by Tom Clancy
But this would be an American hit on British soil, and that, he was sure, would not be pleasing to Her Majesty's Government. It was a matter of propriety. Besides, this was not an action by the American government. As a matter of law, it was a premeditated murder, upon which all governments frowned rather severely. So, whatever happened, he hoped they'd be careful. Even his father couldn't run much interference for this.
* * *
"Oh, Uda, you are a beast!" Rosalie Parker exclaimed as he finally rolled off her body. She checked her watch. He'd gone late, and she had an appointment just after lunch the next day with an oil executive from Dubai. He was a rather dear old fellow, and a good tipper, even if he had told her once that she reminded him of one of his favorite daughters, the nasty old bugger.
"Stay the night," Uda urged.
"I can't, love. I have to pick up my mum for lunch and then take her shopping at Harrods. Good Lord, I must be off," she said with well-feigned excitement, springing to an upright position.
"No." Uda reached for her shoulder and pulled it back.
"Oh, you devil!" A chuckle and a warm smile.
"He is called 'Shahateen,'" Uda corrected. "And he is not part of my family."
"Well, you can wear a girl out, Uda." Not that it was a bad thing, but she had things to do. So she stood and got her clothes off the floor, where he tended to throw them.
"Rosalie, my love, there is only you," he moaned. And she knew that was a lie. It was she who had introduced him to Mandy, after all.
"Is that so?" she asked.
"Oh, that one. She is far too skinny. She doesn't eat. She's not like you, my princess."
"You're so nice." Bend over, kiss, then put the bra on. "Uda, you are the best, the very best," she said. It was always good for the male ego to be stroked, and his ego was bigger than most.
"You just say that to make me feel good," Sali accused her.
"Do you think I'm an actress? Uda, you make my eyeballs pop out. But I have to go, love."
"As you say." He yawned. He'd buy her some shoes the next day, Uda decided. There was a new Jimmy Choo store close to his office that he'd been meaning to check out, and her feet were a spot-on size 6. He rather liked her feet, in fact.
Rosalie made a quick dart into the bathroom to check the mirror. Her hair was a fright — Uda kept messing it up, as though to mark his property. A few seconds with a brush made it almost presentable.
"I must be off, love." She bent down to kiss him again. "Don't get up. I know where the door is." And a final kiss, lingering and inviting… for the next time. Uda was as regular as regular could be. And she'd be back here. Mandy was good, and a friend, but she knew how to treat these wogs, and, best of all, she didn't have to starve herself like a bloody runway model. Mandy had too many American and European regulars to eat normally.
Outside, she hailed a cab.
"Where to, dear?" the cabby asked.
"New Scotland Yard, please."
* * *
It's always disorienting to wake up on an airplane, even in good seats. The window shades went up and the cabin lights came on, and the earphones played news that might or might not be new — since it was British, it wasn't easy to tell. Breakfast was served — plenty of fat, along with no-shit Starbucks coffee that was about a six on a one-to-ten scale. Maybe a seven. Through the windows to his right, Brian saw the green fields of England instead of the slate black of the stormy ocean that had passed during his thankfully dreamless sleep. Both twins were afraid of dreams right now, for the past they contained, and the future they feared, despite their commitment to it. Twenty more minutes and the 747 touched down gently at Heathrow. Immigration was a gentle formality — the Brits did it much better than the Americans, Brian thought. Baggage was on the carousel quickly enough, and then they walked out to the cabs.
"Where to, gentlemen?"
"Mayfair Hotel on Stratton Street."
The driver took this information with a nod and headed off east toward the city. The drive took about thirty minutes with the start of the morning rush hour. It was the first time in England for Brian, though not for Dominic. The sights were pleasant for the latter, and both new and adventurous for the former. It seemed like home, Brian thought, except that people drove on the wrong side of the road. On first inspection, drivers also seemed more courteous, but that was hard to gauge. There was at least one golf course with emerald green grass, but aside from that, rush hour here wasn't all that different from the one in Seattle.
