Rough Weather

She put her hand on Adelaide ’s cheek for a moment. Then she turned and went out the other anteroom door into the hall. I took her place peeking through the door, and watched her appear a moment later at the double doors to the chapel. She came down the aisle alone, the mother of the bride, like a queen at her coronation. She was erect, beautiful, elegantly dressed, and perfectly done, with just the right amount of hip swing. I felt sort of bad for the anticlimactic Adelaide.

Maggie wanted to peek, too, and I sensed her resentment. But my docile mode took me only so far. After Heidi’s long promenade, she slipped into her seat in the first pew. I could almost feel the impulse to applaud run through the chapel, but everyone fought it off successfully.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” Maggie said, as if trying to void any usurpation of her position.

Leopold put his arm out. Adelaide, looking pallid and swallowing often, put her hand on his arm. He patted it and they went out of the anteroom. I followed them discreetly. They went through the big entrance to the chapel. The musicians, cued from the anteroom, I assumed, by the grim and ubiquitous Maggie, began to play “Here Comes the Bride.” Leopold and Adelaide started down the aisle toward the waiting groom. Adelaide seemed pulled in upon herself, smaller than her mother, somehow frail-looking, as if the support of Leopold’s arm was more than symbolic. After they got to the waiting groom and Leopold had retired to his pew, I skirted the back row more silently than the yellow fog, and went down along the side and sat where I’d been told.

8

It may have begun the day as a library, and it might be a library tomorrow, but at this moment it was every inch a chapel. The ceiling had been draped in dark gauze so that it seemed to reach a peak. The seating was in real pews, not folding chairs. There were hymnals in each pew. A small program lay on the seat in each place. The bookcases were draped in the same dark gauze they’d hung from the ceiling, and stained-glass windows hung in place. The lighting was provided by candles. In front was an altar of ornately carved wood that looked as if it had been lifted from a medieval church in Nottingham. There were flowers everywhere, huge vases as tall as I was, standing in exactly the right places, hanging flowers, flowers smothering the altar.

In the back-left corner of the room a string trio supplied the music. Around the room were people I recognized. A famous movie couple, an actor from New York, a tennis player, two senators. A lot of the women were good-looking; money always seems to help in that area. Everyone was dressed to the teeth. Like me. A hint of expensive perfume, nearly extinguished by the smell of the flowers, drifted through the room. I did not see the Gray Man. Susan was looking through the program.

“Bride’s name is Van Meer,” Susan whispered. “Her father must be the second husband, Peter Van Meer.”

I nodded.

“Do I look better in my tux than the groom?” I whispered to Susan.

“No,” she whispered back.

“Do too,” I whispered.

Susan put her finger to her lips and nodded toward the altar. The minister was there in full high-church regalia, holding a prayer book open in his hands. He began the familiar recitation.

“Dearly beloved…”

The room was windowless for the wedding. But through the muffling gauze, and over the minister’s orotund voice, I heard the crack of thunder. Some people in the chapel jumped slightly at the sound. The storm was very close. In fact, it might have arrived. But it was remote from the ceremony, shielded as we were by walls and curtains, gauze, and wealth. The ceremony proceeded just as if there were no storm.

“… you may kiss the bride,” the minister said.

They kissed. Neither husband nor wife seemed terribly enthusiastic about it. There was a slight rustle of movement at the back. Someone had arrived, quite probably by helicopter. Six men came in, wearing wet raincoats. Three went left and three went right.

And as they spread out, Rugar appeared with no coat, his gray suit perfectly dry except for the cuffs of his pants. His shoes were wet. They squished faintly as he began to walk down the center aisle toward the bride and groom. The six men took automatic weapons from under their raincoats. I had an impulse toward my ankle holster and realized it was a bad idea in a room crowded with wedding guests, and six guys with MP9s. The minister hadn’t noticed the submachine guns yet. He was looking at Rugar with contained annoyance.

“Excuse me, sir,” the minister said to Rugar, “but I would prefer…”

Rugar took out a handgun, it looked like a Glock, and shot the minister in the center of the forehead. The minister fell backward onto the floor in front of the altar. He convulsed a little and then lay still. Rugar turned toward the congregation, holding the Glock comfortably at his side. He was wearing a beautifully cut gray suit, a gray shirt, and a silver silk tie.

“Everyone is to stay calm and sit perfectly still,” he said.

He looked at me, as if he knew right where I’d be.

“Particularly,” he said, “you.”

I nodded slightly. How flattering to be singled out.

“Anyone who interferes with me will be killed,” Rugar said. “Anyone attempting to leave this room in the next hour will be killed. If I find you annoying, you will be killed.”

The silence in the room was nearly impenetrable. Rugar took the bride’s arm.

“Come along,” he said.

She looked at her mother. Her mother was rigid. The groom was very pale. I could see him trying to get his breath. Don’t do it, kid. It won’t help her. It’ll get you killed. He was too young. He’d seen too many movies, where heroism is required and the hero doesn’t get killed.

“You can’t do this,” he said.

Rugar smiled almost sadly and shook his head almost sadly, and put his gun against the bridge of the kid’s nose and pulled the trigger. It blew the back of his head out, and there was a lot of blood and brains. A soft sigh ran through the room as he went down. Adelaide stared for a moment, then fainted. Rugar broke her fall easily and let her slide to the floor. He looked without expression around the chapel.

“Anyone else?” he said.

No one spoke. I could feel the tension in Susan as her shoulder pressed against mine. Rugar looked down at Adelaide.

“Spenser,” he said. “You’re big and strong. You carry her.”

Susan put her hand on my thigh.

“I’ve got a roomful of hostages,” Rugar said. “I could kill some.”

Susan patted my thigh and took her hand away.

“I’ll carry her,” I said.

9

Whatever Rugar had worn as a raincoat coming to the chapel, he didn’t bother with on the way out. He stopped before we went out of the building and looked at me.

“You understand about the hostages,” he said.

“I do.”

“That would include Dr. Silverman.”

“I understand that,” I said.

We went bareheaded and without rainwear out into the tempest. One of the gunmen came with us, walking two steps behind me with his MP9 pointing at my back, his shoulders hunched, squinting through the assault of the