Nicholas Marten 01 - The Exile

by Folsom, Allan

  That information was still fresh, barely two weeks old, and it meant whatever operation it centered on might very well be active and findable. The FBI had been checking possible terrorist links, and presumably they would have passed on whatever information they had to the CIA and probably even the State Department, but Barron knew he would never learn what they had found out or reported.

  The most recent and intriguing information had come from Dan Ford, who had just learned of it and confided in him the day before they were to leave for London. Russian Ministry of Justice investigators had quietly arrived in L.A. the week after Raymond’s death. Overseen by the FBI, they had been given access to LAPD files and talked to people at the Beverly Hills PD. Three days later they had left, saying that despite Raymond Thorne’s actions, despite the fact that a chartered jet had been sent to pick him up at two different airports on two separate days with packages containing false passports and driver’s licenses, despite the vanished “Aubrey Collinson” who had chartered the plane in Kingston, Jamaica, and despite the brief handwritten notes in his calendar, they had found no evidence of a threat to the Russian government or its people. When questioned, they had volunteered that there seemed to be no significance at all to Raymond’s notation April 7/Moscow. To them April 7/Moscow was a date and place and nothing more.

  The Russians had come, Barron thought, in the spirit of international cooperation in a time of increased terrorist activity, because the use of a chartered jet suggested that whatever threat there might have been was exceptionally well funded and could have global implications. But that trail had quickly turned cold, and as for Raymond himself, while what he had done had been brutal and murderous, neither he nor it fit the current profile of terrorists or terrorist organizations.

  Yet the dismissal of his rampage as having no further implication or complication—by the Russians, by the FBI, and most especially by LAPD, which wanted to quickly bury what could easily turn into a major tarnishing of an already severely tarnished department if the truth of the Metrolink shootout were exposed—was, to John Barron, a grievous error because, to him, all those other things strongly suggested Raymond had been involved in something major and possibly catastrophic that hadn’t ended with his death. Particularly ominous, no matter what the Russian investigators had said, was April 7, a date that was fast approaching. How could anyone know for certain whether Raymond’s notation was personal, to remind him of someone or something in Moscow that day, or was a reference to a day and place for some act of terror like the hostage-taking Chechen rebel attack on the Melnikova Street theater or the suicide bombings at a Moscow rock festival—or something even more monstrous, like the train bombings in Madrid, or one designed to kill thousands, not unlike the horror that rained down on New York and Washington on the infamous September 11?

  If the notation did refer to a terrorist attack, did that mean the official posture taken by all of the agencies, the LAPD and the Russians included, was merely a smoke screen to avoid terrifying the public? And if it was only a posture, did that mean that the FBI, the CIA, Interpol, and other international counterterrorist organizations were working with Russian security and secretly monitoring the situation worldwide, hoping to discover and then crush whatever Raymond and the people behind him had planned?

  Or—

  Was nothing planned? Was there no significance to any of it? Was everything as dead as Raymond himself?

  Either way there was something else Barron had to keep strongly in mind—regardless of whatever else was going on, and the LAPD’s public dismissal of anything Raymond might have been involved in, they might still be following up on Raymond’s notes and other evidence themselves. If so, and if Barron did the same, he might very well cross paths with Chief Harwood’s detectives. If that happened, it could cost him his life. But he also knew staying away was impossible. The burden of guilt he still carried for the deaths of the people Raymond had murdered in L.A. was enormous, and the idea that more people might die horrified him. So, no matter the risk, he had to go on until he was certain that the fire Raymond had begun was finally and utterly extinguished.

  But he couldn’t be certain. Not now. Not at all.

  Deep inside him a voice struggled to get out, the same as it had from the moment he learned that Raymond was dead. Every time it rose up, he tried to push it away. But he couldn’t. It kept coming back, urging him to keep on, to find the beast and make sure it was dead.

  When he listened to the voice, as he did now, he realized that if he were ever to pick up the scent of the beast again, clearly there was only one place to start.

  “London,” Barron said to Dr. Flannery directly.

