Chaos Theory (18 page)

‘They always do that? Cut people’s throats?’

‘It’s symbolic. People with their throats cut can’t speak any more.’

‘How about castration?’ asked Noah, sharply. ‘One of my friends was gelded, as well as having his throat cut.’

‘That’s symbolic, too. A man with no nuts can’t go spreading the seeds of doubt.’

Rick said, ‘One more time, buddy. Tell us who sent you.’

Noah turned to Steve and said, ‘Steve – how about taking Mrs Pringle and her daughter out of the room? Mrs Pringle – are you OK?’

Kathleen Pringle was grey-faced and still shaking. Steve helped her to stand up, and led both women through to the kitchen.

The hairdresser said, ‘You might as well accept it. There’s no way I’m going to tell you any more. So you’d better do whatever it is your conscience tells you.’

Rick looked at Noah, but the Beretta was still aimed at the bridge of the hairdresser’s nose and his hand was rock steady.

‘I’m coming, Mom,’ said the hairdresser, and Rick shot him in the head.

 

I
t was a hot, brassy morning in Los Angeles. Adeola went with Ted that morning to the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, where the International Peace Convention was being held, to meet two senior directors of DOVE, and to attend a welcome buffet for the 270 delegates.

She wore a long white flowing dress of see-through muslin, and a white turban decorated with bronze leopard pendants from Benin.

Alvin Metzler was waiting for her in his suite overlooking the Avenue of the Stars. Alvin was DOVE’s political director of mission, a small, neat, trimly-bearded man with a nose like an anteater and a fondness for lightweight designer suits and very bright blue socks. John Stagione was there, too, the security director, a former FBI bureau chief with wavy grey hair and a sallow complexion like spotted liverwurst.

‘You disappeared under our radar for a couple of days,’ said John Stagione, in his harsh, congested voice, splitting a pistachio nut with his thumbnail.

‘Rick was taking care of me – Rick and two friends of his.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘You don’t have to worry. They were ex-Secret Service.’

‘Ex-Secret Service or not, you should have let me vet them first. Even old friends can be turned. Retired Secret Service officers, finding it hard to live on their pensions – everyone has their price.’

‘As dedicated as I am, John, and as much as I love you all, I do occasionally need
some
time to myself.’

‘Thing is, Adeola,’ said Alvin Metzler, ‘we have an eye-watering amount of capital invested in your current missions. Our investors aren’t going to be very happy if someone knocks you off and screws up a mission as potentially profitable as the Ethiopian deal. I mean – as you’re aware – peace is a business like any other.’

He paused, and then he added, ‘Not only that, we’d be extremely distressed on a personal level to lose you.’

‘Oh, thanks. But I have no intention of making myself a target, Alvin, believe me. I’m a conciliator, not a martyr.’

‘Of course. But we’ve decided to intensify your personal security. John has arranged for six close-protection bodyguards to keep a twenty-four-hour watch on you, in six-hour shifts.’

‘For how long?’

‘Until we find out who’s been trying to paint you out of the picture,’ said John Stagione.

‘Or at least until your current missions are complete,’ Alvin Metzler added.

‘Well, I appreciate your concern,’ Adeola told him. ‘But I’m not too sure that I’m going to be able to live like that.’

‘I’m sorry, Adeola, this is non-negotiable. The trust have discussed it and we simply can’t risk anything going wrong, not at this juncture.’

Adeola said, ‘All right, if that’s the way it has to be. Does Rick know any of this protection team?’

‘Ah,’ said John Stagione. ‘That’s where I’ve had to make some changes. I’m moving Rick to intelligence duties.’

‘You mean you’re demoting him?’

‘I’m moving him back into the office, that’s all.’

‘But come on, John, I don’t trust anybody else, not like I trust Rick. I want
him
to take care of me.’

John Stagione scratched the back of his neck. ‘From what I hear, Adeola, he’s being taking care of you over and above his job description.’

‘That’s no business of yours.’

‘Oh, it is, I’m afraid. Any personal relationship between a DOVE negotiator and a member of her protection staff is a security risk. It can lay both of you open to all kinds of untoward pressures.’

