No Way Out, page 5
“I was speaking generally, but let’s test your theory. I take it there was an arming switch.”
Reid squinted. “Yes. How—”
“Groups use arming switches as a personal safety measure to keep the device from exploding on them while they’re setting it. These guys want to stick around to further their cause. So they take precautions. Like an arming switch.”
Reid removed the crime scene tape that was strung across the entryway.
“Another thing to keep in mind,” Vail said, “is that if we’re dealing with a situation where access is an issue—like if the flash powder’s military in origin—then that might make your job a hell of a lot easier because it should help narrow your search.”
“Because only a limited number of people have access to that stuff.”
“Theoretically,” Vail said. “Yeah.”
Reid jiggled the key a bit as he unlocked the door. He turned back to her and said, “There was also a separate fire ignited across the room, where other artwork and manuscripts were on display.”
“Casualties?”
“None.” He pushed the door open and led the way inside. “There are three rooms to this place. Two were untouched, and one—this one—was destroyed.”
A pungent chemical smell hung in the air, despite the fresh air leaking through the damaged wall at the far end of the gallery, which had been demolished by the blast. A clear plastic tarp covered the opening, flapping gently in the wind. The interior—and everything inside—was singed beyond recognition.
“Looks like whatever they were going for was in this room.” She ran an index finger through the black soot that had accumulated on the counter. “This was one hot fire.”
“Extremely. According to the Fire Brigade, these people knew what they were doing.”
I’m starting to get that impression.
“What’s Islamic terrorist activity like in the UK these days?”
“We’ve got our share of problems, but we do a decent enough job of staying on top of it. Sleeper cells, yeah. Threats on a regular basis, yeah. Affiliates, we’ve got those too. But al-Qaeda specifically, they’ve claimed for three years to be planning a ‘spectacular attack’ in Britain. Hasn’t happened. And we haven’t had another 7/7, so that’s all we can hope for. Why? You think they, or some group like them, is involved?”
“Don’t know enough yet.”
“Let’s see if we can remedy that. I’ve asked the owner to join us here in case you had any questions. He should arrive momentarily.”
“I assume you haven’t released details to the media.”
“Almost nothing. Hasn’t stopped them, though. They’re good at speculating, filling in the blanks with talking heads.”
Vail strolled around the flat, assessing the layout and orienting herself: what was located where, what areas were most damaged, and taking in the view of Bond Street from the destroyed windows.
The sound of crunching footsteps snagged Vail’s attention. Reid unlocked the door leading to the undamaged room and pulled it open, revealing a lithe man in a cream-colored suit with graying temples and a tan complexion.
“Idris Turner,” Reid said, “this is Karen Vail, from the FBI. She’s here to help us assess what’s happened and determine whether or not substantial threat exists for further bombings.”
Turner glanced around his damaged gallery. “I don’t have to tell you that this is very upsetting. They almost succeeded in destroying my life’s work—and something extremely important to England’s heritage.”
Vail stole a skeptical look at Reid, then said, “Forgive me for being so direct, but that sounds a bit over the top. What are we talking about here?”
Turner pulled over three metal stools and brushed off the ashes with a handkerchief that he pulled from his breast pocket with a flourish. He slid a seat over to Vail and he and Reid took the others. “A few weeks ago, I purchased a very rare manuscript: an early draft of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that I believe dates back about 420 years. It was the find of a lifetime. All of us in the rare manuscript business fantasize of finding something of Shakespeare’s, something written in his own hand. Nothing exists with his original writing. But all hope had been given up long ago because of the fire in 1666 that destroyed just about all of London, and so much of our history with it.”
“There’re no handwriting samples?” Vail asked. “Anywhere? No signatures, on a land deed, a bank check, a signed first edition of Romeo and Juliet?”
Reid chuckled.
“There are six signatures,” Turner said, not joining in the joke, “and they’re all different. Some could’ve been made by law clerks. But this—this manuscript—is written by hand. Entirely by hand. Goose quill and ink. That’s the way they did it back then.”
“No offense, Mr. Turner,” Vail said, “but I’m an FBI agent, not an archeologist.”
“Please, call me Idris. But you don’t understand my point. I believe that manuscript is the reason for this bombing.”
“Why? Who’d care that you found a manuscript written in Shakespeare’s hand? Wouldn’t that be a great thing?”
“It depends. Most people would be intrigued. But some may not be. Just the opposite, in fact. I believe that whoever is behind this did it to destroy the manuscript.”
“The offender bombed a building in the heart of London’s most posh luxury shopping area, to destroy an old manuscript?” Vail chortled. “I know you British are a bit buttoned down, but that seems extreme.”
“I’m not doing this justice. It would be better if you could talk with John Hudson.”
Vail looked to Reid for an explanation.
“Hudson is a Shakespearean scholar.” Reid consulted his watch. “He was here in London but he’s now back in New York. Middle of the night—I’m sure he’s in bed. But his associate with the Dark Lady Players is still in town.”
“Dark Lady Players?” Vail asked.
“An interpretive/experimental theater group of Shakespeare players out of New York. They just finished a week of performances here in London at the Donmar Warehouse.”
