His first move was a summary firing of all the employees. He began with the pompous little headwaiter in the Reading Room, but no one was spared. He fired the doormen in their silk toppers and red frocked coats, the aged valets, dress maids and hall porters, the dining and wait staff in their boiled shirts and cutaways, the Maitre Chef des Cuisines and all the sous-chefs, and, finally, Henri, a confidante of Churchill himself who had presided over the main bar since before the war, and then the general manager himself.
To say this “Bloodbath at Beauchamps,” as the tabloids tagged it, had all of London agog would be to put it mildly. There was outrage from every quarter. A spokesman at Buckingham Palace said the queen had no comment other than she was profoundly disgusted. The editorial pages of the London Times were spewing vitriol in the direction of the former Pasha of Knightsbridge. It was a lead story on the BBC for weeks. They treated it like a national disaster. It was, as one TV reporter put it, “A cock-up of monumental proportions.”
Snay bin Wazir, who happened to be tuned in that night, took this reporter’s comment as a compliment and rang up next morning to thank him for being the one newsman in town with the guts to take his side in the matter.
You could have blown up the Tate, the National Gallery, and the British Museum all in a day’s work and not had more brimstone rain down on your head than bin Wazir found pouring down upon him in those turbulent times.
But Mr. bin Wazir had been forewarned by al-Nassar to expect this reaction from hidebound Londoners, and so he went about town with his usual aplomb, smiling in the face of the angry stares that met him everywhere, ignoring the shouted insults in the street, acting for all the world as if he were a man who’d found himself in the middle of a summer squall that would soon blow itself out.
The story quickly found its way across the pond where the American newspapers and television networks picked it up. There was a resounding hue and cry from that side of the Atlantic as well. Generations of wealthy Americans had called Beauchamps their “home away from home” and legions of them had grown up knowing the hotel staff by name. Now, the hate mail and death threats were arriving at bin Wazir’s door from both sides of the Atlantic.
Unabashed and undeterred, bin Wazir proceeded with his project. It wasn’t long before the scaffolding went up and armies of construction workers and demolition squads were hard at work. The windows and doors were all boarded up and the interior and exterior renovation began right on schedule.
It was bin Wazir’s fervent belief during this stormy period that he would be redeemed once his new palace reopened and haute London got a look at what true grandeur really looked like. He had hired the best architects and interior designers money could buy and given them carte blanche. Within a few guidelines, naturally.
Gone would be the hideous silvered Georges Braque mirrors, the Jazz Age sculpture and paintings, and furniture upholstered in Cubist fabrics so dated as to make one laugh. Bin Wazir told his designers to let their minds venture into a golden future, where computer articulated twenty-four-carat nymphs danced and a ballet of sparkling jets spewed forth in splashing fountains of jeweled marble; and swirling, flashing lasers illuminated multicolored birds singing in massive gilded cages suspended from on high.
He imagined a new skyline for his team of designers as well. Opulently turreted and domed, with pillars and pediments and gables clad in endless mosaics of colored stone; with flags of every nation fluttering from every shimmering bronzed turret top, welcoming the world to bin Wazir’s door. Yes, when the world finally came to his sumptuous palace, and gazed upon its many splendors, bin Wazir would find his redemption. And, quite possibly, a knighthood, he sometimes imagined.
His first clue that this fantasy might not come to pass was the day he invited all of London society, all of the press, including his old friend Stilton at the Sun, to witness the grand unveiling of the hotel’s new marquee. To accentuate the new and dispel the old, it was rumored that bin Wazir had actually changed the two-centuries-old name of the fabled grand dame of Mayfair.
At the stroke of noon, on a hot June day, amidst a cacophony of shouting reporters and clicking cameras, bin Wazir would pull the silken cord, letting the royal purple velvet drapes festooning the new facade and hiding the new marquee, fall to the pavement.
With a great flourish, bin Wazir pulled the cord, the draperies fell away, and a huge gasp arose from all those assembled. The crowd stood in shocked silence, gazing upwards with disbelieving eyes.
There, for all to see, in massive golden letters forming an arch above the hotel’s azure-tiled entrance was the new name of London’s most magnificent new hotel. And, of course, it was spelled precisely the way bin Wazir thought it should be spelled.
Phonetically.
BEECHUM’S.
Chapter Thirteen
Nantucket Island
SHORTLY AFTER K ITTYHAWKE TOOK OFF FOR MAINE, STOKELY Jones, Ross Sutherland, and Sergeant Tommy Quick were having breakfast in the gleaming stainless steel galley presided over by Blackhawke’s executive chef, Samuel Kennard. Kennard was known by one and all aboard the yacht as Slushy. Since the early eighteenth century, this unsavory moniker had been the nickname commonly given to cooks aboard ships in the British Royal Navy.
“Slushy,” Stoke said, swallowing a mouthful of fried grits, “sit your ass down here and eat some breakfast with us. You been on your feet since five this morning.”
“Brilliant idea, mate,” Slushy said, in his thick cockney accent, and brought a plate piled high with bangers and mash over to the galley staff’s main dining table. “Don’t mind if I do, thank you very much.” Slushy’s substantial girth was all the proof you needed of his pudding.
“That’s better,” Stoke said. “I just can’t stomach eating when somebody’s standing there cooking. Must have been something in my childhood. Now, Slushy, you got shore leave this morning? Man, you got to see that whaling museum in town. I’m telling you, brother, those old whaling cats were some seriously badass dudes.”
“Better trust him on that one, Slushy,” Quick said. “Mr. Jones does not use the word badass lightly.”
Tom Quick, who was always heavily armed despite his crisp white crew attire, reported directly to Sutherland and had total responsibility for the security of the yacht Blackhawke. Quick was of medium height, lean, with a shock of sun-whitened hair and frank, inquisitive grey eyes. He had been working for Hawke for more than two years. Alex had met the U.S. Army’s number-one sharpshooter at the Sniper School at Fort Hood. Hawke had promised Sergeant Quick an exciting career and he had delivered in spades. Sarge, as he was now called, had helped to salvage Hawke from too many unsalvageable situations to count.
“Says it all the blooming time, though, don’t he, Mr. Sutherland? Badass?” Slushy said. Most major yachts of the world boasted chefs lured away from the finest four-star restaurants of Europe. Alex had hired Kennard away from a pub in Clapham Common, which, he argued, had the best food in all of London. Slushy was an innate culinary genius and could cook, literally, anything to perfection. Even the salted shark strips Sutherland was currently chewing on.
“Damn good shark this morning, Slush,” Ross said. “C’mon, Stoke. I’m headed for the ship’s library. Get a jump on that list we made last night.”
“That’s good, that’s good,” Stoke said. “My man Sarge here and I’ve been doing some checking on that sniper rifle I found up in the tree. I tell you, Quick here is a walking sniper encyclopedia. And I want to hear about you and Ambrose’s little midnight visit to the crime scene, too.”
“Well, later,” Tom Quick said, rising from the table. “Meeting with my team at nine. Good luck, good hunting, guys.”
“Sarge,” Sutherland said to Quick, “Security level aboard is unchanged, correct?”
“Aye, sir. Level Three ever since the boss got the call from the DSS about the incident up in Maine.”
“I don’t feel good about this, Tommy. Take her to Four.” Five was full on, wartime. They’d only been at Five once and that was in the middle of a firefight with Cuban gunboats during a very hairy military takeover down in Cuba.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Quick said, “Go to Four.” He saluted and he was gone. Four meant round-the-clock armed
