Джозеф Файндер - Extraordinary Powers

His wife answered the door in a faded housedress decorated with tiny blue cornflowers.

“Don’s at work,” she said, squinting at us suspiciously. “He usually leaves between seven-thirty and eight.”

Seeger’s office-cum-warehouse was a long, narrow, unmarked brick building on a busy main strip a few miles away, near a Ground Round. To all outside appearances, it might have been a public storage facility, perhaps a dry-cleaning plant, but the security system within was quite sophisticated.

He was naturally surprised to see me when I rang, but rushed toward the door with a broad smile. He was in his early fifties, physically quite fit, with a bull neck. He wore his blue blazer, which was about a size too tight on him, unbuttoned.

“The lawyer, right?” he said, ushering us past metal shelves stacked high with boxes of guns. “Ellison. What the hell you doing in this neck of the woods?”

I told him what I wanted.

Seeger, who is basically unflappable, paused for an instant, shrewdly assessing me.

He shrugged. “You got it,” he said.

“One more thing,” I added. “Would you be able to obtain specifications for a Sirch-Gate III Model SMD200W walk-through metal detector?”

He looked at me for a long, long time.

“I might,” he said.

“It’s important.”

“I figured as much. Yeah. I got a friend who’s a security consultant. I can get him to fax them over in a couple of minutes.”

I paid in cash, of course. By the time we had finished our transaction, the medical supply house in Framingham, ten miles or so down the road, was open for business.

The shop, which specialized in equipment for invalids, had quite a few wheelchairs on display. Most of them I could rule out at once. Once I explained that I was purchasing one for my father, the salesman immediately recommended that I choose one of the lightweight chairs, which were easier to lift into and out of a car. I told him, however, that my father was particular and not a little eccentric, that he preferred a chair made of as much steel, and as little aluminum, as possible. He wanted something sturdy.

Eventually, I settled on a good, solid, old-fashioned wheelchair made by Invacare. It was extremely heavy; its frame was constructed of brazed, tubular carbon steel, chrome-plated. But most important, the arm tubing was of sufficient diameter for my purposes.

I loaded it, enormously heavy in its cardboard carton, into the trunk, and dropped Molly at a nearby shopping mall to purchase a number of items: an expensive pin-striped blue suit two sizes larger than I usually wore, a shirt, cuff links, and a few other things.

While she shopped, I proceeded to a small auto-body garage in nearby Worcester. The owner, a large, rotund ex-convict named Jack D’Onofrio, had been recommended to me by Seeger. He was temperamental, Seeger explained, but a master metalworker. Seeger had called ahead and informed D’Onofrio that I was a good friend of his, that he should take care of me and I’d take care of him in return.

D’Onofrio, however, was not in good humor. He inspected the wheelchair irritably, distastefully, poking at the gray plastic armrests that were affixed to the steel arm tubing with Phillips-head screws.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “It’s not so easy trying to mill this kind of plastic. I could replace the armrests with teak. Make it a hell of a lot easier.”

I considered for a moment, then said, “Go ahead.”

“The steel shouldn’t be a problem. Cut and weld. But I’ll have to change the diameter of the front tubing.”

“The join must not show, even at close inspection,” I said. “What about using a surgical hacksaw to cut the tubing?”

“That’s what I planned to do.”

“Good. But we need it in an hour or two.”

“An hour ?” he gasped. “You gotta be fucking kidding.” He waved his short, pudgy arms around the cluttered shop. “Looka this. We’re jammed. Totally raked. Up to our fucking eyeballs!”

An hour, even two hours, was pressing it but not impossible. He was negotiating, of course. I had no time to waste, however. I pulled out an envelope of bills and flashed them.

“We’re prepared to pay a premium,” I said.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

The final meeting was the most difficult to arrange, and in some ways the riskiest. From time to time police forces, the FBI, and the CIA must call upon the services of specialists in undercover disguise techniques. Usually, they are trained in the theater, in makeup and prosthesis application, but undercover disguise is a highly specialized and rare art. The artist must be able to transform an undercover officer into someone else entirely unrecognizable, capable of withstanding the closest scrutiny. The techniques are therefore limited, and the artists few.

Perhaps the best, a man who had done occasional work for the CIA (as well as a long list of movie and television stars and several prominent religious and political leaders), had retired to Florida, I discovered. Finally, after several telephone calls to Boston costume and theatrical companies, I turned up the name of an old vet, a Hungarian named Ivo Balog, who had done some work for the FBI, so he was familiar with the requisite artistry. He had, I was informed, enabled the same FBI undercover officer to infiltrate a Providence-based Mafia family not once but twice. This was good enough for me. He worked out of an old office building in downtown Boston, as part owner of a theatrical makeup company. I reached him shortly before noon.

Since there was no time to drive into Boston and back, we arranged to have him meet me at a Holiday Inn in Worcester, where I had reserved a room for the day and night. In order to make time for me, he had to clear the remainder of his day; I let him know it would be more than worth his while.

“We have to split up,” I told Molly when we reached the Holiday Inn. “You finalize the flight arrangements. Meet me back here when you’re done.”

Ivo Balog was in his late sixties, with the coarse features and reddened complexion of a heavy drinker. It became apparent at once, however, that whatever Balog’s personal failings, he was indeed a wizard.

Meticulous and acutely intelligent, he spent perhaps a quarter of an hour simply studying my face and form before even opening his makeup case.

“But who will you be exactly ?” Balog demanded.

My answer, which I thought was perfectly reasoned out, did not satisfy him. “What does the person you wish to become do for a living ?” he asked. “Where does he live? Is he wealthy or not? Does he smoke? Is he married?”

We conversed for several minutes, concocting this false biography. Several times he objected to my suggestions, saying over and over again, his mantra, in his thickly accented English: “No. The essence of good design is simplicity. ”

Balog bleached the color out of my dark brown hair and eyebrows and then combed gray dye through them. “I can add ten, perhaps fifteen years to your age,” he cautioned. “Anything more will be dangerous.”

He had no idea why I was doing this, but he unquestionably sensed the tension in both of us. I appreciated his thoroughness and caution.

He applied a chemical artificial-tanning lotion to my face, dabbing it on carefully to avoid any telltale lines. “This will take at least two hours to develop,” he said. “I assume we have that much time.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good. Let me see the clothes you’ll be wearing.”

He inspected the suit and highly polished black shoes, nodding with approval. Then he thought of something. “But the armor—”

“Here,” I said, holding up the Safariland “Cool Max” T-shirt, made of ultra-lightweight Spectra fiber, which Seeger had assured me is ten times stronger than steel.