Evil Ways
has an extra star now, that the scientists can't explain.
—when the graves were opened and the dead came forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held revel."
Dracula's Guest
The Americans were at the edge of the city, and in another day
—two at the most—they would occupy it completely. Sporadic automatic weapons fire in the distance indicated that some remnants of Saddam's army (the fanatical Republican Guards, probably) were still either brave or foolish enough to offer resistance. The rest of Saddam's forces had either fled or made an abrupt return to civilian life, leaving their military careers in the dust, along with their uniforms. Most of the city's police had followed their example, reasoning correctly that trigger-happy Americans might not make fine distinctions between one kind of Iraqi uniform and another.
For the next few days, until the Americans established complete control, chaos would rule the city. The looting had already begun, and there was no one to stop it.
It was the day the five men had been waiting for.
They made their way through the narrow side streets and alleys of the Al-Salhiya district, at least fifty feet between them to avoid the attention that a group walking together might draw. Each wore the dishdasha robe and checkered kaffiyeh headscarf common to lower middle-class Iraqis. Their garments were neither too clean nor too dirty. Their beards were neither too long nor too short. Every one of
them could speak near-perfect Arabic with an authentic-sounding Iraqi accent. The weapons and tools they carried were mostly hidden under their clothing, although two of the men had the canvas carryalls that many in Baghdad used the way Western college students use backpacks.
Their winding course finally brought them to the mouth of an alley directly across the street from the great, fortress-like building that houses the Iraqi National Museum. The ornate front doors were open wide, and through them, in both directions, poured a stream of men. Some appeared to be alone; others made up groups of three or four. Those entering the building were mostly empty-handed, but those leaving never were. Their arms were full with bowls, cups, swords, statuettes, and other artifacts from ancient Mesopotamian history.
The five men, out of sight within the alley, silently watched the looting for several minutes.
Finally, the team leader spoke, his voice just loud enough to be heard by the other four. Even so, he spoke Arabic. There was no reason to break character, and, in any case, this was not a good place to be overheard speaking English. "This is as good a time as we are likely to see," he said. "No one will notice us entering with that mob, and"
—he glanced up, noting the position of the sun—"darkness will hide us when we are ready to leave. Questions?" The team leader's name was Miles Hawkins, although all of the identification he carried said he was Mohammed al-Sayeed, a carpenter from Rumallah.
Ten seconds passed in silence. "All right," Hawkins said, in Arabic. "Let's go." If he was tense, his voice failed to show it.
They crossed the wide street quickly, making no effort now to disguise the fact that they were together. They drew little attention as they passed through the doorway and went up a short flight of broad stairs into the museum proper. Hawkins turned left without hesitation, and the others followed. They could hear alarms going off throughout the building as various priceless treasures, some thousands of years old, were ripped from their supposedly secure exhibits.
The men passed quickly through two of the exhibit halls. In the third, they slipped through a side entrance into a hallway, which took them to an inconspicuous metal door that was marked, in Arabic, "Private. No admittance."
Hawkins looked at one of the men, a tall Russian whose name was Alex Scrodin. Scrodin immediately stepped forward, producing a stick of putty-like substance from under his robe. He began to break off chunks of it, which he then carefully molded to the door's three hinges, as well as the lock itself. Then he reached under his robe for the detonators.
The others didn't bother to watch Scrodin as he worked. Instead, their eyes moved restlessly around the corridor, searching. They didn't care about surveillance cameras, since there was almost certainly nobody manning the control center that such a camera would feed. Alarms didn't concern them, either. One more alarm amid the cacophony rising throughout the building would make no difference. The men were on the lookout for something more proactive that might have been put in place to protect a door this important
—something lethal. But they saw nothing to give them cause for worry.
Three minutes later, Scrodin gave a small grunt, and backed away from the door. He was now holding a device about the size and shape of a garage door opener. He nodded at Hawkins, who made a sharp clicking sound with his tongue. Immediately, all the men began to move back the way they had come, down to the end of the corridor and around the corner.
