Chaos Theory (32 page)

‘That bastard killed my girlfriend. I don’t want him anywhere near me.’

‘I’m sorry, Noah. That’s the way it has to be.’

Noah closed his eyes for a moment.
Survive, Noah. Play along with this, until you get your chance to get away.

He opened his eyes again and said, ‘OK. Doesn’t seem like I have much choice, does it? But before I agree to any of this, I want to talk to Silja, and Adeola.’

‘Of course,’ said Professor Halflight. ‘Quite understandable.’

He took out his cellphone and punched out a speed-dial number. The phone rang for a long time before anybody answered.

‘Hallo?’ said Professor Halflight. ‘Hallo, yes, it’s me. As expected, our friend would like to have a word with your two travelling companions . . . That’s right.’

He passed the phone to Noah. ‘Ms Davis for you. But don’t be so rash as to ask her where she’s headed.’

‘Adeola?’ Noah could hear the swooshing sound of traffic in the background.

‘Noah? They’ve discovered who you are?’

‘Never mind about that. Are you OK?’

‘We’re fine, both of us, for now. They haven’t hurt us.’

‘OK. Can I talk to Silja?’

Silja came on. She sounded almost too calm. ‘Noah? Don’t worry, please. Adeola and I, we will manage.’

‘Silja?’

‘What is it?’

‘Take good care of yourself. I love you.’

The phone went dead. Noah handed it back to Professor Halflight.

‘You’re happy now?’ asked Professor Halflight.

Noah tightened his lips. He couldn’t speak.

‘What men will do for love!’ Fariah croaked, from behind her mask. She laughed, and then she started coughing again, until she retched.

 

‘
T
he Century Plaza it ain’t,’ said the spidery man, opening the door for them, ‘but the management sincerely hopes that you’ll enjoy your stay here.’

He ushered them into a sparsely-furnished room with white-painted walls and a dirty, royal-blue carpet. There were two mismatched couches, one mustard-yellow and the other crimson, a brown Formica table and two kitchen chairs with plastic seats. On the end wall there was a large framed print of Thai temple dancers.

‘You want any refreshments?’ asked the spidery man. ‘Soda, maybe? Coffee? I have instructions to take good care of you.’

‘Nothing,’ said Adeola. She walked across to the window. The Venetian blinds were open, but all she could see outside was the floodlit factory yard, with a row of yellow forklift trucks parked against a wall, and the black hills beyond.

‘I would like a cigarette,’ said Silja.

‘Sorry, this is a non-smoking facility.’

‘What are we supposed to do now?’ Adeola asked.

‘Make yourselves comfortable. My employer will be here in a minute.’

‘Hubert Tocsin?’

‘Just make yourselves comfortable, OK?’

The spidery man left the room but left the door slightly ajar. Adeola didn’t bother to open it and look outside. She knew that the black man with the MP9A1 would inevitably be standing guard.

Silja sat down on the yellow couch. ‘Why do you think they have brought us here?’

‘I’m not sure, exactly. But they must be using us to put pressure on Noah.’

‘He sounded very worried.’

‘You’re surprised?
I’m
very worried.’

They waited for almost a half-hour. Silja was growing increasingly fretful, and eventually she opened the door. Adeola was right. The black man
was
standing outside.

‘Can you please find me a cigarette?’ Silja asked him.

‘Nobody ain’t allowed to smoke here. But here.’ He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a pack of Winstons.

Silja came back into the room, blowing out smoke. ‘I always promised myself that I would quit on my twenty-fifth birthday.’

‘When’s that?’

‘Week after next. Doesn’t look like I’m going to make it, though, does it?’

‘I don’t know, Silja. I don’t know what these maniacs want. I don’t know why they didn’t cut our throats immediately.’

 

Silja had only half-finished her cigarette when the door opened and Hubert Tocsin walked in, wearing a white silk shirt with HT embroidered on the pocket, and navy-blue pants.

‘Adeola!’ he said, opening his arms to her. ‘It’s so good to see you again! Do you know – I thought you were dead!’

‘I’m beginning to wish that I were.’

‘Don’t say that! You can’t imagine how distressed I was, when I thought that you had been killed! I was
devastated
.’

