by David Archer
Noah got to his feet and held out a hand to the officer. “I never got the chance to thank you, either,” he said. “I’m afraid my friend passed away, but I’ve never forgotten that you tried to help me save his life.”
The other three officers were staring, so Noah shook hands with each of them. “Constable Giles was a big help that day,” he said, catching the young officer’s name tag. “You should all be proud to have a man like him serving with you.”
“We are, sir,” said the man who was obviously the eldest of them. “He’s proven his bravery more than once, and to be honest, we all believed his story. It was just something to tease the lad about, but we shouldna dunnit. You can be sure we won’t do that again, sir.”
The policemen all sat at the table the first two had been using, and Giles made another phone call, which took a few minutes because each of the other three kept taking the phone from him, telling someone that, “The lad’s been telling the truth all along, too right!”
Noah turned back to his team and they made public small talk and jokes while they continued to wait for their food to arrive.
The waiter was coming with a tray filled with their plates as five other people entered the restaurant. Noah glanced at them and instantly recognized Catherine Potts. The five spotted him just as quickly and made their way directly to his table.
Liam was also among them, and he made a point of nodding at Noah. They stopped beside the table for a moment and Catherine leaned down beside Noah’s ear.
“Noah,” she whispered softly, “please see me when you get back over to HQ. It seems that Tushar may have taken the bait we set out for him, and I’m hoping we might be able to put together a workable plan.”
“I’ll be glad to,” he whispered back. “I just wish we could find him sooner.”
The five operatives went to another table a short distance away and sat down to order their own lunch. Sarah leaned over to Noah and asked what Catherine had been whispering.
“Careful, Noah,” Neil said. “I think Sarah is getting a little jealous.”
“No, she isn’t,” Noah said. “She knows she has no reason to be. All Catherine said was that they’ve got an indication that Tushar may be responding to our little scheme about the investiture. She wants to start working on a plan as soon as we get back.”
“I hope we can come up with one that works,” Marco said. “The longer we are on this mission, the more I want to castrate that bastard.”
“I think we could all say the same,” Noah said. “However, this plan carries danger for the queen herself, and I’m not completely certain that she can be kept safe. Last thing in the world I want is for anything to happen to her.”
Marco stared at him, but Neil muttered, “Damn right!”
“We’ll do what we can,” Noah said. “It doesn’t change anything as far as our orders go, but it means we need to take every possible precaution. I just wish we could think of some way to draw Tushar out before that event, terminate him before he ever has a chance to put a plan of his own into action.”
“Do you think there’s any way?” Sarah asked. “This guy seems like a ghost of some sort, almost impossible to track down.”
“He’s human. Sooner or later, he’s going to make a mistake. If we can catch him in even the slightest error, it will open a door that should lead directly to him. Everybody needs to stay on their toes, be watching for any possible slip that he might make.”
“Maybe we can lead him into one,” Marco said. “What if we could find a way to discredit him, make him look stupid or something? It might make him mad, and angry men make mistakes.”
Noah shrugged. “I suppose it could be possible,” he said, “although I have my doubts. This is a man who has been planning for years to get to this point. He’s got to be capable of incredible self-control, or I suspect the guilt would have gotten to him by now.”
They were eating as they talked, but Catherine’s whispered message caused them to rush. Noah noticed that the four policemen seemed to be amused at how quickly they were shoving the food down.
As soon as they were finished eating, they rose and headed back to the headquarters building. Noah made a point of stopping at the officers’ table and shaking hands with all of them once again.
TWENTY-THREE
As soon as they got back to the conference room, Noah looked at Neil. “Is there any way you can think of to see how Tushar is communicating with his people? If we could figure that out, there might be a way we could track him down.”
Neil thought for a moment, then frowned. “I don’t know how I could do that,” he said. “I’d need some kind of data to go on, even if it was just a sample of his voice. It’s possible that we could actually hack into the cell towers, use a voice recognition routine to try to spot previous calls he made and then get the GPS data from his phone. That way, we could look at any locations the phone might have been at more than once as possible hideouts, but we don’t have a sample of his voice to base the search on. This guy’s been careful, he hasn’t been recorded yet that we know of.”
