“So soon?” he asked.
I’d been there less than an hour-a twinkling, by the standards of the room’s diehards. He was still probing, I saw. He had a cop’s instinct for irregularities. I nodded and smiled. “I’ve learned to quit while I’m ahead,” I told him, holding up my chips.
He smiled back, his gaze cool as always. “Yes, that’s usually wise,” he said.
On my way out of the casino I stopped to use one of the restrooms. A full bladder would be a nuisance later this evening, and I also wanted to thoroughly wash my hands. Staph is nasty stuff, and I had no wish to consume some of it inadvertently.
I took a cab to the Oriental and went straight to my room. Keiko was out, presumably still gambling with the money I’d given her. I grabbed what I needed from the safe, placed it in a small backpack I’d brought along for just this occasion, and went straight to Belghazi’s suite. He would start feeling sick shortly and could be expected to return soon after that, and I needed to let myself in ahead of him. If he got in first, he might engage the dead bolt-low tech, but inaccessible from the exterior-and I would lose this opportunity.
I used the SoldierVision before going in. The blonde had said she was going to play craps, but people change their minds. The room was empty. I let myself in with my homemade master key. It would have been nice if I could have just stood in the closet or lain down under the bed, but those would be among the first places the bodyguards would check if they performed even a cursory sweep. Instead, I moved quickly to the larger of the suite’s two bathrooms. I saw two sets of toiletries arranged across the expansive marble countertop around the sink-Belghazi’s, presumably, and the blonde’s.
There was a vertical slab of marble joined to the front edge of the countertop, extending about a quarter of the distance to the floor. I took a SureFire E1e mini-light from the backpack-three inches, two ounces, fifteen bright white lumens-squatted, and looked under the slab. Hot and cold water pipes ran down from the sink handles above and disappeared into the wall. I saw the curved bottom of the ceramic sink, and an attached drainage pipe snaking down, then up, then, with the other pipes, into the wall behind.
I smiled. If Belghazi had taken a more modest room, I wouldn’t have been able to get away with this, and would have had to come up with something less optimal. As it was, the countertop was sufficiently grand to leave a sizeable gap between the back of the vertical marble façade and the underside of the sink basin behind it. It would be a bit of a squeeze, but there was just enough room in there for a man of my size.
I reached into the backpack and took out a specially designed nylon sling, which, unfurled, looked something like an uncomfortably thin black hammock with four aluminum cams on its ends. I squatted down again, held the SureFire in my mouth, and looked for places to secure the cams. I could have replaced the cams with suction cups or with several other means of attachment, but there was no need: the marble countertop must have weighed at least a couple hundred pounds, and it was buttressed by a series of wooden supports, each of which provided a convenient gap for a cam. I attached the cams, tightened the horizontal straps of the sling, then hauled myself and the backpack up into it. I lay on my side, curled around the curve of the sink, the backpack tucked under my upper arm. It was uncomfortable, but not intolerable. I’d certainly put up with worse, and didn’t expect to have to wait long in any event.
I knew that the bodyguards, if they were any good, were likely to inspect the suite before Belghazi entered. But I also knew that, in his current condition, Belghazi would want to be alone and would therefore probably order them out-if he allowed them in at all-before they had done a thorough sweep. Still, ever the good Boy Scout, I was equipped with a CIA-designed,.22-caliber single shot pistol, artfully concealed inside the body of an elegant Montblanc Meisterstück pen, which I now removed from the backpack. If pressed, I would use the disposable pen to drop whoever was closest to me and, in the ensuing melee, improvise with whoever might be left. Of course, if it came to this, I wouldn’t be paid, so the gun was only for an emergency.
I didn’t have to wait long. Twenty minutes after I had gotten in position, I heard the door to the suite open. A light came on in the outer room. Then the sound of feet, rapidly approaching. The door to the toilet stall slammed against the wall, followed immediately by the sounds of violent retching.
Another set of footsteps. A male voice: “Monsieur Belghazi.. .”
The bodyguard, I assumed. There was more retching, then Belghazi’s voice, low and ragged: “Yallah!” I didn’t know the word, but understood what he was saying. Get out. Now.
I heard the bodyguard walk off, then the sound of the exterior door opening and closing. Belghazi continued to groan and retch. In his haste he hadn’t bothered to turn on the bathroom light, but there was some illumination from the suite beyond and I could make out shadows under the sink where I was suspended.
I heard a metallic thump on the marble floor and wondered what had caused it. Then I realized: his belt buckle. Staph causes diarrhea, and he was struggling to keep up with the onset of symptoms. The sounds and smells that followed confirmed my diagnosis.
After about ten minutes I heard him stumble out of the room. The bedroom light went off. A safe assumption that he had collapsed into bed.
I raised my arm slightly and looked at the illuminated dial of the Traser. I would give him another half hour-long enough to ensure that the chloral hydrate had been largely processed through his system and therefore maximally difficult to detect, but not so long that he might start to wake up. The staph would turn up in a pathologist’s exam, of course, but staph occurs naturally, if unfortunately, in food, so its presence postmortem wouldn’t be a problem. With luck, in the absence of any other likely explanation, the staph might be blamed for the heart attack Belghazi was about to suffer.
In fact, the heart trouble would be the result of an injection of potassium chloride. I would try for the axillary vein under the armpit, or perhaps the ophthalmic vein in the eye, both hard-to-detect entry points, especially with the 25-gauge needle I would use to go in. An injection of potassium chloride is a painless way to go, recommended, at least implicitly, by suicidal cardiologists the world over. The potassium chloride depolarizes cell membranes throughout the heart, producing a complete cardiac arrest, immediate unconsciousness, and rapid death. Postmortem, other cells in the body naturally begin to break down, releasing potassium into the bloodstream, and thereby rendering undetectable the presence of the very agent that got the ball rolling to begin with.
Twenty minutes passed, with no sound other than Belghazi’s occasional insensible groans. I rolled out of the harness and lowered myself silently to the floor. Just a few more minutes, and I would begin preparing the injection. I had a small bottle of chloroform that I would use if he started to stir during the procedure.
I heard a card key sliding into the suite’s door lock. I froze and listened.
A moment passed. I heard the door open. It clicked closed. The light went on in the bedroom.
I reached into the backpack and withdrew the Montblanc. I heard the sound of footsteps in the room. Belghazi, softly groaning. Then a woman’s voice: “Achille, tu vas bien?” Achille are you all right? To which Belghazi, clearly out of it, continued only to groan in reply.
The blonde, I thought. I slipped the pen into my left hand and used my right to ease out my key chain, and the shortened dental mirror I keep on it. I padded silently to the edge of the door and angled the mirror so that I could see the suite’s bedroom reflected in it.
It was her, as I had expected. She must have had her own key.