by Gregg Loomis
That was why Inspector Fitzwilliam had called on Patel to provide a team of minders for Reilly every time the American appeared on the UK’s extensive network of surveillance cameras or his name had popped up on the computers’ programs selected daily list of those pre selected persons entering the country by air. Unfortunately, Reilly had a talent for leaving his police followers wondering where he had gone. Had Patel his way, he’d have Reilly detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure and be done with it. But, as Fitzwilliam had patiently explained, locking someone up indefinitely wasn’t the British way, no matter how potentially dangerous they might be. He was, of course, spot on but that didn’t make Reilly any less of a problem.
There was a knock on his door.
“Enter!”
A young woman did just that.
Hardly dishy: Late twenties, mousy brown hair, whatever figure she had largely concealed in the folds of a bulky Scottish wool sweater despite the season. She would be the last person noticed in a group of any size.
This was precisely why Patel had summoned Inspector Patricia Lundy.
Without being asked, she took a seat in one of the club chairs facing the desk, something Patel viewed as a bit of cheek to say the least. But then, the Yard’s personnel got younger every day.
“You wanted to see me?”
Also got right to the point, none of that ‘how’s the grands’ or ‘are you vacationing at the seaside again this year’ bullocks.
He handed her an eight-by-ten black-and-white photo.
“Taken in what looks like an airport,” she said. “From the quality, I’d guess a surveillance camera.”
Patel smiled. “Right.”
She crossed her legs. In other women the move could have been sexy. “Am I supposed to know the bloke?”
“You keep that,” Patel said as she handed the picture back. “That bloke is an American named Langford Reilly. His friends call him ‘Lang,’ although I’m not one of them.”
He paused, disappointed at not getting a laugh--or even a smile--at his little joke before describing Reilly’s real and perceived misdeeds while in the UK.
Her unsculpted eyebrows went up. “You say he killed a man at the British Museum with an ancient Egyptian spear?”
“Justifiably, but yes.”
“Well, he sounds interesting, I’ll say that. When do I get to meet him?”
Patel frowned. “Inspector Lundy, The Yard is hardly a dating service.”
She shook her head, a smile toying with her mouth. “Too bad for me, then.”
There was a moment of silence while Patel tried to decide if he was being put on. Then, “He arrived Heathrow this afternoon. Our last shot of him is about . . . ” He checked his watch. “Two hours ago, going into Christie’s in St. James. I want you to take a couple of men, er, officers, mufti, and keep an eye on him preferably without him noticing. First sign of trouble, in the nick he goes. We’ll think of charges later. It’s your job to make certain he doesn’t kill anyone on this trip, understood?
She stood. “Perfectly.”
He made a shooing motion with both hands. “Then get along with you before we lose him.”
As he watched the door close behind her, he had the thought he might as well try to trap smoke as keep up with the elusive American. Well, as his father’s favorite old Hindustani proverb suggests, best to dig your well before you are thirsty.
9.
Club Gascon
57 West Smithfield
London
23:20 Local Time
As he waited for the check, Lang was still enjoying the cod served with grapes and maple syrup. It had sounded, as his British hosts might say, a bit dodgy. The assurances of the heavily accented French waiter had won him over to Lang’s gastronomical delight, a fact tempting him to make a generous addition to the service charge when the bill finally arrived. Gurt had enjoyed her rabbit and octopus with fennel and chorizo as well.
The only hint of dissatisfaction was the exorbitant price of the accompanying wine. Perhaps Lang would rethink that tip.
The restaurant was small, every patron visible. Gurt had noticed them first: a table of one woman and two men.
“No,” she had cautioned Lang, “Don’t turn around. “She is the only woman I see not wearing heels, certainly the only one wearing a pullover, a sweater.”
The check arrived. Gurt picked it up, pretending to study it while looking at the group behind Lang. “And the men’s shoes . . . Gummisohle.”
Lang reached across the table to take the folder containing the tab and put his personal black American Express card inside. “There are a lot of people who wear rubber-soled shoes. And most of them are cops. Inspector Fitzwilliam has been very generous in providing me with escorts from Scotland Yard. Last time I was here in London I was also having dinner, at Bebendum, with Jacob and Rachel during that business about the Harry Oakes murder. I’m wondering if Fitzwilliam has access to every reservation list in town.”
Gurt shook her head. “There would be no need with all the surveillance cameras. A mouse cannot cross the street here without being filmed.”
Lang decided against the extra tip, signed the check and stood, walking around to ostensibly help Gurt with her chair. His purpose was to get a good look at the trio.
The inexpensive, off-the-rack clothes, more appropriate for a neighborhood pub than a Michelin-starred restaurant, contrasted with what most of the guests were wearing. Plus, all three had only an appetizer, attesting to the fact that they were not as well-heeled as the other diners.
They were dividing up their bill as Lang and Gurt headed for the door.
Outside, there was a faint odor, perhaps imagined, Lang attributed to the Victorian Smithfield Market, the last wholesale meat market in Central London. Or perhaps memory of the site’s unhappy Medieval past as a place of public executions of enemies of the Crown such as Scottish nobleman William Wallace as well as heretics and religious dissidents.
