One Fell Swoop

by David Linzee

  “Holy shit!” muttered Peter.

  Mavalankar was back in his Bentley and the doors slammed after the security detail. The cars’ flashers went off and they moved slowly away. Reeve’s intense blue eyes followed them. He did not notice Peter approaching until he was standing squarely in front of him.

  “Pete,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  * * *

  Renata emerged from the building to find Peter with a haggard, wild-eyed street person who looked as if he was going to fall if Peter did not hold him up. Peter himself was in poor shape to support anyone. His cane was trembling under the weight. She rushed over to take the man’s left arm, which was his only one. She realized he did not smell of filth and urine. He was not a street person. “What’s going on? Who is this?”

  “Oh … you’ve never met. This is Philip G. Reeve, former chancellor of Adams University.”

  Reeve did not react to his name. He was shivering, his arm shaking in her grip. He seemed unaware of the woman who was supporting him. He continued to stare fixedly down the Strand.

  “He’s ill,” she said. “Fever or something.”

  “I don’t think so. I think it’s dehydration and hypothermia.”

  “Hypothermia?”

  “I think he was standing outside Mavalankar’s building for hours. When he saw the limo and chase car, he followed them here.”

  “He’s been stalking Mavalankar?”

  Peter nodded. He said, “Chancellor?”

  No reaction. He leaned closer and spoke louder. “Chancellor?”

  Reeve’s brows drew together and his forehead corrugated. “Call me Phil.”

  “How long since you’ve had anything to eat or drink, Phil?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “Let’s get you inside.”

  There was a Burger King over the road, which seemed like the right place to take an American in sore distress. It was the mid-afternoon lull, and the staff behind the counter had leisure to eye Peter and Reeve suspiciously as they hobbled past. To distract them, Renata went up and ordered food and drink.

  She found them downstairs, sitting at a quiet corner table. Peter was beside Reeve on a red vinyl banquette. Reeve’s head was resting on his shoulder. His eyes were closed, his mouth open, a line of drool running down his chin. Renata set the laden tray on the table and sat on his other side.

  “He just dropped off. I don’t think he’s slept in a long time,” Peter said. “Do me a favor and pat his jacket pocket.”

  Reeve was wearing an unseasonable golf jacket; she remembered he had last been heard of at his vacation home in Pensacola. She felt the hip pocket. There was something L-shaped and hard-edged in it. “I think it’s a pistol.”

  Peter nodded. “He was trying to get a clear shot at Mavalankar.”

  “My God. How did he even manage to get hold of a handgun in London?”

  “He was a captain in the U.S. Army. Survived one and a half tours in Baghdad before the IED got him. Getting hold of a gun wouldn’t be beyond him.”

  “What are we going to do with him?”

  “I don’t know, Renata. Tell me about Mavalankar.”

  She recounted their talk. At one point Reeve stirred, but only to fold his arm on the table and lay his head on it. Renata unfolded the paper Mavalankar had given her. “These are the instructions. He wouldn’t negotiate. The time is nine tonight. I’m sure he’ll kill Don if we don’t show up.”

  “He’ll kill you too if you do.”

  It was Reeve who had spoken. He straightened up. He must have been awake and listening for a while, but his eyes were still closed. He opened them and looked at the tray. Hesitantly he picked up a paper cup of water and took a sip. Then he gulped down the rest of the cup, Adam’s apple bobbing and water running from the corners of his mouth. He set the cup down and said, “People who can make trouble for Mavalankar disappear.”

  “He’s right,” Peter said.

  “I can’t leave Don to die.”

  “If you’re going, take me with you,” Reeve said.

  They both stared at him. He took the paper from Renata’s hand and read the instructions. “What’s the M 25?”

  “The London ring road.”

  “So you’re meeting in an empty field off a highway in the dark. You’ll have a better chance of surviving if I’m with you.”

  “Uh … Phil?” Peter said. “Are you expecting Mavalankar to be there? Hoping for a shot at him?”

  Reeve did not reply.

  “We know about the gun,” Renata said.