“Can you get his associate on the phone?”
“I can do one better. Let’s see if he can grab a coffee. My sense is that this is best handled in person.”
VAIL AND REID FOLLOWED TURNER to a Costa coffee shop in Piccadilly Circus. It was not too different from a Starbucks in the States; in fact, they had passed a Starbucks along the way.
Costa’s walls featured earth red and brown tones along with contemporary furniture and lighting fixtures. The café was larger than it looked from the outside; it extended far back in a long, rectangular shape, with signs directing patrons to extra seating downstairs.
They took a seat at a table in the middle third of the restaurant while Reid waited in line to get their drinks. A moment later, a man with dark hair and ripped jeans approached them.
“This is Simon Wilkinson,” Turner said. “Simon, FBI Agent Karen Vail.”
“Thanks for meeting me,” Vail said. “I’m a little out of my element and I’m hoping you can shed some light on this whole Shakespeare obsession.”
“Yes, well. As you can probably tell from the way I talk I’m at heart a native Brit. I’ve lived in New York the past fifteen years working with John, so I guess I can give you a good view of what you’re looking at from the British point of view. ‘Obsession’ is a bit strong, but really, not far from the truth.”
“You know about the bombing then.”
Wilkinson laughed. “Everyone in England knows about the bombing. The discovery of this manuscript has gripped the country. When the media broke the story, it caused quite the stir. On a smaller scale, it’s like the Olympics all over again. That’s all that’s been on the television. Blogs haven’t stopped talking about it. Idris and Gavin have been under siege.”
“Who’s Gavin?”
“My curator and resident rare art expert,” Turner said. “Gavin Paxton. He does some restoration, too. He’s very good.”
Reid came over with a tray of squat, oversized mugs. “I took the liberty of getting you a coffee. White, that okay?”
Wilkinson took it off the tray. “You remembered. Perfect.”
“White?” Vail asked.
“White,” Reid said. “With milk.”
“Is it me, or do you Brits have weird ways of looking at things?”
“It’s you.”
Vail grinned. “Probably right. So. What is it about Shakespeare that enraptures British society—and why is this rare manuscript so important that someone’d be willing to kill over it?”
“Two very good questions,” Wilkinson said.
Two. Wow. In one breath.
Wilkinson turned to Turner. “How much have you told her? The authorship?”
“Haven’t gotten to that yet.”
“Why don’t we start with your first question.” Wilkinson sucked on his bottom lip a moment. “In a sense, Shakespeare is synonymous with England. He’s so deeply steeped in our society and culture that you can’t separate one from the other. Kind of like the monarchy and the Beatles. A few months ago a think tank did a study of which symbols give Britons a sense of pride. Shakespeare scored 75 percent. The monarchy only got 68 percent.”
Vail lifted her brow. “What about John, Paul, George, and Ringo?”
“The ‘Fab Four,’” Wilkinson said, “scored 51 percent. If that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what does. Shakespeare’s ingrained in our identity, a tremendous source of national pride, our greatest cultural export.
“Not to mention Shakespeare’s arguably the finest writer of all time. Certainly the greatest dramatist in history. His contribution to literature is unparalleled—he introduced nearly three thousand words into the English language. And when you look at the themes, the story construction in his plays—so much of what we take for granted in storytelling nowadays has its roots in Shakespeare’s writings. Some academics and social psychologists even feel that our understanding of human relationships and emotions comes from his works. The plays and sonnets are an integral part of school curricula, studied by half the world’s children.”
“Okay,” Vail said, “I get why he’s an important figure in English literature. But—”
“Then there’s the financial angle,” Turner said.
“Okay, now we’re talking.” As in, now we’re talking motive. “But what kind of financial angle can there still be for old plays? Other than selling books and Cliffs Notes to college students.”
Wilkinson chuckled. “Surely, you can’t be serious.”
“Ironically, this is one of those rare occasions when I am.”
“John—John Hudson—did an estimate and found that Shakespeare is a multibillion dollar enterprise worldwide. Not to mention that an entire city in England is built around the Bard: Stratford-Upon-Avon.”
Vail grabbed a box of chocolate covered espresso beans from the table and peeled open the tab. “Stratford—his birthplace, right?”
“Right. Over three million tourists a year. The house where Shakespeare was born and raised is the main attraction, but everything else, from hotels to restaurants to shopping malls and theaters, all revolve around William Shakespeare and his universally recognizable portrait that’s become a marketing logo.”
“And don’t forget the World Shakespeare Festival,” Turner said.
“I saw the signs,” Vail said. “What’s the deal with that?”
“It’s why you probably had a tough time getting a hotel. Think of it as a cultural Olympics. Millions of people from all over the world are in London to celebrate the Bard. Sponsorships, live performances, concessions, events, exhibitions, lectures. Tens of millions of pounds to be made by lots of businesses and vendors.”
Vail popped an espresso bean in her mouth and crunched. The taste of chocolate and coffee spread across her tongue and was instantly pleasing. “You think there’s something to the timing of your bombing and the festival?”
“I’d be a fool to think it’s a coincidence,” Turner said.
