by L. J. Martin
I’m more than just slightly pissed when Connie and I are bumped to tourist class, not the minimum of business class I’d settled on with Mort, but the girl at the gate swears it’s a booking error. Then I’m doubly pissed when the plane chatter stirs, and I overhear two young girls in the seats ahead of us ooh and aah over the fact the famous young singer Simone is up in first class with another young woman and two young men, members of her band it seems. I wonder if those two young men were the reason we were bumped to the cattle car.
I’m tempted to deplane while calling Mort Meyer and telling him to shove this gig where the sun don’t shine, but Connie is so happy to be going and tells me to quit pouting, so I do. Even if I don’t have my glass of bubbly before the engines even fire up.
It’s a ten-hour-forty-minute flight to Gatwick, and we’re nearly an hour getting off the plane and to the British Airways lounge, where, since we’re not first-class passengers, Connie and I are forced to wait in the waiting room while the attendant fetches Simone or Gretchen Sorenson.
It’s 3:00 a.m. London time when I discover neither lady is anywhere to be found. We were to meet here then ride together to the Amba Hotel Charing Cross, on Trafalgar Square. I have arranged for a limo to haul the five us there. But it seems we may be seven, if the two boys mentioned earlier are now part of the party.
I have Simone’s cell, so I immediately hit the dial.
“Who’s this?” she answers, and yawns.
“This is your bodyguard, Mike Reardon.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess I should have called you. Change of plans. We’re going to the Ritz. Mort is such a cheapskate.”
“The Ritz?”
“The Ritz. You’re booked into that Amba place.”
I take a deep breath. This is likely going to be even tougher than I imagined. So, I advise her, “I’ll be at the Ritz tonight and at 10 A M will expect to meet with you and Miss Sorenson to get a few things cleared up regarding my responsibilities and yours.”
There’s a long silence, but I outwait her, then she seems fully awake. “Look, muscle brain, who the fuck do you think…”
“Ten A M, got it?”
And she hangs up. It’s not ten minutes as we’re heading for our luggage and the limo I booked, when my unknown caller ring rattles.
“Reardon,” I snap.
“You and Sally didn’t hit it off, I guess.” It’s Mort.
“I don’t work for Sally, Mort. As I made clear, I work for you. I told her I’d be at the Ritz at 10 A M to meet with her. For your information, I’ll either get some things straight between her and me so I can do my job, or I’ll have my people in Vegas FedEx forty grand to you. Connie and I will enjoy this cruise without worrying about your daughter.”
“Calm down, Reardon. I’ll have Gretchen meet you at ten…”
“Fuck that, Meyer. You’ll have your daughter and Gretchen meet with me or you can expect a forty grand FedEx.”
Now he’s silent for a long moment, but I outwait him as well. Then he finally speaks up. “I’ll have her at lunch tomorrow in the Ritz dining room if that will work for you?”
“Is there a room near hers at the hotel?” It’s not all right with me, but it does involve a hundred grand, so even though I’m pissed I bite my lip.
“The Ritz?” he asks, his voice a half-octave higher.
“Of course, the fucking Ritz. I can’t do my job if I’m at the fucking Holliday Inn a fucking mile away.”
Connie hooks an arm though mine and, with the other, places a gentle hand on my forearm and gives me a pat. She’s smiling as we stride along and seems about half tickled that I’m so pissed.
Mort sighs so deeply I hear it all the way from Phoenix, or wherever the hell he is. “My London attorneys book people in there damn near every day. I’ll call you back.”
“We’ll be on our way to the Ritz.”
Mort rings off and calls me back by the time we’re loaded into the limo. I advise the driver. “New plans, pardner. The Ritz, please.”
He shrugs and says, “You’re the bloke with the purse.” We’re off.
What a cluster fuck. The good news. There’s a cold bottle of some Dom knockoff in an ice bucket.
“Pop it. It’ll help us sleep,” she says and giggles that giggle that makes my loins heat up. However, the odds are, this is another cuddle night.