Half an hour later, they were looking at Green Park, which was, indeed, itself beautifully green, then the cab turned left, two more blocks, and right, and there was the hotel. Just on the other side of the street was a dealership for Aston Martin cars, looking as shiny as the diamonds in the window of Tiffany's in New York City. Clearly an upscale neighborhood. Though Dominic had been to London before, he hadn't stayed here. European hotels could teach lessons to any American establishment in terms of service and hospitality. Six more minutes had them in their connecting rooms. The bathtubs were large enough to exercise a shark, and the towels hung on a steam-heated rack. The minibar was generous in its selection, if not in its prices. Both twins took the time to shower. A check of the time made it a quarter to nine, and since Berkeley Square was only a hundred yards away, they took the moment to leave the hotel and head left for the landmark where nightingales sang.
Dominic elbowed his brother and pointed left. "Supposedly MI5 used to have a building that way, up Curzon Street. For the embassy, you go to the top of the hill, go left, two more blocks, then right, and left to Grosvenor Square. Ugly building, but that's the government for you. And our friend lives right about — there, on the other side of the park, half a block from the Westminster Bank. That's the one with the horse on the sign."
"Looks pricey here," Brian observed.
"Believe it," Dominic confirmed. "These houses go for a ton of money. Most of 'em are broken up into three apartments, but our friend Uda keeps the whole thing for himself, a Disneyland for sex and dissipation. Hmm," he observed, seeing a British Telecom van parked about twenty yards ahead of them. "I bet that's the surveillance team… kinda obvious." There were no people visible in the truck, but that was because the windows were plastic-treated to keep the light inside. It was the only inexpensive vehicle on the street — in this neighborhood, everything was at least a Jaguar. But the king of the hill, auto-wise, was the black Vanquish on the other side of the park.
"Damn, that's one bad-ass automobile," Brian observed. And indeed it looked as though it were doing a hundred miles per hour just sitting in front of the house.
"The real champ is the McLaren F1. Million bucks, but it only seats one up front, I think. Fast as a fighter plane. The one you're looking at is quarter-mil' worth of car, bro."
"Fuck…" Brian reacted. "That much?"
"They're handmade, Aldo, by guys who work on the Sistine Chapel in their off-hours. Yeah, it's a lot of wheels. Wish I could afford it. You could probably put the engine in a Spitfire and shoot down some Germans, y'know?"
"Probably gets lousy mileage," Brian observed.
"Oh, well…Everything has its little price — shit. There's our boy."
And just then the door to the house opened, and a young man walked out. The suit he wore was three-piece, and Johnny Reb gray in color. He stood in the middle of the four stone steps and looked at his watch. As though on cue, a black London cab came down the hill and he walked down the steps to hop in.
Five-ten, 155 to 160 pounds, Dominic thought. Black beard down the line of his jaw, like from a pirate movie. Sucker ought to wear a sword… but he doesn't.
"Younger than us," Brian observed, as they continued to walk. Then, on Dominic's initiative, they crossed over the park and headed back the other way, slowing for a covetous look at the Aston Martin before heading on their way. The hotel had a coffee shop, where they got some coffee and a light breakfast of croissants and marmalade.
"I don't like the
idea of having coverage on our bird," Brian said.
"Can't be helped. The Brits must think he's a little hinky, too. But he's just going to have a heart attack, remember. It's not like we're going to pop him, even with a suppressed weapon. No marks, no noise."
"Okay, fine, we check him out downtown, but if it doesn't look good we blow it off and step back to think it over, okay?"
"Agreed." Dominic nodded. They'd have to be clever about it. He'd probably take the lead, because it would be his job to spot the guy's police tail. But there was no sense in waiting too long, either. They'd looked at Berkeley Square just to get a feel for it, and hoping to eyeball the target. It would not be a good place to make a hit, not with a surveillance team camped out thirty yards away. "The good news is that his tail is supposed to be a rookie. If I can ID the guy, then, when I get ready, you just bump into him and — hell, I'll ask directions to something or other. You'll only need a second to make the pop. Then we both keep on going like nothing happened. Even if people yell for an ambulance, nothing more than a casual turn, and you keep on going."