Alvin Metzler said, ‘We’re going to give Rick a couple of months’ downtime, Adeola. He’s been under a whole lot of strain lately, especially after losing so many of his team in Dubai, and in Ireland. Remember that he’s still officially under investigation by the
Garda Síochana
.’

‘I want him to stay with me. I insist.’

‘I’m sorry, Adeola. It’s a decision made by the whole trust and it has to be final.’

 

Downstairs, in the largest of the Century Plaza’s convention rooms, delegates from twenty-three different countries were mingling at an informal buffet. Most of them wore dark business suits: others were dressed in flamboyant national costumes, saris from India and kente cloths from Ghana; Arabian haiks and jellabas.

It had been somebody’s idea to give the buffet a Cajun theme. Underneath the sparkling chandeliers, the long tables were crowded with shrimp and blackened catfish and corn-fried oysters, as well as spiced chicken and jambalaya and filé gumbo. In the far corner, a quartet in floppy blue shirts were playing zydeco music with fiddles and accordion.

Adeola knew many of the delegates already, especially the Middle Eastern diplomats. With Ted keeping close beside her, she talked to the junior foreign minister from Algeria, the development minister from Qatar, the trade secretary from Egypt. In the far corner of the room, though, she saw a good-looking man of maybe forty-two or forty-three, with dark, combed-back hair, rimless glasses and a suntan, and although she thought she recognized him, she couldn’t immediately think of his name.

She excused herself from the Egyptian trade secretary and negotiated her way across the room. The man was standing by himself, nursing a glass of white wine. He looked not unlike a young Louis Jourdan, almost too smooth and too handsome to be attractive. He was wearing a well-cut navy blue coat and a pale blue silk necktie with some kind of gold insignia on it.

Adeola went up to him and said, directly, ‘We’ve met, haven’t we?’

He didn’t even look at her. ‘No, we haven’t. I’d have remembered.’

She held out her hand with all the jangly bangles on her wrist. ‘Adeola Davis. I’m sure I’ve seen you before.’

He turned to her. His eyes were unusually black. He clasped her hand between both of his, and slowly shook it. ‘Adeola Davis, from DOVE? Yes . . . I read about you in
Newsweek
. Globe-trotting freelance peace negotiator extraordinaire.’

‘That’s one description.’

‘It’s an honour to meet you, Adeola Davis. Without you, the world would be a much more miserable place than it is already. Can I get you a glass of wine? Or a mint julep? I think they’re even serving a blue mamou.’

‘I’m fine with Evian, thanks. So why do I think I know you?’

‘I’ve been featured in a few magazines, I guess.’ His voice was deep and measured, with a hint of a Southern accent, which Adeola couldn’t quite place. Louisiana, possibly. ‘Hubert Tocsin. I was the winner of last year’s Round-Bermuda Yacht Race. And the year before that.’

‘Don’t tell me that’s your only credential for being here.’

‘Of course not. But I like to boast about it, all the same.’

‘So what are you doing here? I saw you across the room and I thought you looked kind of lost.’

Hubert Tocsin looked around at the peace delegates, and gave an odd, self-deprecating smile. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m the devil in the company of angels. I’m the owner of Tocsin Weapons and Rocketry Systems, of Escondido, and the current president of the Association of American Arms Manufacturers.’

‘
Now
I know you,’ said Adeola. ‘You made that speech, didn’t you, at the United Nations, about arms being necessary for world peace?’

‘That’s the one. I’m flattered you remember.’

‘I wouldn’t be flattered, if I were you. I disagreed with every word you said. And I mean
vehemently
, with a capital V.’

Hubert Tocsin laughed. ‘I wouldn’t have expected you to feel any other way. But I guess the difference between you and me is that you’re an idealist and I’m a realist.’

‘Mr Tocsin, I’ve been to Angola, and I’ve been to Beirut, and I’ve been to Somalia, and I’ve witnessed your reality first hand. Believe me, it isn’t pretty.’

‘Well, don’t let’s fall out over our different world view, not in the first five minutes of meeting each other. I know what you’re telling me, Ms Davis, and I fully understand your distress. But as far as I’m concerned, a well-armed world is the lesser of two evils. Look at the Hutus. They didn’t need smart bombs to slaughter each other. All they needed was prejudice and hatred and machetes, and you can’t ban prejudice and hatred. Or machetes, for that matter.’

