Keep Calm

by Mike Binder

  * * *

  THEY MET BACK up with their kids, plus Beauregard and Tiffany McCalister and their two children, Rolf, seventeen, and Serena, eleven, at the McCalisters’ flat in a newish eleven-story tower of luxury flats off Charles Square. Beau and Tiff were a strikingly good-looking couple. Adam liked to say that they were both as tall as people were legally allowed to be. They were seriously tall. Their kids had some height as well. As a group they would have been damn close to being drafted by a world-class basketball team if they weren’t so damn British.

  Even Tiff, who was American by birth, was awfully British. This was probably what Kate loved so much about having them live in Michigan back when they did. Kate had always adored Tiffany and Beauregard. Back then, the kids were close as well. Rolf had even been one of the first of many to comically crush the young lovelorn Trudy’s heart. Billy and Serena had been playmates as well, but the four years since they’d last seen each other had played so many tricks on all of the kids’ appearances and adolescent attitudes that, at first blush, none of them really knew one another anymore. It was nothing but awkward the way the parents wanted them to instantly be best friends again.

  After a quick drink and a tour of the flat, they strolled the two blocks down to Great Eastern Street to grab a bite at the Hoxton Grill. The kids walked ahead, struggling for things to talk about. Tiffany and Kate coupled up, chatting away as if they’d never not been in each other’s life. Adam and Beau followed up the rear with Beauregard catching Adam up on the changes that had occurred in his career.

  “So, I returned here after the tax rebate for films in Michigan got tight and it turned out I couldn’t get funding for movies here, either. I ran into a friend from school who sold me on a scheme to team up and buy the old Gloucester Studios, a small, run-down film complex from the forties in an industrial park just north of Kentish Town.”

  “Really? You own a studio now?”

  “I do. My partner and I. Gloucester UK Studios. It’s been refitted and is running chock-full.”

  “So, you’re a big shot now?”

  “I am. Massively important.”

  “Does that mean I have to be nice?” Adam and Beau were enjoying teasing one another, picking right up where they had left off, just as their wives were doing.

  “It does. Indeed. Very nice.”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to be easy.”

  “You need to come round and see the studio. You’ll be impressed with the sets we’ve been building. We’ve just now built an amazing submarine set for Michael Bay, the American. The fellow who did the Transformer movies. We’ve also done a complete 10 Downing Street set for a sequel to a movie that the Working Title folks did. You wouldn’t know it from the real thing. You should come round and see our carpentry shop. You may end up begging me to give you a job. Bring the whole family over here to London, live a proper life.”

  Adam stopped him, right as they came up to the restaurant. He lowered his voice as he spoke. “Listen Beau, speaking of Number 10. You know that’s why I’m here, for a meeting there tomorrow?”

  “Yes, you mentioned that. With David Heaton. You’ll be in storied company there with that one and Lassiter.”

  “Well, the thing is, I’m not sure, but I think I’m going to get out of it. I think it could be trouble for me.” Beauregard shrugged it off.

  “I should think having anything to do with a ponce like Heaton is trouble, but that’s just me.”

  “Really? I thought everybody loved him. He was like, a minister or a European rep or something, right? Isn’t he, like, a full-on power broker here?”

  “To some, I guess. To me he’s just part of the problem—his whole group. Nobody needs to get that rich, if you ask me. It can’t help but go to the head. I don’t blame you for not wanting to get into the thick of it with that one. But on the other hand, you’re here, your wife is happy: go to the meeting at Number 10. What could it hurt?” He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and made a bad joke that he regretted as soon as he said it.

  “But do me a favor, try not to go in the back door with a crowbar this time, won’t you?”

  “Very funny, dick!”

  Adam knew making the joke was Beau’s way of telling him that he loved him, that he didn’t give a whiff about any stupid mistake Adam had made. In retrospect, it was way too close to the truth, but Adam didn’t know that then, and didn’t care. It was just good to be with a friend again. It had been way too long. They followed their families into the grill for lunch.

