My first concern isn't about the guests of the hotel; a little darkness doesn't harm anyone. If they want to scream and jump on tables and call for the police and fire department and ambulances, that's their business and not mine. My first concern is to find Mister White (to give him back his jacket and gun) and Miss Franklin (to get her safely out of the war zone).
Rostov and I struggle through a mob of fighting people who want to get off the terrace into the hotel, throwing each other into the water while several voices shout: "Please, calm down. This is not a terrorist attack. Please, sit down." When authorities shout messages like that, even the most dignified group of people panics.
I use the flashlight of my spiPhone to see where we're going. We manage to reach the stairs and start climbing the 25 floors to suite 2539.
I'm trained. To keep in shape, I run at least once a week between five and ten kilometres, and try to spend at least two hours in the gym. For me, climbing 25 floors of stairs is just another day in the office. Rostov spends his days in the office with nothing heavier to lift than a cup of coffee. When he has to visit the bathroom, he orders a taxi. He's breathing heavily when we reach the third floor, puffs and pants on the sixth floor, needs a break on the tenth floor, begs me to carry him in my arms on the fifteenth floor, but when he crashes like a plane without fuel on the twentieth floor, I get mad: "Get up on your high heels and behave like a man. You're making your dress dirty."
Finally, we reach suite 2539. Jake Elwood, worried, opens when we knock. I tell him what happened (everything went great, but some chap from the audience caused the tumbling of the lights in the water, and therewith the short circuit of the power in the hotel and the canton), check on Miss Franklin (she's still asleep and didn't notice anything), tell Rostov to change back into his Mesut-outfit, and explain that I go back to my own room to check the info that I stole from the phone of Mister White.
The power (and therefore the Wi-Fi Internet connection in the hotel) is still down, but my laptop works with the LSD satellite connection so I can reach my secret backup space in the cloud as long as I have battery power. The information from Mister White's mobile phone is interesting. There are files with info about Mister Camponelli and his network of clients, mp3-files with tapped phone conversations, photos of our four friends of last night's dinner, meeting several others, copies of letters from Nixon to Trump with instructions on how to win elections, in short: too much to go through. The only files I read are last week's short daily reports from Mister White to his superiors: no trace of the suitcase and no trace of Mister Nikolai either.
I send a copy of the most interesting files to #2, The Nerd, with the request to analyse and forward a summary to #4, The Agent, to help him with his mission. Then I switch off the laptop and climb the stairs again to suite 2539. When I'm on the 23rd floor, the lights go on. Two floors later, I open the door of the stairwell and surprise a pretty lady in the corridor. She looks in my direction like I caught her in some sort of illegal activity and starts knocking on the door of the suite: "Please, open up, dear. It's me. I've lost the key card. Are you in the bathroom?"
I smile my reassuring chamberboy smile at the lovely lady.
Any other chamberboy would go on with his business, but I'm not any other chamberboy: I see the iron cylinder, standing between her left leg and the door. I see the connected rubber hose disappear under the door of the suite, the door of suite 2503, the abandoned suite of Mister Nikolai. I've seen enough.
I stop.
It's intuition.
It saves my life.
An explosion in room 2503 blows the front door to the other side of the corridor, hitting the pretty lady unconscious on its way. Hadn't I stopped two seconds ago, I would have been there, between that door and that wall.
My thoughts jump around like a cat: when we searched Mister Nikolai's room this morning, I left a burning candle in the bathroom, joking to Rostov that it would be our wake-up call. I did that because the one who stole the suitcase entered Rostov's room after drugging him with OC-V 340, Tumble Tornado, a sleeping gas that comes in small capsules or in iron cylinders with rubber hoses, a highly explosive gas that might fill a room before it gets ignited by a burning candle in a bathroom with the door on just a small crack.
The one who stole the suitcase from Rostov's room is the lady who lies on the ground before my feet. She's found out that she can't open the strongbox without the code, she's found out that Mister Nikolai has that code, she's found out that Mister Nikolai has suite 2503, and now she tried the same trick here that worked so well last night in Rostov's room. She probably doesn't know that Mister Nikolai is missing, and it's a good thing he's missing because when he would have been in his room just a minute ago, he would be on his way down, 25 floors, to land in the lake next to the double bed, the table and the chair that were blown out of the room through the gap in the wall where the windows used to be. Quickly, I scan the room: there's nothing left of it. I look down. The furniture is floating in the lake, but I don't see anything that might be a dead body, so I hope the room was as empty as we left it.
