Getting dressed, I went out into the hall and found Wesley in the living room drinking coffee as he looked out at a cloudy day. He was dressed in suit and tie, and did not seem tired.
"There's coffee on," he said. "Can I bring you some?"
"Thanks, I'll get it." I stepped into the kitchen. "Have you been up long?"
"For a while."
He made coffee very strong, and it struck me that there were so many domestic details about him I did not know.
We did not cook together or go on vacations or do sports when I knew we both enjoyed so many of the same things.
I walked into the living room and set my cup and saucer on a windowsill because I wanted to look out at the park.
"How are you?" His eyes lingered on mine.
"I'm fine. What about you?"
"You don't look fine."
"You always know just the thing to say."
"You look like you didn't get much sleep. That's what I meant.
"I got virtually no sleep, and you're to blame."
He smiled. "That and jet lag."
"The lag you cause is worse, Special Agent Wesley."
Already traffic was loud rushing past and punctuated periodically by the odd cacophony of British sirens. In the cold, early light, people were walking briskly along sidewalks, and some were jogging. Wesley got up from his chair.
"We should be going soon." He rubbed the back of my neck and kissed it. "We should get a little something to eat. It's going to be a long day."
"Benton, I don't like living this way," I said as he shut the door.
We followed Park Lane past the Dorchester Hotel, where some Pakistanis were still taking their stand. Then we took Mount Street to South Audley where we found a small restaurant open called Richoux. Inside were exotic French pastries and boxes of chocolates beautiful enough to display as art. People were dressed for business and reading newspapers at small tables. I drank fresh orange juice and got hungry. Our Filipino waitress was puzzled because Wesley had only toast while I ordered bacon and eggs with mushrooms and tomatoes.
"You wish to share?" she asked, "No, thank you." I smiled.
At not quite ten A.M., we continued on South Audley to Grosvenor Square, where the American Embassy was an unfortunate granite block of 1950s architecture guarded by a bronze eagle rampant on the roof. Security was extremely tight, with somber guards everywhere. We produced pass t, ports and credentials, and our photographs were taken. Finally, we were escorted to the second floor where we were to meet with the FBI's senior legal attache, or legate, for Great Britain. Chuck Olson's corner office afforded a perfect view of people waiting in long lines for visas and green cards. He was a stocky man in a dark suit, his neatly trimmed hair almost as silver as Wesley's.
"A pleasure," he said as he shook our hands. "Please have a seat. Would anybody like coffee?"
Wesley and I chose a couch across from a desk that was clear except for a notepad and file folders. On a cork board behind Olson's head were drawings that I assumed were done by his children, and above these hung a large Department of Justice seal. Other than shelves of books and various commendations, the office was the simple space of a busy person unimpressed with his job or self.
"Chuck," Wesley began, "I'm sure you already know that Dr. Scarpetta is our consulting forensic pathologist, and though she does have her own situation in Virginia to handle, she could be called back here later."
"God forbid," Olson said, for if there was a nuclear disaster in England or anywhere in Europe, chances were I would be brought in to help handle the dead.
"So I wonder if you could give her a clearer picture of our concerns," Wesley said.
"Well, there's the obvious," Olson said to me. "About a third of England's electricity is generated by nuclear power. We're worried about a similar terrorist strike, and don't know, in fact, if one hasn't already been planned by these same people."
"But the New Zionists are rooted in Virginia," I said.
"Are you saying they have international connections?"
"They aren't the driving force in this," he said. "They aren't the ones who want plutonium."
"Who specifically, then?" I said.
"Libya."
"I think the world has known that for a while," I replied.
"Well, now it's happening," Wesley said. "It's happening at Old Point."
"As you no doubt know," Olson went on, "Qaddafi has wanted nuclear weapons for a very long time and has been thwarted in his every attempt. It appears he finally found a way. He found the New Zionists in Virginia, and certainly, there are extremist groups he could use over here. We also have many Arabs."
"How do you know it's Libya?" I asked.
It was Wesley who replied, "For one thing, we've been going through Joel Hand's telephone records and they include numerous calls-mainly to Tripoli and Benghsli made over the past two years."
"But you don't know that Qaddafi is trying anything here in London," I said.
"What we fear is how vulnerable we would be. London is the stepping-off point to Europe, the U.S. and the Middle East. It is a tremendous financial center. Just because Libya steals fire from the U.S. doesn't mean the U.S. is the ultimate target."
"Fire?" I asked.
"As in the myth about Prometheus. Fire is our code for plutonium."