His arm linked through Gurt’s, Lang referred to the local Tube stations, “Five minute walk to Barbican, Farrington and St. Paul’s.”
“You choose.”
They had taken only a few steps when Lang noted a car at the curb ahead, one of the number that seemed to magically appear the instant of the week day, 6:30 expiration of the city’s no parking and “pay and display” ordinances. The only thing remarkable about it was the two men lounging against it.
Experience, a sixth sense, something not quite definable made Lang tense. He was aware Gurt felt the same. He dropped his arm from hers.
The two strangers pushed off from the auto, blocking the sidewalk. The parked vehicle and a building made going around them impossible.
The two couples stood silently facing each other. The man to Lang’s right had a shaved scalp that looked as though it might have been polished. He was large, over two hundred pounds and six feet tall. His nose had been broken and poorly set. He could have been a former participant in a combat sport such as boxing or wrestling. His companion was neither smaller nor prettier. Lang thought he glimpsed a reflection between his lips, perhaps a steel tooth as had been common in Soviet-era dentistry. An angry pink scar, poorly stitched, split his left eyebrow. Lang speculated that under the tight, long-sleeved shirt each wore was the physique of a body builder.
The one with the shiny scalp held out a hand that easily could have palmed a basketball. “Give it to us, Mr. Reilly, no one gets hurt.”
Slavic accent?
“And what might that be?” Lang asked.
He knew and knew they knew he knew. Old agency training: when faced with danger either strike first or stall your opponent. He wasn’t sure which would be the case. But it did distract from Gurt who was edging toward the building on their left.
“And tell the woman to stay where she is,” the Scar demanded.
OK, strike first is the only option left.
“Everybody stay where you are!” A woman’s voice. “Police!”
Lang
turned his head just enough to recognize the trio from Club Gascon.
The woman was holding up a shiny object, a badge.
Steel tooth moved almost faster than the eye could follow. In a step, he had one arm across Gurt’s chest. The other hand held a knife to her throat. Whoever or whatever he was, he was no ordinary street punk.
He and his cohort were moving slowly backward, Gurt being dragged along.
“Stop right where you are!”
Except for Northern Ireland, only about seven percent of British law enforcement officers carry firearms, a choice made by both public and police, Lang thought. Swell. Three Metropolitan Police officers, no doubt armed only with PAVA spray or, perhaps, a Taser, are going be exactly zero help.
10.
Office of Naval Intelligence
Suitland Federal Center
4251 Suitland Road
Suitland Maryland
At The Same Time
(5:20 Local)
The Office of Naval Intelligence, founded in 1882, is the oldest of the seventeen members of the so-called intelligence community. Unlike its cousin, the CIA, it does not have a massive campus but a modest (by government standards) building in a center shared by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency), the US Census Bureau and the National Records Center. Similar to its larger and better known co agency, it is organized into administrative, intelligence gathering and operations divisions. It was originally charged with “collecting and recording such naval information as may be useful to the Department (of the Navy) in time of war as well as peace. . .” Like all government agencies, bureaus and administrations, it has long since expanded its role.
Which was the cause, if not the reason, Cincom (Commander in Chief) Admiral Adrene Puller was frowning over the decoded and translated version of an intercepted communication from the historic Imperial Russian Admiralty building in St. Petersburg now serving as headquarters for the present Russian navy. The message had been sent in Fialk (m-125), a rotor code, a twenty-first century version of the German’s World War II Enigma machine.
Happily for Admiral Puller, a Russian defector had swapped one of the machines for American sanctuary from prosecution for “corruption,” the usual crime of those deemed political enemies of the current Moscow regime. A day or so of tinkering and the Navy’s most talented hackers had retrofitted the device to receive messages with intended destinations such as the Russian Pacific, Baltic, Black Sea, or Atlantic Fleets. There had been speculation the man was a plant, the machine a device for dissemination of disinformation. But satellites had, so far, shown intercepted positioning orders had been followed to the predicted letter.
Once in a while the blind hog really did find an acorn.
But what Admiral Puller had in front of her wasn’t a positioning order. It was hardly a military communication at all. It was directed to the London embassy’s branch of Foreign Intelligence Service for the Russian Federation, one of the two agencies that had been the KGB.
Nothing odd about that. The Russian Admiralty frequently communicated with the intelligence services.
But this, if correctly decoded and translated, directed someone to attend an auction and buy “lot 228.”
Admiral Puller was well aware that corruption and cronyism was rampant in Russian government, but to openly send someone to the world’s foremost auction house to buy an antique or a painting with government funds?
Surely not.
There was knock at the door and a yeoman, the Admiral’s secretary, stuck his head in. “Commander Swift here to see you, mam.”
“Show him in.”
Swift strode in, standing at attention before the admiral’s desk. Since cover was not worn indoors in most situations and the Navy saluted only when under cover, his hands remained at his sides.
