Chaos Theory (33 page)

‘He doesn’t have any hair.’

‘
Exactamundo
. You’ll have to wear a latex bald cap. Either that, or – no, you wouldn’t want to do that, would you?’

‘Shave my head?’

‘It does give a much, much better effect. Even the best bald caps look like bald caps, especially close up.’

‘Actually, it’s not going to be me. I’m swapping places with somebody else.’

‘Not Mr Congeniality in there?’

‘No. Wait here a second.’

Noah looked out of the bedroom and made sure that the blond man was still sitting in front of the television. All he could see through the living-room door was the blond man’s elbow, twisting methodically from side to side as he cleaned out his ears, and the lower part of his right leg, and his foot, in a shiny black loafer. He went quietly through the kitchen and out on to the veranda.

‘
Rick!
’ he called, leaning over the railing. ‘
Mitch is here! Come on in!
’

Rick emerged from the bushes. Noah led him back to the bedroom and closed the door. ‘I’ve explained to Mitch what you have to look like. He says you’ll look more convincing if you shave your head.’

‘Whatever it takes,’ said Rick. ‘Listen, I can take this from here. You get out of here and hightail it down to San Diego.’

‘I’m getting confused here,’ said Mitchell. ‘You want me to make
Rick
look like this Ethiopian character – not you?’

‘That’s right. Only blondie isn’t to know.’

‘Listen – by the time I’ve finished, Rick’s own mother isn’t going to recognize him.’

‘OK,’ said Noah. ‘There’s your suit, laid out on the bed. There’s your shades. Good luck, man. Try to stay safe.’

‘You too.’

Noah opened the bedroom door and looked cautiously towards the living room. The blond man hadn’t moved, so he went through the kitchen and into the backyard, and out through the side gate.

The morning was already hot, and there were only the faintest streaks of mares’ tails high in the sky. The Grand Prix was parked around the corner, in Canyon Crescent, and Leon was waiting for him in the front seat. He was wearing Rick’s brown leather jacket and his hair was tousled.

‘How’s it going?’ Noah asked him, sitting down behind the wheel and starting the engine.

‘I’m OK,’ said Leon.

‘You’re sure? You look kind of frazzled.’

‘I’m OK. I know what to do. Rick and me, we went over it twenty thousand times at least.’

‘Good. Because we’re really relying on you, you know that.’

‘I know. But I always remember what my dad used to say: ninety per cent of being reliable is showing up.’

 

Noah dropped Leon off at Stars Diner on Sunset. They synchronized their watches, and then Noah took hold of Leon’s hand and gave it a hard squeeze.

‘When this is over, we’ll take a vacation together. How about that? Do some guy stuff. Fishing, or hunting.’

‘Sure,’ said Leon. ‘See you later.’

Noah felt as if he ought to say something momentous and meaningful, considering what they were expecting Leon to do, but he couldn’t think of any words that would effectively sum up their fear, and their tension, and the isolation they felt. There was nobody they could trust, except each other.

Leon climbed out of the car and gave Noah an offhand wave, as casual as if he were going off to nothing more momentous than baseball practise.

‘Later,’ said Noah, under his breath.

 

Noah drove south to San Diego as fast as he could. By 10.25 a.m. he had reached Balboa Park, and was driving along El Prado, between the palms and the Spanish Revival houses. He turned into the entrance of the Reuben H. Fleet Science Centre and parked.

George Burdaky was waiting for him, sitting in a bronze Explorer. He climbed out and walked across to Noah, grinning. George was a short, stocky man with a grey buzz cut and a bulbous nose, and his eyes were always narrowed as if he couldn’t believe what he was looking at. He was wearing a red short-sleeved boiler suit that showed off his tattoos, including a hula-dancing girl in a grass skirt, and the Seabees bee.

‘Well, well. In like Flynn. Didn’t think I’d see you till the next reunion, you miserable bastard. How’s the stuntman business?’

Noah embraced him. ‘How are you doing, George? How’s Molly?’

‘Me and Molly, we’re kind of having a vacation from each other. But I guess we’ll get back together again. You know what we’re like – Tom and freaking Jerry.’

‘You managed to get the stuff?’