A waiter came past with a tray of fried shrimp, and Hubert Tocsin took one. ‘I have a special weakness for fried shrimp,’ he smiled. ‘I ought to take you to Mulate’s, in New Orleans. They also serve a crawfish
étouffée
to die for, and a great blackened alligator, if you have a taste for blackened alligator.’

‘The weapons maker invites the peace negotiator out for dinner?’ asked Adeola.

‘Why not? I could spend the evening making swords and you could spend the evening beating them into ploughshares.’

Adeola looked at him acutely. ‘So what exactly
are
you doing here?’

‘I’m here because I was invited. I’m here because peace is just as much my concern as yours, even though we both believe in different ways of achieving it.’

‘You got that right.’

Hubert Tocsin put down his wine glass and took hold of her hand again. ‘I really respect what you do, Ms Davis. I just want you to know that.’

‘I wish the feeling were mutual, Mr Tocsin, but it isn’t.’

Hubert Tocsin shrugged. ‘That makes me a little sad, I have to admit.’

‘I saw a fifteen-month-old boy lying in the dirt in Beirut, with both legs blown off at the knees. That made
me
sad.’

Hubert Tocsin kept on smiling, and kept on holding her hand, but Adeola saw something in his face that made her feel suddenly chilled, as if the sun had disappeared behind a cloud.

She rejoined Ted, who was standing at the end of the buffet table with his mouth full of spicy Cajun sausage. ‘Everything OK?’ he asked her. ‘You look kind of pissed.’

‘No . . . I’m fine. I met somebody I didn’t expect to meet, that’s all.’

‘That guy in the sport coat? Who he?’

‘Let’s put it this way. You see all these people gathered here today? One way and another, Hubert Tocsin has probably killed a thousand times more people than this.’

 

Outside, in the hotel lobby, John Stagione was waiting for her, looking impatient and sweaty, with a stocky young Korean man in a black suit and a black shirt. He had shiny black hair parted in the centre and long scimitar-shaped sideburns.

‘Adeola, this is Hong Gildong. He’s going to be taking care of you for the next six hours.’

Hong Gildong bowed his head and shook her hand. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Ms Davis,’ he said, in immaculate English. ‘Rest assured I will make my presence as unobtrusive as I possibly can. But if there is anything you require from me, all you have to do is say the word.’

‘Well, thank you,’ said Adeola, turning to Ted in amusement.

Ted said, ‘Guess you won’t be needing
me
to run close-protection any more. Obtrusive kind of a mook like me.’

‘You’ve been terrific, Ted, don’t worry about it. You and Steve both. I’ll see you later, anyhow, when Rick and Jonah get back.’

‘Where is Rick?’ asked John Stagione. ‘I’ve been calling him on his cell all morning but he’s not answering.’

‘Went to see a friend, that’s all,’ said Adeola. ‘I’ll have him call you.’

‘I have my SUV here,’ said Hong Gildong, gesturing towards the curb.

At that moment, with a faint ringing sound, one of the bronze pendants dropped from Adeola’s turban and rolled across the sidewalk. The fine silk thread necklace that was holding it had broken.

She picked it up, and unwound the necklace from her headdress. Another pendant must have dropped off without her noticing it, because she had only five left. They were only copies of the fifteenth-century originals from the reign of Oba Ewuare, but they were beautifully cast, and they had been given to Adeola by the Nigerian ambassador to symbolize her ‘speed, her grace, her beauty, and like the leopard itself, her remorselessness’.

‘Hold up a minute,’ she said, and went back across the lobby to the convention room. The reception was beginning to break up now, and the few delegates left were standing around in small knots, finishing their discussions and saying their goodbyes. But Hubert Tocsin was still there, in the same corner, and he was talking to a black man in a grey suit.

As she came nearer, Hubert Tocsin caught sight of her, and the black man turned around, too. It was Captain Madoowbe, from the Ethiopian security forces, with his ritually-scarified, pockmarked cheeks. He gave her a grin crowded with orange teeth.

‘Captain Madoowbe. What a pleasant surprise.’

‘Ms Davis, the pleasant surprise is all mine. I am here in the LA with His Excellency Ato Ketona Aklilu.’

‘I wasn’t aware that you and Mr Tocsin were acquainted.’