Love or Hate?, page 28
“We haven’t much time, Professor.”
He flicks through the pages.
“This is your only passport?”
The Professor is taken back initially by the speed this man moves at and also his total lack of subtlety. Looks can be so deceptive. When he first put his hand on the Professor’s shoulder, the Professor felt safe. Now they are alone, the Professor feels totally at his mercy and in more danger than ever.
The Professor manages a nod of his head, not knowing what to do, then thinks to ask a question he should have asked as soon as they met.
“Can I see your passport … please?” the Professor says, trying to control his breathing. He doesn’t know what he will do if the man refuses, but thankfully, he is spared that problem. The man slips his hand into his own jacket and retrieves a dark green passport. He opens it to a photograph that doesn’t look dissimilar to the Professor’s, except this photograph has the surname Quadir clearly printed beneath it.
“Here, you are to keep it, Professor—for the time being.”
Quadir slips the Professor’s passport into his own jacket, indicating the Professor should do the same with his. All of a sudden, the Professor knows why his son chose this man to look after him. If an assassin was to kill the Professor, he would first have to decide which one of them he was.
“Are you armed?” Quadir demands.
The Professor is shocked anyone thinks he even might be armed. The CIA put an end to that idea long ago.
“No. Are you?” the Professor responds, then jumps as the outer door receives a thud from something heavy. Quadir looks at the door. It is only the clumsy cleaner and his trolley.
“I am always armed,” Quadir answers the Professor as if it was a superfluous question.
He looks at the stain on the Professor’s shirt and notices his hand starting to shake.
“You need to clean up. Go now. Be quick. I will wait here.”
Quadir points towards the inner door to emphasize they have no time to spare.
The Professor turns to go into the restrooms just as the outer door receives another thud and slowly opens.
* * *
Geneva Opera House
11/10/11 (One Day before the Vault)
Marie goes into her private box and sits on the plush seat, waiting for the evening performance to begin. It is one of her favorite operas, but she knows she is too on edge to fully appreciate it. Her heart is still racing from the pushing and shoving at the airport earlier on that day and meeting that man who set off such mixed feelings.
Her always lengthy ordeal showering and freshening up after a long flight became an especially elongated affair when she finally reached her hotel. The one saving grace was the hotel was considered to be one of Europe’s best, and as she walked naked around her suite, she could see the picturesque scene of the superyachts and marina of Lake Geneva from every window.
The members of the orchestra warm up beneath her, individually making an eclectically extraordinary sound, but Marie struggles and doesn’t notice. She stares at the burgundy curtain waiting to be raised, and tries to contain her thoughts as she assimilates the devastating news that she read in the evening newspaper only an hour ago.
Marie was not accustomed to reading newspapers when traveling in other countries as they generally did not concern her. But the headlines that caught her attention didn’t just concern her—they terrified her.
And so did the photographs. They were plastered over the front page and immediately made Marie feel sick to the stomach. The first photograph showed the inside of Geneva airport where she had been hours earlier.
It was all cordoned off, and a mass of police and various forensic experts were investigating the scene. At first, she thought it might have nothing to do with her. Then she read the caption and immediately knew it was. A brutal murder had taken place at the exact time she was departing the airport, and the victim was a man she knew.
Newspapers rarely give the identity of a victim, but in this case, the victim was a prominent American academic from Harvard University. He had been stabbed through the heart, and then his dead body had been bundled unceremoniously into a storeroom. The second picture was thankfully underexposed as it was taken of the body strewn at an unnatural angle on top of the cleaner’s cart. The face wasn’t clear, but Marie could make out the victim was the Professor.
Marie shivers as she imagines how it would be to die in such a horrific way. She shivers as a stab from a stiletto knife was exactly the same way her grandfather was killed. Marie remembers the night the murderers came to the mansion. She remembers one of the assassins smothering her grandfather’s face with a white cloth, and the other assassin calling his accomplice by his name—his real name—a name Marie still can’t recall.
Marie thinks again of the photographs in the newspaper, and it reminds her that Geneva spells danger for all of the clients. The small, supposedly unassociated, article at the bottom of the page confirms it. A second hit had taken place in the Alps later on that day after the fatal stabbing in the airport.
Marie tries desperately to piece together the two murders. She is in such deep thought that she doesn’t hear the door open. She jumps as she realizes there is someone standing behind her.
“Kharmel, you scared me!” Marie says, instinctively putting a protective hand over her heart.
Kharmel looks down at his stunning South American girlfriend. Her extraordinary beauty never ceased to take his breath away. But this evening, Kharmel sees something different. That usual confident aura of invincibility of hers has vanished, and she suddenly looks full of uncertainty.
“I am sorry, Marie, my love, it was not my intention to scare you. Is something wrong?”
Kharmel kisses her softly on the lips, then sits down next to her and rests the program for the evening’s performance on his lap.
