Assignment- London

by Craig A. Hart

  “You’re mad.”

  “I know you’re not just figuring that out now.”

  Before Burke could respond, the Velvet Glove returned. He was wiping his hands with a monogrammed handkerchief, which Burke felt was a bit preposterous, considering almost every other inch of him was drenched in blood.

  “Really, gentlemen. I expected to find these other two beans pulled from their pods by now. I must reiterate my oft posited opinion: Americans are just lazy.”

  “That’s the second time I’ve heard you make reference to Americans. It might interest you to know that we’re here on behalf of your mother, who is an American housekeeper. Kind of moves you under a similar heading, doesn’t it?”

  “Ugh. Americans are stupid as well. First, let me correct you. She is a housekeeper in America, but she is not an American housekeeper. She is British through-and-through. As am I. She has never told me much about the Mister Moorhead for whom she works, but I guarantee that whoever he is, his home is well kept.”

  Burke and Perry allowed themselves a quick glance at the mention of the name Moorhead, as opposed to Moore. Mrs. Fischer had obviously been careful over the years that she’d been in the chief’s employ not to reveal his real name. Perry, for his part, thought it a little dangerous to use an alias that was so similar to the actual name. Increased chance of misspeaking. But also, he supposed, it made for an easier recovery if one did say “Moore.” Just a slip of the tongue. Regardless, the thoughts of the two men quickly snapped back to the moment at hand as they watched the Velvet Glove deftly remove the head of the eviscerated unfortunate.

  “Just like a Brit to bitch about something he doesn’t like when he’s the cause of the problem,” Perry said, deciding to play along with and counter the Glove’s Anglocentric complaining.

  As he stood holding the severed head by its medium-length hair, the Velvet Glove wore a perplexed expression. “And how, might I ask, am I the cause of the problem?”

  “You’re the only one with a knife.”

  Now the man’s face changed slowly until he smiled in a way that seemed to let his refined façade shine through the blood with which it was currently colored.

  “Ah! You sting me with the truth. I retract my observation.” And with that, he threw the knife at Perry’s feet, where it penetrated the expensive carpet and dug into the hardwood beneath. With a chuckle, he headed down the hallway with his fresh trophy.

  Perry bent to take the knife.

  “Jesus Christ, Perry! What the hell!”

  Perry looked at his friend in a way that was comforting and frightening simultaneously. “There’s just something cathartic about taking a head,” he said. To Burke’s shock, Perry turned the knife and handed it hilt-first to Burke. “Give it a try.”

  “What in the hell is going on?” Burke demanded, taking a step away from his friend and holding both palms forward, as if to push him back still farther.

  “Lesson One. It’s time, just in this instance for the good guy to be bad.” He reached out with the knife again. For several seconds, Burke looked from Perry’s face to the knife, then back again.

  “You’re serious.”

  “As a heart attack.”

  Burke looked at the knife again, then, finally, took it. Now he looked down at his own hand holding the gore-encrusted blade. He walked to the man whose throat the Velvet Glove had stabbed after they had been noticed.

  When he looked yet again at his friend, Perry quietly said, “What if he was the one who sent Lyndsey over the cliff?”

  Of course Burke had not clearly seen any of the men who had attacked them in Ireland. And, really, it was probably very unlikely that the dead man had been involved at all. But what if? He knelt beside the body with a ferocity that caused Perry to smile; a sly, unobserved expression. In less time than Burke thought possible, he was holding a head in his hands. He looked at the pain-twisted face with its still-open eyes.

  “So, Sad-Hotshot has done the deed,” said the Velvet Glove. Burke’s attention had been so focused on removing the head of the man he’d allowed himself to imagine responsible for Lyndsey’s death that he hadn’t heard him return. As Burke looked at him now, he saw the man reach out and wait for him to transfer ownership.

  “I’d like to see where this goes,” Burke said, surprising both other men. “I’m going out on a limb here and I’m going to say… under your bed.”

  The statement immediately changed the expression on the Velvet Glove’s face to one of suspicion. “How could you know that?”

