November Rain

by Donald Harstad

  She felt like wrapping herself up in a blanket, curling up on her bed, and crying herself to sleep. It was just that there was neither the time nor the opportunity for that.

  A Small Hunting Cabin Near Bothel

  The Lake District, NW England

  02:30

  Robert Northwood, in blissful ignorance of everything that had happened since he last saw Emma alive, well and irritable; took a last sip of brandy, and prepared to retire. He had reached several decisions regarding his approach to Emma, and had managed to convince himself that he was, in fact, about to regain control of himself, his fate, and the little group of kidnappers. He always managed to feel better after a little time alone, in which to reflect on his superiority.

  He planned to call his Department on Monday, tell them he was feeling under the weather, and couldn’t make classes on Tuesday. That meant that he didn’t have to return to London until Wednesday, the 19th. He’d decided on the approach for Emma.

  It had been his experience that, the more time he spent trying to convince a woman of anything, the less likely they were to agree with him. His plan, therefore, was to sweep into the flat where Emma was being held; pretend he was there secretly, and free her before anyone could stop them. He’d briefly considered staging some sort of fight with Hamza and Anton, but had discarded that. He thought he could trust Hamza not to get carried away, but had severe doubts about Anton. He’d just have to contact them Wednesday, tell them to stage an absence, and go rescue her at that point. He thought he’d take her to his flat, where he could offer her a shower and a good sleep before she and he went to the police. He could see no way that she could turn that down, after his rescuing her. Seduction, as he referred to it, would follow naturally. It had also been his experience that, even if they regretted it, after a young woman had slept with him once, she would very likely consent to repeat the adventure at least two or three times. He’d talked with his sister about that this very evening, although she had what he thought to be an opinion that was skewed by their relationship.

  “The first times for adventure, Bobby dear,” she said, “and the next few times she’s simply attempting to convince herself that she hasn’t been the fool.”

  Regardless whether his sister was right or not, that meant a good two or three days before Emma would make any serious attempt to break off the relationship. With the blandishments he had in mind, he felt certain that he could persuade Emma to go along with the scheme. He was at his best during times like those.

  At about this time, back at Hanadi’s flat, Anton was being beaten nearly senseless.

  Chapter 22

  Monday, November 17, 2003

  Heathrow Airport, London

  09:25 Greenwich Mean Time

  I met Sue by the currency exchange, just at the exit from the American Airlines baggage recovery area. I saw her first, pushing a cart with her three bags, and looking very lost.

  I was holding a large piece of white card stock I’d gotten from Vicky, and had carefully printed SUE on it in big black letters. She saw it, and waived.

  I gave her a huge hug.

  “By God, it’s good to see you!”

  “Why are you here? Where’s Jane?”

  “She gets out of the hospital later today, Vicky’s with her. She’s just fine!”

  “Well, it’s good to see you, too . . . did you rent a car?”

  “Cab,” I said. “Faster.” It was the reference to speed that prevented any questions regarding cost. If you’ve been married as long as we have, you just do that automatically. As we hustled toward the cab, me pushing the luggage cart, I said, “Where do you want to stay? With me at the hotel, or with Jane at her place?” It was pretty well rhetorical.

  “Why, with Jane. Besides, isn’t the County Attorney staying with you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then where would he stay? Surely not with Jane and Vicky!?”

  “We would have worked something out,” I said.

  “We’ll just go right to Highgate, then,” I said, as a driver approached.

  On the way, Sue sort of alternated with worry and wonder. I think she would have been totally overwhelmed with being in London, if it hadn’t been for her concern for Jane.

  “How did this happen?” That was one of her first questions, and the underlying theme of the next ten or so. I tried to explain, but it was pretty difficult. Act of God didn’t quite cover it, nor did coincidence, or bad luck, or anything else that came to mind. At the root of it all, at least for us, was the fact that I had not only allowed Jane to go into what turned out to be an unsafe location, I had actually been there at the time.

  I couldn’t very well explain that my guard was down because I knew that Emma was dead, and therefore hadn’t any concern at all that we’d find her or her kidnappers. That, at least, was the explanation I’d come up with for myself.

  We were in the midst of my stumbling my way through the possible explanations when my cell phone rang. Saved by the bell cannot be overused.

  “Houseman,” I said.

  It was Blyth. “I hate to interrupt your meeting your wife,” he said. That kind of surprised me, because I didn’t know that he knew that Jane was coming.

  “That’s okay. What’s up?”

  “We’re going to have to talk with you for a bit, as soon as possible. Something, oh, questionable has come up. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

  “Sure. Hang on a sec . . . how soon do you need to do this?”

  “As soon as possible. It may be important, it may not. One of those irritating situations.”

  “Sure. Ah, my wife, Sue, and I are headed to Highgate, to drop her luggage at Jane’s apartment. Then we plan to go to St. Thomas’. About an hour?”

  “Very good. Alice is at St. Thomas’ even as we speak,” he said. “She’s interviewing, ah, Vicky. And Mr. Hilgenberg, the prosecutor. And your daughter, if she’s up to it.”

