“You mean an affair?”
“Yes. Susannah….the prime minister…she broke it off.”
“When was this?”
“Yesterday. Dr. Ryder was extremely upset. I think it’s why she came back tonight. To try to get back with the prime minister. I heard shouting.”
“You mean an argument?”
“Yes.”
“Could you hear what was said?”
Bebe looked up, felt the tears start from her eyes—she’d practiced that, too. She sniffled. Jerked a nod. “I listened at the door. Just for a moment. I heard Dr. Ryder say something.”
“Well?”
“ ‘If I can’t have you no one will.’ ” Bebe blurted the words. Then she looked down and sobbed. She didn’t look up until she heard Dame Imogen leave the Cabinet Room. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. Then she started to cry again. Security cameras monitored the Cabinet Room; one never knew who might be watching. Inwardly she was smiling. She’d accomplished her mission. Ayesha Ryder must now be the chief suspect in the assassination of the prime minister. Whether Dame Imogen Worsley liked it or not. She closed her eyes, the better to savor the feeling. She’d started the destruction of Ryder’s reputation. All that remained was her death. After Bebe had rammed the truth into her face, and seen her break.
Bebe waited a minute; then, still dabbing at her eyes with the tissue, she rose and left the Cabinet Room. In her tiny office in the basement, she removed a cellphone that had been taped beneath her desk. Activated it. Entered a number.
A man’s voice answered. “Sí?”
“Longo! Where are you? Where’s that damned bird? Have you got it yet?”
“Zilinsky’s dead. He didn’t have the bird on him. I think Ryder knows where it is. I’ll have her soon.”
“How—” Bebe bit back the questions and recriminations that rose to her lips. “No mind. Just get it. Quickly!” She ended the call before Longo could reply. Then she entered another number.
“It’s me,” she said, when the familiar voice answered. “It worked. Worsley now has reason to believe that Ryder is behind Armstrong’s assassination.”
“Very good. The Falcon?”
“We’ll have it soon.” Bebe echoed Longo, almost purred at her Master’s praise. She pressed her legs together, thinking about the visit he’d promised her to his dungeon. Imagining the delicious pain he would inflict on her body.
“Bring it to me as soon as you have it.”
Bebe opened her mouth to respond, but he’d ended the call. She put down the phone and slid her hand between her thighs.
Chapter 9
“Isn’t it wonderful? Ghayda’s coming home!”
“What?” Ayesha stared at her mother, Leila. The woman had aged ten years, at least, in the year since Ghayda’s murder. Ayesha dreamed all the time that her sister was coming home. That she wasn’t dead. That the Israeli missile hadn’t killed her and her school friends. That Ghayda had been somewhere else. She’d even dreamed that Ghayda had woken up in her coffin—her body whole instead of the scraps they’d wrapped in a shroud—and climbed out. When Ayesha woke up, though, she knew it had been a dream. Had her mother lost the ability to tell the difference? To separate dreams from reality?
“The Israelis made us believe she was killed,” Leila continued, speaking rapidly. “But they took her. I know they did! They did things to her. Now they’ve finished. I’ve seen her, here. In Gaza!”
Ayesha’s father shook his head sadly. It hurt her to see the pain in his dark eyes. He had aged, too. The lines in his face had multiplied. His hair had grayed and he had developed a pronounced stoop, as if he carried the world on his shoulders. He put his arms around his wife and held her close. Leila buried her face in his chest; sobs racked her frail body.
Ayesha couldn’t bear to watch. She crossed to the cracked and filthy window that overlooked the narrow Gaza City street her parents had called home since the Israeli army had thrown them off their farm. She stiffened. The man was still there. Slouched against the utility pole. Smoking cigarettes. She’d been home, visiting after finishing her basic training with the fedayeen. He’d appeared less than an hour after she’d arrived. He’d been there ever since. As far as she could tell he hadn’t moved. She’d thought about telling her superiors in the movement. But there were so many factions. He could have been sent to watch her by one of them. Or her own people. She didn’t want to get into trouble.