  As they stepped inside, across Great Eastern Street, Harris and Peet, in one of the Heaton Global Mercedes, watched from afar. Their faces were stoic; even with each other they remained largely silent. They had spent the whole morning following Adam and Kate and the two kids all the way from Mayfair. To both Harris and Peet they seemed like nice people, the Tatums. Both had had thoughts to that effect. Each had separately assessed the American family positively.

  That didn’t mean that when the order came down, they wouldn’t do their jobs, wouldn’t follow through on killing the entire family. No, when the time came to act, they both planned to go through with it exactly as discussed.

  AFTER ■ 5

  Steel left Number 10 following another meeting in the prime minister’s den with Georgia. She took the Underground up to Farringdon Street. The tube was jam-packed with commuters. It seemed as if every one of them was reading a newspaper article about the bombing. The Sun’s headline seemed to be addressing Steel personally.

  3 DAYS LATER—WHO DID IT AND WHY?

  INSIDERS: “SO15 STILL HAS NOTHING TO GO ON?”

  She paid another call on the Heaton Global building. Things didn’t move as fast for her this time; she showed her badge again, used all the right buzz words, but this round she was left waiting in the lobby for an interminably long spell, long enough to think about Georgia Turnbull: the clean slap her perfume delivered, the sense of pride she got from bringing her news, the thrilling feeling evoked by simply being in her presence. She’d never experienced anything like it before. She wondered what it was. She wanted to get her off her mind, but it wasn’t easy. Even on the crowded Tube she could have sworn she smelled Georgia on her clothing. Three different times she thought she saw a woman who looked exactly like her.

  As she waited, as she reflected on Georgia, she noticed a man watching her: a tall man, completely bald, with dark sunglasses on, trying not to look like he was watching her from the landing on the first-floor stairwell, observing her through the reflection on the mirrored wall across from him, eyes over a prop newspaper he was pretending to read. She was well aware of what he was doing. She’d noticed him the minute he sat down.

  Finally, after a long wait, she was given an address for the Tatum family in London. They were staying at the Millennium on Grosvenor Square.

  She left the HGI building to embark on another battle with the Underground: transfers at Moorgate and Bank, then a rush-hour slog along the Central line to Bond Street, all the time trying to fit together the floating pieces of what she knew about Adam Tatum and the 10 Downing Street bombing, while still trying to make sense of what she was feeling about Georgia Turnbull. She got off at Bond Street and hiked down through Mayfair, along the east side of Grosvenor Square, past the Canadian embassy, over to the Millennium.

  Her badge and her papers earned her a much faster response than she had gotten at Heaton Global. The manager took the query very seriously. When he had gone through the records, it was revealed that the Tatum family had checked out three days ago, a little more than one hour after the bombing, eight days earlier than they had booked for, at six p.m., leaving both rooms empty for the night.

  A further interview with Ronnie, the clerk on duty at the time the family checked out, painted for Steel a picture of a family in disarray: a fight in the open air of the lobby with a teenage daughter who didn’t want to leave, some cursing, a father who was spooked and wanting to vacate the hotel right away, the wife demanding he c
alm down.

  Ronnie, a nicely dressed black man in his late twenties with a thick South African accent, remembered them all too well.

  “It was an outburst all right, then. I kept asking Mr. Tatum if it was something that the hotel had done wrong. I could not get an answer; in the end I could not even call a car for them. They left with their luggage right under their arms. A horrible hurry. I did not know what to make of the entire situation, ma’am. He just rushed them all off into Grosvenor Square. It was truly one of the very oddest things that I have witnessed.”

  Ronnie had now walked Steel out to the front door of the hotel. They stood on the curb, facing the redbrick-bordered square as the sun was setting for the day, the traffic whizzing by in front of them.

  “I watched them until they got about to the middle of the square there, and then I had to get back to the desk.”

  “Did it seem to you like they were in some sort of trouble?”