I go back to the corridor and concentrate on the lady. Her pulse is fine, she's breathing and there are no visual wounds or signs of blood, just a big bump on the back of her head where the door hit her after the blow. I look at her face. She looks familiar, but I can't connect her to anyone right now. She's gorgeous, not just beautiful, but a complete knockout. Well, knockout is the right word.
I can't leave her here. I can't take her to my room either: imagine she sees my arsenal. Suite 2503 is destroyed and suite 2539 with Rostov and Jake and sleeping Miss Franklin is no option either. The only place I can think of is room 404, Rostov's room. The place might be bugged or under surveillance, but all the odds tell me there's hardly any risk anyone would pay interest to that room. Any other room can be occupied by guests. I don't have the time to go to the reception and ask if they have a room available where I can hide an unconscious lady. I need a place where a lady and a tramp can spend some quality time without being disturbed. Room 404 is the only room I'm sure is empty.
A lovely lady like this deserves to be taken there by a handsome, tall man who carries her in his strong arms like she's a bride who enters her new house for the first time after getting married. She's not my bride and I'm not a handsome, tall, strong man. Carrying a woman in your arms, a grown-up woman of 60 or 65 kilos, that's what Jason Bourne and James Bond do. I use the fireman-grip: she hangs around my neck like a boa, my right arm between her knees, grabbing with my right hand her purse and her right arm that hangs down from my left shoulder, so I have my left hand free to open doors and push lift buttons. Miss Charming is unconscious anyway; she doesn't care and she doesn't notice.
In the lift, my memory returns bit by bit. I look in the mirror at the lady's face and suddenly I know why she looks familiar: I've never seen her myself, but her biggest fan gave me her description. She's Katniss Everdeen meets Catherine Zeta-Jones with a short haircut. She's the Russian anthem played by Carlos Santana. She's a strawberry-and-peach cake with thirty-two candles. She's Katja. She's the woman on the arm of the Frenchman, Mister Antoine Lafitte, at the dinner party. Antoine confessed in the church that he'd made love to her the entire night, until six-thirty. If that had been true… why was he up and running around town at 12, only five hours later? And if his confession was true, he was already up and running a few hours, looking for Katja everywhere. Begging his Saviour for help had been his last chance.
At the dinner party, there was a lot of boozing: Rostov said that just waiting for the transfer took two gigantic bottles of champagne. The two only logical explanations for Antoine's early appearance could be that he never slept at all, which would include he'd notice Katja leaving, or that he slept early without even getting his goodnight kiss. Katja had sleeping gas… He was not desperately looking for her because he was so satisfied after a long night of hot and steamy sex. No. He was desperate because he was still horny, because he didn't get what he hoped for. He even lied to his Saviour about it. Never ever trust a banker!
That explains everything and… it kills Katja's alibi. After putting Antoine in bed with a relaxing capsule of OC-V 340, Katja had all the time she needed to go over to Rostov's room, drug him with the gas from the iron cylinder, and steal the suitcase. She probably tried to open it, in vain, and spent the rest of the time looking for a place to hide it. A Swiss bank would be my first option. Open an account and leave the suitcase there. But if you're a criminal with a false ID, perhaps you wouldn't take the risk. If I'd be in that situation, I would use Rostov to open an account in his name, or I would hide the suitcase in a place where nobody would look for it.
I enter Rostov's room, 404, with the universal key and put Katja on the bed. She's still unconscious, but now I've found out what a tricky bitch she has been with the Frenchman, I decide not to be naive; I won't let this dangerous woman out of my eyesight for even one second. But… what do I do now?
What would a normal chamberboy do when he found an unconscious lady in the corridor? He would take her to a safe place (I did that already) and he would call for medical assistance. That's indeed a good idea. I take my spiPhone and dial #555, the phone number in case of immediate disasters. Immediate disaster Rostov answers immediately.
"Hello, Miss. My name is Julian Weidenfeller. I'm here in room 404 in the Prestigio International Hotel with a woman who's hurt. She needs medical assistance urgently. She is a victim of an explosion on the 25th floor. I've taken her out of the danger zone and she's… Please, Miss… No, you listen to me. I don't care what happened on the terrace and I don't care that… Of course, I know what a disaster means, but this lady needs urgent… Hello… Miss?… Rostov! She hung up."
