by Stuart Woods
“We’re adjourned,” Kinney said, standing up. He went back to his office where his secretary was waiting with a sheet of paper.
“Here’s your answer from Sealand,” she said, handing him the paper.
It was his own letter, upon which someone had scrawled in large, block capitals, “GO FUCK YOURSELF.”
“I guess that’s clear enough,” Kinney said.
“Have you read this morning’s Post?” she asked, handing him the paper.
“No.”
“Upper right-hand corner.”
British Prime Minister Arrives in D.C.
“He’s coming in this afternoon,” she said. Kinney read the piece. “Call the president’s secretary and request an appointment soonest.”
The president blinked. “You’re not really suggesting we send in the marines, are you?”
“No, sir, I’m not. I’m suggesting you raise the issue with the prime minister white he’s here.”
“You mean ask him to send in the Royal Marines?”
“I’m not sure what to ask of him, Mr. President. All I know is that these ridiculous people on this little rock in the North Sea might have the information we need to arrest the man who’s been doing these killings. Maybe there’s something he can do to help us get it.” He handed the president a copy of his letter to the Sealand Company with their scrawled reply. “They have not been cooperative.”
The president looked at the letter. “I guess not. Have your people tried hacking into their computers?”
“Yes, sir, repeatedly. Their security has, so far, been impenetrable.”
The president laughed. “Maybe we should hire them to work on White House security. Somebody got in last week and read some of my email.”
“The Bureau is working on that, sir.”
“All right, Bob, if I have an opportunity, I’ll bring this up with the PM, but don’t expect much.”
“Thank you, sir, that’s all I ask.”
It was late, and the two men sat alone in the residence, their black ties undone, sipping brandy. Will thought that John Ridge-way, the prime minister of Great Britain, was a little worse for the wear. Must be the jet lag, he thought.
“John, I suppose you’re acquainted with this island off your coast called Sealand?”
Ridgeway laughed. “It wasn’t called anything until those people made camp there. Do you know they helicoptered in Porta-cabins?”
“What?”
“Prefabricated buildings. They choppered in a cement mixer and poured pads, then they sent in these buildings and put them together.”
“They must have financing, then.”
“I suppose. My people estimated they spent three, maybe four hundred thousand quid. We thought that at the first sign of cold weather they’d pack it in, but it’s been three years now, and they seem to be thriving.”
“Have you given any thought to ousting them?”
“Well, yes, but the consensus among the cabinet and the military is that it’s hardly worth the effort. Plus, we’d be fighting them in court for years, spending a lot of the people’s money. Why does this interest you, Will?”
“Well, we have a little situation with Sealand, and I thought I might mention it and see if you have any ideas.” He went through the problem.
“Yes, of course I’ve read about these murders, and it’s awful— even if the killer is eliminating your enemies.”
“A senator actually accused me the other day.”
“Good God! Was he serious?”
“He was preaching to the converted, as we say, getting in a dig to appeal to his right-wing constituency.”
“So this is becoming a real problem for you?”
“No one really believes that I have anything to do with the murders, but the fact is we have a serial killer on the loose, and the FBI and the relevant local law enforcement haven’t been able to track him down. He’s very intelligent and has left us without any traceable evidence.”
“I see. And you’d like me to ask my people to get this information for you?”
“If you can see a way to do it without causing an uproar in your press or otherwise compromising your personal position.”
“Gosh, I just don’t know,” Ridgeway sighed. “Let me talk to some people and see if anybody has a suggestion.”
“I’d appreciate that, John. I wouldn’t bring it up if I thought we had any other option—at least, at the moment. I mean, eventually, the man will make a mistake and we’ll catch him, but how many more murders is he going to commit before that happens?”
“Quite.”
Will climbed into bed, his bones aching.
“Was Ridgeway willing to help?” Kate asked.
“He says he’s going to talk to his people.”
“That sounds like a no.”
“Probably. When he gets home, he can drop me a little note saying that he can’t help. I suppose it’s easier than looking me in the eye.”
Kate almost told him about the latest letter from Ed Rawls, but she thought better of it. Maybe the Brits would surprise them.
29
Ed Rawls was working at his desk in the library when his mail was delivered by a trusty pushing a metal cart. He picked up the stack—three magazines and a couple of envelopes—and set it next to the computer where he was working. He had intended to look through the stack later, but he recognized his own prison-issue envelope in the pile.