“Okay,” Vail said, “so I get the fact that William Shakespeare is big business, and that he means a lot to your national pride. But what’s your Midsummer Night’s Dream manuscript got to do with this?”
“That’d be the authorship dispute,” Wilkinson said.
“Dispute?” Vail asked. “Disputes are always good for murder.”
Wilkinson brought his mug to his mouth and blew on the drink. “Are you aware that there’s disagreement over who wrote the Shakespearean plays?”
Vail looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. “This isn’t a trick question, is it? Like what color was Washington’s white horse?”
Reid laughed. “That wasn’t a trick question.”
“Wait,” Vail said. “That movie. Is that what you’re talking about? I never saw it, but the trailer looked interesting. Something like Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare, right? But really. Seems absurd, no?”
Wilkinson set down his cup and paused a moment. “Let’s talk fact, not the fiction of a Hollywood producer’s dream. There are a lot of theories that a different man was the author of the plays. And there are dozens of names on the list, many with proponents who can make a case. But there’s really only a handful that are serious contenders. The people championing these theories are academics, Shakespearean scholars, not some whacked out bloggers who’re trying to make a name for themselves.”
“Okay, so this topic is taken seriously.”
“Extremely seriously. From an academic point of view, the most commonly advanced theories involve Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford; Francis Bacon; and Christopher Marlowe. Each one of these men, as well as a few dozen more, have treatises written about why they are the true authors of Shakespeare’s works.”
“But nothing’s ever been proven,” Vail said.
“No. But keep in mind we’re talking about a very long time ago, and a lot of potential evidence could’ve been destroyed.”
“I’m no English major, but big deal. These plays are over four hundred years old. Is it just me, or does someone really care about whether some guy named William Shakespeare wrote them or if Francis Bacon wrote them and used a pseudonym?”
“Oh yes, very much so. It’s an important matter that’s been debated for over 250 years.”
Vail spread her hands. “I don’t see why. I mean, the financial machine that generates all the money’s gonna be around whether Will wrote ’em, or Francis. Right?”
Wilkinson sat forward in his seat. “You have to understand that entire industries have been built around the concept that the man from Stratford named William Shakespeare wrote the Shakespearean plays. Theaters and academia worldwide are threatened by challenges to that belief, and will do anything possible not to have to face the prospect of their careers being in ruins.
“Just here in England,” Wilkinson continued, “the Stratford-Upon-Avon tourism trade is based on that ‘truth,’ and now you have the World Shakespeare Festival bringing millions into London’s economy. It’d be devastating if it came out that Shakespeare was built around a lie.
“And then you have the British Shakespeare Academy—which cleared £900 million in profit last year. The principles expressed in the plays are overseen, protected, and cultivated globally by that group—with a very firm hand. More so than even the Royal Shakespeare Company. But it’s not just about the plays. It’s about the times the plays were written in, about the monarchy, and just as importantly, the church. One can’t be separated from the other, because they’d lose their context.”
“This is more than merely someone trying to destroy, or even steal, a rare manuscript,” Reid said.
Wilkinson nodded animatedly. “Yes, yes. There are also many aspects to ‘William Shakespeare,’ beyond his writings: his name’s synonymous with Elizabethan English—a close cousin to today’s English. He’s synonymous with England, with our society. To think otherwise is like trying to rewrite the past…pulling the rug out from under a country’s history and, well, its very identity.”
“Google ‘William Shakespeare,’” Turner said, “and you’ll get 100 million results. And among those, you’ll get scholars claiming that Shakespeare was Italian. Or Brazilian. Everyone wants a piece of him.”
“Still,” Vail said, “what matters is the plays, right? They were exceptional stories with themes that are still emulated today. But—and I keep coming back to this—what does it really matter who wrote them? I mean, William Shakespeare was just a name printed on the plays.”
“First of all,” Wilkinson said, “let’s look at this as a UK issue, in the context of the past as well as the present. William Shakespeare was a Catholic Caucasian whose very identity fit—and fits—the identity of the male-centric British society.”
Vail chuckled. “You’ve got one of those too, huh?”
“I think you need to tell her John Hudson’s theory on authorship,” Turner said.
Wilkinson inched his chair closer to the table and lowered his voice. “What if it’s not just that Shakespeare wasn’t written by William Shakespeare? What if it was a woman who wrote the plays?”
6
“Awoman,” Vail said. “I’d think that’d be pretty awesome.”
“You might,” Wilkinson said, “but the rest of the world might not. And what if she was a woman of color?”
“Even better.”
“If that’s not enough, what if that woman of color was not a Catholic but…a Jew?”
“Is that supposed to scare me?”
Wilkinson frowned. “You don’t understand. English society in the Elizabethan era was extremely anti-Semitic: Jews were expelled in 1290 and weren’t allowed to return for almost four centuries. So there were hardly any Jews there, and hardly any people of color, in England in the sixteenth century. Jews were presented on the Elizabethan stage in a very negative light, in hideous caricature with hooked noses and bright red wigs.
“Point being, England was no place for a black, Jewish woman to write plays that would be performed in public—certainly not ones with concealed religious allegories that were highly critical of the church.”