  Reeve slumped against the back of his seat. “Yeah, you’re right. Mavalankar won’t be there. It’ll be just the goondahs.”

  “We’re not going to this rendezvous. But we do want your help,” Peter said. Renata looked at him, puzzled. He had another idea, but she couldn’t imagine what it was. He went on, “What we need is another venue for this meeting. A survivable one.”

  “Mavalankar won’t negotiate,” she said.

  “Not with us,” Peter said. “We need someone he will negotiate with. Someone he respects.”

  “You mean Sheikh Abdullah?” she asked.

  “He’s back in London by now,” Peter said.

  “Not exactly,” Reeve said. “He’ll be at his country estate.”

  “You know where it is? Good.”

  “It’s a long drive. And I don’t want to see Abdullah again.” He shook his head wearily. “We argued about who would build the Kutar Campus for months. He kept saying it had to be Mavalankar. They’ve been friends all their lives. Mavalankar named a son for Abdullah’s father and Abdullah has set aside a three-year-old niece to marry Mavalankar’s five-year-old nephew. Their falcons have hunted together. They have a bond we shallow Westerners can’t understand. Abdullah kept giving me that crap. And I kept saying, Adams University cannot sign a contract with a man of Mavalankar’s reputation. I thought I had him convinced. He knew what the campus could do for his people. Obviously Mavalankar insisted and Abdullah was weaker than I thought. I’m disappointed in him.”

  Renata said, “Mavalankar said the same about you.”

  “What?”

  “That he was disappointed in you. He thought that once he had you trapped, you’d be able to make your faculty and the media accept him.”

  Something flared in Reeve’s eyes and died down. “He said that. How interesting.”

  She turned in her seat so that she was facing him squarely. “Chancellor—”

  “Phil.”

  “Please help us. You can get the sheikh on our side.”

  “I don’t know about that. I’m tired. I haven’t got much left.”

  “You’re our only hope.”

  “Ms. Radleigh, I don’t give a flying fuck what happens to your brother.”

  “If you don’t help us,” Peter said, “Renata will go to that rendezvous. And I’ll have to go with her. Will you stand by and let that happen? Wouldn’t you rather have us alive and making trouble for Mavalankar?”

  “What are you gonna do, Pete? Write a nasty article about him? There have been plenty of nasty articles, and they haven’t done him any harm.”

  “It beats standing around outside his office building, hoping to get a shot at him.”

  Reeve sighed, sat up, and pulled the tray over. “I haven’t had a Whopper in twenty years. Smells good.” He unwrapped the paper, took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. It took three more bites before he made up his mind. “Okay. Maybe I can get Abdullah on our side. He owes me one.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  At nightfall they were driving along a quiet road in Wiltshire. They had four hours left to persuade the sheikh to arrange a new rendezvous with Mavalankar. Renata had retrieved Don’s statement from the safe deposit box. Reeve had advised her that an expensive car would help them get past security, so she had hired an Audi sedan. Having two arms and being used to driving on the left, she was at the wheel, Reeve beside her and Peter in back. It began to ra
in, and she switched on the windshield wipers.

  She glanced over at Reeve. In the light from the dashboard she could see that he was awake. The Whopper and a coffee had revived him. He’d stopped shivering and some color had returned to his angular face. He had washed up in the Burger King men’s room, but was still wearing the clothes he’d left Pensacola in. The gun, she presumed, remained in his jacket pocket.

  She put out a hand to the heater controls. “Warm enough?”

  “I’m fine. You know, Renata? You seem like a decent person. Your brother isn’t worth your trouble.”

  “They lied to him too. He didn’t know what he was getting into until it was too late.”

  “He didn’t want to know. His eye was on the payoff. Mavalankar has used and discarded his type by the dozen. But I’ll grant you this much. That night, when he told me how they’d tricked me, he was plenty scared.”

  “Told you that you’d bought Parkdale from Mavalankar, not the sheikh, you mean.”