He picked it up and looked at it. no longer at this address, no forwarding address, the stamp said. “Shit,” Rawls said aloud, attracting a frown from the librarian, a fiftyish schoolmarm type who Rawls had been screwing on a sofa in her office for two years, twice a week, like clockwork. “Sorry, Imelda,” he said.
“You must learn to control your language, Ed,” she replied, then went back to her filing.
Rawls finished his work, read the other letter, which was a fund-raising appeal from a Republican candidate, who hadn’t figured out yet that his box number address was the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. He threw that away, ripped the returned letter to shreds and put the pieces in his pocket, then he went back into the stacks as if he were looking for something.
He found the volume, Songbirds of North America, a book that had never been checked out of the library, and opened it. He had cut out the pages enough to allow him to hide a cell phone in the book. The charger was hidden elsewhere in the library. He switched on the phone and dialed a number.
“Yes,” a man’s voice said.
“You know who this is,” Rawls replied. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. What can I do for you?”
“I want to find a guy we used to know at work,” Rawls said. He spoke the name. “Remember him?”
“Yes. I don’t see how I can help.”
“Do I have to remind you that you would be in my company at this very moment, had I chosen to—”
“All right,” the man said, cutting him off. “Do you have his last address?”
“Sixty-nine Riverview Drive, Arlington. Mail is being returned from that address. They’re not forwarding.”
“You have any clue where he might be?”
“He’s traveling, I think, but he’s got to have a base somewhere.”
“Does he have any family?”
“He had a wife. I don’t know if she’s still alive.”
“Kids?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re a big help.”
“I do what I can.”
“How will I get in touch with you?”
“Email me, but be circumspect.” Rawls gave him a Hotmail address.
“Give me a couple of days,” the man replied.
“Thanks for your help,” Rawls said, and hung up. He replaced the phone in the book and went back to his computer. He logged on to the Internet and checked his email. There was one from Hotbooks.
“Dear Fast Eddie,” she wrote. “I’m still wet from your last email. I printed it out and took it to bed
with me last night, and I still can’t get it out of my mind.” She described what she had done to herself while reading it, then what she would have done to him, if he had been there. “Are you sure there isn’t some way we can get together soon?”
Rawls wrote back that he’d love to, but the demands of work kept him constantly on the road. “I’m in Kansas City right now, putting out a fire, then I have to go to Witchita, then to L.A. Believe me, I’d rather be with you. We’ll work it out soon.” He would, too, just as soon as he had a fix on this guy, as soon as he was a free man again. Rawls finished his workday and went to the rec room to wait for dinner. There had been a time when he had been uncomfortable in the company of large numbers of prisoners, but he had grown accustomed. Anyway, when prisoners were gathered in the yard or the common room, they tended, like everybody else in the world, to gather in groups that had something in common—murder, rape, gang activity—and Rawls nearly always sat with the stockbrokers, accountants, bankers, and other con men who, in their past lives, had worn suits to work. Today, however, he took a seat with a tall, skinny man who sat alone at one of the steel tables.
“Hello, Nickolai,” he said. “I hear you wanted to talk.” Rawls had known the man professionally, when they were working opposite sides of the street in Scandinavia. Nickolai had posed as a chauffeur for the KGB at the USSR embassy in Stockholm, and later, in Washington, until CIA people had caught him working in their embassy without a diplomatic passport. His lengthy interrogation had been a disappointment, and now they kept him on ice in Atlanta for a time when they might want to exchange him for an American agent. But time had overtaken Nickolai; the USSR was defunct, and it was extremely unlikely that he would ever be exchanged.
“Hello, Ed,” Nickolai replied. He sounded less mournful than usual. “I wish you to send a message to your people at Langley.”
“What sort of message?”
“I have something to offer them in exchange for… exchange.”
“Yeah? And what would that be?”
Nickolai’s thin mouth twitched into something resembling a smile. “I cannot tell you that, of course. Not until we have established contact.”
“And what makes you think they would want to hear from me?” Rawls asked. “I’m no more popular at Langley than you are.”
“Ah, but you have friends, right, Ed? People whose friendship is stronger than… what you were punished for.”
“Maybe, but what’s in it for me?”
Nickolai looked serious, now. “I may be able to get myself sent home and you released from this place.”
Rawls laughed heartily. “Nickolai, don’t you understand that ‘home’ isn’t there anymore? Everything has changed. The KGB, or whatever they call it now, is run by people your children’s age. Everybody you knew there is dead or pensioned off.” He waved an arm. “This is your home now.”
