The Protocols of Carstairs
Copyright© 2021 by Ron Dudderie
Chapter 8: A Fox Is a Wolf Who Sends Flowers
September 11th, 2015. Four Seasons hotel, Las Vegas.
Wouldn’t you know it: my phone rang while I was in the shower. I’d left it on a marble ledge on the other side of a glass panel, so I could see any incoming notifications. Instead, it rang. As it was Asim, I sighed, turned off the water and reached around the door to pick up.
“Good morning, Your Royal Highness.”
The echo was awful. That’s the thing about marble.
“Hey! Wow! Where are you? In a cave?”
“Shower, Sir.”
He giggled in a way that told me he was drunk.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, trying to sound soothing for some reason. “Listen, I’m going to bed.”
“Sir?”
“Bed! I’ve been up all night and now I’m going to bed. Alexandra and I have been clubbing. The security guys were there, too. We are all tired. So you can go and do what you want for a while. Just make sure you charge your phone, okay? We talk later. And no lesson for Lexy today.”
“I see, Sir. Well, good night.”
“See you tonight, Carstairs. But be ready to come out with me. No early night for you!”
“I appreciate the warning, Sir.”
“Okay, bye.”
Shortly thereafter I emerged from the bathroom, shaved and preened. This didn’t seem like the best time to go around with stubble. I’d taken another malaria tablet, because once you start you’re not supposed to stop intermittently. Still, it felt weird taking them in a Four Seasons bathroom.
I found Peter at the dining table, or one of the dining tables I should say, staring at my laptop. He was currently looking at the devastation recorded by K-T’s drone shortly after the explosion at the mosque. Gorgeous images, really. Everything is sunlit, the image is rock steady and the camera gracefully circles the smouldering remains of the building. You can clearly spot the individual corpses on the ground. As the drone is quite high up, you can see beyond the devastated buildings: the rest of the city is quiet, as everyone is indoors, praying. There was no sound, obviously. Drones don’t capture any, as all you’d hear is propeller noise.
“Hello. Impressive, huh?”
“Yes,” said Peter, his eyes glued to the screen. “That ... is a Goddamned thing there, Martin. You did that?!”
“No. Well, I had some part in it, but I only set fire to the building. The explosion was a bit of a bonus, really. They must have had a stash of something awful in there. Serves them right.”
“Yeah,” answered Peter, as if he hadn’t been listening. “Which building were you in?”
“That one. The mall.”
“So who’s flying the drone?”
“The car.”
Peter shook his head.
“Incredible. Press agencies would pay a fortune for this.”
“So would the Saudi police, I imagine. Listen, Asim called me while I was in the shower: he and the princess have been out all night, with the security team in tow. I’ve got a couple of hours, it seems.”
“That’s great! You can call your family!”
“What? Why?”
“What do you mean WHY?” asked Peter. “Because they haven’t heard from you in ages!”
“I know. But...”
“So CALL THEM! Call your wife!”
“Peter, I can’t go calling around my family all the time. I’m undercover! It’s one of the first things they teach you in spy class: don’t call home. I’m not sure what the second thing is because by that time I got kicked out of spy school, but I got at least that much. Just because you have an hour to yourself doesn’t mean you can suddenly call your mum. Quite apart from the risk, there’s also the emotional aspect. I miss them.”
“Then ask them to come over! They can be here in twelve hours! Look at all this space!” said Peter, getting worked up.
“Don’t be absurd. Ask them to come HERE? It’s bad enough my own DAD showed up while I was in prison, and then Caroline and now you. I’ll leave my wife and child out of this, thanks very much.”
“Bad enough your ... Wait a minute! What’s going on here? Why is Cars ... I mean Martin King, quintessential family man, no longer interested in his family?”
“Don’t be silly, of course I am. But you just said they’re all angry with me anyway, so...”
At that point Peter exploded in rage. Which, I’ll be honest, frightened me somewhat.
“So don’t make that worse! Call them! They’ve been accused of all sorts of things since your disappearance. And now you’ve been spotted in Las Vegas! Imagine what the press is writing about that for a minute. You HAVE to call them and tell them what the deal is. You’ve been away from home for far longer than any of them imagined. They MISS you. You call them right NOW, or so help me I will knock you out cold and DRAG you to the airport. Well, not this one: a smaller one near Boulder City, where I know some people. Do you doubt for a moment that I am capable of abducting you, Martin? You’re not the only apex predator in town, you know. Not even in this ROOM. I may not have blown up a mosque, but I’ve DONE shit, my boy. And I have resources you or even sodding MI6 can only DREAM of. Especially here. CALL HOME.”
“But it’s the middle of the night there!”
“Oooooh, nice try! But it’s actually the late afternoon in London. Best possible time to call. Does that steampunk contraption you call a laptop even do Skype? Tell you what, use my iPhone. They’re all on FaceTime anyway. And it won’t lead back to you.”
“Peter! Enough! I am not calling anyone. It will only upset them.”
“It will only upset YOU, you mean!”
He had me there.
“That too. I’ll be off my game for hours. And I’ll have to lie to them, because there’s no way I can tell them what I’ve been up to. I told dad and he immediately deleted the recording and refused to tell anyone else.”