At thirty-six, Commander Straton Swift was the youngest head of ONI’s Ops division in memory. In any intelligence organization, successes in operations don’t go unnoticed but they do go unheralded. Only the President of the United States, Admiral Puller, and perhaps half a dozen others knew that it had been Swift who put together the intel resulting in the Panamanian government seizing a North Korean ship carrying Cuban weapons concealed under produce in January of this year. This was just one more of his accomplishments.
Scuttlebutt had it the commander had a dark side, a habit of claiming credit belonging to others and a ruthlessness where advancement was concerned. Truth or jealousness of the Navy’s youngest commander?
Or both?
Puller could care less. If Swift could get the job done, his personal shortcomings were none of her concern.
“At ease, Commander,” she said, pointing to a captain’s chair at the edge of her desk. “Give the deck a rest.”
Puller was not one for banalities. She really wasn’t interested in the state of Swift’s health or that of his family. Besides, as only ONI’s second female cincom, she did not feel comfortable discussing her subordinates’ personal lives.
She handed the intercept to Swift without further conversation. “What do you make of this?”
Swift read the communication without expression or comment. Then he read it again.
“Fialk?”
She nodded.
“It’s one of their top codes. Maybe ‘lot 228’ means something other than an item to be auctioned, perhaps a pre-planned action of some sort.”
“That or simple disinformation.”
He shook his head. “I don’t see how believing the Ivans are buying something at Christie’s does us any harm. Might be a test, though. If we start snooping round Christie’s, they know we have one of their machines.”
“Christie’s is closed for the day, or, I should say night over there. One of our friends at MI6 will be on the doorstep when they open tomorrow to find out what lot 228 might be and who bought it.”
“Let’s hope the Russian’s don’t have a plant who will let them know someone’s interested. If so, our Fialk rotor machine becomes so much junk.”
Was the commander implying she should not have made the inquiry?
If anything got the admiral’s temper up, it was some testosterone-juiced male with a superiority complex. She hadn’t spent the last twenty years of her life kissing men’s asses while busting her own climbing the chain of command to have some Wunderkind nearly young enough to be her son question her judgment.
There was ice in her tone as she asked, “Perhaps, Commander, you have a different idea as to how to find out about the mysterious lot 228?”
She intentionally asked about “different” rather than “better.”
Among his many talents, Swift could detect the way the wind was blowing faster than any weather vane. “None whatsoever. May I inquire as to why the admiral’s interest in this, this lot, whatever it may be and why Ops is more suited than Intel to carry out the Admiral’s wishes to identify it?”
“Because, Commander, this object has attracted the attention of the Russian navy’s higher ups. Ergo, we are interested. Depending on just what the item may be, I intend to be prepared to obtain it. That would be your job.”
11.
Outside Club Gascon
London
A knife at her throat and an arm around her chest, Gurt was being forced backward.
“Move and she dies,” snarled the man with the metallic dentures.
The three new arrivals froze. Even had they been armed, Gurt would have provided a shield for the two thugs.
She gave a nod, an almost imperceptible movement of the head that had meaning only for Lang.
With Steel Tooth’s next step backward two things happened in concert: Gurt went completely limp, forcing her captor to take a step forward to maintain his grip around her chest. An instant before his front foot touched the pavement, she lunged. His reflex was to react by snatching her backward. In the split second before he could regain complete equilibrium, Gurt used the shift in his weight to hook the toe of her shoe behind his ankle, sending him stu
mbling backward, his arms flailing the air for balance.
In a single step, Lang gripped the hand holding the knife in both of his and a foot planted behind the man’s knees. Snatching violently down on the wrist sent the man into an involuntary back flip and the knife spinning across the puddle of light generated by street lights like a comet across the sky.
Gurt was on her former assailant just as he thudded onto the unforgiving sidewalk, gasping for the breath the impact had taken away in a whoosh. A well-aimed kick to the groin doubled him into the fetal position and terminated any further interest in the affair he might have for the immediate future.
Scar Face was not idle.
In the instant his confederate went down, he took a step forward and, using his momentum, aimed a fist at Lang’s head. Had it landed, it would have sent the American sprawling at best if not to the nearest hospital.
But it didn’t.
Lang used his left arm to deflect the blow, leaving his opponent open for the roundhouse right to smash the man’s nose with the sound of a ripe squash hitting pavement. The pain sent Scar Face’s hands involuntarily flying to his face, making him completely vulnerable to the head butt to his solar plexus that doubled the big man over.
Hands clasped, Lang brought them down on the back of the exposed neck like a headsman’s ax.
Scar Face went to his knees just in time to receive a kick to the jaw that left him spitting blood laced with what had been teeth.
He staggered to one knee, raised a hand as though to plead for mercy and soundlessly toppled over face down to join his companion on the sidewalk.
From the moment of Gurt’s first move, less than five seconds had elapsed
Lang was rubbing the knuckles of his right hand as he made sure neither antagonist presented an immediate threat. Looking up, he saw the disbelief on the faces on the trio from the restaurant. The woman’s mouth was open in a near perfect “O.”