Chaos Theory (22 page)

‘Sometimes, when you’re setting up a movie stunt, you have to use the talent instead of a trained stunt-person, and so the stunt is much more difficult to get right. But you make allowances for the talent’s inexperience, and you factor in a far wider safety margin.’

‘OK,’ said Rick. ‘But I still don’t see how you can get to join them. Why would they want to recruit you?’

‘They might, if I assassinated somebody on their hit list.’

Adeola frowned. ‘The only person we know for sure that they want to assassinate is
me
. You’re going to kill me, just so Emu Ki Ilani will accept you as a member?’

‘You’ve got it.’

‘Well, I’m sorry to think that you consider me so dispensable.’

But Rick was smiling. He leaned back in his chair and said, ‘I see where this is going.’

‘I was thinking of kidnap,’ said Noah. ‘Followed by the release on the Internet of a highly-graphic video, showing Adeola’s execution. A shot between the eyes, maybe. We might even manage a beheading.’

‘A kidnap would certainly be the best way of doing it,’ Rick agreed. ‘We wouldn’t even have to produce a body.’

‘So who exactly is going to kidnap me?’ asked Adeola.

‘Some Middle Eastern fanatic, I guess,’ Rick extemporized, ‘from some splinter group that nobody’s ever heard of.’

Adeola nodded. ‘Palestinian would probably be the most convincing. I tried to talk to some Palestinian freedom fighters at the end of last year, but they refused to consider any kind of compromise. They spat at me and called me a Western whore.’

‘Perfect,’ said Rick. ‘And before he executes you, this fanatic could appear on the video, ranting against capitalism and Western tyranny. A few days after which, he could contact Professor Halflight and ask if he could join Emu Ki Ilani and assist them in their struggle.’

‘Can you talk like a Palestinian?’ Adeola asked Noah.

‘I told you, I can do any accent you want. I can do Greek. I can do Inuit.’

‘Can you
look
Palestinian?’

‘My friend Mitchell DeLorean is the best motion picture make-up artist in Hollywood. Did you ever see
The
Gods of Mount Olympus
? Mitch won more than half a dozen awards for that. The movie was shit, but the make-up was sensational.’

Hong Gildong said, ‘You will need to work this out with very great precision. The kidnap must be seen by independent witnesses and must appear to be one hundred per cent authentic. And whatever happens, you cannot afford to be apprehended. I have some friends who may be able to assist us with this.’

‘You’re going to need a watertight background story, too,’ said Rick. ‘I don’t doubt that Professor Halflight and his pals have the facilities to vet you all the way back to the moment the doctor cut your umbilical cord.’

‘I can help you out with that one,’ said Steve. ‘I have a friend in immigration. We can pick some stray Palestinian who’s staying in this country without papers and gone on the lam. Somebody like that won’t exactly be rushing forward to protest that he’s innocent of kidnap and first-degree homicide, will he?’

Adeola said, ‘All right. I think I understand what you’re planning to do. I will disappear, presumed murdered. I’m not sure if this is ethical, and it will certainly cause a great deal of distress to my family and my friends and the people I work with at DOVE—’

‘But?’

‘But – if it’s the only way of stopping these people, how can I disagree with it? I have so many dead friends who deserve justice. All that worries me, Noah, is what you’re planning to do, once Emu Ki Ilani have accepted you – always supposing, of course, that they
do
accept you.’

‘I hadn’t really thought about that, not in any detail. I guess the first thing is to find out who the head honchos are, and how the organization works, and who they plan to knock off next.’

‘And then?’

Noah pulled a face. ‘It depends.’

‘What if they do allow you to join them? Won’t they expect you to kill somebody else? What if they demand that you assassinate somebody, or kidnap them and shoot them or cut off their head? What will you do then?’

Noah looked queasily from Rick to Silja to Hong Gildong. ‘I don’t know. I think I’ll cross that particular swamp when I come to it.’

 

M
itchell DeLorean was delighted to turn Noah into a Palestinian fanatic. In fact, he was almost too enthusiastic.

‘I could give you this amazing scar, all the way down the side of your face, and make your teeth look seriously rotten. And maybe you could have this one milky eye.’

‘Mitch, we’re not making
Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp
here. I just want to look vaguely Middle Eastern. And the most important thing is that I’m not recognizable as
me
.’