  “The Balmore Clinic?”

  “Yes. Would you be able to get Rebecca into a program there? And quickly?”

  “I will do what I can,” Dr. Flannery said.

  And she had. And done it very well.

  3

  LONDON, YORK HOUSE, THE BALMORE CLINIC, MONDAY, APRIL 1. 1:45 P.M.

  John Barron’s, no, Nicholas Marten’s (he had to force himself to remember who he had become) first impression of Clementine Simpson was less than startling. Tall and about his age, with neck-length auburn hair and wearing an oversized navy business suit, she gave the impression of being a reasonably attractive but rather dowdy hospital supervisor. What he would later learn was that she was not a supervisor at all but a member of the Balmore Foundation participating in one of her twice-yearly weeks as a clinic volunteer. It was in that capacity that she had accompanied Rebecca’s new psychiatrist, Dr. Anne Maxwell-Scot—a short, rather heavyset, particularly astute woman Marten guessed to be somewhere in her early fifties—and two medical attendants to Heathrow Airport to meet Rebecca Marten and her brother when their British Airways flight from Los Angeles landed just before noon.

  By then Rebecca had been awake for nearly an hour and, though still groggy from her medication, had had a light breakfast and seemed to understand where she was and why she and her brother were on the plane and going to London. The same calmness and understanding carried over during the ambulance ride from the airport and into London and to York House, the inpatient facility of the Balmore Clinic in Belsize Lane.

  “If you have any questions at all, Mr. Marten, please don’t hesitate to ask,” Clementine Simpson said as she left Rebecca’s small yet cheery third-floor room. “I shall be here for the remainder of the week.”

  And like that she was gone, and Nicholas Marten turned to the process of getting Rebecca settled. Afterward, he spent a few moments alone with Dr. Maxwell-Scot as she told him how well Rebecca seemed, certainly better than she had expected, and then explained what would happen next.

  “As I’m sure you are aware, Mr. Marten, you are not only Rebecca’s brother but her security blanket, and it is important you stay close by, at least for a few days. Yet it is equally important that Rebecca be weaned from that kind of crutch as quickly as possible. It is essential that she gain confidence and make advances on her own.

  “Soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow, and aside from private two-a-day-meetings with me, Rebecca will be introduced to group therapy sessions where she and the other participants will work on putting on a play or designing a new building for the hospital. Tasks that require cooperation and prevent the participants from creating safe, singular hiding places where they could easily regress or become stranded. The whole idea is to socialize Rebecca and allow her to become more and more self-sufficient.”

  Marten listened carefully, trying to be certain that the practice at the Balmore, as Dr. Flannery had promised, was the same as it was elsewhere in the world of psychotherapy: A patient’s personal records and psychiatric history were confidential and, if the family requested it—which he had—were available only to the patient’s therapist. Dr. Flannery had assured him further that her explanation of the need for Rebecca to be admitted to the Balmore so promptly had been completely confidential and Marten was simply looking to make certain that was so.


  Fifteen minutes with Dr. Maxwell-Scot had given him that reassurance and more. She had talked only about Rebecca’s situation and about the program she and Dr. Flannery had designed for her and about how successful she thought it could be. It gave Marten a sense of trust and comfort that was enhanced by Dr. Maxwell-Scot’s warm and personable nature. It was a feeling that seemed to flow throughout the Balmore. He had felt it with Ms. Simpson and everyone else from the moment they had been met at the gate at Heathrow and seen quickly through customs and passport control and to the waiting ambulance, and even during the admittance procedure once they reached the clinic.

  “You look drawn from your journey and, I’m sure, your concern, Mr. Marten,” Dr. Maxwell-Scot said finally. “I trust you are staying somewhere close by.”

  “Yes, the Holiday Inn in Hampstead.”

  “Good.” She smiled. “Not far away. Why don’t you get some rest yourself. Rebecca will be just fine here. Perhaps you will come back about six o’clock for a short visit before she has dinner.”

