Assassin

Chapter Twelve

London

ATTAR AL-NASSAR APPROACHED SNAY BIN WAZIR THE WAY A master jeweler at Van Cleef & Arpels might have a go at an uncut twenty-carat diamond. He screwed in his eyepiece and went to work. He paused before each strike, his instrument delicate and poised, and when he struck it was swift, precise, and perfect. Gradually the rough edges became fine under his hand and Attar could begin to see fragments of his own brilliance reflected in his new friend.

If Snay was the uncut diamond, Attar was the diamondback rattler of his era. In the rough-and-tumble world of international arms dealing in the eighties, he struck swiftly and with deadly precision. Having reached a certain age, Attar was, albeit imperceptibly, slowing down. But, no matter, Snay was now fully on board. Having made a fortune in gladiolas, he had moved up to dealing Kalashnikovs, bullets, and helicopter gunships.

Attar gradually displaced some of his more onerous responsibilities onto his new partner’s shoulders.

Snay never complained about these duties. His partnership within the vast al-Nassar arms empire had made him rich beyond measure. As an added benefit, he had a keen appetite for some of the more distasteful things which needed doing.

His lust for blood remained undiminished. He found outlets, always discreet and well hidden from both the police and the aristocratic society of London to which he now so desperately sought acceptance. He still enjoyed killing, but now getting away with it was the real thrill. His murders sometimes made the papers, but the police didn’t have a clue.

The two men were dining alone this night in one of the smaller restaurants at Beauchamps, in some eyes the most exclusive of London’s tiny coterie of truly first-rate hotels. They were enjoying an evening in the Reading Room, breathing the same rarefied air one might find at Claridge’s or the Connaught; air consisting of fairly equal proportions of oxygen, nitrogen, and money.

To say the room was grand would be an understatement. Satin-wood and burr wood furnishings covered in pale pink and grey brocaded satin filled the room and bronzed statuary stood atop the nickel-plated bar. Above all, a huge chandelier of crystal shimmered within a gilded dome in the ceiling.

Snay cracked open his gold cigarette case and extracted one of his trademark cigarettes. Long, slender, with yellow wrappers, they produced a distinctive odor that some people found distinctly unpleasant. Snay bin Wazir touched his gold Dunhill to the tip and lit up.

“Most unusual, those cigarettes,” al-Nassar said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you; what are they?”

“I buy them from a dealer in Iraq,” Snay said, sending a thin stream of smoke upwards. “They’re called Baghdaddies.”

“Baghdaddies?” al-Nassar said, smiling. “The name, at least, is quite marvelous.”

Snay turned to offer a cigarette to the mysterious woman in the veiled magenta chador who accompanied al-Nassar everywhere. They said she was a great beauty, from Paris, but Snay had never seen her face. Nor heard her utter a word.

“She doesn’t smoke,” al-Nassar said.

“She doesn’t speak,” Snay replied.

“No.”

“What does she do?”

Al-Nassar regarded his friend with a satyr’s smile and picked up his wine. “Whatever you wish,” he said, caressing her hand.

“What is her name, may I ask?” Snay said.

“Aubergine.”

Taking a swig of the ’48 Lafitte in his goblet, bin Wazir leaned forward in his chair and said to the arms dealer, “My dear Attar, now I must ask you a question. I must say I still don’t understand how these bloody Brits get ‘Beechums’ out of ‘Beauchamps.’ ” In five short years, Snay bin Wazir had managed to acquire a passable British accent and his daily conversation was always liberally salted and peppered with newly acquired turns of phrase.

Bin Wazir had recently learned, painfully, that one never pronounced the name of the hotel, ‘Beauchamps,’ as ‘Boshamps.’ It was always pronounced ‘Beech-ums.’

“I don’t know either, to be honest,” Attar replied in a rare admission of ignorance, “but you’re missing the point entirely. The point is, you know that ‘Beech-ums’ is how it is properly pronounced.”

Eschewing the toast points, Attar spooned some caviar directly into his mouth and added, “I’ve told you a thousand times, my friend, there are far more people in this world who get by on style than on substance. Style, not substance, my dear Snay, is your most reliable passe-partout into London society.”

“You, Attar, have always possessed an abundance of both.”