Hawkins said, in Arabic, "Masks." Each man quickly donned a small, light, state-of-the-art gas mask that was said to be proof against any poison gas, nerve agent, or biowar aerosol known to science. Hawkins found himself hoping that the Iraqis hadn't concocted a deadly gas that modern science
hadn't
heard about.
The men dropped to the floor and lay flat, covering their ears. Scrodin looked toward Hawkins and, receiving a nod, placed his thumb on one of the electronic device's buttons, took in a breath, and pressed it.
The explosion was achingly loud in that confined space, but the damage it caused was focused and controlled, just as the men had intended. The heavy metal door, ripped free of its latch and hinges, lay flat on the corridor's floor, smoking slightly.
Beyond, the empty doorway yawned at them, a great black rectangle with no light showing behind it. The men were prepared for that, and had brought small but powerful flashlights. They got to their feet,
plaster dust from the ceiling trickling down their robes to fall unnoticed on the floor. The gas masks stayed on.
At Hawkins's signal, they rapidly made their way, single-file, down the corridor and through the doorway, into the darkness and whatever awaited them there.
Two hours later, all of them were dead. Except one.
"Satisfactory," Walter Grobius said. It was the highest praise he ever gave. He was sitting on the suite's king-size bed, back against the headboard, and hadn't looked up from his laptop. Pardee wondered whether the old man was buying England, or merely selling France.
Pardee went over to one of the big windows and looked down. The penthouse of the Hotel Sultanhan afforded an excellent view of Istanbul's insane rush hour traffic, for what that was worth. "We could have picked him up when he crossed the border from Iraq two days ago," he said mildly. He was tall, and very thin
—but there was nothing about him that looked frail.
Pardee was the only living person allowed to question Grobius's decisions, even obliquely.
"But then you couldn't have watched his progress with your magic, to make sure that no one was interested in him." His voice had the rasp of a longtime smoker, although the old man had never touched tobacco in his life. "Plenty of people would love to get their hands on the Book, you know that. And it's only a matter of time before word gets out that it's been… liberated."
Pardee allowed himself a quick smile. "Yes, that should cause quite a stir, in certain circles."
"They can stir themselves into a frenzy, for all I care, once the thing is in my possession and secure."
Grobius put his laptop aside and looked up for the first time since Pardee had entered. The clear, sharp blue eyes were a startling
contrast to his seamed, weathered face. "Besides, we have friends in Istanbul, in case there's trouble."
"People you've bought, you mean." There was no criticism implied. Not even Pardee would have dared go that far.
"What other kind of friend is there?" The old man's voice contained no irony
—just a statement of cold fact. "Now, suppose you call room service and conjure us up some dinner. But first, hand me my medication. It's time for another dose."
Miles Hawkins, a battered old valise next to him, sat on a park bench, apparently at ease. He had chosen this bench with care
—it was directly across Piyerloti Caddesi from the front entrance of the Hotel Sultanhan. Although looking toward the hotel, Hawkins was less interested in the former Ottoman palace's elegant marble façade than he was in the traffic around him, both pedestrian and motorized.
It was only one and a half kilometers from the train station to Istanbul's best hotel, and Hawkins had walked it, despite the heat. He'd wanted to stretch his legs after the long train trip
—and, more importantly, wanted to see if he'd picked up any ticks. That would have been impossible to do in a taxi, especially in the rush hour traffic.
Hawkins had spent a number of years with MI6, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, and "ticks" was the term by which Her Majesty's spooks referred to opposition surveillance. Now, after using every reflective surface he'd passed to unobtrusively check behind him, then spending ten minutes in the park vetting everything that moved, Hawkins was virtually certain that nobody was interested in him. The old man had insisted that he arrive clean, but Hawkins would have made sure, anyway. It was simply good tradecraft, even though that trade had changed considerably since his cloak and dagger days.