Brian thought his way through that. "We have to check out the neighborhood first."
"Agreed." They finished breakfast without another word.
* * *
Sam Granger was already in his office. It was 3:15 A.M. when he got in and lit up his own computer. The twins had gotten to London at about 1:00 A.M. his time, and something in the back of his head told him that they would not dally on their mission. This first mission would validate — or not — The Campus's idea of a virtual office. If things went according to plan, he'd get notification of the operation's progress even faster than Rick Bell's news over the intelligence network's wire service. Now came the part he always knew he'd hate: waiting for others to effect the mission he'd drawn up in his own mind, here at his own desk. Coffee helped. A cigar would have helped even better, but he didn't have a cigar. That's when his door opened.
It was Gerry Hendley.
"You, too?" Sam asked, with both surprise and amusement.
Hendley smiled. "Well, first time, right? I couldn't sleep at home."
"I hear you. Got a deck of cards?" he wondered aloud.
"I wish." Hendley was actually pretty good with a deck of cards. "Any word from the twins?"
"Not a peep. They got in on time, probably at the hotel by now. I imagine they got in, freshened up, and went out for a look-see. The hotel is only a block or so from Uda's house. Hell, for all I know they might have popped him in the ass already. The timing's about right. He'd be going to work about now, if the locals have his routine figured out, and I think we can depend on that."
"Yeah, unless he got an unexpected call, or he saw something in the morning paper that caught his interest, or his favorite shirt wasn't properly pressed. Reality is analog, Sam, not digital, remember?"
"Don't we know it," Granger agreed.
* * *
The financial district looked exactly like what it was, though somewhat homier than New York's tower-targets of steel and glass. There were some of those, too, of course, but they weren't as oppressive. Half a block from where they got out of the cab was a portion of the original Roman wall that had surrounded the legion town of Londinium, as the British capital had originally been known, a place selected for its good wells and large river. The people here were mostly well dressed, they noticed, and the shops all upscale in a city where few things were low scale. The bustle factor was high, with crowds of people moving about with speed and purpose. There was also a good supply of pubs, most of which had chalkboards near the doors to advertise their food. The twins picked one in easy sight of the Lloyd's building; agreeably, it had outside tables, as though it were a Roman restaurant near the Spanish Steps. The clear sky belied London's wet reputation. Both twins were sufficiently well dressed not to appear too obviously to be American tourists. Brian spotted an ATM machine and got some cash, which he split with his brother, and then they ordered coffee — they were too American to get tea — and waited.
* * *
In his office, Sali was working on his computer. He had a chance to buy a town house in Belgravia — a neighborhood even more upscale than his own — for eight and a half million pounds, which wasn't quite a bargain, but neither was it excessive. Certainly he could rent it out for a good sum, and it was a freehold, meaning that in buying the house he'd also own the land, instead of paying ground rent to the Duke of Westminster. It wasn't excessive, either, but it did add up. He made a note to go look at it this week. Otherwise, the currency valuations were fairly stable. He'd played with currency arbitrage on and off for a few months, but he didn't really think he had the education to delve deeply into it. At least not yet. Maybe he would talk to a few people skilled in that game. Anything that could be done could also be learned, and with access to more than two hundred million pounds, he was able to play without doing his father's money too much damage. In fact, he was up this year by nine million pounds, which wasn't too bad. For the next hour, he sat at his computer and looked for trends — the trend is your friend — trying to make sense out of it. The real trick, he knew, was spotting them early — early enough to get in low before bailing out high — but, though he was closing in on it, he hadn't learned that particular skill yet. Had he done so, his trading account would have been up by thirty-one million pounds, instead of a mere nine. Patience, he thought, was a damnably hard virtue to acquire. How much better to be young and brilliant.