“We’ll be there in a minute,” Joram said.
Ayesha blinked away the vision. Their taxi was passing the British Museum. Houses of Parliament. Traffic was light. She recalled another taxi ride she’d taken with a man she was attracted to: the journalist Milton Hoenig. Back in June. They were actually kissing. She’d practically given herself to him in the taxi. Then the world had been turned upside down. Literally. They taxi had been rammed by a garbage truck and they’d been lucky to escape with their lives. She never had slept with Hoenig; wondered briefly what he was doing now; decided she didn’t care.
When she and Joram had made their hurried exit from St. Olave’s they’d been lucky to hail a passing taxi. As the vehicle drew away three men had run from the church. One of them, a bald man, towered over the others. Longo. Malcolm’s man. Ayesha kept thinking about that. Joram had put his finger on the key question. Why had Malcolm sicced the big Italian on her? If Malcolm had waited, she’d have given him the Maltese Falcon. She focused her thoughts on the present. “We have to assume they know Zilinsky came in on the Paris train. So they may have someone watching the station.”
“Yes, and if they’re working for the powers that be—Noel Malcolm, I mean—then they’ll have access to CCTV. We’ll have to keep on the move.”
Ayesha nodded. Being on the run was nothing new to her. She found it odd, though, that the erudite librarian in the old-fashioned suit seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. Despite his taking the lead in their flight from the Walsingham Institute, and knocking out one of the enemy, she’d been prepared for him to direct their driver to the nearest police station.
“Where to, guv?” the cabbie had asked over his shoulder, when they’d flung themselves aboard his taxi in Crutched Friars.
“St. Pancras Station?” Joram’s blue eyes had twinkled at her from the gloom of the passenger compartment.
“Yes!”
“Anything new on the prime minister?” Joram asked the cabbie.
“Nothing. ’Cept they’ve got her at St. Thomas’s. No word on who dunnit.”
Ayesha clenched her fists. She pictured Susannah that afternoon, laughing at a joke. Applauding her skill at archery.
Opposite St. Pancras, abreast of the Fellow, Joram told the driver to pull over. The pub was still open and busy. A number of patrons had taken their pints onto the pavement to enjoy the warm night air. The crowd seemed subdued, though. Ayesha caught snatches of conversation and understood. Everyone was talking about the prime minister. It had been a very long time since a British leader had been assassinated. In fact it had only happened once before: Spencer Perceval in 1812.
Crossing the road to the train station, they took a circuitous route through the booking hall, keeping their heads down to avoid CCTV cameras. They were unable to resist a pause, though, in front of one of the big-screen TVs around which a crowd had gathered to watch the latest news. A reporter spoke to the camera from outside St. Thomas’s Hospital, where a line of uniformed police kept back a large number of people. Mounds of flowers were already piled in front of the hospital. Ayesha’s heart tightened. She felt Joram’s hand on her arm. This time she did not pull away
“We can’t stay here.”
She let him guide her away from the crowd.
The left-luggage office was empty of travelers. The lone occupant, a pimply fair-haired youth, lounged behind the counter reading a graphic novel. Joram handed him Zilinsky’s receipt while Ayesha kept watch on the door. Conflicting emotions roiled her psyche: excitement that she might be on the verge of po
ssessing the treasure she’d sought for weeks. Excitement, too, at the challenge of once again outwitting a dangerous pursuit. Anguish at the thought of what had happened to Susannah Armstrong.
The youth disappeared behind a row of lockers. When he returned, he heaved a scuffed brown carryall onto the countertop. Joram paid the fee. He accepted some change. Then he carried the bag, with little regard to its evident weight, to a long table set against the wall. He put it down and unzipped it.
A brown-paper-wrapped parcel, much tied about with string, lay inside the carryall, nestled within a mess of torn-up newspaper.
Joram hefted the parcel with both hands. “It’s heavy. And about the right sort of size, wouldn’t you say?” He nodded toward the clerk, who had returned to his reading. “This chap probably has a knife we can borrow.”
