The Color Of Night (43 page)

“Fine.” The maneuvering was just about at an end. It had taken him a long time to get to this point.

“There is nothing else to do until tomorrow, then,” Skerlic said, standing. “Don’t touch any of this shit.”

He turned and walked out of the reception and into his bedroom. He left the door open. Corsier heard the television come on, and that was that for the evening.

Corsier turned off the lights. He stood at the windows and looked down into the intersection that circled the small island of plane trees. The bronze statue of the nude woman glistened in the rain. No one sat on the benches beneath the trees. A few black cabs were parked at the curb across the street, and occasionally a car came and went along Carlos Place, going into or coming out of Mount Street.

It was a very strange evening for Claude Corsier. For the past several months, during his methodical planning of Schrade’s assassination, it was an abstract, an academic exercise. It had become a little more real with each passing week, and then with each passing day. Now it was down to hours. An imaginary act was about to become a reality, an irreversible one with critical consequences. He felt at once oddly powerful, almost euphoric, and at the same time trepidant. Despite all his planning, a great deal still could go wrong. He would spend the night worrying.

Left alone in his suite, Strand turned off the lights and threw back the curtains. The suite looked out to the Italian embassy on Davies Street, along which he had just walked. He could see the trees in Grosvenor Square. On the other side of that, a few streets away, was Ma Micheline.

Looking into the hazy London night, he double-checked his perspective. Other than Mara, not a soul on earth knew what he was doing. Even professional assassins had to share their secrets with one other person—the one who hired them. It couldn’t get any tighter than that.

Yet it really wasn’t tight at all. Mara’s contact with Carrington was a gaping hole. However, only the intelligence services were likely to see it, and even that would be obscured once Strand unleashed his files on the media. It was highly unlikely that any of the agencies would pursue what they knew. After all, they were among the few entities on earth that feared light more than darkness. There was no turning back on this.

If Schrade’s reservation was for eight-thirty, Strand would do well to be in the foyer by seven, an hour and a half from now. Schrade might go to the restaurant from the hotel, or he might fly in from Berlin, go to the restaurant, and then to the hotel. Strand couldn’t do anything about that. But if Schrade left from Claridge’s, Strand wanted to see if he was accompanied by a chauffeur, if he was accompanied by the second person, if he took a cab. It would even help to know how he was dressed. He had test fired the pistol into the bathtub, but he was still apprehensive about the pellet’s ability to penetrate the amount of clothing Hodge had assured him it would.

He had a sharp pain in his stomach, just below his sternum. Disappointed, he pressed his fingers into it. He had thought he was handling the tension better than this. It scared him. How the hell could he be sure of his judgment?

Turning away from the windows, he removed his coat and maneuvered around the furniture to the bed. He tossed his coat on the foot of the bed, untied his shoes, and lay down. He tried to relieve the tension in his stomach by breathing deeply. The shadows in the suite were murky, no sharp distinctions, no clear margins or boundaries. From the window across the room a blue gray light washed over the furniture, the color of night. Christ, he wanted this to be over.

For the next hour—he kept looking over at the face of a clock on the table at the side of the bed—he concentrated on rehearsing several variations of the same scenario. He approached Schrade coming out of the restaurant, jammed the pistol into his side, and fired, catching the slumping figure. He approached Schrade in the lobby of Claridge’s, jammed the pistol into his side, and fired, catching the slumping figure. He approached Schrade on the street, jammed the pistol into his side, and fired, catching the slumping figure. He approached Schrade…

He began to worry about how many opportunities he would have before ten o’clock the next morning. Obviously it would be best to finish it tonight. Even if it didn’t work out as he imagined it, if the pellet didn’t penetrate, if he fumbled the pistol, if Schrade screamed, if… if… it would be a hell of a lot easier to flee into the darkness. Another reason why a street-side approach was best. If something went wrong inside, getting away would be much more difficult.