The lobby of London’s Ritz looks like a morgue, a very fancy morgue, but you could shoot a cannon through it with little risk of hitting anyone at 4:30 a.m., with only a doorman and a single clerk at the desk. I’m pleased to discover Mort has redeemed himself and we have a room, not a closet, not a pair of sleeping bags in the parking garage, but a real room with a king-size bed.
I’d normally describe the room by saying, “It’s not the Ritz, but…” But the fact is, it is the Ritz, with gold fixtures on the lav and bath and marble trim like I’d imagine Windsor Castle might enjoy.
I’m secretly glad Mort put off my meeting with Simone and Gretchen until noon. I dozed on the plane, but mostly reviewed the crew and passenger info. As it is, I’ll only get four hours of shuteye, if that, as sleeping in daylight has never been a talent of mine.
Harry Weinstein was a lifer with the FBI, having signed up after graduation from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California in the late eighties. This is the beginning of his thirty-second year with the Bureau. He’s risen slowly having never been a shooting star, but rather was a plodder who could always be counted upon to complete an investigation carefully with all i’s dotted and t’s crossed.
His office for the last six years has been ensconced in the American Embassy at 33 Nine Elms in London, assigned as liaison to the FBI in their LEGAT office. That LEGAT office covers the U.K.: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands, and the Republic of Ireland. He enjoys his job and plans to retire somewhere on the Atlantic coast of Ireland, probably near Dingle or Cong. He is not a practicing Jew although his heritage is obvious by his name if not his demeanor. He’s not a lox and bagel Jew, more a pizza pie kind of guy. His first overseas position took him to Israel, shortly after agent training at the FBI Academy near Quantico, Virginia, and liaison training at The Farm, the CIA facility on the nine-thousand-acre military reservation near Williamsburg, Virginia. He met his wife, Sarah, a graduate of Brown University, at The Farm, as she was training as a result of being hired by Defense Intelligence Agency’s Defense Clandestine Service. They stayed married for over twenty years even though apart eighty percent of the time. His first job—he wondered if due to his ethnicity—was to join the recently opened legal attaché office in Tel Aviv where he became an expert in cybercrime. He was happy to eventually land a position as Liaison to LEGAT in London and get out from under the specter of bus bombings and suicide vests. Until he discovered he’d transferred to a city which soon grew to six hundred thousand Muslims, elected a Muslim mayor and was now under the same specter. Now, he was eager to retire and flee to Ireland where he could fish and sip Guinness and watch Fox News on the internet.
One of his primary functions is to develop clandestine contacts in the Muslim community and he has a six-figure budget to do so. He has a dozen informants on his payroll, including Omar Al-Amed, a waiter at the Swahili Tea Room, which is only five kilometers from his top floor—fifth floor—office at the embassy, but the morning traffic is horrendous. Luckily both embassy and teahouse are on the north side of the Thames and he doesn’t have to worry about bridge congestion.
He arrives before they open at ten o’clock, has his driver and assistant, Angelina Lara, drop him, and stations himself between the Bow Road Tube Station and the teahouse, only four blocks apart. He knows Omar makes that walk morning and evening every day except Tuesday.
At ten minutes to ten, Omar tops the Tube stairway and Harry slips back in a doorway and whistles at him as he nears. He pauses and looks over, and the frown he suddenly acquires makes his displeasure clear.
“You don’t seem pleased to see me, old
friend?” Harry says.
10
Omar glances both ways, as if he can tell if he is being observed by any of the hundreds on the sidewalks, then steps into the doorway. “I am not pleased to be seen seeing you,” then greets Harry. “As-salam ‘alaykum.”
“And good morning to you, Omar. There has been abnormal telephone activity from the cell tower in your neighborhood…the teahouse neighborhood. Are you earning your money?”
“I have nothing to report, my friend. You are here to bless me with my twenty-five quid?”
Harry digs in his pocket and produces two tens and a five-pound note and hands it over. Again, Omar looks up and down the street before snatching and pocketing it.
Harry cautions him. “If I’m to continue to ‘bless you’ you must bring me some actionable information. And soon, or my superiors will insist I find another source.” He's actually using the old pass-the-buck ploy as he makes all decisions regarding informants.