“No time!” Ayesha snapped. Three men were climbing from a black Range Rover. Longo was one. Her lips set in a grim line. She was sure the paper-wrapped parcel contained the Maltese Falcon. She couldn’t lose it now. Not before she’d learned its secrets. Whatever they were, they’d tell her what was driving Noel Malcolm, the man who stood most to gain from Susannah Armstrong’s death.
Chapter 10
Imogen Worsely paced the waiting room outside the operating room in St. Thomas’s Hospital, where doctors struggled to save the life of her prime minister. The MI5 chief had come there from Downing Street, once she felt she’d got as much information from Bebe Daniels as she was going to get. For now.
A kaleidoscope of images circled through Imogen’s brain as she struggled to plan her next move. Ayesha Ryder predominated, inevitably. She recalled the first time she’d met the Palestinian scholar. A dump of a café on Crutched Friars. Horribly tortured by the monster Nazir, Ayesha had tried to conceal her pain. Imogen had thought the woman was going to collapse; was in fact reaching for her phone to call an ambulance. Then something extraordinary had happened. Ayesha rallied. As if someone had injected new life into her.
More images flashed through Imogen’s mind. Ayesha in the kitchen of Nazir’s East End safe house, covered in blood. Some of it was her own. Most of it Nazir’s.
Imogen lingered on her most recent memory of Ayesha in action. Just months before, in June. The library of Broome House, in Kent. Former home of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener. Ayesha, seemingly at the end of her tether, had transformed before Imogen’s eyes into the embodiment of a coldly ruthless killing machine. Imogen had said nothing about what she’d seen that day. Nor would she ever.
“Focus!” Imogen admonished herself. She’d never felt like this before, never had trouble coming to grips with a crisis. In fact her career since joining MI5 sometimes seemed to have been one long crisis, involving more than one plot to assassinate those who led the government she served. She’d never questioned her commitment to the job. She relished the challenges that each day threw at her. Her husband, the home secretary, referred to it as her “saving the world complex.” There was more than a grain of truth in that. It’s what she’d signed on for. She’d thrived on it. This was different, though. There was nothing to relish here.
Imogen checked her phone for messages. Nothing relevant. She caught sight of her reflection in a window. She made another face; wondered what Norman saw in her.
Her hair had kept its red-gold luster, but she could see the lines encroaching around her eyes and mouth, and on her neck. Logically she knew that what she saw, and how she felt, had a great deal to do with lack of sleep and way too much caffeine. Not to mention the probable assassination of her prime minister. As head of MI5 that was her responsibility. Not that she cared about the blame that would come her way. Or the enquiries she’d have to attend. Or what the press would do to her. Her husband was another thing. As political head of the domestic security services, he’d come in for a large share of the blame. Some of it would be because of his marriage to her. Much more than blame, though, she cared about Susannah. The prime minister was her friend.
“I can’t believe it.” Norman Eldritch stepped into the waiting room. He hugged her tight. “Who would want to poison Susannah?”
“That’s what I aim to find out.” She returned her husband’s embrace. It felt so good to be in his arms.
“They’re certain it was poison?”
“McKenzie has no doubt. After his work on the Litvinenko poisoning he’s the authority on polonium-210.” A dose of polonium-210 administered via a cup of tea had been used to murder Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London, in 2006, bringing the rare and highly radioactive isotope to the attention of the world. As head of MI5, Imogen was intimately familiar with the details of the case, much of which had never been made public.
“We’re damned lucky McKenzie was available. Does he think there’s any hope?”
“He does,” a deep voice said from behind them.
Imogen swiveled. A bulky, middle-aged man had emerged from the operating room. McKenzie looked tired but not unhappy.
“Is she going to live?” Eldritch demanded of the physician.
“The next few hours will tell.” McKenzie pulled off his surgical cap to reveal a thicket of iron-gray hair. He nodded to Imogen. “Her family?”
“Her ex-husband is on his way from Scotland. Her parents are both dead. She has no other close family.”
“And the government?” McKenzie turned to Eldritch. “Not that it’s any business of mine.”