  Perry quickly spoke up. “Aha! There! You’ve tipped your cards, VG! He just laid the trap and you stepped right in.” He hoped his stage-bravado would be sufficient to convince the Velvet Glove that it was a lucky guess and not allow him to make the connection with the girls in Ireland, who, he assumed, would have been the only ones to know about the whole under-the-bed macabre collection.

  For an uncomfortably long time, the Velvet Glove said nothing. Finally, his shining teeth appeared from beneath the red mask. “‘VG.’ I’m normally not a fan of improperly addressing another, but I think I rather like that. Very well, then. Follow me.”

  He led them down the narrow hallway. As Burke walked behind the Glove, he still held the head, grasping it the same way as the newly christened VG had. As he moved, the head swayed with the motion of his arm, spattering blood in a reasonable facsimile of a sine curve on the wall. The Velvet Glove noticed and let go a melancholy sigh. “As much joy as killing brings me, it does make for a lot of work in the aftermath. Blood, especially in this quantity, is rather difficult to explain away when hosting a cocktail party.”

  “I know of a good forensic cleanup firm. Very discreet,” Perry said as he walked just behind Burke, noticing the blood and trying to avoid getting any on his clothes. “Remind me to give you their number.”

  “There’s probably no level of discretion that would make me feel comfortable outsourcing the job,” the Velvet Glove said, stopping next to a closed door. As he pushed it open, Burke and Perry detected a strong smell of burning sage. He noticed their expressions. “Ah, the scent. Yes, well, it wouldn’t do to allow the smell of rotting flesh to spoil the cocktail party, especially after going to all the trouble to clean up the blood. No, that wouldn’t do at all.”

  The room they entered was indeed a bedroom. The Velvet Glove knelt beside the four-posted brass bed and pulled up a dark blue dust ruffle to reveal a neatly arranged row of heads. Judging by the level of decomposition, Burke, who knelt beside him and peered under the frame, figured they were arranged from oldest to most recent, running left to right. It reminded him of a scene in the movie Young Frankenstein, and he laughed. Then he put the head he’d carried in to the extreme right of the line. The Velvet Glove nodded in approval.

  “Nicely done. In the correct position and with the correct spacing.” He let the ruffle fall into place once more and stood. Burke rose to his feet as well. Again there was a long moment of silence, during which Burke realized he had absolutely no idea of what should or would happen now. He looked to Perry for some indication of direction, but his friend seemed to be content just to go along for the ride at the moment.

  At last the lull was ended as the Velvet Glove said, “Well, gentlemen, it would appear that we have some things to discuss. Have either of you ever tried Boodles gin? It’s Britain’s best kept secret.”

  10

  Punctuality, our parents teach us, is a virtue. But for a criminal, especially one on Lyndsey Archer’s hit list, a fastidious nature could be harmful to one’s health, fatal even. She’d made up her mind the minute the Wolf had handed her the Velvet Glove’s dossier that the Glove was going to die resisting her efforts to recruit him. After their encounter in Ireland, there was no way she was going to deliver him to the Wolf. It would be like the meeting of two cyclones that merge and then veer straight towards populated landfall. Besides, her directive from Moore was to send a few low-level thugs the Wolf’s way while eliminating anyone who mig
ht actually be dangerous.

  She’d also learned from the dossier that the Velvet Glove had a habit, no matter where he was or what he was doing, of returning to his flat around one o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday. The file didn’t indicate why, merely that it was his routine. She could not have known that the Wolf’s previous two attempts at either recruiting or killing the man had also used this factoid but had only resulted in him missing his usual return to the flat.

  She knelt at the edge of the building directly across from his on Fashion Street. Once a dark passage filled with overcrowded doss houses during the days Jack the Ripper worked Whitechapel, it was now lined with attractive East End apartments and shops. A row of bicycle rentals lined the front of the Glove’s building, completing the charming picture that no doubt was a full one-eighty from the scene that would have greeted the man “from hell.”