He began to worry about Schrade’s dinner guest. Was it a woman, and would she accompany him back to Claridge’s? That would make it more difficult. If she was with him, she would be close enough to see that Strand’s brush-by was more than that. The milliseconds between the contact, the muffled slap, Schrade’s reaction, and Strand’s own response could say volumes to her. Her impressions would be instantaneous and would be largely formed by Strand’s own behavior in those seconds after Schrade’s reaction to being shot. If the saxitoxin didn’t work fast enough…

The next time he glanced at the clock he was startled to see that it was eight o’clock. He swung his feet off the bed and flipped on the light. Eight o’clock. God. What had gone on in his mind to make an hour pass so quickly? Immediately his stomach clenched. He swore, put on his shoes, and stood. He undid his trousers and smoothed down the tail of his shirt, then fastened his belt again.

Walking into the bathroom, he turned on the light and then looked in the mirror. He had the sensation of being a voyeur, as though he were behind a two-way mirror. The latex was holding up well. Nothing had changed. He smiled. The man smiled. There was no hint of resistant tissue. Everything moved naturally, as it was supposed to. He firmed up the knot in his tie. He wanted to wash his face. He turned out the light.

In the dimly lighted suite he put on his suit coat, grabbed his raincoat and umbrella, and left.

Strand was relieved to find that the foyer and the front hall were fairly busy, more generally active than he ever remembered them being, with people milling about the marble floors, moving in and out through the arches that led to the foyer. There was no bustle, no sense of collegial acquaintance among any of the guests.

He took a seat as out of the way as he could manage and still see the vestibule. He put his hands on the curved handle of his umbrella and sat back to wait and watch. Senior employees of the hotel stood about usefully but unobtrusively in dark suits while liveried staff glided to and fro across the polished marble floors in their scarlet tailcoats and white stockings.

Strand had no luck. At eight-twenty Schrade had not appeared. He was nothing if not punctual, so Strand could only assume that he was going to the restaurant from somewhere else. He walked out of the vestibule and got a cab in front of the hotel.

Ma Micheline was something new for sedate Mayfair, a result, perhaps, of Tony Blair’s insistence that Great Britain should begin thinking positively, reminding itself and the world that it was a modern, progressive, twenty-first-century commonwealth, a place of possibilities and bright futures.

In that vein, Ma Micheline was a wonderful mixture of sophistication and understated adventure. It was located on a quiet street of Edwardian architecture near Park Place, and as Strand approached he saw its softly lighted interior through large plate-glass windows, the pale ice blue linen tablecloths shimmering as though floating freely in the receding, tenebrous expanse of the large dining room. Once inside, Strand entered the warm, polished world of belle epoque decor, subdued lighting, smartly dressed diners, huge paintings along the walls above the wainscoting reminiscent of Picasso’s blue period.

There was an abundance of serving persons of two kinds. The first were waiters in tuxedos and glittering white shirts with wing-tip collars who did most of the work; and the second were a generous number of young women dressed identically in black, water-thin cocktail dresses, a single strand of pearls, their hair identically bobbed, with straight bangs. They all had blue eyes. They were the only introduction of eccentricity, but they were striking, and they waited on the tables with a somber, detached efficiency.

While the maître d’ located his reservation, Strand quickly scanned the dining room. Schrade was not there, but something caught his eye; he came back to a table and looked at a man sitting alone, in three-quarter profile. Strand tensed. Bill Howard was buttering a piece of bread.

Strand almost wheeled around, then caught himself. It took every bit of his self-control to allow the maître d’ to lead him through the aisles of tables to one five or six tables away. It was in a good location. Howard would have had to turn his head to see Strand’s table.

With his heart working hard to maintain some semblance of a rhythm, Strand ordered a bottle of wine, which arrived instantly. As one of the young women began opening it for him, Wolfram Schrade made his entrance.

Strand had not seen him in nearly five years, but Schrade had not changed. He was neither older nor heavier nor thinner. Even from where he sat, Strand could see Schrade’s strange clear eyes, and as he approached, following the maître d’, Strand reacquainted himself with the straight, narrow nose, the wide mouth with its thin upper lip and full lower lip, the thick, coarse hair the color of the vellum pages of old books. Schrade carried himself with an erect, straight-backed posture that was saved from being military by his abundant self-assurance, evident in the way he moved with a loose elegance that Strand had never seen matched anywhere.