“Noel Malcolm has assumed responsibility as acting PM pro tem. We’ve got a full party room meeting of all ministers and backbenchers in the morning that’s bound to confirm him in the position. Or as prime minister in the event of Susannah’s death.”
Imogen grimaced. Noel Malcolm was her least favorite politician. Ruthless, scheming, he’d been the party’s hatchet man for years. Where Susannah had been—still was, she told herself—all about the country, Malcolm was all about himself. Imogen didn’t trust him an inch. The man’s coarse physicality repelled her. He’d come on to her once, at a party, pawing at her and belching beer fumes into her face. She’d kneed him in the groin; nearly hospitalized him. She almost smiled at the memory.
“What about this vote?” McKenzie asked. “On the referendum to break up the union?”
Eldritch shrugged. “I assume all House business will be suspended.”
“Glad to hear it. Damned stupid idea,” McKenzie growled. He pulled his cap and face mask back into place. “I must return to my patient.”
“I’ll go back to Thames House,” Imogen told her husband, when the physician had gone, referring to the headquarters of MI5. “It’s going to be a long night.”
“I must see Malcolm. There are things to do. You’ll keep me posted on your investigation?”
She thought rapidly. “Norman? Please say nothing about Susannah’s condition. For now.”
Eldritch hesitated. Then, “Is there anything you can tell me?”
Imogen marshaled her thoughts. “The last person to see Susannah, I’m told, was…Ayesha Ryder.”
“Ryder! You don’t suspect her? Not after everything—”
“Of course not. But we can’t find her.”
“I see.” Eldritch grimaced. “You’ve got to look for her.” He patted her shoulder. “Maybe this means Ryder knows something. She’s probably in danger herself.”
Imogen was glad that, as so often, their thinking was attuned. “My thoughts exactly.” She didn’t tell him what else Bebe Daniels had told her. Norman knew all about Susannah’s proclivities. They had come near to costing the prime minister her office. Imogen didn’t believe the private secretary’s tale of the affair with Ayesha. Not that she believed Ayesha incapable of a relationship with a woman. It was just that, if there had been such an affair, and Susannah had ended it, Ayesha would have accepted that. She simply wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. She’d been through too much. All of which meant that her prime suspect right now was Bebe Daniels. She couldn’t tell Norman that, though, not yet. Imogen needed some hard data first.
Her husband folded her in his arms once more, hugged her, and kissed her on the lips. She felt herself melt. “I love you, Norman.” Gently, she pulled away. “Let’s go and do our jobs. We’ll talk soon.”
—
“Thames House,” Imogen directed her driver, sinking back against the cushions in the rear seat of her official car. She closed her eyes and conjured up a picture of Ayesha Ryder. Where was Ayesha? What had she done? What did she know?
Chapter 11
“Polonium? You’re sure?”
John S. Danforth III, CIA’s London station chief, rubbed the place on his upper abdomen where he’d been shot. This particular wound—there’d been others—had been inflicted almost three months before. At times, it felt like yesterday.
He was damned lucky to be alive. He wouldn’t be if Ayesha Ryder hadn’t turned the lights out on the sonofabitch who’d shot him.
Danforth pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned forward in his chair. He wanted coffee. He wanted sleep. He wanted to be doing anything but speaking on the phone with the president of the United States.
“Yes, Mr. President. We’re sure it’s polonium.”
“The Russians?” The familiar voice was wide awake. Alert. Concerned. Of course it was only mid-evening in Washington, D.C. Then again, Danforth had never known the old man to be any different. Not for the first time, he thought what a pity it was that the president couldn’t run for a third term.
“That’s one idea. We have no evidence of their involvement, though. No motive, either. I understand the last person to see the prime minister alive was Ayesha Ryder.”
“What? There’s no way that young woman…” The president’s voice trailed off.
Danforth knew what the president was thinking. “There’s no reason to think Dr. Ryder has had any involvement with Palestinian terror groups for decades now. Besides, Susannah Armstrong has been a huge supporter of Palestinian rights. There’s something else.” He hesitated.
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