Smoke & Mirrors
Prologue
April
George Stevens lay in the dark, unable to sleep. Light from the street bled through the drapes, casting dim streaks across the carpet. The heater ticked randomly on the baseboards. He shifted under the blankets but couldn’t find a comfortable position. The room was so cold that he had to stay in one place on the bed to conserve heat. Moving out of the body space meant cold. He silently cursed. Normally, he would have called the front desk and had them remedy the situation immediately, but he knew he would get no more sleep tonight and made a mental note to ask the clerk for another blanket after the sun came up. Finally giving in to the creeping cold, he got out of bed and walked to the bathroom, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. He poured a glass of water from the sink and looked at his travel clock. Twelve twenty-five. Do the math; five twenty-five GMT. They’ll start serving breakfast in an hour or so. It’s always easier going west than east. The jet lag killed him on the way over, every time. Killed. How ironic.
Walking to the front of the room, he parted the blinds to look out the front window of the John Howard Hotel onto Queensgate. Hyde Park and the Royal Albert Hall to the left, South Kensington off to the right. No traffic to speak of yet. That gray light you only see on cloudy days just before the sun comes up.
He ran a shower and turned the TV on while he waited for the water to heat up. The talking head on the BBC informed him that it would be another overcast day in London. Typical. It was April but it could be any month from March to September. What did John Lennon say? Something about getting tan by standing in the English rain.
Passing through the lobby forty-five minutes later, he stopped to chat with Nick, the concierge.
“Nick.”
“Mr. Stevens. How are you this morning?” Nick was a middle-aged Irishman financially stranded in London; are came out as aire. The brogue was entertaining.
“Good morning, Nick. It’s nice to be back. You been to your island lately?”
“Oy yeah. Been gamblin’. It does my heart good to get back to the old country.” Hairte. “It’s not yer regular time o’ year fer a trip, eh?”
“Nope. This time it’s all for pleasure. I find any excuse I can to get back to your fine country.”
“’Taint my county. No sir.”
“Sorry, Nick. I know better. All the same, I do love this side of the ocean.”
The help at the John Howard was a mixed bag of nationalities, largely African with the occasional Jamaican, all attracted to London in the hope of a better life. Nick was an anomaly.
Breakfast was served in the basement restaurant, buffet style. Stevens passed on the wet scrambled eggs but helped himself to a second plateful of muffins and bangers. He wondered what the English lifespan was.
After breakfast, Stevens took the Underground to Piccadilly Circus. He found an anonymity in the tube during the morning rush hour that he got nowhere else in the world. He liked the impersonal crush, the gallery of humanity. The tube is a great equalizer in London, used by businessmen and tourists, call girls and secretaries. It gave him access to a huge cross-section of people, a place to get lost.
For the remainder of the morning, Stevens wandered around the National Gallery trying hard not to think about the events that brought him here. He roamed the museum, looking at the Botticellis and Titians, the Van Goghs and the Rembrandts. His favorites were the Monets. Something about the color palette infused him with a certain calm. In truth, there was nothing pleasant about this trip. It was a necessary escape, a way to wrap his head around recent events without interruption. He needed thirty-five hundred miles of distance to gain perspective.
He stared out from the portico of the Gallery across Trafalgar Square toward the Thames. If ever a man deserved to die, it was Ashley Short. Goddamn you, he thought.