Al-Nassar laughed and took a deep draught of his claret. “You see? This is why I keep you around! Shameless! Absolutely shameless! I have always adored that quality in anyone; man, woman, or child.”

Snay, studying his menu, which was printed entirely in French, had been trying unsuccessfully for some minutes to get the headwaiter’s attention.

“Who does this little prick think he is, ignoring me? I love this restaurant, but every time I come here that little French poofter over there always acts as if it’s the first time he’s ever seen me.”

“What do you want? I’ll get him over here.”

“I have a question or two.”

“Perhaps I can help. What is it?”

“Pardon my fucking French, but what, exactly, is Canard du Norfolk Rôti à l’Anglais?”

“It is Roast Norfolk Duck with some applesauce on the side. Applesauce, according to Escoffier, translates to à l’Anglais. Absolutely delicious with a fine Burgundy like the Nuits-Saint-Georges ’62.”

“I’m thinking of the salmon…”

“Poached, no doubt?”

They smiled and raised their goblets to each other. It was their private joke.

“Your second question?” al-Nassar asked.

“That one I’d like to ask the little shit personally.”

“Watch me closely,” al-Nassar said.

He nodded to one of four huge men he had stationed at tables in each corner of the room. When he had the man’s attention, he nodded his head in the direction of the headwaiter. His man immediately rose from his seat, walked over to the waiter, bent down and put his lips near to the fellow’s ear and had a short, whispered conversation with him. Then he squared his shoulders, turned his great bulk around, and returned to his table.

The headwaiter, looking like a man who was experiencing a most unpleasant coronary event, came immediately to Mr. al-Nassar’s table, bowing and scraping when he was still twenty feet away.

“Monsieur al-Nassar,” he said, unable to hide the tremor in his voice, “My deepest apologies. I’m so very sorry that I did not see that you required my presence. Oh, mon Dieu! Please forgive me. However may I be of service?”

Al-Nassar looked up and favored the man with a dark, heavily-lidded look that would wither kings.

“It seems, monsieur, that my business associate here, Mr. bin Wazir, has a question for you. He has been trying to gain your attention for some time without success. You have caused him some embarrassment.”

“Mais non! But I did not notice!” the man said, turning and bowing now to Snay. “What can I do for you, sir? Besides beg your forgiveness?”

Snay turned to Attar and said, “I begin to like this groveling little toad, don’t you? Even though his words ring false?”

“Apart from this chap’s cheap perfume, he’s probably a decent enough little frog.”

The waiter smiled and bobbed his head, as if acknowledging the most generous of compliments. “How may I serve you, monsieur?” he asked Snay.

“See that bus stop?” Snay said, pointing at one across the road. “The next bus leaves in ten minutes. Be under it.”

“Ah, a most excellent suggestion, monsieur. I will do all within my power to…to…I’m sorry—”

Snay waved the waiter away with the back of his hand and smiled at al-Nassar. “No style. No substance,” he said.

“Shoot him.”

“And waste a perfectly good bullet? No, I have a far better idea, with your permission.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been thinking on this for some time, Attar. I’m going to buy this hotel.”

“An interesting notion. To what end?”

“Real estate has been very profitable for me, as you well know, Attar. Every one of my clubs and casinos is posting spectacular numbers. Especially my new hotel, the Bambah in Indonesia. Fabulous resort. But it is time again to expand my holdings. I will create within these walls a sumptuous palace where eminent men of the world like you and I do not have to suffer these miserable insufferables. And this silly English décor.”

“It’s French, actually. Art Deco. Created by a chap named Basil Ionides sometime in the late twenties.”

“All the more reason to fix it up.”

And that is precisely what Snay did. He bought the old Victorian brick hotel in the heart of Mayfair. Snay bin Wazir could not know this—his history was too short—but this was not merely a fashionable hotel. It was a cultural icon, one of London’s most revered architectural symbols for a century or more. Queen Victoria had visited Empress Eugénie of France when she was in residence here in 1860. The present queen had come here for balls when she was still a princess. Even to this day, the hotel catered to the Royal Family, hosting innumerable teas, state visits, and receptions.