  “Yes. I knew right away they had me. No point resisting giving the contract for the Kutar Campus to Mavalankar anymore. Buying Parkdale from him was enough to put me in the shit with holier-than-thou professors and editorial writers. I would just have to shove Mavalankar down their throats. I was awake all that night. Thinking of how and when I would make the announcements, calculating the news cycles, figuring what questions I’d be asked and what answers I would give. And by the time the sun came up, I thought I could move ahead with the Kutar Campus and keep my job. A few hours later, fucking Professor Baraku gets up in front of the TV cameras and rips the lid off my secret plan—the Medical Park. It sure was a secret to me.”

  “Baraku undermined your credibility when you needed it most,” said Peter from the back seat. “You gave up.”

  “I forgot. You saw me that day. It makes me ashamed to remember that. All those months I was in the hospital, after Iraq, I used to promise myself: I will never say that I’m helpless. That I have only one arm and I just can’t do it, whatever ‘it’ is. But after the Med Park bombshell, I was helpless. Unable to put up the fight everyone was expecting of me. Disappointing Roger and all my other supporters, people who put their hopes and trust on me. And I couldn’t even tell them why. You have no idea what it was like.”

  “No,” said Renata. “No one puts their hopes and trust on us. We’re peons.”

  Reeve laughed dryly. “All right. I deserve that. I’ve been marinating in self-pity for the last couple of days.”

  “How did you manage to slip away from Pensacola?” Peter asked.

  “Who’d stop me? I was free as a bird. The only people who were interested in talking to me were reporters wanting me to write my own epitaph and save them the trouble. My ex sent me a consoling text message. We get along best when we don’t talk. And my sons called. But they’re both in the service, deployed overseas. They couldn’t come running. So there I was, alone, except for the servants in my house by the sea. You get used to having a schedule. Aides rushing you around. I couldn’t stand the empty time. The silence. It was like being in a vacuum. I thought I was gonna explode. Had to go somewhere, do something.” He peered through the side window. They were driving along a twelve-foot-tall iron fence, with video cameras at intervals. “This is Abdullah’s property.”

  Renata slowed down.

  “No, don’t slow down yet. It’s a long way to the gatehouse.”

  They drove on. Finally the gates came into view. The golden heraldic adornments of whatever long-dead lord had built the estate flashed in the headlights as she turned in. A powerful overhead light illuminated the car and a CCTV on a pole pivoted to focus on it. There was an intercom speaker outside her window.

  “ ‘Some work of noble note may yet be done.’ ” Reeve said.

  “Sorry?”

  “It’s what my driver said last time I visited, and the gates opened.”

  “It’s Tennyson,” Peter said.

  “Figures. The sheikh went to Eton.”

  She lowered the window and leaned out. Raindrops flicked her face. The speaker snarled something indecipherable. She said, “ ‘Some work of noble note may yet be done.’ ”

  The old gates had been fitted with new motors: they swung smoothly inward. Floodlights came on as two men emerged from the gatehouse. They were uniformed and armed. Reeve lowered his window. “Evening, gentlemen.”

  The nearer guard bent down for a closer look. “Chancellor?”

  “It’s Tobin, right?”

  “Tubman, sir. We weren’t expecting you.”

  “They should have called. I’m sorry about that, Tubman.”

  “It’s all right, sir. But I’ll have to check with the house.”

  “Oh.” The note of surprise and displeasure in his voice was not strong, but the young guard flinched. Reeve still had authority. “Tell you what. Let us through, then call the house. You’ll have the okay by the time we get there.”

  The guard looked at his mate, who said, “Sorry, chancellor, but you’re not on the list, and—”

  Reeve waved the men closer. In a lower voice he said, “My driver has to—what do you say?—spend a penny. She’s been complaining the last five miles. We can’t wait.”

  The guards grinned. Reeve sat back and said, “Drive.”

  She put her foot down and the rear tires spat gravel. Outside the floodlit area, it was pitch black. She switched on the high beams. “Aren’t you the clever one?”

  “I apologize. Encouraging the men in their sexist attitudes is regrettable.”