‘When he called me, that friend of yours wasn’t too sure exactly what you wanted. What was his name, Dick? So I got you a variety. We’re doing a big demolition job down at Imperial Beach, all the old administration buildings, so it wasn’t difficult to divert a few kilos of RDX. I got you some Thermite-TH3, too.’

‘That’s great. Thanks, George.’

‘Hey, don’t even mention it. I owe you one. In fact, I owe you several. There’s a Colt .45 in there, too, and half a dozen clips.’

They looked around, but apart from a bus-load of chattering children arriving for a tour of the science centre, the parking area was empty, and they couldn’t see anybody who looked as if they might be watching them. George brought over a large milled-aluminium suitcase and stowed it into the trunk of Noah’s car.

‘I don’t know what you’re intending to do with this stuff, and I don’t want you to tell me, but whatever it is, you miserable bastard, I hope it all works out.’

Noah embraced him again. ‘See you at the next reunion, OK? Remind me to buy you more than one beer.’

George went back to his Explorer and drove off. Noah checked the time. It was 10.43 a.m. He climbed back into the Grand Prix, turned around, and headed out of San Diego on Route 15, towards Escondido.

 

Rick straightened his necktie and put on his sunglasses, and the bald Ethiopian in the mirror did the same.

‘Mitch,’ he said, ‘you’re a genius. Even
I
don’t recognize me.’

Mitchell was washing his hands in the basin. ‘I think Noah and me, we’re quits now. Tell him if he wants me to turn him into a Chinaman, forget it.’

Rick looked down at his hands, turning them this way and that. Mitchell had even managed to give him the pale, sandy-collared palms of an Ethiopian.

The bedroom door suddenly opened, and the blond man looked in. ‘You ready yet? We should be making a move.’

‘I’m ready,’ said Rick, in a mock-Ethiopian accent. ‘What do you think?’

‘I’m not paid to think nothing,’ the blond man told him. ‘Come on, let’s get going.’

Mitchell fastened the clips of his make-up case. ‘Can you give me a ride? I have to be over at Fox by eleven thirty.’

‘Sorry,’ said the blond man.

‘OK, I’ll just have to call myself a taxi.’

He took out his cellphone and started to look for the number, but as he did so the blond man approached him and grabbed his wrist.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Mitchell demanded. ‘Let go of me, will you.’

‘Listen,’ said the blond man, ‘I want you to understand that this isn’t personal, OK? It’s just the way we have to do things.’

Mitchell tried to tug his arm free, but the blond man bent it round behind his back and forced it up between his shoulder blades.

‘Hey, let go of me – that hurts!’ Mitchell shrilled at him.

Rick shouted, ‘Leave the guy alone!’ He took one step across the bedroom floor, but he was too late. He didn’t even see the knife before the blond man sliced it across Mitchell’s throat, left to right, and blood sprayed all across the cream-coloured bedcover.

Mitchell made a gargling noise and his knees collapsed under him. He dropped on to the carpet, quaking and quivering like a fallen horse, one leg kicking at the closet doors.

Rick approached the blond man, both hands raised, but the blond man pointed the bloody knife at his face and said, ‘Don’t even think about it. You know what you got to do, and if you don’t do it, those women are going to get the same.’

A large bubble of blood came out of the slit in Mitchell’s throat, and then burst. He stopped kicking and lay still, staring at the end of the bed as if he was mesmerized by it.

The blond man pushed him with his foot to make sure that he was dead.

‘You son of a bitch,’ said Rick. ‘I swear to God you’re going to pay for this.’

The blond man looked at him and frowned. After all, Rick didn’t smoke, and his voice wasn’t as throaty as Noah’s. But all he said was, ‘You think so?’

It obviously hadn’t occurred to him that the white man who had gone into the bedroom and the Ethiopian who had emerged from it were two different people. He wiped the knife on the bedcover and pushed it back into the sheath on the side of his belt.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ he told Rick. ‘The professor ain’t going to be happy if we’re late.’

Rick looked down at Mitchell, lying on the blood-spattered carpet. But there was nothing he could do, and nothing he could say. The blond man raised his hand to push Rick into the living room, but Rick raised his hand, too, and said, ‘Don’t you touch me, you son of a bitch. Don’t you ever touch me.’

