The Color of Night

CHAPTER 45

Hodge was right. It was already raining when Strand came out of the Terrier, and he rode back to Mayfair through a wet, sad London. He felt guilty for being glad to be away from the dying man. Hodge had made a career of selling clever devices for delivering death in a businesslike way to anonymous others. Now the time had come to Hodge himself. Death did not care so much about clever devices and used whatever lay close at hand. In Hodge’s case it was nothing fancy, but it was brutally personal.

Strand had the cab drop him off on Queen Street and then hurried through the drizzle the short distance to Chesterfield Hill.

“You hadn’t been gone five minutes when an e-mail from Howard came in,” Mara said as he walked into the room. “He wants a meeting as soon as possible.”

Strand went straight to the computer, sat on a paint bucket, tapped out Howard’s address, and then the question:

Can you meet tonight?

Strand stared at the screen. He could feel rain on the sleeves of his jacket, on the legs of his trousers. Mara was behind him, silent. Then suddenly the words were there.

Okay. Tonight. When? Where?

The Running Footman pub on Charles Street, near Berkeley Square. 10 o’clock. Wait at the bar.

I’ll be there.

When he got downstairs he put the pistol on the shelf in the coat closet, all the way to the back, out of sight.

Strand sat in a black cab on Charles Street, watching the doors of the Running Footman. Though the rain was keeping the customers inside, he could see from the movement behind the windows, and from the people coming and going, that the pub was busy. He knew Howard would not come by cab, rain or no rain, and since most of the people came in pairs or groups, the solitary figure would be easier to identify. There was no reason for Howard to wait on Strand. In other circumstances he might have been wary, but in this case he had nothing to fear. Rather, it was the other way around. So Strand would let Howard arrive first. Besides, his e-mail had told Howard where to wait. The assumption was that Howard would precede him.

Eight minutes after nine o’clock Howard emerged from around the corner on Fitzmaurice Place, his umbrella held low over his head. Strand recognized his walk. Howard immediately crossed the street and made his way to the pub.

He had to wait at the door for a couple who were coming out, fumbled momentarily with his umbrella, then disappeared inside.

“Okay,” Strand said, sitting forward in his seat, talking through the window to the cabdriver, “that’s him.”

The cabdriver held a flashlight in his lap and turned it on a photograph he was holding in his hand.

“Right. I’ll recognize him.”

“The photograph,” Strand said.

The driver handed it back through the window.

“His name is Howard,” the driver rehearsed. “I say to him, ‘Mr. Strand would like you to come with me, please.’” He looked back over his shoulder. “That’s it? He’ll come along?”

“He knows the routine.”

“But he’s not expecting it?”

“No. But when you say that to him he’ll know what’s up.”

“Right.”

The cabdriver didn’t sound convinced, but he sounded game. The money was more than he was going to earn in the next five nights.

“You have the route down?” Strand asked.

“Right. I do.”

“Fine.” Strand got out and hurried back to another cab waiting at the curb a few cars back and got inside.

The cab in front crossed into Hays Mews and stopped at the curb. The driver got out and went into the side door of the Running Footman.

Strand concentrated on the door. The rain suddenly became heavier, drumming loudly on the roof of the cab.

The cabdriver emerged from the side door of the pub and ran to his cab, jerking open the rear door. Howard darted out of the pub and quickly crawled into the back of the cab. The driver slammed the door, got into the front, and turned on the headlights, and the cab lurched and disappeared around the corner.

Knowing the route, Strand’s driver was able to lag behind several blocks, sometimes passing the first cab, covering the route like a net. They went as far north as Oxford Street and over to Regent Street and Piccadilly before working their way back to Berkeley Square, where the two cabs pulled into a tiny, dark lane on the northeast corner of the square and stopped in front of a place called the Guinea Grill.

The two men got out of the cabs at the same time and quickly ducked through the door in the vine-laden facade of the pub.

“That was a goddamn waste of time,” Howard complained, folding his umbrella impatiently and tossing it toward a corner.

“Not for me.” Strand wiped his face with a handkerchief and leaned his umbrella against the wall. The Guinea Grill was a restaurant with a small pub proper at the very front of the establishment set off from the entry by a wood screen with a narrow door in it. The screen was open at the top, and the conversation from the tiny pub was audible as one waited to be seated in the restaurant.

Strand gave his name, and they were quickly taken to a table in an oddly shaped alcove that comfortably contained three tables. All three of the tables had “Reserved” signs on them. Strand and Howard were seated at the center one, farthest from the entry.

“You bought the other two,” Howard said.

“Yes.”

“Hang the expense.”

Strand ignored the sarcasm. They ordered drinks, and Howard wiped his hair and brushed at the sleeves of his coat, pissed at having gotten wet and pissed at having been wheeled around Mayfair because of Strand’s scrupulosity.

“What did he say?” Strand asked.

