by A. M. Murray
He soaked up the look and feel of the building, picturing the palace in bygone eras with its collections of valuable art and sculptures and a rich background of intrigue and deadly power brokering. He paid scant attention to the crowd, wandering through designer exhibitions in rooms fitted out with furniture he thought should be displayed in galleries rather than sold in shops for practical use.
They made their way to a trendy café-bar inside Somerset House to wait for Isa. Slade ordered a beer and Roche a red wine from Burgundy. They drank and took in their surroundings, though the contrast between the bar’s contemporary interior of stone and timber and the eighteenth-century Georgian grandeur of Somerset House disappointed Slade.
The two men exchanged amused looks when fragments of conversation from the champagne-charged crowd drifted their way. They overheard fashion experts deconstruct outfits seen in the last runway show and discuss the details and craftsmanship of each piece. There was talk about fluid styles, juxtapositioning of contrasting colors, textures and fabrics, structured lines, reinterpreted feminism, liquid silks, effortless designs, and other patois of a world they knew nothing about.
Slade and Roche looked at the tired clothes they’d worn since leaving Tokyo and felt an extreme disconnect with the milieu of bespoke-suited celebrities and wealthy women here to custom-order the latest outfits from their favorite designers. Added to this mix were fashion reporters, self-styled experts researching trends to fuel their fashion blogs, and the rest of the glitterati.
Slade settled back in his chair and felt his cell phone signal the arrival of an email. He saw Fontaine’s report and started to read, but had trouble concentrating. He stood up to order another beer and caught sight of a man slipping out of the café. In the crowded room, he only glimpsed the back of the man’s head and shoulders, yet he looked familiar. His build and short hair brought the Aculeus goons, Maine and Fox, to mind. Slade shifted his position to get a better look, but the man disappeared. With Maine’s current whereabouts unknown, Slade felt uneasy but dismissed the notion of one of these men being at London Fashion Week as farfetched.
“What’s up?” asked Roche.
“Probably nothing.” Slade sat down again and waited until Isa arrived and hustled them out of the bar to their front-row VIP seats at Ono’s runway show.
The décor was spectacular, with a catwalk constructed from glittering material simulating the appearance of beach sand. The rest of the floor consisted of reinforced glass installed over fast-flowing water churning in waves from one side of the room to the other below the feet of the audience. The effect was so real, Slade checked to see if his shoes were wet.
Like all runway shows, the event was short. Ono’s garments, which, according to Isa, featured combinations of the East meeting the West and contemporary styles mixed with traditional, were shades of sea blue with a hint of shimmer in the skirts, mimicking the ocean’s reflection. To reinforce the image, models with long, tanned legs strutted to a soundtrack of waves breaking on the shore.
It was Slade’s first fashion show, and contrary to expectation, he enjoyed it, perhaps because of its fast pace. If he allowed himself to follow the pull of his emotions, it might not have been his last, with Isa clearly on her way to the top of the industry.
Slade recognized Isa’s designs immediately from the sensuous style he’d seen in the sketches spread out on his dining table and in the clothes she wore herself. Her designs on the models here proved she could create a sensational garment from the simplest of ideas, a testament to her intellect.
He now believed her intelligence more than her exotic beauty had drawn him to her with a force subjugating doubt and rational thought. It lingered in the depth of her eyes, her calm, methodical movements, her posture, her voice, the flick of her hair, her emotional awareness, her restraint, and her skillful lovemaking. Or, more truthfully, Slade had to admit, her effortless ability to make him feel like an accomplished lover.
He controlled his emotional responses to attractive women and managed relationships at his own pace, but now found himself unable to deal with the unique combination of Isa’s looks and razor-sharp mind. She was just another in a long line of affairs, but for the first time, he did not want to walk away.
Slade thought the human brain was the body’s most sensual part if you cared for a person the way he felt about Isa. To protect his emotions, he needed to reach into the deepest recesses of her mind to know whether he’d read it right or she was playing him. But so far, it remained firewalled by her controlled reticence, and if he weren’t careful, it could become his sword of Damocles.