  “Alright,” Nicholas Marten said gratefully, then added genuinely, “and thank you. Very much.”

  4

  The Hampstead Holiday Inn was a short taxi ride from the Balmore Clinic, and Marten sat back trying to get a sense of a city he had known only through history and books and movies, and the thunder and rattle of British rock bands.

  The taxi turned onto Haverstock Hill, and he became aware of the traffic coming toward him on the right instead of the left. He had not noticed it during the ambulance ride with Rebecca from Heathrow; that he did now made him realize he was truly somewhere else and that thanks to Dan Ford and Dr. Flannery everything in Los Angeles was closed tightly behind them.

  Putting Marten up quietly at a friend’s house in a citrus-farming area northwest of Los Angeles, Ford had settled the lease on Marten’s rented house and taken care of his personal belongings, giving away almost everything and putting a few important items in storage under Ford’s name. For her part, Dr. Flannery had not only arranged for Rebecca to come to the Balmore but dealt with the situation at St. Francis, informing Sister Reynoso only hours before they left L.A. for London that, at John Barron’s request, she was transferring Rebecca to an institution out of state. Less than thirty minutes after her talk with Sister Reynoso, Dr. Flannery, in her own car, was driving Barron and Rebecca directly to the airport, where, because of Rebecca’s condition, she and her brother were allowed to board the aircraft far in advance of the other passengers and hence were kept out of public view.

  And so the major steps had been taken and they were safely here. It made it alright for Nicholas Marten to take a moment and sit back and watch the city go by. To take a moment and not think about why he chose the Balmore over the clinics in Rome and Geneva. To take a moment and not think about why he had come to London.

  5

  STILL MONDAY, APRIL 1. 3:25 P.M.

  Marten checked into his hotel and unpacked. Immediately afterward he took a quick shower, changed into fresh jeans, a light sweater, and sport coat, and went down to the lobby, where he asked directions to Uxbridge Street. Twenty minutes later his taxi was turning off Notting Hill Gate onto Campden Hill Road and then down Uxbridge Street.

  “What number, guv?” the cabbie asked.

  “I’ll get out here, thank you,” Marten said.

  “Right, sir.”

  The taxi pulled to the curb. Marten paid the driver and got out, and the cab drove away. And like that he stepped into Raymond’s world. Or at least the piece of it he found noted on a slip of paper in Raymond’s valise.

  Number 21 Uxbridge Street was an elegant three-story private home separated from the street and sidewalk by a black six-foot-high ornamental iron fence. Just inside it were two enormous plane trees beginning to bud out, encouraged by a sunny and, according to the cabbie, exceptionally warm early spring afternoon.

  As Marten approached he could see an iron gate leading to the house propped open by a painter’s ladder. A drop cloth covered the ground beneath it, protecting the brick walkway, while a painter’s bucket, half filled with black paint, hung from a rung on the ladder. Wherever the painter was, he wasn’t in sight.

  Marten stopped at the gate and looked up at the house. The front door was closed, and a garden walk led around the house to the left. Still no sign of the painter. He took a breath and pushed around the ladder and past the gate, walking down the pathway along the side of the house. Near the back he found three steps leading up to a partially open door. He glanced around once more. Still he saw no one. Quickly he climbed the steps, then stopped at the door to listen.

  “Hello,” he called out. There was no reply. Another breath and he went inside. Within minutes he had covered the house from the ground floor to the third and back down again and found nothing but a grandly furnished home with no sign of anyone currently living there. He was greatly disappointed, but in a way it was what he had expected, even without the grand tour he’d taken for himself. The home, as Marten remembered from the London Metropolitan Police report, belonged to a Mr. Charles Dixon, a retired stockbroker living in the South of France. Dixon, the report stated, had never heard of a Raymond Oliver Thorne, nor did he know anyone who looked like him. He occupied the house during the Christmas holidays and again through Wimbledon week at the end of June, and that was it. The rest of the year he spent in France and the house was vacant. And yet Raymond was to have been in London and ostensibly had gone to the same address in the middle of March. It made no sense, unless the house was rented out from time to time, but the Metropolitan Police had made no mention of that.