Without appearing to do so, Hawkins was watching the traffic patterns on Piyerloti, which had three lanes running each way. When he finally saw that a gap was about to develop, he rose in one smooth motion, grabbed the valise, and sprinted across the street. He'd cut it fine
—as it was, a taxi nearly nailed him from one direction, and a blue Mercedes sedan from the other—but that was all right. If Hawkins barely made it, then someone on his tail would not make it
at all. As he approached the hotel's big glass doors, Hawkins used their reflection to check behind him one last time. No one had tried to follow him from the park. He was clean.
Two minutes later, Hawkins stepped out of the express elevator into the elegant foyer of the penthouse, and was immediately confronted by two large men in suits, Turks by the look of them. Hawkins stood still, spread his arms a little, and waited for the men to pat him down, which they did with a clinical thoroughness that paid no regard whatever to their subject's personal dignity. Hawkins bore this stoically
—he had been there before, many times—but then one of them tried to take the valise from him.
Hawkins pulled it back roughly. "Uh-uh, mate. No way. This stays with me. Ask your boss, he'll tell you."
But the security man, who may or may not have understood English, was persistent. He reached for the valise again, while his companion moved in and grabbed Hawkins's other arm.
Eighteen seconds later, the door to the penthouse opened to reveal a tall, wiry man with a shaved head and black goatee. "I thought I heard a commotion," he said, taking in the carnage.
"Mister Pardee," Hawkins said with a nod, straightening his tie. The two security men lay strewn about the floor, not moving, one of them bleeding copiously from the mouth. "I'm sorry about that, but these gorillas
—"
"It doesn't matter," Pardee said, and opened the door wide. "Come in, please." He didn't spare the security men a second glance.
Pardee brought Hawkins into the suite's master bedroom, where Grobius was again sitting up in the bed, pecking away on his computer. The shadows under the old man's eyes looked a little darker than nine months earlier, when Hawkins had last seen him.
"The prodigal is returned," Pardee said.
Grobius nodded. "But not, it would appear, empty-handed."
Hawkins hefted the valise slightly. "No, not at all. I've got what you want."
Grobius closed the laptop and set it aside. His hands trembled a little. They had not trembled nine months ago.
"And where are your colleagues, who took part in this adventure with you?"
Hawkins gestured toward one of the windows with his head. "Out there. Waiting for me to come out. And they know what to do, if I don't."
"Very wise of you, I'm sure," Grobius said. Pardee was standing a little behind Hawkins, so only Grobius saw the smile that briefly crossed the wizard's face.
Grobius pointed at the valise and said to Hawkins, "Show me."
Hawkins placed the valise on the bed, produced a key, and unlocked it. Then he carefully lifted out a bundle made of some ornately decorated cloth. "This tapestry, here, was in the same vault as the book," he said. "I needed something to wrap the thing in, so I figured this would do. I suppose it's valuable, considering where they were keeping it." With exaggerated care, Hawkins placed the bundle on the bed near Grobius's feet. "You can have it
—no extra charge."
"How very kind." Grobius might have been thanking him for passing the salt at dinner. His eyes never left the bundle on the bed.
Hawkins finished unwrapping the tapestry, let it fall open, then stepped back.
Resting on the cloth was a thick volume bound in old, cracked leather. On the cover, faded but still legible, were several esoteric symbols and a few words in Arabic.
Pardee stepped forward and bent over the book. He studied the symbols on the cover carefully, and ran his long, thin fingers gently over them, several times. Then, with great care, he opened the book and carefully studied several pages apparently selected at random. Finally, he slowly closed the volume and looked up at Grobius.
"Oh, yes," he said, in the voice a man might use after fantastic sex. "It's genuine. Exactly what we wanted."
Grobius nodded. "Very well." Hawkins thought this was the first time he had heard genuine emotion coming from the old man. Grobius was staring at the book, and continued to do so until Hawkins finally felt obliged to cough gently.