‘Of course you were. But I’ll bet you were even more devastated when you found out that I was still alive.’

Hubert Tocsin walked around the back of the yellow couch. ‘And this is Ms Silja Fonselius. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms Fonselius. I don’t know if anybody has told you, but we have a strict non-smoking rule here at Tocsin.

Silja took a deep draw on her cigarette. Hubert Tocsin reached over, took it away from her, and crushed it on the carpet. ‘We couldn’t risk a fire here, Ms Fonselius. We wouldn’t want to flatten half of San Diego County. Besides, it’s so bad for your health.’

‘I don’t think that Nakasu is particularly good for our health, either,’ said Adeola.

‘Nakasu! Yes, I gathered that you and your friends had discovered all about Nakasu. One of the best-kept secrets of the past two and a half thousand years.’

‘It’s only a best-kept secret because you’ve murdered anybody who suspects Nakasu exists.’

‘Oh, come on. It’s like a company protecting its patents, that’s all. Like KFC, protecting its secret recipe for eleven herbs and spices.’

‘By cutting people’s throats?’

‘Ms Davis – Adeola – without Nakasu we would still be living in the Middle Ages. Without Nakasu there would be no airplanes, no cars, no plastics, no nuclear energy, no antibiotics . . . the list of benefits that have come out of human conflict is endless. Wars always bring progress. Great wars bring great progress. If a few reactionary people have to be sacrificed to keep mankind moving forward . . . well, so be it.’

Adeola stared at him for a long time. Hubert Tocsin smiled at her and kept on smiling.

‘What are you going to do to us?’ she asked, at last.

‘That really depends on your friend Noah. By noon, the day after tomorrow, we’ll know if he’s been cooperative or not.’

‘Cooperative, in what way?’

Hubert Tocsin approached her and took hold of the lapels of her Chinese bathrobe between finger and thumb, stroking them.

‘You really are a stunning woman, Ms Davis, but you have such inner tension. You always remind me of an animal, about to pounce.’

‘Cooperative, how?’ Adeola repeated.

‘You’ll soon find out. Ha! One way or another.’

 

Rick and Leon had been sitting in the dark for over an hour and a half before headlights swivelled across the ceiling, and a vehicle drew up outside the house.

Rick went across to the window and parted the blinds. ‘Buick sedan. Hard to tell in this light, but it looks like grey.’

He lifted his SIG-Sauer automatic out of its holster and cocked it. Leon came up and stood close behind him. ‘You said they’d come back for us.’

‘They know we know all about Nakasu, that’s why. They’re not going to let us get away that easily.’

They waited. After almost a minute, the Buick’s doors opened and two men climbed out. One was blond and wide-shouldered. The other, to Rick’s surprise, was Abdel Al-Hadi.

‘It’s Noah,’ said Rick.

‘But that fair-haired dude who’s with him,’ said Leon, ‘he’s one of the dudes who tried to kill us.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Sure I’m sure. He’s the one who was going to cut my throat, until Silja kicked him.’

‘So what the hell is going on? What are they doing here?’

They watched as Abdel Al-Hadi came up the steps towards the front door. The blond man was close behind him, although it didn’t look as if he were holding a gun.

‘Quick,’ Rick hissed, ‘out the back – into the yard.’

Crouching low, the two of them hurried through the darkened kitchen and out through the back door. They crossed the veranda and knelt down beside the veranda steps. The moon was up again, bone-white and bright, but the bougainvillea that hung down over the veranda roof gave them a deep, inky shadow in which to conceal themselves.

They heard voices, and then the kitchen light was switched on.

‘First thing you gotta do, call your make-up guy.’

‘It’s late. He’s probably in bed asleep by now.’

‘I don’t care if he’s in bed pronging his old lady. You heard what the professor said. Call him. Tell him it’s a matter of life and death.’

They couldn’t hear the answer to that. It sounded as if Noah had gone back through to the living room, and the blond man had followed him. They stayed in the shadow for another ten minutes, listening, and then the blond man came back into the kitchen.

‘You won’t mind if I help myself to a beer?’

Indistinct answer.

‘You want one, too? Shit, man, it’s your beer.’