“Shit…” Howard fussed, flexing his arm to straighten out his coat. Using his linen napkin, he wiped his face again, dried his hands. “He says, Okay. Get everything together, bring it to Berlin. He’s willing to-”

“No.”

Howard stopped. He gave Strand a cold, tight-lipped stare.

“None of this will be done according to anything he says. I’ll spell it all out. How it’s done, when it’s done, all of it.”

“Bullshit.”

“I don’t trust him, Bill. Everything having to do with this exchange is predicated on that.”

“You think you’re in a position to dictate this?”

“If he wants the money, yes. If he doesn’t, then I guess not, and none of it matters anyway.”

They sat in silence, looking at each other. Strand had nothing else to say, and if Schrade really wasn’t going to cooperate, then the conversation was over and Howard could go back out into the rain. He suspected that Howard’s instructions were far more flexible than this. He was just engaging in his own little pleasures of prologue.

Their drinks arrived, gin and tonic for Howard, Scotch for Strand. They each drank.

“Okay,” Howard said, “what’s for openers?”

“Is he going to meet with me or not?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Then I’ll arrange a meeting place where he’ll be safe.”

“What does that mean?”

“He’ll be familiar with it. He’ll be comfortable with it.”

“Okay, where?”

“My main concern is meeting with him alone, without his security. And I have to know we’re alone.”

“Okay, okay, okay.” Howard wasn’t interested in finessing his irritation. “Where?”

“I’ll e-mail you a date and an e-mail address. On that date Schrade has to be ready to travel.”

“Ohhh, bullshit, Harry. He’s not going to-”

“I’ll let him know where to go. He plugs in there and gets another e-mail message.”

“This is stupid.”

“It’s the only way I’ll do it.”

“Okay, so you do a treasure hunt. Then what?”

“When I know he’s clean, I’ll give him the meeting place.”

“Then?”

“I’ll bring everything in a briefcase. The CDs with all the accounts, detailed instructions about transferring them…”

Howard started to laugh. “Jeee-zus. He said you’d do that, that you’d say you’d give him the instructions. Wow.” He took a drink. “Well, Schrade says go fuck yourself.”

Strand waited.

“You told me this morning that the transactions could be done in minutes. Schrade says, fine, then you do them in minutes, right there. The two of you. When his people tell him he’s got the money, then he’s got the money.”

Strand waited again. He couldn’t relent too easily, he couldn’t say, “Fine, it’s a deal,” just like that.

“I don’t know…”

“Okay, you’re so damn fond of giving ultimatums, here’s one for you to deal with: You do it right there, in front of Schrade, or you forget it. Period.”

Silence. Finally Strand said, “Okay. We’ll do it right there.”

Howard laughed again. “You really did a hard ass negotiation on that one, Harry. You drove me right down to the wire, up against the wall, made me sweat.”

Howard was feeling cocky.

“But this is going to cause a delay.”

Howard tried to hold his grin, as if Strand’s last remark were of no consequence. “Oh, a delay. Why’s that?”

“If I’m going to move that kind of money electronically, in just a few minutes, I’ll have to give written notification signed in the presence of a designated bank officer that on a certain date, at a certain hour, I’ll be making these transfers by wire. They’re not going to do it just because they get a computer message that says I want them to do it. Even if I give authorized code numbers. I’ll have to make arrangements ahead of time, and I’ll have to do it in person, face-to-face.”

“You told me minutes.”

“That was if I handed over everything to Schrade. I would’ve had time to do that. But if you want it done this way, you’ve got to give me time to arrange it.”

Howard studied him. He was trying hard not to let his exasperation show. “How long?”

“The money’s in six banks in six different countries. It’s going to take me a day and a half-minimum-to fly to each of them, get the authorization, and move on to the next. That’s nine days. Banks are closed weekends.” He fixed his eyes on Howard. “Two weeks.”

Howard couldn’t argue. He really had no choice. “I’ve got to go back to Schrade with this.”

“Fine.”

“Let’s agree, right now, when and where.”

Strand nodded. He let his eyes slip to the side as if making mental calculations.

“Okay. Zurich. Two weeks from today. I’ll use your e-mail address to notify you of the exact time and location.”

“That’s it, then,” Howard said.

“That’s it.”

Howard downed the last of his gin. He had to recover. Strand could see his mind working. Howard was over the hill, even worse than Strand. He screwed up as much testosterone as he could muster for one closing gesture of bravado. He smiled thinly.

“You know what, Harry?” Howard said, his voice low, his tone almost pensive. “All these years, I thought you were better than average as an officer. Not the best by a long shot, but a good bit better than average.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “But I would never have guessed that you had the brains-or the stomach-for something like this. Never.”

Strand had nothing to say to that. What Howard had or had not thought about him all those years was of no interest to him in the least. Everything he cared about now was in front of him. Everything behind him was dead and gone.

Strand looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go,” he said, and raised his hand to get the waiter’s attention.