  She’d gotten to the sniper’s nest a little later than she’d intended and hadn’t actually seen the Velvet Glove arrive home. Truth was, she didn’t even know if he had, though based on the file and her own experience of his disposition, she was sure he’d just gotten there before her. The optical scope of her M21 rifle was trained unwaveringly at the building’s only entrance.

  Her line of work often required this kind of patience, and it was not her strongest suit. Give her some close-quarters hand-to-hand combat over this stealthy shit any day. But on the other hand, she was sure she didn’t want to get too close to the Velvet Glove again. Considering the nature of their one and only prior meeting, she wasn’t really interested in a second face-to-face. He would die resisting from a distance of about sixty feet.

  As she sat silently, peering through the scope, her normal aversion to waiting became amplified by the unwanted thoughts running through her head. Seeing Burke and not running to him the other day had been murder. Moore had told her he was in London, and he’d given her strict orders not to make contact until she had eliminated the five names he’d given her… the five most dangerous criminals currently working in the UK. The Glove, having flown completely under everyone’s radar, was not on the list. But he was on the Wolf’s tally-sheet, and she knew that if Moore had known about him, he’d have been at the top of the kill ballot.

  The assignment was open-ended, so she had no idea how long it would take her to get through the names. So far, she’d taken out only one, and it was, in fact, her “audition kill” for the Wolf. The other part of Moore’s instructions had been to closely monitor his activities. There was solid intel that linked him with Zmaj, and that was a trophy Moore wanted for his man-cave wall, metaphorically speaking. Her acceptance by him, founded upon her killing a man in his presence (a task she might have found distasteful if the man hadn’t tried to kill her first), gained her access to the Wolf that she wouldn’t usually have enjoyed in such a short time.

  But none of this was reducing her angst. She only hoped she could complete this mission fast, and that she wouldn’t have to see Burke again before she was cleared to contact him.

  That hope was dashed approximately five seconds later as The Velvet Glove emerged from his building, along with Burke. To make matters worse, Perry Hall was with him. Lyndsey had known Perry since they were kids, and next to Burke, she probably cared more about him than anyone else in the world.

  None of this should have mattered. The Velvet Glove was even kind enough to pause for a moment to address the boys, giving her the perfect shot. Dropping him as he stood flanked by Burke and Perry would have been a breeze, and she had carefully planned her exit, so she would have been long gone before they could reach the rooftop where she hid.

  But she noticed something as she held the rifle steady on her target. The three men seemed to be conversing quite casually, as if they were on their way out for an afternoon cocktail. She lowered the gun. Knowing the two agents as well as she did, she could not imagine that they didn’t know who they were talking to. They came out of his apartment. Burke looked a little shell-shocked but seemed to be holding it more or less together. She assumed he probably looked like that most of the time these days. Surely “losing” her had to have been devastating.

  Perry, for his part, was laughing and joking around, almost in an over-the-top fashion. She knew he was doing much better since meeting Adabelle, but she had long suspected he might be somewhat bipolar, and feared he was exhibiting manic tendencies. Or maybe he was just being an asshole. That was always a possibility with Eagle.

  But the main thing she was thinking was they were probably working an angle. Maybe they, too, were thinking of eliminating him. That would be just fine with her.

  In any case, she wasn’t going to take the shot. Not today, anyway. She disassembled the rifle and returned it carefully to its carrier, which was not dissimilar to a rectangular guitar case.

  She considered tailing them, but the thought of being this close to Burke again was more than she was ready to handle. Instead, she decided to return to the tiny flat she was renting and have a stiff drink.

  The Velvet Glove had taken exactly five minutes to change his clothes, wash the blood from the parts of his body that had been painted with it, and returned to ask the fellows if they had a preference of pubs.

  “Anywhere except The Blind Beggar,” Burke replied. He and Perry, though far less saturated in hemoglobin than had been their host, had cleaned off their hands as well.

  “Ah, bad memories of our first meeting, perhaps? Yes? Really, I don’t know why you took it so badly when I informed James Burke I was going to kill him. If you know him at all, you know he’s a cad.”

