he call it self-defense? Yes. Had he argued it ad nauseam in his own mind? Yes. Then why did he still agonize over it?
He didn’t know. But he did know that if he didn’t gain control of his thoughts right now, he might as well turn around this very moment, go back and get Mara… and start running.
He had stopped at the upper end of Berkeley Square. There was a spattering of cars careening off Mount Street and tilting into the turn that would take them down on the other side of the park, while traffic from behind him came up the near side of the square and headed into Davies Street. When the light changed he followed the dribbling traffic upward in the direction of Grosvenor.
In another ten minutes he was passing the lighted windows of Claridge’s dining room, which looked out onto Davies Street toward the Italian embassy. A few more steps and he turned into Brook Street and walked under the inviting awning of Claridge’s.
Accepting the doorman’s assistance, he folded his umbrella and entered the vestibule, removed his raincoat, and proceeded to the front hall, where he approached the reception desk.
“Good evening.” The reception clerk was quick and smiling.
“Good evening,” Strand said. “I just came in from Paris early this morning for a business meeting, thinking I would be returning to Paris this evening. Unfortunately my business is carrying over to tomorrow. Might you possibly have something available for me on such short notice?”
“Let me see, sir.” The clerk tipped his head and immediately consulted his computer, typing quietly in quick bursts, studying the screen. While he waited Strand allowed his eyes to follow the extension of the front hall toward three tall arches through which one passed to the more formal foyer famous for Claridge’s afternoon teas. A good number of people still lingered around the small tables, chatting quietly, the epitome of decorum in the most decorous of places.
“Nothing available, sir,” the clerk said, and Strand turned around.
“Not anything?”
“No singles or doubles, sir. We have only suites.”
“One of those will be fine.”
The clerk accepted this quiet extravagance with smooth alacrity.
Strand quickly produced one of his forged passports and credit cards, and the clerk got busy putting together the necessary paperwork for the accommodation.
Claude Corsier had an extended argument with the murderous Skerlic that was immensely frustrating and even, at times, comical in its absurdity, over Corsier’s insistence that he buy a proper suit and go to a barber. There were surveillance cameras, for God’s sake, Corsier had argued—he had no idea if there were—and if the Serb did not want to be conspicuous, he would bloody well dress like everyone else whether he liked it or not. He could not go into the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair looking like a refugee and expect not to be noticed. Skerlic was insulted, and as Corsier argued with him, he actually turned his head away like a child refusing another spoon of green peas.
In the end he relented, and when he arrived at the Connaught carrying an oxblood leather satchel that Corsier had bought for him at Asprey, he did not turn a head. Corsier knew because he was watching from an armchair in the lobby.
He waited nearly ten minutes before folding his
London Times
and following Skerlic up to his rooms. When he got there the Serb had peeled off his suit coat and had thrown it, turned inside out, onto one of the sofas in the reception area. He was standing at the windows, looking at the tripods and the binoculars.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“I don’t want to depend on the audio alone. I want to see who’s there, and I want to know what they’re doing.”
Skerlic looked across Carlos Place. “He leaves the curtains open?”
“In the second-floor room, yes. It’s a library, a space for viewing paintings and drawings. There’s good natural light.”
“You can see everything over there?”
“Very nearly.”
“No privacy.”
“It’s a place of business, and it’s far enough away that, without something like these”—he gestured to the binoculars—“you really can’t see much of anything.”
Skerlic looked across as if to double-check that assertion, but the lights were out.
“We still have to rely on the mike,” he said. “The mike is how I will know if his face is in the right place.”
“I can see if that’s the case.”
“You cannot rely on what you see. The perspective might be confusing. You could be wrong.”
“Of course. I intend to watch nevertheless.”
Skerlic regarded him as if he were a simpleton and shrugged. “Where are the pictures?”
“In my bedroom.” Corsier nodded to the doorway on the right. “Your bedroom is over there,” he added, tilting his head the other way.
“Get them.”
Corsier went to his bedroom and returned with one picture, then went back for the other. Skerlic lifted each onto one of the sofas and began examining it, going over the elaborate moldings with his face close to the gilding. Then he turned them over and examined the backs.
“Okay,” he said. He carried each of them across the room and leaned them against the wall, facing out. He looked around the room. “Okay. We pull that over there to over here.”
Corsier helped him move a writing desk over to the windows so that it sat at an angle to the street. Skerlic removed all the hotel information from the desk, removed the lamp, then carried over the satchel and set it beside the desk. He opened the satchel and began taking out his electronic equipment, putting the pieces on the writing desk like a surgeon laying out his instruments.
Corsier stood by uneasily. The equipment made him uncomfortable. Naturally he was entirely ignorant about it, but he had always had the impression that electronically activated explosives were highly unstable, even precarious. Not reliable. Touchy. He was aware that he was beginning to perspire as he watched Skerlic deal with the wires and the little plastic boxes with toggle switches and readout dials, both analogue and digital. Why was so much electronic equipment always black? He could smell the electrical wiring and the plastic. He noted with surprise that Skerlic was precise in the way he handled the equipment. He didn’t remember seeing any of that kind of deftness a few nights ago in the Harley Mews garage.
Half an hour later Skerlic pulled two sets of headphones out of the leather satchel and plugged them into the side of one of the boxes. One set had very long wires attached to it.
“These are yours,” Skerlic said, extending them to Corsier. “Put them on and sit over there.” He motioned to another chair.
Corsier moved the chair over, sat down, and held the headphones in his hands as Skerlic looked around the reception area and spotted a radio on a lamp table. He unplugged it and put it on the floor about five feet away from the paintings. He turned it on and reduced the volume to a near whisper. Corsier could barely hear it. Skerlic put on his set of headphones, gesturing for Corsier to do the same, and turned on the dials of the two black boxes. Needles moved on the analogue dials. Red numbers flew by rapidly on the digital one. In moments Corsier heard the radio, classical music, at first low, then louder and quite clear. For the first time since Corsier had known him, Skerlic managed a tight-lipped smile.
Suddenly he flipped off the switches, removed his headphones, and turned to Corsier.
“Now, the schedule tomorrow…”
“I take the pictures to Knight between eight and eight-thirty. We’ll chat awhile in his library so that you will have time to modulate the reception or frequency or whatever you do. Then I come back over here. Schrade is supposed to be there around ten o’clock.”
“What if something happens and he comes earlier?”
“Even so, I don’t think he would come earlier than eight-thirty.” He paused. “What about the second frame?”
“The second frame?”
“If you get Schrade with one, what about the second one?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You just leave it? You will be giving investigators a guidebook of evidence, wiring signatures, explosive source…”
Skerlic snorted. “You have been watching too many spy programs on television. Bomb makers know all about signatures. Besides, they have never seen this woman’s work before.” He scratched his head, uninterested. “Now, after the detonation I will pack everything and leave. Within forty-eight hours I will message your e-mail address with instructions for the final deposit.”