“You look scared, my darling,” he says, and if Marie could see what was concealed underneath the program, she would have reason to be scared. Kharmel caresses her with one hand and caresses a pistol with the other. He uses the program to conceal the pistol—a pistol that has a short, barreled silencer attached to it and a safety catch that has been off for the last hour.
“Try to calm down, my darling—who did you think was behind you?” he probes.
Marie looks at the program placed unnaturally on his lap.
“Calm down? How can I calm down—haven’t you read the newspapers?”
Marie studies Kharmel’s face for any sign he knows anything about the two murders. But there is no sign, so she continues.
“It’s all over the news!”
Kharmel’s face now shows more concern as Marie’s eyes start to well up.
“Marie, tell me … what has happened?”
She tries to gather herself. Her voice is shaky.
“The Professor …” Marie can’t bring herself to say it.
Kharmel squeezes her hand forcefully.
“Tell me. What has happened to the Professor?”
Marie looks into Kharmel’s eyes before she answers.
“He’s dead.”
Marie confirms the news everyone in Geneva was talking about. Kharmel is now the one who is no longer calm. He grips Marie’s hand so hard it hurts her.
“Dead?! Are you sure?!” Kharmel hisses.
Marie nods her head, stares at the stage as the curtains are raised, and tries to imagine just how the Professor died.
*
The Professor takes off his spectacles and rests them on the glass shelf above the sink. He turns the tap to run cold water. Even from the inner part of the restroom, he can hear the cleaner bang his trolley again into the outer door. He lowers his face into the sink and feels the water, still chilled from the mountain streams, start to revitalize his skin.
Outside, Quadir holds the door open for the old man pushing the trolley. The cleaner’s accentuated stoop and slow movements give the impression of someone who has done the same monotonous job for far too long. His uniform is much too small for him. Even his hat is crooked. Everything about the cleaner is ill-fitting—everything except his shoes. Years of having to observe tiny details leads Quadir to notice the cleaner’s shoes are polished spotless—and very expensive.
Quadir looks at the inner door. Something is wrong. He hears the Professor running the water. He turns back to the cleaner and immediately freezes. He freezes because he realizes he failed to check the restroom before the Professor went in.
He also freezes because a searing pain shoots through him. He can’t tell whether it is burning hot—or icy cold—but he knows the stab is from a stiletto knife. He also knows it has pierced his heart and gone right through it.
It’s strange the things you notice when you are just about to die.
The knife has gone deep enough to exit the other side of the heart, but not deep enough to break through the skin of his back.
Either way, Quadir knows it is his death blow, and there is now nothing he can do about it. But before he dies, he needs to know who his murderer is.
He looks at the hand holding the knife. As the blood stops flowing from his heart, he notices just how short the sleeves of the cleaner’s jacket are. He sees the shoes again, and the fact that they don’t match the rest of the cleaner’s slovenly appearance suddenly makes sense.
Quadir even has enough time to look into the impostor’s face before blood stops pumping to his brain.
He sees the German smile underneath the cleaner’s hat. He sees his murderer reach out to catch him so as to make as little noise as possible.
Then he sees and hears … no more. On the other side of the door, the Professor savors the sensation of splashing cold water on his face.
He pauses as he thinks he hears a strange noise just outside. He decides he must be imagining it, so he again lowers his face into the basin.
He now feels safe with Quadir so near.
The Professor doesn’t raise his head even when he hears the inner door click open.
He wonders whether the lakes high up in the Alps could be any fresher than the water now tinkling against his skin.
Someone goes to the sink beside him.
The Professor turns off his tap and shakes his head to get rid of the last drops of water from his face.
The man next to him is washing his hands, but as he washes his hands, the water in his basin turns blood red.
The Professor still has water in his eyes. He can see the blood, but can’t see who it belongs to.
“I feel better now … but you have blood on your hands, Quadir.”
The Professor assumes Quadir must have accidentally cut himself, and he gropes for his glasses so he can see more clearly.
At first, all the Professor can see is the other man looking at him … and smiling. He fumbles to put his glasses on, and the man’s face slowly comes into focus. The teeth are false and so is the smile—and it is not Quadir’s.
Then the eyes come into focus—they are blue and sparkle.
The Professor chokes.
The German is wearing the cheap uniform of a cleaner, but there is no doubt—this is the very same man who tried to kill the Professor on the mountain road outside Boston, and the very same man who was pushing other people out of the way in the concourse trying to get to the Professor.
The German briefly turns away from the Professor. He looks into the mirror in front of him, adjusts his false teeth, and adjusts the cleaner’s uniform, as if it somehow matters.
He finishes washing the blood from his hands. The Professor is in total panic and can’t breathe.
“You would be amazed at how much blood a man can bleed,” the German says as he reaches for the paper towel.
“It goes everywhere—into your skin … under your nails … on your hands and wrists. But I still prefer a knife to a gun despite everything,” the German says, expecting the Professor to sympathize with him.