I cut the connection, act as if I'm thinking, as if I'm desperate, as if I'm just getting a marvellous idea. I know it's just acting and I'm alone in a room with one woman who has her eyes closed, probably unconscious, but she might be faking: I have to keep up the appearances and play the scene as if it's real life itself. This time, I take the room's phone and dial 2539, the number of Miss Franklin's suite. I hope Rostov has had enough time to think why I spoke to him as if he was a phone operator from an emergency centre. At least, he shows initiative and picks up the phone in the room, although it's not his own room.
I say: "Hello? Is this the room of Yogi Votsor? Do I speak with his assistant? … Thank you, Sir. My name is Julian. I'm a chamberboy of the hotel. Right now, I'm in room 404 with a lady who needs urgent medical assistance. The problem is that all emergency personnel are busy with something that happened just ten minutes ago on the terrace of the hotel and nobody has time to help this lady. She… She's unconscious and I'm really worried about her. Nobody has time for her because down there, it is the end of the world, but… This lady is the kind of woman who makes the end of the world look like an insignificant detail…"
I drop a brief pause. I hope Rostov realises who this woman is, using his own words to describe her without alarming Katja in case she's eavesdropping.
A whisper on the other side of the line tells me that Rostov understands the situation: "Katja…"
Thank you, Rostov, for being so smart. You're a real friend: I can count on you.
"So, please, Sir, can you be so kind to ask Yogi Votsor to come over to room 404? The Yogi is a Holy Man, a well-known master of healing with mental powers. We'll need his help. He's the only one who can get this woman well again… Can you please ask him to come?…"
I drop another pause, so the one I'm speaking to can convince the Holy Man to come over and save the life of an innocent girl. It gives Rostov the chance to whisper an answer: "«Holy Man», 1998 starring Eddie Murphy as G. What do you want me to do?"
I keep my act up: "Yes, I know that the Yogi only speaks Malawi, but I have a dictionary Malawi-English — English-Malawi on my phone. If you just could tell Yogi Votsor to say little and speak clearly… That would be fine, Sir. Thank you very much… Yes, room 404. Thank you very much, Sir."
I hang up the phone and sit down on one of the chairs. Rostov is on his way. I hope he understood my little insinuation about speaking little, and I do hope that he also understood how to speak: Votsor is Rostov backwards. If he speaks one word in Russian backwards, we might give each other clues without Katja finding out, and it will also give Yogi Votsor a magic alien image that could do the trick to fool her.
I fill the electric kettle and prepare a cup of that excellent tea Rostov brought, to have something to do, and also because my stomach grunts that its last refill was eight hours ago, that splendid lunch with our French host, Antoine Lafitte. The hot tea gives me back the feeling of being in control, the hope that we'll have a happy ending, but it's just an illusion that lasts until a knock on the door announces Yogi Votsor from Malawi.
The face of Yogi Votsor is the face of Mesut Bellarabi with a black moustache but without the enhanced nose: the putty didn't survive the rubber mask of Aretha Franklin. The rest of Mesut has disappeared fully. Yogi Votsor is dressed in a white satin bedsheet robe. The white turban on his head has the same fabric as the towels that the hotel supplies to the most expensive rooms on the 20th floor and higher. He's barefoot, like can be expected from a holy Yogi from Malawi, and I wonder where he got the brown make-up to paint his feet, or perhaps he didn't wash them since Christmas last year. It must be make-up because his hands, folded before his chest, are of the same mocha colour.
I fold my hands, bend my head to show respect and welcome the Yogi: "Orbod Tavolahzop"
That's «dobro poshalovat» backwards or «Welcome» in Russian. The Yogi replies with a voice that's as dark as the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger: "Obisaps."
«Spasibo» is «thank you» in Russian. Rostov understood my little trick. This might work.
I enter the room before him, make a gesture to the sleeping beauty on the bed, and say in English: "She's badly hurt. I don't know what to do. I fear for her life."
Yogi Votsor knows what to do. He is a Holy Man, a healer and a medicine man. He looks at Katja, bends over… grabs her breasts, cup D, with both hands and rocks them like he's mixing a milkshake with coconut flavour. Immediately, Katja opens her eyes, slaps the holy man in his holy face as hard as she can, and shouts: "Hey, you. Get off of my cloud!"