When Isa walked down the runway beside Ono to take an equal share of the spotlight and applause, feelings of pride overwhelmed him, yet there was no justification for that emotion, no verbalized commitment between them, nor any clarity from Isa about her feelings for him.
Slade tried to navigate through his roiling emotions, wanting to believe she cared for him and was no more involved in the unfolding chain of events than she’d explained.
CHAPTER 37
(Monday Afternoon—London)
Slade and Roche stayed in the room and waited for Isa after the show. They stood up and looked around while the boisterous crowd jostled out of the room.
Slade’s reflections shattered when a shot rang out. A bullet missed his head by a hair’s width and smacked into a pillar behind him, leaving a dissipating trail of heat behind it. A second bullet grazed the back of a seat six inches away from Roche and punched a hole in the wall behind them.
“Alex, get down behind the seats,” Slade yelled. “Without weapons, there’s not much we can do. I’ll edge closer to the door to see where . . . ”
A few feet away, the glass floor exploded from the force of a volley of bullets, causing water flowing under the glass to cascade upwards like a fountain and spill over the floor. Slade’s senses drowned in screams from the panicked crowd now stampeding out of the room and the noise of water gushing across the floor to the door, drenching him through to the skin.
Slade had narrowly escaped a potentially fatal bullet, and the knowledge was as chilling and uncomfortable as his sodden clothes.
He yelled at Roche to stay put and scrambled down behind the first row of tiered seats. He crawled toward the origin of the shots at the exit. At the end of the row, he eased his body from behind the seats and raised himself on one knee to look at the door. The shooter was not among the stragglers shoving each other as they ran from the room.
Slade ran his hand through his wet hair and stood up. He dashed to the exit and peered around the doorjamb. He caught sight of the man who’d aroused his interest earlier in the bar and now recognized him. Maine was snaking his way through the crowd, but terrified people ran in every direction, hindering his progress. Water streaming from the room caused him to lose balance and fall.
Maine lay stunned for an instant, then leaped to his feet. He took long enough that Slade could catch up and heave his shoulder, pushing him into the wall. Slade grabbed his neck with one hand and wrenched his wrist behind his back with the other. He let go of his neck to get in three quick punches to his face, but the slippery floor prevented him from gaining the leverage needed to pin down an adversary of Maine’s build. Maine used the opportunity to lash out and pull free from Slade’s grip.
Maine made a run for the open door at the far end of the corridor. Slade took off after him, just managing to avoid colliding with a rack of clothes being wheeled toward him. He caught up, tackled Maine from behind and shoved him against the wall again. The thug retaliated, delivering a spear-handed chop between Slade’s shoulder blades. It hit the nerve center below his neck and sent him to his knees. For a second, Slade could see nothing but stars.
The wail of sirens approaching the building spurred Slade on to stand and snap his right leg up to kick Maine in the groin. The man doubled over in pain, and Slade attempted to subdue him until the police arrived. But Maine twisted and lunged at him again. Slade dodged t
he awkward assault and delivered three successive punches to the man’s solar plexus, windpipe, and jaw. The third blow stopped Maine mid-stride. He staggered back against the door with a thud and crumpled to the floor.
But he recovered fast and struggled with Slade for several seconds. He pulled out a small white plastic box from his jacket pocket and pointed it at Slade’s chest. Slade recognized a plastic gun manufactured by a three-dimensional printer.
At the same instant, he caught sight of Roche rushing toward them with a metal bar in his hands and Isa close behind. Maine froze for a moment when he saw them, allowing Slade’s reflexes to kick in. He dived to one side and pulled Maine down with him. Maine fired three times, the echoes of the shots reverberating through Slade’s ears. The bullets missed their target and slammed into a picture on the wall behind them.
Glass rained to the floor.