 

W
hen they arrived at the Century Plaza, the lobby was already crowded with police and Secret Service agents and television cameras. The blond man drew the grey sedan up to the main entrance, and a Secret Service man opened the door for him.

Rick got out of the car and showed his security pass.

‘OK, sir. Go in by the side door, please.’

As he pushed his way through the throng of reporters and cameramen and TV technicians on the steps, Captain Madoowbe came out of the lobby to meet him.

‘Sergeant Gebeyehu! I have to say that you are looking
very
well this morning!’

‘You murdering bastards,’ said Rick, in his Ethiopian accent, smiling as he did so.

‘Now, now,’ said Captain Madoowbe. ‘You have to understand that nobody who knows about Nakasu can be allowed to live.’

‘I suppose that includes me, and Adeola Davis, and Silja.’

Captain Madoowbe led him through the glass doors. ‘Of course not. Professor Halflight has made a deal with you, hasn’t he? And why should we silence you, when you will keep your own silence? What you are doing today, that is not something you are going to shout out to the world, is it?’

He turned and grinned at Rick with his orange teeth. Rick said nothing. As they crossed the lobby, he caught sight of himself and Captain Madoowbe in a mirrored pillar. Two intensely black men in black suits and white shirts and sunglasses. He felt as if he were walking through a nightmare, and that he would soon wake up.

Captain Madoowbe took him up in the elevator to the presidential floor. His Excellency Ato Ketona Aklilu had a suite there, and in a large red-carpeted side room his security detail was gathered, five of them, all wearing black suits and white shirts and sunglasses, talking to each other in Amharic.

Captain Madoowbe led Rick over to the table. He opened a folder and took out a diagram.

‘This is the room where they will be signing the peace agreement. His Excellency Ato Ketona Aklilu will be sitting here, on the right. Alvin Metzler from DOVE will be sitting here, on the left. When they have signed, the President will come in through these double doors behind them, and greet them both.

‘I will be standing closest to the table, here. You will be standing on my right, and slightly behind me. As soon as the President takes hold of Alvin Metzler’s hand, and the press cameras start to flash, you will take out your gun and shout out, “Death to all appeasers!” and shoot the President first and then Alvin Metzler.

‘We will surround you at once and take away your gun, and rush you out of the building.’

‘And you seriously think the Secret Service are going to let you?’

‘We will be taking His Excellency with us. You don’t think that they will risk harming the Ethiopian Foreign Secretary, do you?’

Rick looked over at the rest of the security detail. They were all staring at him in silence. After all, he looked exactly like one of them, and yet they knew that he was a white man.

Captain Madoowbe went over to one of the security men and came back with a big automatic pistol with a brown plastic handle, a Russian-made Stechkin APS.

‘Here . . . it is already fully loaded. I don’t know if you have used one before, Mr Flynn, but it is very similar to a Colt .45.’

Rick took the gun and hefted it in his hand. He had actually fired an APS during his Secret Service training, as well as other Russian guns, but he shook his head, and said, ‘Never seen one of these babies before. Looks like a man-stopper, though.’

‘Oh, yes,’ grinned Captain Madoowbe. ‘Today, men will be stopped, believe me.’

 

It was 11.28 a.m. when Noah arrived outside the Tocsin Weapons and Rocketry plant outside Escondido. He parked beside the perimeter fence, well away from the main gate, and hidden from view by bushes.

There was no traffic on the road, and the plant itself was almost deserted, except for one man in a forklift truck moving packing cases from one side of the main factory building to the other. The morning was even hotter now, and the cicadas were deafening.

Noah opened the aluminium case that George had given him, and took out a small charge of plasticized RDX. It was yellow, like a half-melted church candle. He pushed his way through the bushes until he reached the fence. Then he shaped the RDX into a ball and pressed it up against one of the concrete uprights. He inserted an electronic detonator, and then pushed his way back out on to the road again.

He drove all the way along the perimeter fence, passing the main gate, but then he stopped, and steered the Grand Prix off the road, parking it on a dusty patch of ground overlooking the reservoir.