  Burke, as shaken and disoriented as he was, had to smile. “Oh, I know him pretty well, and I can’t disagree with your assessment. I would still prefer you didn’t kill him, though.”

  “Well – ,” the Velvet Glove started, then paused as if considering his answer. “Let’s just delay a decision on that, pending the outcome of our chat. No pub suggestions, then, just refusals?”

  “How about the Good Samaritan?” asked Perry.

  The Velvet Glove smiled now. “Perhaps a portentously named establishment. We shall see, we shall see.” He eyed Perry approvingly. “I like the cut of your jib, Dapper.”

  “I’m reserving judgment on you, VG. But you’ve said some things that make sense, so let’s go have that drink.”

  “Very strong, well-thought-out decision. Even more so for a psychopath.”

  “Takes one to know one,” Perry shot back jovially.

  “Indeed. Indeed.” The Velvet Glove looked at the sky and thought he caught a glint of light from the roof of the building across the street, but when he focused on the area, he saw nothing. So he said, “It’s a lovely day, and it’s only a little over a kilometer to The Good Sam from here. Fancy a walk?” Without waiting for a reply, he began walking east at a brisk pace.

  Burke and Perry looked at one another, then fell in behind the stylish killer.

  11

  Adabelle Fox had not been idle since the boys had gone off to check on Mrs. Fischer’s son. First, she put in a call to her parents to let them know she was in London. As she touched her father’s name in her contacts, she thought about their gorgeous home on Mansfield Road in Oxford. Saying the house was not far from the campus of the world-famous university was not really necessary. Everything was close to the sprawling grounds. On an afternoon such as this, he’d be no doubt taking his tea on the lawn near his beloved greenhouse. She smiled at the thought of the glass addition, filled with exotic flora from around the world. It was a quest for a rare Turkish plant that had brought the Foxes to Istanbul just over thirty years before, where while waiting to for a colleague who would drive to an area in which the plant was known to grow, they had met a pregnant homeless woman who was in obvious advanced labor. Fortunately for the suffering woman, Adabelle’s mother, Lisa, was an obstetrician, and delivered the baby on the dirty street, before helping mother and new baby girl to hospital.

  One thing had led to another, and when the Foxes
flew back to England, it was with their newly adopted daughter, who Austin Fox had named Adabelle.

  “Hello, my baby girl,” came her father’s voice through the phone. She smiled.

  “Hello, Dad! I’m just calling to let you and Mum know I’m in London.”

  “Filthy place,” Austin replied.

  She laughed. “Yes, Dad. We all know how you feel about the city.”

  “Are you with Perry?”

  “Yes, and another friend from work.” Austin and Lisa believed that their daughter worked for a brokerage firm in New York since moving there to be with Perry (who they had yet to meet).

  “Business trip, then?”

  “Of sorts. Doing a little financial research.”

  “Spying, then!” came her father’s laughing reply.

  Adabelle’s laugh joined his, only hers was tinted with a heavy dose of irony. “Yes, spying. That’s it, Dad. How’s your day going?”

  “Lovely. Lovely. Sitting outside, watching a couple of my students playing tennis on the lawn court. Let’s hope they make better botanists than tennis players. It’s painful to look upon.”

  “What’s Mum up to?”

  “What is she always up to? Helping bring a baby into the world. One of her patients called earlier this morning. Well, her husband called, I should say. I swear, these women should call themselves when they’re in labor. Even in the midst of their trauma, they’re always more clear-minded than the hubby. Especially with the first child, which was the case today. Sadly, I took the call, as Mummy was in the shower at the time. The chap was out of his mind.”

  “Oh dear. And you don’t do well with hysterics,” the beautiful agent replied.

  “No. Plants rarely behave badly.”

  “Indeed. Well, I hope we will have time to make the trip. I’d love to see you.”

  “I miss you very much, darling,” her father said. “And I would love to meet the mysterious Mr. Hall. His parents’ fame and unfortunate end are very well known.”