Grobius blinked a couple of times, then looked up. "Well, I expect you'll be wanting your money."
"Yes, sir." Hawkins managed to keep most of the eagerness out of his voice.
Grobius reached for his laptop again and began working the keyboard. Less than a minute later, he pressed "Enter," watched the screen a moment longer, then shut the computer down.
"Duly transferred to your account in Barbados," he said to Hawkins. "Ten million dollars."
Hawkins reached into a pocket and pulled out his Blackberry. "You won't mind if I just confirm that, sir."
"You'd be a fool if you didn't."
It took less than thirty seconds with the device to bring a wide grin to Hawkins's tanned face. "Very good, Mister Grobius. A pleasure doing business with you, sir."
"That works out to two million for each of you, assuming you're dividing it equally."
"Yes, sir."
"Is that what you're doing
—dividing it equally?"
Hawkins looked at the old man. "No offense, Mister Grobius, but what do you care?"
"I care because it annoys me when people lie to me. And when they do, I want to know why."
Hawkins stated to speak, but the old man's hand slashed through the air like a blade, cutting him off.
"Spare me your protestations," Grobius said. "You've been under surveillance ever since you left Baghdad. You left alone, and you've been on your own ever since. I knew your little threat was empty as soon as you made it. The other men on your team are not lurking outside, ready to take revenge if something untoward should happen to you in here. So,
where are they?"
Hawkins stared at Grobius for several seconds, wondering if it was worth trying to keep the bluff going. But then he sighed and said, "I wonder if I might trouble you for a drink of water."
At a nod from Grobius, Pardee glided off to the suite's kitchen. "Sit down," Grobius said, his tone less angry. Hawkins stepped over to a nearby armchair and sat down gingerly, as if he was expecting the thing to grow teeth and bite him.
Pardee returned and handed Hawkins a plastic bottle of Evian water. Hawkins cracked the top and took a long swig.
"I must apologize for deceiving you," he said to Grobius. "I figured as long as you got what you wanted, the specifics of getting it didn't
matter to you. And I don't much want to talk about what happened back in Baghdad."
"But you will," Grobius said. It was not a question.
"Yeah, all right." He twirled the bottle in his fingers for a moment. "It was in the museum that it all went to shit. We'd followed the blueprint you'd given us
—worked a treat, too. Everything was just where it was supposed to be—including the door leading to the vaults underneath the building. We blew the door, no problem. Went down the stairs to the first vault and kept right on going past it. Same for the second. You'd said the book was in the third vault, so that's where we headed.
"Scrodin, the explosives bloke, blew the combination lock. Took more juice, that did, than the one upstairs, but he got it done. Then we pried the vault open."
Hawkins took another long draw from the bottle of water. Then he sat there a moment longer, as if hoping that someone would interrupt him. No one did.
"Way I figure it, they had some kind of state-of-the art nerve agent
inside the vault,
all ready to go. Saddam probably had his boffins make it up special. One of those 'weapons of mass destruction' that wanker Bush is always goin' on about. The stuff must have been under pressure, because it dispersed into the hall pretty damn quick once we'd got the vault door open."
"How do you know that?" Pardee asked him. "Nerve gas would surely have been invisible to the naked eye."
"I know that, because it killed every man on the team in the next ten seconds, before we even had time to get into the bloody vault."
"And you alone survived to tell the tale," Grobius said. He might have been discussing pork belly futures. "Why is that?"
"Because I kept my gas mask on, that's why. We'd all put them on upstairs, in case there was something wired to the hallway door. Nothing. It was stuffy underground, and the other guys took their masks off so they could breathe better. Hell, the only reason mine was still on was, I was so busy thinking out the next move that I forgot about it."
"Did you attempt to render assistance to your fallen comrades?" Grobius asked.
"Waste of time. The gas killed them in a few seconds. Nasty stuff, nerve gas, and works pretty damn quick. And I know dead men when I see 'em."