Another indistinct answer, then the snap of a beer can being opened.

Another five minutes passed. Inside the house, somebody switched on the television, very loud. Then they heard the kitchen door swing. Footsteps crossed the veranda, and somebody leaned on the railing right above them, and lit a cigarette.

Rick looked up. ‘
Noah?
’

‘Rick? Leon?’ Noah had pulled off his beard, and peeled the latex bump from the bridge of his nose, but his hair was still black and curly and his face was still spattered with moles.

‘What’s happening, man?’ Rick whispered. ‘They took Adeola and Silja. We saw them do it.’

‘I know. They’re holding them hostage. They got Hong Gildong. They tortured him, I think. Anyhow, he told them all about the video and where we were hiding out and everything.’

‘Shit! What’s that blond dirtbag doing here?’

‘Keeping an eye on me. They want me to shoot the President, day after tomorrow.’

‘
What?
The President? You’re putting me on!’

‘He’s coming to LA for some economic summit. But he’s going to make an appearance when they sign that Ethiopian peace agreement that Adeola was working on. I’m supposed to black-up to look like one of the Ethiopian security guys – shoot the President, and Adeola’s boss, too.’

‘That’s, like,
lunacy
.’

‘Maybe it is, but so was killing JFK, and they pulled that off. They’ve got it all worked out.’

‘So they’re holding Adeola and Silja why? To make sure you do it?’

‘That’s right. As if they’re not going to kill us all anyhow.’

‘We know where they are,’ said Rick.

‘You’re kidding me!’

‘We followed them. They took them down to Escondido, to the Tocsin missile plant. It’s our guess that Tocsin’s been bankrolling Nakasu.’

There was a roar of laughter from the television. The blond man was laughing, too.

Noah said, ‘What the hell are we going to do? I can’t shoot the President.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Rick. ‘We’re a hit squad, remember? You and me and Leon and Silja and Adeola. We decided we were going to go after Nakasu and whack the bastards before they whacked us.’

‘How the hell can we, when they’re holding Silja and Adeola hostage? If I put one foot wrong, if I don’t shoot the President, they’ll kill
them
. They won’t even hesitate.’

‘Just helping myself to another beer here,’ came the the blond man’s voice from the kitchen.

Noah didn’t turn around but lifted one hand as if to say that he could take whatever he wanted.

Rick whispered, ‘Listen, knowledge is power.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘We know where Adeola and Silja are being held hostage, don’t we? But Nakasu don’t know that we know. That may be the only edge we’ve got, but it’s still an edge.’

‘Hey, you should watch this,’ the blond man called out. ‘It’s fucking hilarious.’

 

A
t 7.17 a.m. on Thursday morning, Mitchell DeLorean arrived by taxi. He was wearing a peacock-blue satin shirt and tight white jeans, and he was in a seriously irritable mood.

Noah opened the door for him before he had a chance to ring the bell.

‘If I didn’t owe you so many favours, Noah, I swear . . .’

‘This is the last time, Mitch, I promise you.’

‘You’re not pulling another one of those snuff video stunts, are you?’

Noah led him into the living room. The blond man was slouched in front of the television, cleaning out his ear with his finger. Mitchell said, ‘Hi!’ but the blond man simply looked him up and down and said nothing.

‘Come through,’ said Noah, and took Mitchell into the bedroom. Mitchell opened up his case and started taking out pots and tubes of make-up.

‘Who’s your surly friend?’

‘He’s no friend of mine, believe me.’

‘What’s going on here, Noah? First of all you want to be a Palestinian and now you want to be –
what?
’

Noah picked up the identity card from the dressing table. ‘Ethiopian.
This
Ethiopian. Kebede Gebeyehu.’

Mitchell peered at the photograph and wrinkled up his nose. ‘Hmm. He’s a very
noir
young man, isn’t he? But it shouldn’t be too difficult. The main problem areas with a black face are always the eyes and the lips. And the hands, of course. The hands are always a challenge.’

‘Well, the eyes should be OK. I’ll be wearing shades most of the time.’

‘That’ll help. And I use my own blackberry-based dye to colour the lips. What about the hair?’