Rostov manages to maintain his role: he hides his stupid grin, but I know him well enough to see that grin hidden in his eyes.
Quickly, I save Rostov's life, saying to Katja: "A miracle! You're alive! Yogi Votsor cured you. You were badly hurt, Miss, and I feared for you. All the doctors were busy elsewhere, so the Yogi was our last hope. He has magic hands, as you found out. He can transfer his holy energy to everything he touches; he had to touch you as close to the heart as possible and shake you back to life again. I'm so happy you are fine. There was an explosion. Don't you remember? Your suite, 2503, suffered a terrorist attack. You were unconscious, imagining the world had stopped. I brought you here and asked the Yogi to come over…"
Katja is a quick thinker. My news about the explosion makes her anger disappear, troubled worry taking its place: "An explosion? Oh, my dear. And my fiancé was in that room. What happened to him? Is he okay?"
"There was nobody in the room, Miss. I don't know where your fiancé is right now, but I'm sure that he's safe. I don't think he's kidnapped by the people who put that bomb in your suite, or that he's being tortured right now or… No. I'm sure your fiancé is all right. You should lie down and rest. There's nothing you can do right now. You should—"
"No, you don't understand. Criminals try to kill my poor Nikolai. Someone put a bomb in our room. They've probably kidnapped him. I must find him. He's in danger. I can't just lie down and do nothing. We have to find him, as soon as possible. You have to find out where he is…"
This is going exactly where I like it to go: Katja asks us to help her find Mister Nikolai. Finding Mister Nikolai was in the top three of our To-Do List anyway, just below finding the suitcase and just above finding the person who stole that suitcase from Rostov.
"Don't worry, ma'am. You should calm down. We can ask Yogi Votsor to help you. In his country, Malawi, the Yogi is a Holy Man. He has powers in his hands that no other living creature has. He can see the invisible threads of fate that link us, and he can find your fiancé by touching just one object that was in his possession. Do you have anything that belongs to your fiancé?"
Katja looks confused: "Can't we use anything from our room? All his things were there, his luggage…"
"The explosion cleaned the room entirely, ma'am. Even the furniture and the bed were blown out. There's no chance we can find anything there. Don't you have something in your purse, a cigarette lighter or his car keys or his passport, perhaps?"
Katja looks around for her purse and finds it on the floor in front of the bed. She opens it and takes out a shabby piece of cloth, fire-truck red, with the face of Mickey Mouse: "Can you ask the Yogi where we will find the owner of this garment?"
I have no idea why Katja has Mister Nikolai's underpants in her purse, but Yogi Votsor smiles when he takes it over from me. He must have seen this before. His inner self Rostov must have packed Mister Nikolai's suitcase for the trip. He touches the cotton fabric, closes his eyes, takes a deep breath with the underpants under his nose and speaks with a deep voice: "Antoine… Club Escandalo… Einbahnstrasse…"
Katja's mouth drops open and her big eyes express that she's truly impressed: "Unbelievable. This… garment… belonged to a man with the name Antoine, Antoine Lafitte, and it wouldn't surprise me if he's having breakfast at Club Escandalo in the Einbahnstrasse right now… This Yogi is amazing…"
"I told you. He's a Holy Man. He can see the threads of fate that connect us all. But if you want to find your fiancé, we should have something that belonged to him. The Yogi needs something to work with."
The Yogi has a suggestion: "Nadomech." His assuring smile supports his dark voice when he repeats the word: "Nadomech".
I translate it backwards: «chemodan», the Russian word that means «suitcase». Rostov is a genius. I fake not knowing what it means, grab my phone and check the dictionary app for the word: "The Yogi says «suitcase». But… that's not possible. Your luggage was blown out of the room. The suitcase of your fiancé must be at the bottom of Lake Geneva by now. How do I explain that to the Yogi? What's the Malawi word for «lake»? How do I say «explosion» in his language?"
Katja is thinking too, although she's not thinking about translating Malawi: "The Yogi is right. There is a suitcase that can connect us to my fiancé. That suitcase was not in our room at the moment of the explosion."