Two police officers, their guns drawn, ran toward them from the open door and screamed at Maine to drop his weapon. In a crazed attempt to escape, Maine turned his weapon on the officers. In the split second before Maine fired, Slade used his shoulders to shove him off balance, sending the bullet into the arm of one of the officers instead of his head. The other officer fired back and struck Maine in the chest, killing him instantly.
Slade extracted himself from underneath Maine’s lifeless body and struggled to his feet out of breath. Roche ran up, and Slade saw a pedestaled no-smoking sign in his hands.
“I assume you planned to do some damage with that.” He inclined his head and pointed to the sign. “And not merely ask Maine to refrain from lighting up.”
“It’s the only thing I could find in a hurry. The artwork here is too heavy and definitely too expensive, non?” he said, relieved to find Slade unharmed.
Isa looked at Slade for a few moments in silence, her face blanched and pupils dilated.
“Oh, my God. Are you all right? I know how this must seem, but I had no idea he planned to harm you,” she said in a barely audible voice.
“You mean to kill us,” Slade said, still angry at having lowered his defenses like an amateur. They’d escaped death more through good luck than professionalism. His training taught him that if something smelled even slightly suspicious, it needed a full investigation. He punched himself mentally for ignoring his instincts and letting the man disappear from the bar earlier without an effort to check his identity.
“You knew he was here and didn’t tell me?” he asked.
“I didn’t know this particular man was here,” Isa said. “I don’t even know this man. My Aculeus handler’s assistant in the US, who’s a woman I trust, messaged me earlier today and said an Aculeus representative was in London and wanted to meet. So I told her where we could be found. I’m sorry. This could have ended badly.”
“It did end badly for Maine. And it could just as easily have been one of us, including you,” Slade said. “They trained you but left out classes on Trust 101. Operatives working for private outfits like Aculeus are definitely high on the don’t-trust list, especially when they’re your colleagues or their assistants, as they can be chillingly deceptive.”
Slade pulled out his cell phone and called the London FBI station head, who arrived fifteen minutes later to vouch for their identity and handle the inevitable paperwork. He also had information from MI5 about Richard Palmer’s initial autopsy results, confirming Slade’s hunch that his death resulted from ingesting poison dissolved in wine. It would take several days to identify the substance precisely, but as Slade had predicted, the ME suspected ricin or abrin, the same poison that probably killed Sakata.
The embassy driver took Slade and Roche back to the May Fair, where they would meet Isa for a late dinner after she finished work at Somerset House with Ono. They went to the bar, ordered drinks, and booted up their computers.
Roche reserved a seat on the Eurostar to Paris for the next morning to touch base with his home office director at the Service Central de la Sécurité des Systèmes d’Informations before returning to the Tokyo CIB. While in Paris, he would have access to SCSSI’s high-powered supercomputers and software to run more penetrating cyber-searches.
Slade sat back in the half-empty bar and read Fontaine’s report. Halfway through, he sat upright, his body stiffened.
“These notes from Ben are interesting. Videos taken from surveillance cameras yesterday morning at the Monte Carlo Marina show Chloe Harris boarding the Chevalier at five minutes past four after she arrived in the hotel’s limousine, confirming what we knew from Ben’s earlier inquiries.”
Slade read to the end of the message before going on. “At four-ten, three men arrived in a cab from the opposite direction and followed her on board. Ben’s office extracted a clear frontal head image of one of the men. Their facial recognition software yielded a one hundred percent match with Sakata’s file photo, so we know he boarded the yacht. One of the other two men looked like Maine, although he kept his head down. The third man has not been identified. A hat obscured his face, but he was tall and thin. They all boarded the Chevalier, and it departed right after that at four-twenty.” Slade now had Roche’s full attention.
“Maine couldn’t have reached London so fast in the Chevalier,” Roche said.