Peter had already calmed down again. His anger might even have been an act. In actual fact, he’s a far better actor than I’ll ever be. If I’m brutally honest I’m a bit of a one trick pony. People seem to like the look of me, somehow. Which is good, because I couldn’t look very different if I tried. But I’m acutely aware it gives me undue credit, just like tall people often end up in charge and Asians are always assumed to do well in school. But Peter was more of a blank canvas. He could be anything, except tall. His chin wasn’t dimpled, his eyes grey more than anything, his face was unremarkable and his voice and accent could become whatever he wanted. If he was around anyone for any length of time he’d begin to subtly mirror them, which made people feel at ease around him. Except right now, because for some reason he’d become this belligerent, highly verbose and single-minded person who I really wanted to thump. Especially because he was right.
“Martin, they’re your family. I think they’ll understand if you can’t tell them everything right now. That’s not what they’re after. They just want to have a chat. And they need to tell you how they feel. It’s not about you and what you’ve been up to. Trust me on this. They’re women. They need to communicate about their feelings, not the facts. Come on, sit down.”
He pointed to one of the large sofas and offered me his phone.
“I can’t. Sorry.”
“Give me ONE good reason why you shouldn’t call your wife and si...”
“Because if they ask me to come home, I’ll do it!” I barked. “That’s why. All it takes is two words from Kate and I’m on my way home. And I don’t want to. I need to see this through. And then when the next bomb goes off, or worse, I’ll sit there and think: ‘Maybe I could have stopped that.’ And I don’t want that.”
Peter rubbed his chin.
“There will always be another bomb, Martin. As long as there’s Islam, there will be bloodshed. But I’ll tell you what: I’ll set it up. I’ll call them first, and explain what is and isn’t off-limits. And I’ll see if I can’t get them all together. Why don’t you nip downstairs and buy a MacBook at the mall. That way you’ll have a bigger screen! That’ll be nice, won’t it?”
“Buy a MacBook just for one video chat?!”
“Why not? What’s a thousand dollars to us, Martin? This room costs five times that per night. Leave it behind as a tip for the maid if you like. She can give it to her kid, for homework.”
I considered it. The siren call of home was strong.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go and get a MacBook. See if you can get them together and explain my position.”
“Sure. You’ll need about twenty minutes, I think. Hop it, Beau Brummel.”
I keep forgetting I’m rich. Not just because of the Saudi credit card I had on me, but because I’m me: I’m a millionaire, but I still behave like I’m on 35 K a year. I buy sandwiches at petrol stations for lunch and I look at the prices when I choose one. I don’t buy bottled water there, because that is a rip-off. Instead, I’ll sometimes buy a six-pack of bottled water at the supermarket and stash them in my car. I’ve never had a mobile subscription that came with a ‘free’ phone: that’s just absurd to me. SIM-only all the way! I’m not CHEAP, mind you. I challenge you to find any woman who says I’m cheap. But I do find it hard to spend money on myself. It’s only me, after all.
And that’s fine: it’s how you STAY rich. And when being rich was new to me, Monique was always there as a sounding board. Does a new car make sense? Should I really buy a painting? Who in their right mind pays 9000 Guilders (back then it was Guilders, but after inflation that equates to 9000 Euros rather nicely) for a dinner table and six chairs? I’d sit on garden furniture from the charity shop, I’ll be honest. But I wouldn’t make the woman, or indeed women I love live like that. If they want something, I’ll bend over backwards to get it for them. And I loved Monique, once.
And although I’ve always had trouble making major purchases, I’ve very rarely regretted making them. With cars especially, every extra €10,000 you spend brings a LOT of joy. (There is a tipping point, by the way, at around 80 to 90 thousand. Then you’re paying for bullshit like remote starters, which are murder on your engine, rear deck spoilers and rear passenger footwell lights that can vary their colour temperature. I’ll repeat that: REAR PASSENGER FOOTWELL LIGHTS.)
Thanks to Caroline I’ve learned to spend money on clothes. Ridiculous money, to be honest. But that’s because it’s largely invisible: I have accounts with my tailors and I rarely even see the invoices. And let’s face it, ethically it’s better to spend a few thousand pounds of honest money on a suit made from wool produced in Scotland and sewn together by a British craftsman living in London than a few quid on a shirt made from cotton drenched in pesticides, shipped halfway across the world, then woven, cut and sewn by day labourers who live and work in slums and then shipped back. The suit will still look fine in five years. The shirt won’t last the summer.
That being said, I felt quite uneasy waltzing into the nearest electronics store in the inevitable mini-mall on the grounds of the Mandalay Bay (which are infuriatingly called ‘The Shoppes’), pointing at the first MacBook on display and asking them:
“Can I have that one, please?”
“Sure!” said a rather flustered young man. “Uhm ... The Air or the Pro?”
“Which has the biggest screen?”
“This one. The MacBook Pro. 13.3 inches.”
“That’s not much.”
“There’s a fifteen inch version as well.”
“Do you have that in stock?”
“I do, but that’s quite heavily specced. It’s got a Core i7 and...”