“Ed, I can make my way in the new Russia. Don’t worry about that. But aren’t you interested in getting out of here before you die?”
“Well, sure, Nickolai, but you’re going to have to convince me that what you’ve got is important enough to get us both Out before I’m willing to contact anybody at all. Now tell me about it.”
“And what’s to keep you from acting for yourself and forgetting all about me?”
“Well, I guess you’re just going to have to trust me, Nickolai. After all, who else in here could do what you want?”
Nickolai sighed. “Ed, do you give me your word that you will not act just for yourself, that I go, too?”
“Yeah, sure I do. Now tell me what you’ve got. We’ve been talking too long already.”
Nickolai placed his hands on the table and interlocked his fingers. “Tell them that I can give them this fellow who’s killing your reactionaries everywhere.”
Rawls blinked and looked shocked, because he was. “And how the hell can you do that?” he asked.
“Because I know his name.”
“And how the hell do you know his name?”
“In my former profession I had reason to know this man’s work,” Nickolai said.
“You’re not making any sense, Nickolai,” Rawls said. He was alarmed, and he had to get this out of the man.
“Ed, just as your people tried to know as much as possible about our people, so did we try to know as much as possible about your people.”
“Are you saying that this guy was a Company man?”
“Precisely.”
“Did I know him?”
“No, you would have been in very different jobs.”
“How do you know for certain that the name you have is the guy they want?”
Nickolai shrugged. “I know, that’s all. When they check out the name, they will have their man. If he’s not the man, then they have lost nothing. They will not owe me—or you—until they have arrested him.”
“What’s the man’s name?” Rawls asked. “They’ll want to know that right away.”
“Of course they will, Ed, but that will have to come directly from me to them.”
“And how will you do that?”
“I’m sure you could arrange a telephone call. I will give this information directly to Ms. Katharine Rule.”
“You think the director is going to call you on the phone?”
“I suppose that depends on how badly they want this person. Tell them to act quickly, before he kills somebody else important.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Rawls said. “In the meantime, don’t you mention this to anybody else, you hear?”
“I will deal only with you, Ed, unless I become convinced that you can’t help. Then I’ll have to use other means.”
The dinner bell rang and both men got up and joined the crowd heading toward the mess hall. Rawls was frightened and angry. Unless he played this right, Nickolai could screw up his chances for a pardon.
30
The cabinet meeting was breaking up at Number 10 Downing Street, and people were filing out, putting on their coats against the driving rain outside. Ridgeway’s private secretary came and stood close to him. “General Sir Ewan Southby-Tailyour and the lady from military intelligence are waiting,” he said.
“Show them in as soon as everyone is out the front door,” Ridgeway instructed. “No, better put them in my private study now, and I’ll join them in a moment.”
“Yes, Prime Minister,” the man replied.
Ridgeway packed some papers into a dispatch box and gave them to an assistant, then he dictated replies to some letters. He dismissed his staff for the day and went through the bookcase door and into his study. The two people waiting came quickly to their feet.
“Sir Ewan,” he said, extending his hand.
“Prime Minister.” General Sir Ewan Southby-Tailyour was a handsome man with thick, white hair, wearing a beautifully cut uniform. He was the senior commander of the Royal Marines, and a former commando himself.
“Good afternoon, Carpenter,” he said to the woman.
Although he knew her name was Felicity Devonshire, the intelligence people preferred sobriquets. She was an elegant, handsome woman in her late thirties, dressed in a tweed suit designed to deemphasize her sexuality, which Ridgeway thought was a failure.
“Good afternoon, Prime Minister,” she said warmly.
“Please sit down,” he said. “I believe the sun is well over the yardarm. Please let me get you something to drink.”
“A dry sherry, please,” Carpenter said.
“A small whisky,” Southby-Tailyour replied.
Ridgeway went to the concealed liquor cabinet and made the drinks, asking with his eyebrows how much water the general wanted in his Scotch. Then he mixed himself a large bourbon with ice. The president of the United States had given him a case of Knob Creek, and he kept it in an unlabeled decanter, so that no one would know he was drinking American whiskey.
He handed the drinks around, then sat down and took a long pull on his drink. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “I hope
I haven’t pulled you away from something terribly important.”
The two people made demurring noises.
“There’s something I’d like you to look into and make a recommendation on— Good God, do you two know each other? I didn’t introduce you.”