"I understand," I said. "What you're saying makes chilling sense. Tell me what I can do."
"Well, we need to explore the mind-set of this thing, both for purposes of what's happening now and what might happen later," Olson said. "We need to get a better handle on how these terrorists think, and that, obviously, is Wesley's department. Yours is to get information. I understand you have a colleague here who might prove useful."
"We can only hope," I said. "But I intend to speak to him."
"What about security?" Wesley asked him. "Do we need to put someone with her?"
Olson looked at me oddly as if assessing my strength, as if I were not myself but an object or fighter about to step into the ring.
"No," he said. "I think she's absolutely safe here, unless you know otherwise."
"I'm not sure," Wesley said as he looked at me, too.
"Maybe we should send someone with her."
"Absolutely not. No one knows I'm in London," I said.
"And Dr. Mant already is reluctant, if not scared to death, so he's certainly not going to open up to me if someone else is along. Then the point of this trip is defeated."
"All right," Wesley reluctantly said. "Just so long as we know where you are, and we need to meet back here no later than four if we're going to catch our plane."
"I'll call you if I get hung up," I said. "You'll be here?"
"If we're not, my secretary will know where to find us," Olson said.
I went down to the lobby where water splashed loudly in a fountain and a bronze Lincoln was enthroned within walls lined with portraits of former U.S. representatives.
Guards were severe as they studied passports and visitors.
They let me pass with cool stares, and I felt their eyes follow me out the door. On the street in the cold, damp morning, I hailed a cab and gave the driver an address not very far away in Belgravia off Eaton Square.
The elderly Mrs. Mant had lived in Ebury Mews in a three-story town house that had been divided into flats. Her building was stucco with red chimney pots piled high on a variegated shingle roof, and window boxes were filled with daffodils, crocuses and ivy. I climbed stairs to the second floor and knocked on her door, but when it was answered, it was not by my deputy chief. The matronly woman peering out at me looked as confused as I did.
"Excuse me," I said to her. "I guess this has already been sold."
"No, I'm sorry. It's not for sale at all," she firmly said.
"I'm looking for Philip Mant," I went on. "Clearly I must have the wrong . . ."
"Oh," she said. "Philip's my brother." She smiled pleasantly. "He just left for work. You just missed him."
&nbs
p; "Work?" I said.
"Oh yes, he always leaves right about this time. To avoid traffic, you know. Although I don't think that's really possible." She hesitated, suddenly aware of the stranger before her. "Might I tell him who dropped by?"
"Dr. Kay Scarpetta," I said. "And I really must find him."
"Why of course." She seemed as pleased as she was surprised. "I've heard him speak of you. He's enormously fond of you and will be absolutely delighted to hear you came by. What brings you to London?"
"I never miss an opportunity to visit here. Might you tell me where I could find him?" I asked again.
"Of course. The Westminster Public Mortuary on Horseferry Road." She hesitated, uncertain. "I should have thought he would have told you."
"Yes." I smiled. "And I'm very pleased for him."
I wasn't certain what I was talking about, but she seemed very pleased, too.
"Don't tell him I'm coming," I went on. "I intend to surprise him."
"Oh, that's brilliant. He will be absolutely thrilled."
I caught another taxi as I thought about what I believed she had just said. No matter Mant's reason for what he had done, I could not help but feel slightly furious.
"You going to the Coroner's Court, ma'am?" the driver asked me. "It's right there." He pointed out the open window at a handsome brick building.
"No, I'm going to the actual mortuary," I said.
"All right. Well that's right here. Better to walk in than be carried," he said with a hoarse laugh.
I got out money as he parked in front of a building small by London standards. Brick with granite trim and a strange parapet along the roof, it was surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron fence painted the color of rust. According to the date on a plaque at the entrance, the mortuary was more than a hundred years old, and I thought about how grim it would have been to practice forensic medicine in those days. There would have been few witnesses to tell the story except for the human kind, and I wondered if people had lied less in earlier times.
The mortuary's reception area was small but pleasantly furnished like a typical lobby for a normal business.
Through an open door was a corridor, and since I did not see anyone, I headed that way just as a woman emerged from a room, her arms loaded with oversized books.
"Sorry," she said, startled. "But you can't come back here."
"I'm looking for Dr. Mant," I said.
She wore a loose-fitting long dress and sweater, and spoke with a Scottish accent. "And who may I tell him is here to see him?" she politely said.
I showed her my credentials.
"Oh very good, I see. Then he's expecting you."
"I shouldn't think so," I said.
"I sec." She shifted the books to another arm and was very confused.