Strand was not prepared for the rush of emotions that flooded over him as he heard Schrade’s deep voice, his heavily accented English. Strand bent his head to his menu and shifted his eyes to one side to watch them. He was suddenly seized by a loathing for Schrade that surpassed any animus he had felt in the past. He watched as one of the black-draped young women poured Schrade’s wine; he picked up the glass and drank without even looking at her. He portrayed no expression whatsoever as he talked to Howard. Strand remembered the arrogance he had always thought Schrade’s lack of expression conveyed. Schrade picked up his menu, glanced over it once, and then tossed it down, knowing what he wanted from the complicated entries without giving it a second thought, a dismissive gesture that demonstrated his world-weary hauteur in a way that Strand detested.

Watching Schrade, Strand slowly, deliberately dredged up the painful images he had carried with him like secret reliquaries: the harsh light on Romy’s wild face as she looked back over her shoulder, horrified, desperate, the rear of her Land Rover sinking slowly into the cold tidewater; Ariana’s naked, bloody body stuffed under the bed in the Metropole Hotel in Geneva; Dennis Clymer’s headless, limbless corpse being fished out of the Canal de Charleroi in Brussels; Meret’s charred skull amid the smoldering rubble of his home in Houston; Claude Corsier.

“Monsieur?”

Strand ordered the first thing that caught his eye.

Goddamn Bill Howard. Had Schrade been dining with a woman, or any person other than Howard, Strand would have had a chance on the sidewalk after dinner. But Howard would see right through Strand’s clumsy procedure. It would work only among the unsuspecting, the uninitiated. Howard’s world of betrayals and dirty business was far too cynical for him to witness such an act and be fooled by it.

Strand sat back with his glass of wine and looked once again at Schrade. He stared at him, his eyes exploring every minute aspect of his face and dress and demeanor in the same way a sightless man’s fingers lightly probed a person’s body to gain a sense of understanding. In Strand’s case he knew the man all too well. What he was doing as he watched Schrade was more akin to picking at a scab. Everything about the man inspired a disgust that Strand did not want to let go. He worried it and studied it, using it to justify a moment that he felt in his viscera was not long away.

Strand watched them, tantalized by their facial expressions, their gestures, the angle of their bodies, the cant of their shoulders. Bill Howard seemed quite comfortable with Schrade, as much as anyone could be. Their conversation was constant and apparently to the point, since neither of them ever took the time to look around the restaurant, either out of idle curiosity or out of concern for surveillance. Strand took that as a good sign, an indication that he had successfully convinced Howard that he had departed London the previous night.

He watched carefully as they progressed through their meal. He guessed that both men would have dessert. When the time came, they did, accompanied by coffee for Howard and espresso for Schrade. Strand asked for his bill. He wanted to leave just in front of them. They lingered over their drinks. Strand’s bill came promptly, too promptly. He perused it. They called for their bill also. Strand caught the eye of the young woman in the black dress, who took his credit card. Schrade did the same. Strand felt as though he were engaged in an intricate dance in which the partners never touched.

His young woman returned. Schrade’s returned. Bill Howard now looked around idly for the first time. He looked straight at Strand, who had glanced up from signing his credit card slip. Their eyes met, and Howard’s eyes moved on. That was bad luck. Howard did not recognize him, but ideally Strand should never have allowed himself to be noticed at all, not even in passing. Strand tore off his copy of the credit slip and got up from his table. Neither Schrade nor Howard noticed he was leaving.

He had to wait in the reception foyer for his raincoat and umbrella. If they separated here, at the restaurant, Strand had a chance at Claridge’s as Schrade went inside. Or in the lobby, if it was still busy. Or in the elevator, if he could get him alone.

Just as his coat and umbrella arrived, Schrade and Howard appeared at the desk, asking for theirs. One of the blue-eyed women helped Strand on with his raincoat while Schrade and Howard chatted a moment, waiting for their coats to be retrieved from the cloakroom. Strand could hear their voices clearly, but he understood nothing. The blood was driving through his head so violently, his ears heard only the rushing.