  “Oh?” I thought Jane would be up to it, all things considered, but I also thought it had better be very important for her to be bothered right now. “What’s the problem?”

  “Not a secure line,” he said. “Alice will tell you when you get there. Just information we need, nothing sinister or dicey. Be assured.”

  We got to Jane’s apartment, dropped off Sue’s luggage, took a moment for her to use the facilities, and started walking to the tube station.

  “This is a very pretty place,” she said. “This is part of London?”

  “Yep. Depending on who you ask.”

  “I think I’d paint that wall behind the sofa a softer color,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The wall behind the sofa. Just as you leave Jane’s.”

  “What color is it now?” The things a trained eye can notice.

  “Blue,” she said.

  We were headed down Southwood Lane, just before we began descending toward the main road. “Look over there . . . what’s that?”

  “Downtown,” I said. “The London you read about.”

  My phone rang again. It was Carson.

  “Houseman. . . .”

  “It’s me,” he said. “I just got out of an interview with the important people.” That would have been MI5, I thought.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you know that the two little bastards in the tube station were involved with this professor and the kidnapping?”

  “What?” I took a deep breath. “What?”

  “You bettcha.”

  “They told you that?”

  “Not in so many words, but they’re asking if we told anybody we were going down there. Anybody who could have tipped somebody else off is the unsaid question. But that means that it was no accident, doesn’t it?”

  It sure sounded like it to me. “We ought to be there in forty-five minutes,” I said.

  “Good. They’re talking with Vicky right now, and then they want to talk to Jane.”

  “She up to it?”

  “Well, she’s
dressed, and walked down to the coffee shop with us a while ago. I think so. Yes, I think she is.”

  “Excellent. I’ll tell Sue how she is.”

  I terminated the call, and did exactly that.

  “She’s walking?”

  “Sure. It wasn’t anything that would prevent that, once they got her stitched up. Carson says she’s doing fine.” I could see that, fine or not, Jane was in for some great mothering.

  “When will she be released?”

  I’d forgotten to ask. Just like me. “Carson didn’t say,” I said. That was true, and avoided nicely the fact that I hadn’t asked, or so I thought.

  “I didn’t hear you ask,” said Sue, as we started down Archway Road toward the tube entrance. “Isn’t this lovely?”

  “Yeah. Ah, when we get there, there will probably be a couple of British officers there, they’re asking questions about the incident.”

  “Still?”

  “Well, yeah. I think there might have been a development. You know, additional evidence, did we see notice anyone else lurking in the shadows, or something of that sort.”

  “Lurking in the shadows?”

  “Oh, you know. Just details. I was just joking about the lurkers.”

  “Yes.” We started down the exterior steps to the tube entrance. “Oh, this is just lovely.” She looked up. “I didn’t bring my umbrella. . . .”

  “Don’t worry. Clouds or not, it hasn’t rained once since we’ve been here. I don’t even carry mine anymore.”

  We got off at Westminster. That way we had to cross the bridge, and she’d get to see Parliament and Big Ben across the street from the station. I didn’t tell her why we were going to be getting off there.

  When we got to the surface, it was noon. Inadvertent but perfect timing, and she could hear Big Ben tolling the hour as we stepped out of the glass doors.

  “Oh, my God!” She sounded pleased.

  “Really cool, isn’t it?”

  “It’s gorgeous.” She glanced around. “But I certainly hope we don’t have to walk far. . . .”

  Wouldn’t you know? It was raining. Not hard, but it was enough to make us hurry across the bridge, and miss lots of scenery. On our left as we hustled to the bridge, was the statue of Queen Boadicea and her chariot, and I said to Sue, “Remind me to tell you about Alice.”

  “Alice?” asked Sue, from under her jacket that was being used as a substitute umbrella.

  “The closest thing to Mrs. Peel I’ve ever run across,” I said. “She’s sort of assigned to us, and she’s great.”

  When we got to the hospital, we met Jane, Vicky, Carson and Alice, who were waiting for us in the lobby.

  After much hugging and tearing up between Sue, Jane and Vicky, with Alice looking like she could join in at any time, they finally got around to telling me that Jane had checked out, and they were waiting for us to get there before they went back to Highgate.

  When Sue was introduced to Alice, Jane said, “And this is the one who clobbered the guy who stabbed me. . . .”

  Sue told her how grateful we all were, and Alice said, “Well, as it turns out, it doesn’t appear that the one I got was the one who struck you. His knife didn’t have any blood on it at all. We think that it was the one that Mr. Houseman struck, who was the real culprit.”

  “Really?” I have to admit, I felt pretty good about that.

  “Indeed. That’s one of the things we’ll be talking about. But, some lunch first?”

  Bless Alice. We took a cab. Due to the rain.

  Highgate

  15:26 Greenwich Mean Time

  We all got back to Highgate at about 3:30, and while Jane protested, Sue got her to put on her sweats, grab a comforter, curl up on the couch, and drink a cup of cocoa while Sue started making macaroni and cheese. We turned on the TV, half expecting to see something about Jane being stabbed. Nothing, strangely enough. I think that might have been because two things were taking up most of the news space: the US Presidential visit and the attendant controversy over Iraq, and the fact that England had beaten France in the semifinals of the World Rugby Championships. England had never won the World Cup, and they’d just made it to the final game. They were scheduled to be playing the Australian team in Sydney, Australia, for the championship on Saturday. As far as I could tell, the rugby folks were slightly ahead of the political pundits.