  “Just who the bloody hell are you?”

  Nicholas Marten stopped short. He was halfway out the door he’d come in and suddenly found himself face-to-face with a large white-haired man in overalls.

  “You must be the painter.”

  “I am, but I asked who the bloody hell you are and what the Christ you’re doing in here!”

  “I was looking for Mr. Charles Dixon. The gate was open so I came in. I was told he might rent the house on occasion, and I—”

  “I don’t know who told you that or who you are.” The painter looked him up and down carefully. “But Mr. Dixon never rents, ever. Is that clear to you, Mr.—”

  “Ah—” Marten made up a name quickly. “Kaplan. George Kaplan.”

  “Well, Mr. Kaplan, now you know.”

  “Thank you. Sorry to have bothered you.” With that Marten started to leave; then a thought struck him and he turned back.

  “Do you happen to know if Mr. Dixon is a friend of a Mr. Aubrey Collinson of Kingston, Jamaica?”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Aubrey Collinson. His name came up with Mr. Dixon’s. I believe he’s a lawyer. He travels to London and elsewhere quite often by charter jet.”

  “I don’t know what the bloody hell you want. But I never heard of an Aubrey Collinson, and if Mr. Dixon knows him that’s his business.” The painter took a menacing step toward him. “If you’re not gone in the next five seconds I’m calling the police.”

  “Thank you again.” Marten smiled, and then turned and left.

  4:15 P.M.

  Some five streets and twelve minutes later he stood in front of the imposing structure at number 13 Kensington Palace Gardens—the Embassy of the Russian Federation, London, W8 4QX, United Kingdom. There were guards at the gates and a few people in the small courtyard beyond and that was all.

  Marten stood observing for a few moments, and then the guard gate opened and an armed soldier came toward him. Marten put up a hand and smiled. “Just looking, sorry,” he said and walked quickly off, going away from the embassy and toward the green sprawl of Kensington Gardens. He had seen nothing at the house in Uxbridge Street that suggested it was anything more than it appeared, and the Russian Embassy was simply that, a foreign embassy within walking distance of the Uxbridge Street residence. So what did it mean, if anything at all? The only one who knew for certain was Raymon
d, and he was dead.

  Besides, what did Marten think he was going to do even if he came across something? Alert the authorities? Then what? Try to explain what was going on and have them start wondering who he was? No, he couldn’t. He had to leave it alone and he knew it. But how? Suddenly he was back to the push-pull of it. Common sense told him to have nothing whatsoever to do with resuming, privately, his investigation of that larger something that Raymond had been involved in, and had been killed because of his involvement in. The voice inside him dragged him full force back into it. It was as if the investigation were a seducer and he were its slave or, more to the point, he were an addict who could focus on nothing but his habit. The voice was everything. Somehow he had to find a way to stop it.

  6

  THE HAMPSTEAD HOLIDAY INN. 9:00 P.M.

  Nicholas Marten woke with a start in the darkness. He had no idea where he was or how long he’d been asleep. He sat up. Then he saw a light coming from a partially open door and realized it was the bathroom and that he must have pulled the door open himself. Then he remembered. He’d left the Russian Embassy and walked across Kensington Gardens to Bayswater Road and then taken a cab to the Balmore Clinic to visit Rebecca. She’d been happy to see him but was clearly worn-out from the long trip, so he hadn’t stayed long. Promising to see her the following morning, he’d come back to the hotel, taken off his jacket, then curled up on the bed to watch television and must have simply fallen asleep.

  Jet lag and the emotion of the trip itself had exhausted him, but he’d slept enough to take the edge off, and now he was up and alert and with no idea what to do. After a quick wash of his face, he combed his hair and went down to the lobby and then walked outside. The night was still warm and London was bright and alive. He crossed the street and walked down Haverstock Hill, a tourist out for a stroll, taking in the sounds and sights of a place he’d never been before.