‘Sure, sure,’ said Mitchell, walking around Noah in a circle, sizing up his profile, and flicking at his hair. Mitchell was a small, restless man – bald, with a deeply-suntanned head and protuberant ears, and a heavy black Stalin moustache. He was wearing a silk shirt with lilac swirls on it, very tight Massimo Dutti jeans and Cuban-heeled boots. For all that he acted so effeminate, he had a ravishing young wife – Nadia Greene, who had appeared in several episodes of
Coast Patrol
, most of which had required her to stand on the prow of a coastguard cutter in a diminutive yellow bikini, and say nothing.

‘I don’t need to make your face any darker, because you already have a suntan. But I need to change the
quality
of your skin tone. You need to look like a person who is naturally dark, but doesn’t go out in the sun a whole lot.’

‘OK. That sounds good.’

‘I’m going to give some interesting moles on your forehead, too. Those will distract anybody who talks to you, so that their recognition process is thrown off. That was one of the reasons why women in the eighteenth century used to wear beauty spots . . . the spots caught people’s attention and stopped them from realizing how homely the women were.

‘I can give you some bushy black Muslim-style face fungus, and a bump on your schnoz. A bump on the schnoz, that’s
amazing
for changing your appearance. Why do you think cartoonists always draw people with such big noses? Your nose is easily the most significant part of your facial identity. I made a huge prosthetic hooter for Brad Pitt once, for some picture about down-and-outs, but he refused to wear it. He didn’t mind looking like he’d slept in a dumpster for three weeks, living on fish heads, but there was no way he was going to walk around looking like Jimmy Durante.’

Rick said, ‘Before you agree to do this, Mitch, you have to understand that you won’t be getting any credit for it, no matter how brilliant it turns out.’

‘Sure, sure. Noah told me this was some kind of secret hush-hush thing.’

‘It is. But it’s also highly likely that you’ll see it on TV, and in the media.’

‘Really? But I still can’t say that I did it?’

Rick shook his head. ‘If you do, you could be putting yourself in danger. You have to know that before you say yes.’

‘You don’t think I can keep schtum?’

‘Of course I do. If Noah trusts you, then I trust you. But if and when you do see it, the chances are that you’ll find it a shock. All I can say to you is that nobody will get hurt, even if it looks like they are.’

‘OK . . . ’ said Mitchell, although he began to sound dubious. ‘When you say “
danger
” . . .?’

‘If you never say a word about this to anybody, ever, there’s no reason why you should have to worry about it.’

‘Noah?’ asked Mitchell.

Noah shrugged. ‘It’s up to you, Mitch. But like Rick says, if you forget you ever did it, and never mention it to nobody, not even to Nadia, then everything should be OK.’

‘Can I ask you . . . is it the Mob?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well . . . why not, in that case? Some of my best friends are wise guys, believe it or not. I did all the make-up when Vinnie Proietti’s eldest daughter got married.’

‘Vinnie the Grin?’

‘That’s him. We’re neighbours. He’s always inviting us round for linguine.’

 

Three days later, as the Peace Convention was coming to a close, the sky over Los Angeles turned a dark, corroded green, and lightning flickered in the hills.

The final speech was given in the main conference room by Mahfoud Ould N’Diayane, the UN Secretary General. As he spoke about the need for greater tolerance between the world’s religions, there was a deafening crash of thunder overhead, and rain began to clatter against the windows.

Adeola turned to Alvin Metzler and said, ‘Sounds like God doesn’t approve of religious tolerance.’

‘You weren’t always so cynical,’ smiled Alvin Metzler.

‘I don’t think you can help it, after people have made serious attempts to kill you.’

Mahfoud Ould N’Diayane said, ‘I would ask you to leave this convention today with one thought in your minds: that worldwide peace can only be achieved if we look at the world through each other’s eyes. Put on your enemy’s spectacles, and look at yourself in the mirror.

‘Maybe, in that mirror, you will see somebody who is much more aggressive and intolerant than you thought. Maybe you will see somebody who needs to learn that the ways of other people – even if they are different – are not necessarily wrong.’

‘“Put on your enemy’s spectacles”?’ Alvin Metzler repeated. ‘Holy cow. Is he a diplomat or an optometrist?’