  “You know,” I said, “I’ve never seen a rugby game.”

  “Match,” said Alice.

  “Okay, match. Never seen one.”

  “You shall have to remedy that,” she said. “Watch Saturday night. It’s quite exciting.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said.

  “Well, while you wait,” said Alice, “I do need to interview you.”

  “Did you mention our trip to the Down Street station to anyone, before we actually went?”

  I thought back, and got the answer I would have expected. “Nope.”

  She sighed. “Neither did anyone else, it seems.”

  “This is bad?”

  She glanced at the rest of the room, who were paying very little attention to the two of us. “Remember our conversation about coincidences? At the hospital?”

  “Sure.”

  “As it turns out, this very likely was one.”

  “You lost me,” I said.

  “Both suspects not only know Professor Northwood,” she said, softly, “they’re members of the group who took Emma.”

  “How in hell . . . ?”

  “The little fellow we’ve got said they were; a search of his flat in Chiswick revealed that it was the place we’ve been looking for. There was, ah, evidence present. Of the political things, as well.”

  “Well, Jesus Christ,” I said. I said it softly, but the dropping of the name got everybody’s attention.

  “What?” asked Jane.

  I looked at Alice, praying that she’d field that one.

  “It begins to appear,” she said, “that the two men in the Underground were, in fact, associated with Emma’s disappearance.”

  Jane said, “Yes!” and immediately started to tear up again. So did Vicky.

  “I’m not at liberty to provide the specifics,” said Alice. “But they do seem to have been involved.”

  As everybody started talking at once, I leaned closer to Alice, and whispered, “You gonna tell ’em?”

  She shook her head. “I’d best call the boss,” she said. “He may have the time to stop by. . . .”

  Outside, the rain had stopped. Now that we were all inside for a while.

  Since Sue had gotten Jane so comfortable, we did take-out, or take-away, from Zizi about 6:30. Alice and I went to pick it up, or take it away. I just love the language differences.

  Anyway, we were alone as we walked over.

  “Explain to me again how this could have happened.”

  “The connection between the parties?”

  “That’d be it,” I said.

  “I’m not completely sure, but it seems that our dear Professor Northwood took many, many people on his little tours of the Underground. I don’t think it was for the specific purpose of using the place for terrorist purposes, though. Just a fascination with the whole idea of abandoned tube stations.”

  “There isn’t such a thing as a true coincidence, is there?” I asked.

  “Apparently not in this case,” said Alice.

  I sighed. “What else have you got on these people?”

  “Oh, we’ve got his cell phone, his laptop, his video recordings that they didn’t use . . . everything we could want.”

  “Fantastic,” I said. “That’s great.” It came out as sincerely as I could make it.

  “By the way, the creepy one you knocked over is named Anton, as far as we can determine. Do you think you could identify him? We’re looking for him now. As well as others.”

  “No doubt,” I said. “How many others?”

  “As far as I’ve had time to discover, several. It does appear that there wer
e at least two main players above Professor Northwood. One in the group, and one rather . . . separate, shall we say.”

  “How close are you?” I asked.

  “Special Branch will have more information on that. I’ve not seen the material, just been told that we’ve got it. So it’s a best guess.”

  “Good enough,” I said. “I hope to God that Blyth will tell everybody that Emma’s dead.”

  “Likely not just yet,” she said. “To the best of my information, we have as yet not received the next tape.”

  “I thought you said you had. . . .”

  “The attempts, I think. They did many takes, apparently. They don’t appear to have been able to edit much at all.”

  We had stopped in the little park called Pond Square Garden, facing each other and thereby clearing each other’s back of possible eavesdroppers. “There are explosives involved here,” said Alice. “Quite a bit of them, in fact.”

  “No shit? At his apartment?”

  “No. Elsewhere,” she said. “Can’t really say right now, you know.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But with your president arriving soon, we absolutely cannot afford to take chances.”

  That had, I’m sorry to say, completely left my mind. “Oh, yeah. Sure. I mean, hell, yes.” It would be an underlying worry for the British Security Service right now. “But, you really think the business with Emma has something to do with Bush?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “I know I’m way out of my league, here, but . . . well, I just can’t for the life of me see how that would be.”

  “I’m not so certain we can, either,” she said. “But that wouldn’t make it any the less embarrassing if something were to happen and we’d missed the connection.” She smiled again. “You and I shall just worry about the things directly effecting Emma, and now Jane. Agreed?”

  “Works for me,” I said, and we resumed walking. “Do you think they’re at risk?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Hanadi’s Flat

  Near Tower Bridge, South Bank

  London, UK

  19:26

  Anton awoke to find himself propped up on Hanadi’s couch. His first realization was that he was breathing through his mouth. He wrinkled his nose, and felt the blood clots in both nostrils. The taste in his mouth was bad, his throat was uncomfortably dry, and he was able to open only one eye.