“I’m sure it does. One of those, please.”
He fetched one from the store room and lovingly placed it into an expensive carrier bag.
“That’s a wonderful machine,” he said, almost wistfully. “Great for video editing.”
“Oh, that’s good. Here.”
I offered him my private credit card, the one linked to the account that received my wages. It was tempting to charge the house of Saud, but then I’d have to keep this thing with me and my favourite security tools are all Windows based. That seemingly old clunker I carried around was actually secured in so many ways I’d keep Kelly’s nudes on it if I had them. Not that I do, but if I did I’d trust them to be safe on that machine.
I marched out of the shop with a white box in a white bag and got back to my suite. All in all I’d been away for about twenty-five minutes and by now I was ready to see my wife and child. I found Peter chatting with someone on his phone.
“Ah, there he is. Excuse me. Hi Martin, gimme that. You didn’t get an extension cord, did you?”
“No, sorry. Didn’t think of that.”
“That’s fine, I’ll call room service for one. Listen, I’ve got your son on the line. Here.”
He offered me his seat at the big dining table. His iPhone was leaning against a glass fruit bowl. He appeared to have been chatting to Kelly’s mother and my son Edwin!
“Oh, hello!” I said, quite surprised. Peter stepped into my bedroom to call room service, so now I was alone with Mrs. Newman.
“There’s daddy!” said Mrs. Newman, pointing at the camera. I think she had her iPad set up on our dining table. Edwin looked fine. He wore tiny blue jeans with an elasticated waist and a blue shirt adorned with a red train, and didn’t seem particularly interested in me.
“Hi Edwin! Hello Mrs. Newman. How are you?”
Mrs. Newman used to be a bus of a woman, riddled with anxieties. Now she was more the size of a Renault Kangoo and, thanks to some expert psychiatric treatment and probably also because she’d stopped worrying about her daughter so much now that I had taken Kelly under my wings, a lot happier. She was the go-to babysitter for Edwin (my mother is getting on a bit) and some weeks she spent more time in our house than Kelly. The rest of the ballad of Mrs. Newman will have to wait. The funny thing is that she had modelled in some pictures as Carstairs’ departed wife Gertrude. Even so, for some reason we somehow never progressed to a first name basis.
“Fine, thanks, Mr. King. They’re all upstairs, fixing their hair and whatnot. Our Kelly’s on the way, too. Shouldn’t be long.”
“Ah, wonderful. And Edwin is in your capable hands, I see. How is he?”
“Oh, fine, fine! Still has his accidents, but he had his third dry night in a row last night, didn’t you, Eddie?”
“Wings?” asked Edwin, as he slid off her lap and walked out of shot.
“Edwin, come here! Your father wants to see you! And no television during the day, you know the rules. He wants to see Super Wings all the time. It’s a show on Netflix.”
“Edwin! Kom eens hier, jochie? Papa wil je zien!” (Edwin! Come here, lad. Dad wants to see you.)
“Oh, I’m afraid he’s forgotten almost all his Dutch. Excuse me, gotta grab him. EDWIN! Don’t.”
Mrs. Newman spent five minutes trying to keep Edwin in shot. He glanced at the screen every now and then and even said ‘hello’ to me after some gentle persuading, but it was clear he’d much prefer to be watching his favourite show of the moment. As you can imagine, this didn’t exactly cheer me up. I know how things work with toddlers, but it still hurts if your own son seems completely oblivious to your voice.
Meanwhile Peter was setting up the laptop, which is a matter of minutes with MacBooks. I’m fine with both Mac and PC, but switching back and forth annoys me so right now I was on Windows 8. It’s gotten a lot more stable, but also a lot uglier since my beloved Windows 2000 Professional. Remember when computers weren’t pretending to be funhouses?
Peter received some confirmation messages on his phone as Apple made sure it was really him, and then we were good to go. Peter hung up on Mrs. Newman, slid the laptop in front of me and called back. Mrs. Newman answered again, now on Mel’s iPad.
Mel was the first to come downstairs. Her hair looked nice and she had some make-up on, but she was wearing a baggy grey tracksuit. That’s unusual. Mel always looks presentable, unless she’s painting. Then she wears paint-splattered dungarees and sometimes nothing underneath. Sexy as hell, I don’t mind telling you. Maybe she was a bit under the weather?
“Hey, you! Looking sharp!” she said, as Mrs. Newman grinned, waved and wadd ... lked out of the shot. Edwin followed her.
“Hello gorgeous!” I replied. “Who else will be showing up?”
“Kate is still upstairs and Kelly is on her way over. Hang on, let me switch over to the Apple TV so we can see you on the big screen.”
She moved the iPad to a shelf on the wall above our large flatscreen TV stood, which suddenly made it possible for me to see the entire sofa and part of the frosted glass partition between the living room and the front door.
“Can you still hear me?” she asked, as she sat down again.
“Yes, it’s fine. Clear as day.”
“You’re looking sharp! And someone’s been doing your ears!” she laughed.
“Yes. A barber with a lighter. Bit of a shock, really. I’ll get it done properly in a few days.”
“I’ll do it,” grinned Peter.
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