"He used to work with me in the States," I said. "I'd like to surprise him, so I prefer to find him if you'll just tell me where."
"Dear me, that would be the Foul Room just now. If you go through this door here." She nodded at it. "And you'll see locker rooms to the left of the main mortuary.
Everything you need is there, then turn left again through another set of doors, and right beyond that. Is that clear?"
She smiled.
"Thank you," I said.
In the locker room I put on booties, gloves and mask, and loosely tied a gown around me to keep the odor out of my clothes. I passed through a tiled room where six stainless-steel tables and a wall of white refrigerators gleamed.
The doctors wore blue, and Westminster was keeping them busy this morning. They scarcely glanced at me as I walked past. Down the hall I found my deputy chief in tall rubber boots, standing on a footstool as he worked on a badly decomposing body that I suspected had been in water for a while. The stench was terrible, and I shut the door behind me.
"Dr. Mant," I said.
He turned around and for an instant did not seem to know who I was or where he was. Then he simply looked shocked.
"Dr. Scarpetta? My God, why I'll be bloody damned."
He heavily stepped off the stool, for he was not a small man. "I'm so surprised. I'm rather speechless!" He was sputtering, and his eyes wavered with fear.
"I'm surprised, too," I somberly said.
"I quite imagine that you are. Come on. No need to talk in here with this rather ghastly floater. Found him in the Thames yesterday afternoon. Looks like a stabbing to me but we have no identity. We should go to the lounge," he nervously talked on.
Philip Mant was a charming old gentleman impossible not to like, with thick white hair and heavy brows over keen pale eyes. He showed me around the corner to showers, where we disinfected our feet, stripped off gloves and masks and stuffed scrubs into a bin. Then we went to the lounge, which opened onto the parking lot in back. Like everything else in London, the stale smoke in this room had a long history, too.
"May I offer you some refreshment?" he asked as he got out a pack of Players. "I know you don't smoke anymore, so I won't offer."
"I don't need a thing except some answers from you," I said.
His hands trembled slightly as he struck a match.
"Dr. Mant, what in God's name are you doing here?" I started in. "You're supposed to be in London because you had a death in the family."
"I did. Coincidentally."
"Coincidentally?" I said. "And what does that mean?"
"Dr. Scarpetta, I fully intended to leave anyway and then my mother suddenly died and that made it easy to choose a time."
"Then you've had no intention of coming back," I said, stung.
"I'm quite sorry. But no, I have not." He delicately tapped an ash.
"You could at least have told me so I could have begun looking for your replacement. I've tried to call you several times."
"I didn't tell you and I didn't call because I didn't want them to know."
"Them?" The word seemed to hang in the air. "Exactly who do you mean, Dr. Mant?"
He was very matter-of fact as he smoked, legs crossed, and belly roundly swelling over his belt. "I have no idea who they are, but they certainly know who we are. That's what alarms me. I can tell you exactly when it all began.
October thirteenth, and you may or may not remember the case."
I had no idea what he was talking about.
"Well, the Navy did the autopsy because the death was at their shipyard in Norfolk."
"The man who was accidentally crushed in a dry dock?" I vaguely recalled.
"The very one."
"You're right. That was a Navy case, not ours," I said as I began to anticipate what he had to say. "Tell me what that has to do with us."
"You see, the rescue squad made a mistake," he continued. "Instead of transporting the body to Portsmouth Naval Hospital, where it belonged, they brought it to my office, and young Danny didn't know. He began drawing blood, doing paperwork, that sort of thing, and in the process found something very unusual amongst the decedent's personal effects."
I realized Mant did not know about Danny.
"The victim had a canvas satchel with him," he went on. "And the squad had simply placed it on top of the body and covered everything with a sheet. Poor form as it may be, I suppose had that not occurred we wouldn't have had a clue."
"A clue about what?"
"What this fellow had, apparently, was a copy of a rather sinister bible that I came to find out later is connected to a cult. The New Zionists. An absolutely terrible thing, that book was, describing in detail torture, murder, things like that. It was dreadfully unsettling, in my view."
"Was it called the Book of Hand?" I asked.
"Why yes." His eyes lit up. "It was, indeed."
"Was it in a black leather binder?"
"I believe it was. With a name stamped on it that oddly enough was not the name of the decedent. Shapiro, or something."
"Dwain Shapiro."
"Of course," he said. "Then you already know about this."
"I know about the Book but not why this individual
had it in his possession, because certainly his name was not Dwain Shapiro."
He paused to rub his face. "I think his name was Catlett."
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