I feign enthusiasm: "That's wonderful, Miss. All you have to do is give that suitcase to the Yogi and he'll tell you where your fiancé is."
Yogi Votsor has something else to add to our problems: "Ityv amuzh ariknab."
«Marry a banker». The Yogi's dirty mind tells me to suggest to Katja that she should marry a banker, and that banker is Rostov, of course. I don't want to translate it, but Katja insists and Rostov repeats, so with the help of my phone I explain to her: "He says you will marry a banker. Is your fiancé a banker?"
Katja is convinced now: "Yes, he is. I don't know how this Yogi knows all this, but I'm convinced now that he has certain powers that might help us find my fiancé. Can you explain that to him?"
Yogi Votsor has already understood. He says: "yulestop"
«Potseluy» is «kiss» in Russian. Rostov has forgotten everything about the mission now; all he wants is Katja. I search the word on my phone and lie to Katja: "Hurry. He says that we should hurry. I fear the worst. But… you should stay here. You were badly hurt in an explosion. You should tell us where we can find that object and we'll bring it here to you."
Katja grabs her purse and jumps on her feet: "I'm fine. I survive explosions every day. You've heard what the Yogi says. We should hurry. I know where to find the suitcase he referred to. It's not far. In fact, we don't even have to leave the hotel. You wait here. I'll be back."
Yogi Votsor knows that last line. He blocks the way so Katja can't leave the room, repeats: "I'll be back?" in his deep Arnold Schwarzenegger voice and shakes his wise head with an understanding smile like he wants to say: "We go together or we don't go at all."
Katja surrenders: "Okay, we go together. Come."
In the lift, she hesitates, looks at Yogi Votsor, looks at me, looks at Yogi Votsor again, and decides we go to the top floor.
The lift stops, the doors open, and we follow Katja through the corridor to the stairwell.
"Are you afraid of heights?", she asks.
"I lived in a flat on the ninety-ninth floor. On a cloudy day, I could see the angels passing by.", I grin. I'm not sure about Yogi Votsor, though. Earlier today, when a KGB agent asked him if he'd climbed Mount Everest, he confessed he was so afraid of heights that he refuses to put on thick socks.
We go up one more floor, to the door that gives passage to the roof of the hotel, a place to hide something, a place that nobody would ever think of…
Katja seems to guess our thoughts: "Don't ask. My fiancé asked me to hide something for him. I don't know what it is, but it looks like people want to kill him for it. I want you both to promise me not to tell a word of this to anyone. Do we have a deal?"
I try to smile my most trustworthy smile: "The Yogi won't tell because he doesn't understand what you say and nobody understands him either. And I promise not to tell anyone, on my boy scout's word of honour as a chamberboy of this hotel."
I lift my right fist, stretch my index and middle finger and spit on the floor to sign the holiest oath I know. Katja is satisfied. "Okay. Let's go. Stay close and don't make a sound."
She walks to the other side of the roof, the sharp heels of her shoes leaving little marks on the warm black tar surface. At the other end of the roof, there are three chimneys next to a little fuse box with a metal door. With a hairpin from her purse, she works on the lock. Curious, we come closer, to see what's inside. We know what's inside: the phone connections of the hotel. We can see the sign of the phone company on the door. The lock doesn't open easily, perhaps because Katja is a little distracted. Instead of concentrating fully on the lock picking, she starts to talk to me: "Ever since Yogi Votsor entered the room, I thought there was something familiar, like I've seen him before."
"He has been on TV several times. He's quite famous."
"I wasn't referring to that. I had the idea that he looked like someone I know, but I couldn't make the connection. When we entered the lift and I saw his face from the side, in the mirror, I finally realised. He looks like that film star…"
I can't follow this woman. She's picking a lock on the roof of a hotel and suddenly she starts to talk about a film star. Katja opens the door, keeping her perfect body between the fuse box and our curious eyes while she takes out what's hidden inside, stands up, turns and shows us what she kept in the fuse box: two loaded Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum revolvers. We are invited to have a close look at them, very close indeed, because Katja puts the barrels between our eyes when she finishes her sentence: "… The Yogi looks like Matt Damon, just like a man I met yesterday evening, the assistant of Mister Nikolai. I forgot his name, he didn't make much of an impression, but he also looked like Matt Damon. Do you have any last words to say in backwards Russian before I shoot you, dear Yogi?"