Omar pauses a moment, then says, “I will text you a name, maybe two, possibly three, this afternoon. There are three men meeting at the Swahili regularly. They quiet each time I near and always sit apart from others, if possible. There is little other than that, but it seems they are planning something.”
Harry shrugs, but is interested. “Names?”
“No, but I will attempt to obtain them. I overhead them talking about working together and it seemed on something they wanted no one to overhear. Of course, they could be planning a falafel street stand."
“Get me those names, and if possible, use your cell phone for a picture and include it with your text.”
They part and Harry waves to Angelina, who is double-parked across the four-lane. He has three other assets to touch bases with before returning to the office, all likely within cell phone range of the tower where the call to Abu Mansoor Mukta had originated.
Harry always wants to look his informants in the eye when communicating with them. First, for their sake and safety, he doesn’t want his number easily located on their cell phones, and second, he can far more easily discern if they are lying or only working him for a few quid, if he eyeballs them.
He thinks Omar sincere. Maybe he has something actionable? But the fact is, there are probably fifty thousand Muslims in the radius of the cell tower in question. Still, he trusts Omar’s instincts.
I’m not surprised that I awake before 8:00 a.m. and am showered, shaved and downstairs for coffee by eight fifteen. The lobby still is nearly vacant other than, in addition to the same guy behind the desk, there’s a mature gray-haired lady there and a bellman helping a high-class lady out with a half-dozen matching flowered bags that likely cost more than my Ford 250 diesel.
“Coffee?” I ask the lady, who shrugs before she answers.
“Ten o’clock in the tea-room, love.” And gives me a tight smile as if she doesn’t think much of my USA red-white-and-blue bill cap. Then she adds, “Starbucks across the lane.”
I give her a wave and thanks and head out. Connie was in deep breathing hard sleep when I left, so I kill time at Starbucks, then walk a half mile up Piccadilly and back the other side, admiring the one red double-deck bus I see and missing the many that were here twenty years ago when I was a wet-behind-the-ears jarhead, and the iconic black taxis are now LEVC electric vehicles. Good for the environment, I guess, but too neat and clean to go with the cockney accents of the drivers.
I wander through the nearby Royal Green Park and enjoy the birds and greenery, then stop in another Starbucks and buy a London Times to read while I knock down a Latte, then stroll back to the hotel. This time there are a dozen well-dressed folks milling about. I look like I might be there to sweep the chimney. Before I go up, I cross again to Starbucks, get a crumb cake and coffee for Connie and check my iPhone. I see it’s just after ten when I enter the room and hear the shower going. I’m tempted to strip down and climb in with her, but she turns if off before I have a chance to do so. She comes out with a robe covering that beautiful body, barefoot with red toes to match her fingernails, her hair wrapped in a towel, and flashes me a smile when she sees the coffee and cake. A brilliant smile that makes me extra happy I thought of it. And sorry I wasn’t back in time to try out the shower for the second time this morning.
“Don’t ruin your lunch,” I caution. “We’re meeting the famous Simone, her friend Patty, and her chamber maid or whatever the hell she is, for lunch here in the hotel.”
“You are, I’m not,” she says.
“Why’s that?”
“Because you’re pissy. You will likely ream them out and you don’t want to do so in front of another woman. Particularly one they don’t know. You need to get off to a little better start and embarrassing this twenty-five-year-old who thinks her caca smells like roses is not the way.”
“This is CIA Psychology 1A?” I ask.
“Actually, this is mature woman common sense. Trust me in this. Besides, I have to meet Carlos and collect our gear. We have to repack.”
I’m silent for a moment, watching her unroll the towel and begin to blow dry those long beautiful blonde tresses. I have to raise the volume. “This Carlos isn’t an old boyfriend, is he?”
“Yes, I go for the five-foot-six, two-hundred-seventy-five-pound Latin lovers. Nothing like them. If they stand on their head so their belly falls the opposite way normal, they can actually find that chubby little love muscle."
I laugh, feeling better. “Okay, you’re probably right. Where are you meeting him?”