His office had a TV, too, of course, and he switched it to an American financial channel that spoke of a coming weakness in the pound against the dollar, though the reasons for it were not entirely convincing, and he thought better of buying thirty million dollars on speculation. His father had warned him about speculating before, and since it was his father's money he had listened attentively and granted the old bastard his wishes. Over the previous nineteen months, he was only down three million pounds, and most of those mistakes were a year behind him. The real-estate portfolio was doing very nicely. He was mostly buying property from older Englishmen and selling a few months later to his own countrymen, who usually paid cash or its electronic equivalent. All in all, he considered himself a real-estate speculator of great and growing talents. And, of course, a superb lover. It was approaching noon, and already his loins were aching for Rosalie. Might she be available this evening? For a thousand pounds, she ought to be, Uda thought. So, just before noon, he lifted his phone and hit the number 9 speed-dial button.
"My beloved Rosalie, this is Uda. If you can come over tonight, about seven-thirty, I will have something nice for you. You know my number, darling." And he set the phone down. He'd wait until four or so, and if she did not call him back, he'd call Mandy. It was a rare day indeed when both of them were unavailable. He preferred to believe they spent such time shopping or having dinner with friends. After all, who paid them better than he did? And he wanted to see Rosalie's face when she got the new shoes. English women really liked this Jimmy Choo fellow. To his eye, the designs looked grotesquely uncomfortable, but women were women, not men. For his fantasies, he drove his Aston Martin. Women preferred sore feet. There was no understanding them.
* * *
Brian got bored too easily to just sit and stare at the Lloyd's building. Besides, it hurt his eyes. It was more than undistinguished, it was positively grotesque, like a glassed-in DuPont plant for making nerve gas or some other noxious chemical. It was also probably bad field craft to stare at any one thing for any length of time. There was some shopping on this street, again none of it cheap. A men's tailor shop and similarly nice-looking places for women, and what appeared to be a very expensive shoe store. That was one item he didn't bother with much. He had good black leather dress shoes — he was wearing them now — a good pair of sneaks that he'd bought on a day best forgotten, and four pairs of combat boots, two black and two the buff color the Marine Corps was heading to, except for parades and other official stuff that did not often concern the snake-eati
ng Marines of Force Recon. All Marines were supposed to be "pretty" troops, but the snake-eating ones were thought to be from the side of the family that you didn't talk much about. And he was still coming to terms with the shoot-out of the previous week. Even the people he'd gone after in Afghanistan hadn't made any overt attempts to kill women and kids, at least that he knew about. They were barbarians, sure, but even barbarians were supposed to have limits. Except for the bunch of people that this guy played with. It wasn't manly — even the beard wasn't manly. The Afghans' were, but this guy just looked like some sort of pimp. He was, in short, unworthy of the Marine's steel, not a man to be killed, but a cockroach to be eliminated. Even if he did drive a car worth more than a Marine captain made in ten years, before taxes. A Marine officer might save up for a Chevy Corvette, but, no, this POS had to have the grandson of James Bond's car, to go along with the whores he rented. You could call him a lot of things, but "man" was definitely not among them, the Marine thought, subconsciously working himself up for the mission.
"Tallyho, Aldo," Dominic said, putting cash down on the table to cover the bill. Both stood and walked away from the target at first. At the corner, both stopped and turned as though looking around for something. There was Sali…
… and there was Sali's tail. Dressed as a working man, expensively. He'd also appeared out of a pub, Dominic saw. He was indeed a rookie. His eyes were too obviously fixed on the subject, though he did stay back, fifty yards or so, clearly unconcerned about being spotted by his target. Sali was probably not the most alert of subjects, unschooled in countersurveillance. He doubtless thought himself perfectly safe. Probably thought himself pretty clever, too. All men had their illusions. This one's would prove to be more serious than normal.
The brothers scanned the street. Hundreds of people were in direct view. Lots of cars moving on the street. Visibility was good — a little too good — but Sali was presenting himself to them as though it were deliberate, and it was just too good to pass up…