His first move was a summary firing of all the employees. He began with the pompous little headwaiter in the Reading Room, but no one was spared. He fired the doormen in their silk toppers and red frocked coats, the aged valets, dress maids and hall porters, the dining and wait staff in their boiled shirts and cutaways, the Maître Chef des Cuisines and all the sous-chefs, and, finally, Henri, a confidante of Churchill himself who had presided over the main bar since before the war, and then the general manager himself.

To say this “Bloodbath at Beauchamps,” as the tabloids tagged it, had all of London agog would be to put it mildly. There was outrage from every quarter. A spokesman at Buckingham Palace said the queen had no comment other than she was profoundly disgusted. The editorial pages of the London Times were spewing vitriol in the direction of the former Pasha of Knightsbridge. It was a lead story on the BBC for weeks. They treated it like a national disaster. It was, as one TV reporter put it, “A cock-up of monumental proportions.”

Snay bin Wazir, who happened to be tuned in that night, took this reporter’s comment as a compliment and rang up next morning to thank him for being the one newsman in town with the guts to take his side in the matter.

You could have blown up the Tate, the National Gallery, and the British Museum all in a day’s work and not had more brimstone rain down on your head than bin Wazir found pouring down upon him in those turbulent times.

But Mr. bin Wazir had been forewarned by al-Nassar to expect this reaction from hidebound Londoners, and so he went about town with his usual aplomb, smiling in the face of the angry stares that met him everywhere, ignoring the shouted insults in the street, acting for all the world as if he were a man who’d found himself in the middle of a summer squall that would soon blow itself out.

The story quickly found its way across the pond where the American newspapers and television networks picked it up. There was a resounding hue and cry from that side of the Atlantic as well. Generations of wealthy Americans had called Beauchamps their “home away from home” and legions of them had grown up knowing the hotel staff by name. Now, the hate mail and death threats were arriving at bin Wazir’s door from both sides of the Atlantic.

Unabashed and undeterred, bin Wazir proceeded with his project. It wasn’t long before the scaffolding went up and armies of construction workers and demolition squads were hard at work. The windows and doors were all boarded up and the interior and exterior renovation began right on schedule.

It was bin Wazir’s fervent belief during this stormy period that he would be redeemed once his new palace reopened and haute London got a look at what true grandeur really looked like. He had hired the best architects and interior designers money could buy and given them carte blanche. Within a few guidelines, naturally.

Gone would be the hideous silvered Georges Braque mirrors, the Jazz Age sculpture and paintings, and furniture upholstered in Cubist fabrics so dated as to make one laugh. Bin Wazir told his designers to let their minds venture into a golden future, where computer articulated twenty-four-carat nymphs danced and a ballet of sparkling jets spewed forth in splashing fountains of jeweled marble; and swirling, flashing lasers illuminated multicolored birds singing in massive gilded cages suspended from on high.

He imagined a new skyline for his team of designers as well. Opulently turreted and domed, with pillars and pediments and gables clad in endless mosaics of colored stone; with flags of every nation fluttering from every shimmering bronzed turret top, welcoming the world to bin Wazir’s door. Yes, when the world finally came to his sumptuous palace, and gazed upon its many splendors, bin Wazir would find his redemption. And, quite possibly, a knighthood, he sometimes imagined.

His first clue that this fantasy might not come to pass was the day he invited all of London society, all of the press, including his old friend Stilton at the Sun, to witness the grand unveiling of the hotel’s new marquee. To accentuate the new and dispel the old, it was rumored that bin Wazir had actually changed the two-centuries-old name of the fabled grand dame of Mayfair.

At the stroke of noon, on a hot June day, amidst a cacophony of shouting reporters and clicking cameras, bin Wazir would pull the silken cord, letting the royal purple velvet drapes festooning the new façade and hiding the new marquee, fall to the pavement.

With a great flourish, bin Wazir pulled the cord, the draperies fell away, and a huge gasp arose from all those assembled. The crowd stood in shocked silence, gazing upwards with disbelieving eyes.

There, for all to see, in massive golden letters forming an arch above the hotel’s azure-tiled entrance was the new name of London’s most magnificent new hotel. And, of course, it was spelled precisely the way bin Wazir thought it should be spelled.

Phonetically.

BEECHUM’S.