The Professor takes a step back and stumbles. He doesn’t know what to say—not that he could get any words out anyway.
The German remains perfectly calm as he surveys his next victim. He is perfectly at peace and loves what he does. And he loves this bit especially—the buildup before the actual kill.
“My twin accomplice is different. He refuses to use a knife. He only uses a gun—and a long range one at that … cowardly—don’t you think?”
The Professor doesn’t think that—he can’t think.
He is struggling for air, while the man who is just about to kill him seems to be expecting praise for killing at close quarters with the use of a knife, rather than firing a bullet in your brain with a gun.
“Where is Quadir?” the Professor stutters.
He tries desperately to make his question sound like a demand, but he is in no position to demand anything.
“Quadir?” the German shakes his head, “Quadir is no longer around, Professor Cohen. No one is. There’s no one to save you, so for once in your pitiful life, you are going to have to try to save yourself.”
The Professor suddenly gets a surge of adrenaline and feels he might be able to rush forward and surprise his assailant.
“What do you want?!” the Professor says as confidently as he can as he nervously edges forward.
The German knows exactly what the Professor is thinking and calmly retrieves the stiletto knife from the sink. This stops the Professor in his tracks by sticking it an inch from the Professor’s heart. One short stab, and his job is finally done.
The Professor focuses on the blade itself and can make out remnants of blood on it—Quadir’s blood—and he knows it will soon have his on it as well.
But the German isn’t ready to kill him, not just yet.
“What do I want?” he asks rhetorically. “You are the mastermind behind all this, Professor, and I want you to tell me exactly what will happen in the vault tomorrow.”
For a second, the Professor thinks there is a glimmer of hope he might live.
“I don’t know—none of us can know for sure …”
But his hope only lasts for a second and is less than a glimmer.
“In that case, Professor, I won’t wait until tomorrow. I will kill you right now.”
The German has done enough talking. He exerts more pressure on the stiletto knife and feels it puncture the skin of Professor’s chest, and this excites him more than anything.
The Professor feels the blood drain from his head and then can feel himself fainting. He falls back against the wall just as the German lunges at him and just as the inner door opens.
Two agents de securite appear in the doorway, and just as quickly the stiletto knife that was about to be thrust into his heart disappears into the “cleaner’s” jacket.
The Professor sees confusion on the faces of the two officers, and he sees the fury on the German’s face—fury that he has been denied the chance to kill him at close quarters.
The Professor thinks for sure the two agents de securitie will arrest the German, but to the Professor’s astonishment, a short exchange of words in Swiss seems to pacify the officers, and, as the Professor slumps to the floor, the German adjusts his cap and calmly makes his exit.
The Professor tries to control his breathing and lowers his head in between his knees to induce some more blood to return to his head. He can hear the police officers talking to him—demanding something, but he cannot fully understand what they are saying—and doesn’t care.
He only cares about the fact that he and Natalie are still alive.
As the Professor starts to recover, he looks up at the two officers, and rather than telling them a murder has just taken place, he whispers one name.
“Natalie!”
*
The Professor staggers as quickly as he can back to the main concourse. He shoves his way through a group having their picture taken. He ignores their protests and reaches the exact spot he and Quadir had left Natalie. He has no regard now for his own safety. The German could be within a few feet of him, and he wouldn’t be terrified or even try to protect himself as long as he knew Natalie was safe.
But there is no sign of her. He panics, and almost in despair, the Professor looks up at the departure lounge and the balcony—and Natalie.
She is standing alone, watching him, composed as always, as if nothing at all has happened. The Professor rushes towards the escalator. By the time he reaches the bottom of it, Natalie is at the top waiting for him with now just a hint of concern on her face. And by the time the Professor reaches the first floor, he has made his decision what he must do, and as importantly, what he mustn’t do.
He mustn’t go to the authorities and admit he is a witness to a murder. If he does, he will be held for questioning for days—which means he will be unable to return to the vault on the most important day of the millennium—and he can’t possibly let that happen.
As far as knowing what he must do—he must set off to the chapel right now, and without Natalie, if he is to have any chance of returning to the bank by this time tomorrow.
The Professor doesn’t know what to expect at the chapel, but something deep down tells him he must go there first before he returns to the bank. The Professor can’t wait to hold Natalie in his arms. At that moment he realizes how much he needs her. As the escalator brings his head level with her feet, Natalie quickly puts something away in her purse, and with a couple of innocent gestures, asks what has happened to Quadir.
In his haste to hold her, the Professor almost trips off the last step, then immediately hugs her. He hugs her tightly even though it is not reciprocated—never wanting to let her go.
“Natalie, my darling, listen to me, it is not safe here … Quadir is dead,” the Professor says when he finally lets Natalie go.
He doesn’t wait for a reaction or any follow-up questions—there isn’t enough time to explain.