  “Yes, it did. Maybe they were in some kind of trouble. Why are you asking? Did something go wrong? Did something happen to them?”

  “No, nothing that we know of yet. We’d just like to speak to them, ask them some questions.”

  Once the clerk went inside, Steel spent a few minutes walking into the square, trying to think where the family could have gone, what the options were in each direction. Why didn’t they get a cab? Why did Tatum need to check out so quickly? She stood in the middle of the tony garden square, the FDR statue looking down on her, the Eisenhower statue at her back. During World War II the square was even known as the “Eisenhower Platz.” It was truly the “American Square,” a fitting place for a family from Chicago to vanish from in London.

  She looked back and forth to all four different paths the family could have taken. At this point the puzzle was still a jumble. Nothing was coming together as quickly as Steel wanted: swirling objects; unanswered questions; Adam Tatum; an attempted murder charge in Michigan; a family on the run; David Heaton; high-end plastic explosives; an antique cupboard on the north wall of the White Room—fragments floating in her head, nothing making any sense.

  Finally an image came to her: an Avis car rental place. Off Duke Street, behind the Brown Hart Gardens, she had caught a glimpse of the car rental location, the very corner of it, as she walked down from the Tube station toward the hotel thirty minutes earlier.

  * * *

  TATUM HAD INDEED rented a car, two hours and twenty-five minutes after the bomb went off. It was a good guess that had paid off. If they had wanted a cab, they would have gotten one at the curbside of the hotel; they didn’t want a cabbie to be able to give information as to where they were dropped. The Tube would be covered on CCTV, every square inch of their journey start to finish, and he would know that. If they didn’t want a cab or public transport, that left either their own car, which, being from Chicago, they didn’t have, or a rental car that they could drive and then abandon somewhere in order to buy themselves some time.

  The clerk on duty at the Avis center didn’t really remember him. It was a Ford wagon, though. It was in the records. He had used his credit card for a return rental to this location. He was either coming back or planned on ditching the car. Steel was betting on the latter. Her blood was flowing. She wasn’t sure what it was, but the puzzle had a few new pieces now.

  As she walked back up toward Oxford Street, she thought about how she would couch it all to the chancellor, to Georgia.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, having breakfast at her parents’ café in Bloomsbury, sitting at her perch in the window, making lists, fielding phone calls from the team of inspectors working under her, she noticed the bald man from Heaton Global across the street, down half a block, reading another paper, watching her, once again doing a rotten job of not looking like he was.

  The Tatums hadn’t come up on any hotel registers on the day after the bombing or since, in or outside the city. The rental car registered to them hadn’t shown up yet, even though a bulletin was out for it. All roads would be watched. They hadn’t flown out of the country, nor had they crossed through Folkestone, the Chunnel rail terminal to Europe, or taken any ferries over to Ireland or Europe. They were still in the UK, it seemed, but where? Who did they know? Where were they running to—or, more important, who were they running from?

  Steel had briefed Darling, the home secretary, and a group from COBRA at Scotland Yard’s Operation Center. She really wanted to wait and tell Georgia in the prime minister’s private den about the family’s dramatic flight from the hotel, but protocol and professionalism won out. Darling wanted to know everything that Steel knew in real time and not a second slower. Burnlee had already contacted the FBI in Washington for a brief on Tatum: what he had done in Michigan, why he had done it, and why the case was dropped. He expected to hear something back early that day.

  Why was “Baldy” watching her? That was a nagging question. What was Heaton up to? He was too firmly planted in the center of power to be involved with something like this. Was Tatum just a whacked-out ex-cop? Was he off the rails? Why would he want to harm Lassiter anyway? None of it amounted to a smidgeon of sense, yet it was all, to her, incredibly fascinating. She looked over to her mother and father, serving up breakfast, rushing out the fried eggs and the sausages, day in, day out. She had escaped that treadmill, she thought, had found a life that suited her, that made her jump out of bed in the morning. She felt badly for them: they rarely ever left the block, left Bloomsbury.