“That’s for sure, but it looks like there’s an explanation. Ben says video footage from the Nice Marina shows the Chevalier’s motor launch arriving from the open sea at five-fifteen. Maine and the unidentified man from the Monte Carlo footage could be seen getting off the launch supporting Sakata, who looked drunk but would have been dead by that time if they’d poisoned him on board. They moved out of view of the camera and returned a few minutes later without Sakata. They must have dumped him in shallow water to make it look like accidental drowning of a staggering drunk or a waterfront mafia hit. If the body were dumped out at sea, it would eventually wash up and the estimated time of death, matched with the prevailing wind and currents, would place any yacht passing the area at that time under suspicion.”
Slade read on silently, then said, “A cab arrived five minutes later, and the men got in. The launch headed out to sea again, no doubt returning to the Chevalier. The person behind the wheel of the launch was a woman who Ben says looked like Harris.”
“And the Chevalier took her to Marseille, where she disembarked to travel to a secret destination,” Roche said. “A neat plan.”
“Ben was able to read the cab’s registration number and checked with the company. The driver took the men to the Nice airport and according to his records, arrived there at five-fifty. The airport records show that Maine traveled to London on his own passport and checked in at the same time for the same flight as a passenger called Ray Short.” Slade paused before adding, “And they would have arrived in London at nine this morning.”
“Maine’s plastic gun must have gone through the security check undetected, and he concealed the bullets in his luggage or got hold of them when he arrived in London. A man in his line of work would have contacts, bien sûr.” Roche focused again on his computer screen to complete his travel arrangements.
“I agree with you.”
Slade recalled FBI reports that showed massive spending by the US Defense Department over the past three years on 3-D printers and defense-related applications. The technology’s appeal had spread across the globe, and 3-D printers were in use everywhere. In Slade’s view, law enforcement agencies had not overreacted when they’d called for the removal of blueprints for 3-D printing of a functional weapon from thousands of online sites. Metal detectors couldn’t screen for these weapons because they lack metal parts. FBI concerns went unheeded as early prototypes were unstable and capable of firing only a single bullet.
But Maine’s weapon proved that Aculeus had found a way to modify the blueprint and create a functional multi-firing plastic weapon capable of discharging a volley of lethal bullets.
CHAPTER 38
(Tuesday Morning— Washington, DC)
Slade took in the aging, grime-covered l
eaves clinging to their last weeks of life on trees lining Washington, DC’s streets, marking summer’s end and the first stage of fall. He could tell the season of vibrant red, orange, and yellow colors was still a week or two away, yet the knowledge lacked the usual anticipation. He’d lived and worked here for ten years, but his fifty-minute cab ride from Dulles Airport to the Hoover Building lacked any sense of homecoming. It no longer mattered that he’d once called this city home.
He knew he’d feel the same when he traveled back from Narita Airport to Tokyo, defined by its massive urban spread of concrete, noise, and exhaust. It would still be three or four weeks before senescent leaves of that city’s ubiquitous gingko trees would turn yellow and dance like flakes of gold across the roads in the bracing fall wind. He’d always likened their descent to the last phase of the fragile human life cycle. Ironically, it also symbolized the start of his favorite season in Japan, but this time, he did not look forward to another Tokyo fall alone.
Now, as the cab slowed five hundred meters from the FBI building, he could see with twenty-twenty vision that he didn’t belong anywhere. He was not rooted in any of the places he’d lived. Where you belong is not where you live and work—it’s with the person you go home to every night. Being with Isa, Slade realized, might be exactly where he belonged. He pictured her exotic beauty, uncompromising self-confidence, and noetic drive.
He flashed back to events of the previous afternoon. While waiting for Isa in the May Fair’s bar with Roche, he’d called Deacon at FBI headquarters with the latest sitrep. Deacon instructed him to leave London for Washington, DC that night on the eight o’clock American Airlines flight—he wanted to meet at eight-thirty the next morning. Slade managed to secure one of the last seats available.
He’d counted on a long night of passionate lovemaking. Instead, he settled for a brief talk and a peck on Isa’s cheek in the hotel bar when she returned from Somerset House.