“At his condo with a couple of our bags. He’s driving me back here after we load up the gear, then you are going to repack it, so I can blame you if you end up in London Tower.”
“Smart girl. I hope he’s a good driver, and you don’t get stopped on the way here. They’d call out SWAT and the bomb squad.”
“Be gentle with the ladies. We’ve got two or three weeks with them, if you don’t get canned at lunch time.”
“If I do, we’ve got two weeks without them, and with a vacation, so I don’t much give a damn which way it goes.”
“A hundred grand?”
I laugh. “There is that.”
I go back to my paperwork until she comes out looking like a million bucks in a brown business suit and white silk blouse with matching white high heels and purse and kisses me on the back of the neck.
Turning, I give her the once over. “You look too good to turn loose on London Town.”
“And you look too good to turn loose on three chicks for lunch.”
“Hurry back and stay safe.”
She leaves, and I work until a quarter past noon then have a talk with myself on the way to the dining room. I reach the elevator, then realize I read that the dining room requires a coat, even at lunch. I hustle back and change into slacks, a long-sleeve shirt, and my Saville Row sport coat, which should be appropriate this close to Saville Row.
I walk in at twelve-thirty-five and am not shocked to discover no ladies in sight.
I’m seated at a table for four, order coffee and wait. At twelve fifty, Gretchen Sorensen, a bobbed blonde with piercing blue eyes, wanders in. She’s in a patterned yellow and black mini-skirt mid-thigh, a black silk blouse, and a Gucci scarf matching the skirt, and is shown to the table. I stand and extend a hand and we shake. She has a strong square jaw and perfect teeth, but piercing ice blue eyes are her most prominent feature. I’m all business so don’t let my eyes sweep a compact and well-formed body…maybe just a little.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says.
“But not as late as the other two young women,” I say, and it’s obvious I’m not going to be obsequious. I’ve never been good at hiding my anger.
11
Gretchen, who’s joined me for lunch, laughs pleasantly, not allowing me to queer her good nature. “Simone is not known for being prompt and Patty follows close behind. They’ll be along.”
“Let’s order,” I say.
“We’d better wait,” she says.
�
�Nope, the lunch was for twelve thirty. Please join me as I’m going to order.”
She shrugs but looks a little fearful like she’s risking her job.
I order a veal marsala and she nervously orders a salad. We’re served when a strawberry blonde and a striking brunette float into the room, followed closely by two loud men of about the same age, both in kid leather jackets, one in leather pants and the other in something I’d call pedal pushers were they on a woman. The pants are cuff-less just below mid-calf—I guess to show off the tattoo of a drum set on his ankle. Both wear ankle-high sport shoes that are probably as expensive as Air Jordans, and no socks. And both have on L. A. Laker jerseys.
Just looking at them makes me want to slap them silly.
One is taller than me and about the same weight, the other even shorter than the brunette, who it appears he’s hooked up with. The tall one is shaved bald, the other has shoulder-length dirty-blond locks.
The strawberry blonde, I presume, is Simone, as Gretchen immediately rises and eyes her as she nears.
And the blonde gives Gretchen a snotty look and snaps, “The table’s not big enough for all of us.”
I stand, even though I would rather remain seated. “My fault. I didn’t know you were bringing the band.”
“You must be Reardon. Mort said you were a smartass. We’ll get another table and you can join us.”
“Actually, I have my lunch and will finish it, then come over.”
“What the fuck ever,” she says, and spins on a heel and waves the maître d’ over and points to a table across the room.
“Sorry,” Gretchen says, and rises and follows.
The waiter strides over and asks, “Is everything all right, sir.”
“I’m fine. You might take the lady’s salad and iced tea to her.”
“Yes, sir,” he says, and follows Simone and her entourage across the room.
I don’t hurry as I finish the delicious veal marsala, then for dessert have coffee and some pudding concoction that’s equally wonderful. It was hard not to hear the three women and two young men across the room. They’re loud and, I’m not surprised, obnoxious. Unfortunately, when I’m in a foreign country I’m almost always reminded of where the term “ugly Americans” comes from.