  She still lived with them, in the family flat just up and across the street, but that was more about responsibility than convenience. They needed her. She knew that. She would have to leave soon, but not quite yet. Her life had grown much larger, her swath of the city ever increasing. Now here she was, dead smack in the center of the biggest crime in London for possibly the last hundred years, working with the most exciting, historic woman to come along for decades. She wanted to pinch herself, it was all so intoxicating.

  * * *

  GEORGIA WAS BURROWED down deep into the couch in the prime minister’s den. The night before had been another long one. Up until late working on plans to form a temporary government while Lassiter was on the mend, dealing with her Parliamentary secretary on another route to hold off on the newest European referendum, and getting forward movement with Treasury staffers on the budget proposal that would be coming due in a matter of days. On top of it, the bad weather in the north had brought in a horrible flood that indirectly killed seven people in a tourist coach accident. Georgia worked for hours with Alan Munroe, the director of communications and strategy, on a government statement in response to the tragedy.

  Now, as noon approached, she was desperately in need of a few more pain pills, even if the pain was no longer restricted or necessarily pertaining to her leg. As always, she succumbed and dug further into what scarily was becoming close to the bottom of the little plastic bottle.

  * * *

  JACK EARLY POPPED in to tell her that Inspector Steel wanted to come by for a quick update. Georgia instantly perked up. She hoped that Early didn’t see her rapid change in demeanor. Something about this young woman was incredibly stimulating to her. The other day when they were in that very room together, without realizing it, she had dropped the use of her cane. When she stood to say good-bye, she did so with a speed and an energy she hadn’t had in the longest time. Something about Steel had an almost curative effect on her. She liked her energy, her youthful passion, yes, but it was more than that. When Steel was in a room with her, there was a zing to the air that Georgia wasn’t accustomed to—a feeling she wasn’t sure she was entirely comfortable having.

  After confirming the meeting, she went over to 11 and up to her flat. She let her hair down, let it fly in a more casual youthful way, then changed out of her dress suit into a light-colored spring skirt and a loose-fitting sweater. In her entire life Georgia had never changed her wardrobe like this for a woman. She wasn’t sure why she was starting now. She wasn’t sure why she s
o quickly needed a couple more of the little pills.

  Davina Steel, too, had dressed just a little more nicely for the meeting—just a tad more feminine. She put on a very small degree of makeup. She wasn’t sure why she had done this, either. She simply knew that every meeting with the chancellor was more nerve-racking than the last instead of the opposite. She kept waiting to calm down in her presence, but it wasn’t happening.

  This time she had even worn a splash of perfume from a bottle of Yves Saint Laurent Parisienne that she had picked up when she went for a police conference on terrorism the summer before in Paris. She had yet to use it, and now here she was splashing it on, trying so hard to be subtle with it.

  Georgia caught the scent the minute Steel walked into the den. It was the equivalent of a sweet mist of rose water.

  “Ms. Steel, I must say I love the perfume you’ve on. It’s lovely.”

  “Thank you. Got it in Paris. Last year. I like it, too.”

  Both not sure what next to say, they took a seat across from each other in unplanned unison. Georgia sat firm, her back straight, eager to get started with any update.

  “So tell me your newest, Inspector. Where are we?”

  “We’re still working many angles, all the usual, but I have to tell you we are looking very closely now at the American, Adam Tatum. As it turns out, he and his wife and their two children were staying at the Millennium on Grosvenor Square.”

  “Yes, I know that hotel. They’ve a banquet room. The teachers union has their yearly membership election luncheon there.”

  “The point is, Madam Chancellor, the Tatums checked out in a hurry, unscheduled, almost four days ago—just a little over an hour after the bomb went off.”

  “Could they simply have had a problem with the hotel?”

  “Maybe. They left in quite a huff, though. They rented a car and went off somewhere in an ungodly hurry. It’s all very suspicious.”