  His voice was stronger and more relaxed. Acting like the chancellor for a moment had raised his spirits. They followed a winding, up-and-down road, crossing a short but ornate bridge with marble gods and goddesses standing on the balustrades. Eventually the house came into view. Floodlights illuminated the sweep of drive before the steps, lofty columns, and noble pediment. It was late eighteenth-century, Renata judged. There was a good deal more of it hulking behind in darkness and mist. The men at the gate had alerted the house. Several guards were standing on the steps, watching them approach.

  “It looks like they’re getting set to repel boarders,” said Peter.

  “I can hop from foot to foot, if that will help,” said Renata.

  “We’re in,” said Reeve, with serene self-confidence. “They’re not going to stop us now.”

  Sheikh Abdullah, without his ghutrah, was revealed as having long gray hair, thinning on top. His thick, drooping moustache and the spike of beard that hung from his chin were gray, too. His skin was surprisingly pale, better suited to England than his desert land. He wore aviator glasses with thick lenses. He had broad, rounded shoulders and an ample gut that rested atop his thighs as he sat with his legs folded on a chair that had been specially made to fit that posture, with a wide, deep seat. His calves and knees lay flat on the seat, an impressive display of limberness in a man of his age. He was dressed like a country gentleman, in tan moleskin trousers and a green cashmere cardigan. He had the plummiest upper-class accent Renata had ever heard outside a theater.

  They were seated in a modern addition off the kitchen wing. They had reached it through long, dim, drafty corridors. But this room was as cozy as central heating and double-glazing could make it, and she suspected that the sheikh spent most of his winter nights, when not entertaining, in here. The rain-spattered windows gave views of the long rows of pedimented windows at the back of the great house.

  Contrary to what she had heard about Arab hospitality, the sheikh had neither invited them to sit nor ordered refreshments. He waved away Reeve’s attempt to introduce Peter and Renata. His guards were waiting in the corridor to eject them.

  “I’m not interested in the details,” the sheikh said, not for the first time. “I will not interfere in any negotiations between Anand Mavalankar and these people.”

  The former chancellor was smiling pleasantly. He moved to a chair facing the sheikh and sat down. “You’ll recall that once when you were singing your frien
d’s praises, I got you to concede that sometimes his goondahs went too far. It’s about to happen again.”

  The sheikh straightened up and brushed back his moustache with his index finger. “I will not betray Anand. Our fathers were friends before us and our children will be friends. You in the West—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Materialistic people like us can’t begin to understand the nobility of a friendship like yours with the filthy fucker. How many times did I have to listen to that? I hope you don’t believe in that bullshit, because Mavalankar doesn’t. You and he have made big deals together. His construction company, your connections and investment capital. Malls and hotels all over the Middle East. You’ve both done well out of them. If you hadn’t made money together, it wouldn’t matter how many times your families have gathered round the same table for Eid-al-Fitr. He’s using you for what he can get out of you. Like the contract to build the Kutar Campus. He’s cost your country a great university.”

  “We will find another American university to partner with.”

  “No, you won’t. Not after what happened to me. You’ve never been able to grasp the concept of getting fired, Abdullah. Americans are afraid of that. On every campus in the country they’re talking about the fall of Philip Reeve. No university president will so much as take a call from you.”

  The tired-looking eyes behind the thick lenses regarded Reeve for a while. “I regret the loss of the Adams partnership. I’m sorry for what happened to you, Phil.”

  “Something similar can happen to you. Don’t kid yourself. You’re a guest in this country. An honored guest, but that can change, if you allow Mavalankar’s men to commit more murders.”

  Reeve flung out his arm toward Renata and Peter. “You need to know who these people are. Renata Radleigh, a well-known opera singer. And Peter Lombardo, one of my men at Adams U. People like them can’t be made to disappear.”

  Renata and Peter exchanged an arch glance. They were coming up in the world.

  Reeve went on, “Mavalankar hasn’t bought as many politicians in England as he did in India. There will be repercussions. And they will reach you.”