Adeola gave him a quick, nervous smile. Now that the convention was breaking up, she knew that it wouldn’t be long before she was ‘kidnapped’. But Rick and Noah had insisted that it came as a surprise, when she was least expecting it, so that she would look genuinely startled. She knew, too, that there was a high element of danger in what they were doing. The convention was swarming with federal agents and police and armed security guards.

The convention hall gradually emptied. Adeola went over to talk to Christophe Corthouts, the Belgian foreign secretary, and then to Przemek Romanski, from Poland. As Przemek Romanski kissed her hand, she looked sideways and saw Hubert Tocsin standing only five or six rows of seats away from her, chatting to a striking young woman with a very white face and a black raven’s wing of hair. He was wearing a soft black mohair sport coat, with a flame-red carnation in the lapel.

Hubert Tocsin caught her eye. He excused himself to the white-faced young woman and came over to her.

‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘Mr Tocsin again. Have you had a good convention?’

‘Saleswise, yes, not bad at all. Our super-smart bombs have generated a gratifying amount of interest, especially from the Syrians.’

‘
Super
-smart bombs? I thought ordinary smart bombs were bad enough.’

‘At Tocsin, Ms Davis, we’re always trying to find new ways to minimize collateral damage.’

‘You mean you’re trying not to blow up too many innocent bystanders.’

‘If you like. The super-smart bomb makes political sense, as well as humanitarian sense.’

‘I don’t know how you can use the words “bomb” and “humanitarian” in the same sentence, Mr Tocsin, let alone “sense”.’

‘Are you coming to the farewell dinner tonight?’ Hubert Tocsin asked her. ‘I’d very much like to discuss this with you some more. I like a woman with fire.’

‘Yes, I’ll be coming. But I’ll probably be sitting next to the Iranian ambassador. He’s much more interested in world peace than you are, Mr Tocsin.’

Hubert Tocsin gave her a radiant smile, but in his eyes she saw that that she had seen before. He was like an alligator, watching her, unblinking, from a sandbank.

 

Hong Gildong came up to Adeole and gently took hold of her elbow.

‘Time to leave, Ms Davis. The SUV’s right outside.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and then, ‘Goodbye, Mr Tocsin. And good luck with your super-smart bombs.’

Hong Gildong steered her through the crowded hotel lobby, giving a running commentary into his throat mike.

‘We are approaching the front doors now, right-hand side. OK. There are two men in dark glasses immediately to the left of the revolving door. You’ve marked them? OK.’

They pushed their way out through the swing doors. For security reasons, Adeola had long ago stopped going through revolving doors. It was too easy to jam revolving doors, and there was your intended victim, caught like a rat in a jelly jar.

It was chaos outside the hotel. Beyond the shelter of the portico, it was raining hard, and thunder was still rumbling overhead. Peace convention delegates were milling around, shaking hands and saying their goodbyes. TV crews were interviewing some of the most controversial personalities. SUVs and limousines were nose-to-tail, all of them trying to manoeuvre as close as they possibly could to the front steps. Bodyguards of twenty different nationalities were looking warily all around them – Japanese, French, Ghanaian – every one of them wearing dark suits and dark sunglasses.

‘Looks like the
Men In Black
fan club,’ said Adeola.

Hong Gildong pointed across to the far side of the hotel portico. Adeola’s silver Grand Cherokee was waiting for her, with another of her new security team, Peter Silverman, standing by the rear door. Peter was a skinny, hard-bitten type from Omaha, Nebraska originally, whose mouth was always puckered up as if he were sucking on a lemon.

They negotiated their way through the narrow spaces between the Lincoln Town Cars and Escalades. Adeola said, ‘Can we make a detour on the way back? I need to stop at Mickey Fine’s Pharmacy, to pick up some of that skin cream.’

‘No problem,’ said Hong Gildong. They had almost reached the Grand Cherokee now, and Peter Silverman was opening the door for her.

At that instant, however, a figure in a maroon tracksuit and a black ski mask came running at full pelt through the portico. The figure knocked into Hong Gildong, so that he collided with the Escalade right behind him and sprawled on the ground. Then it seized Adeola, crooking one elbow around her neck and holding up a large hunting knife.