Noah nodded. “All right, it was just a thought.” He turned to Sarah. “If a lead comes in, we may have to move suddenly, so we need to make sure the cars are ready to roll. I’d like you to take them out one at a time and get them filled up, check the oil, just make sure they’re ready if we have to go somewhere in a hurry.”
Sarah grinned. “Sounds like a good idea,” she said. “It’ll get me away from all the depressing stuff here for little while, so I appreciate it.” She picked up her purse again from where she had just set it down and started out the door, but Noah told her to wait.
He turned to Jenny. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Go along with her. I don’t want any of us going out alone until this mission is either over or aborted.”
Jenny nodded and picked up her own handbag, checking to make sure her pistol was easily accessible as she did so. She and Sarah walked out the door together as Noah sat at the conference table and looked at Catherine Potts. “Okay, fill me in.”
“Simple enough,” she said. “We have a tap on Ibrahim’s phone, and Balakrishnan called him just before I took my lunch break. They are meeting at Sir Walter’s Seafood Shoppe for dinner, at seven. Unfortunately, we tracked the phone the call came from and it was a disposable. We pinpointed its location in a garbage bin, so it didn’t help us find him.”
Noah narrowed his eyes, deep in thought. “That seems rather sloppy, for Tushar,” he said. “Neil was just telling me moments ago that he had managed to avoid ever letting his voice be recorded. You would think a man that cautious would have avoided making such an arrangement over the phone.”
Catherine looked at him for a long moment. “Unless he suspects a trap,” she said. “That is what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
“Well, we know that he used a decoy on Sam in Israel, somebody wearing a mask designed to look like his own face. I can’t help wondering if it was really Tushar on the phone, or someone pretending to be him.”
She pursed her lips. “You could very well be correct,” she said. “Your logic is impeccable, as always.”
“Still, it’s all we’ve got.” He turned to Neil. “They got a recording of someone who claims to be Tushar. You want to try your magic, see if you can get a lead on whoever it is?”
Neil nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Can somebody send that recording over to my computer? I need to run a voiceprint on it, then scan through the recorded voices in the cloud.”
Catherine barked an order, and one of the computer techs in the room huddled with Neil. The two of them spoke for a minute or so, using the jargon that only computer geeks can understand, and then both of them got busy.
The conference room door opened, and both Noah and Catherine turned. Sam and Denny walked in, both of them looking tired and frustrated. They went directly to the table, and Sam sat beside Noah.
“Sorry we slept so long,” he said. “Anything happening?”
“Someone claiming to be Tushar called Mr. Ibrahim a bit ago,” Noah said, “and they are scheduled to meet for dinner tonight at seven. I’m going to have my team in place when they get there, assuming they show up at all. Meanwhile, Neil is trying to match the recorded voice to other calls that have been made around the area. If he can, it’s possible we can get some kind of location data that could lead us directly to him, but we aren’t certain that the voice was actually Tushar himself.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “So let us listen,” he said. “Denny and I both met the guy, I doubt either of us will ever forget his voice.”
Noah nodded, and Neil unplugged his ear buds. He played the recording to the speakers on his computer, while Sam and Denny leaned close and listened.
“It sounds a little like him, but I’d be willing to bet it’s not,” Sam said. “I think that’s somebody who has practiced trying to sound like Tushar. This man is incredibly intelligent, and probably more cautious than anyone I’ve ever seen. He’s also devious, the decoy he sent to draw us out in Israel staged a meeting with a couple of tourists that had just met him. When we showed up and the commotion began, he snatched off his mask and walked right past us. Whoever it was, he had ice water in his veins.”
“That’s why we doubt the recording is genuine,” Catherine said. “As you say, he’s very cautious.”
“Then we also need to consider why he would communicate with this guy by phone in the first place,” Sam said. “He’s surely considered the possibility that Ibrahim is being used as bait. By making that call, he’s got to figure he just told whoever might be setting the trap exactly where he plans to be.”
“I said the same thing,” Noah said. He turned to Catherine. “Is anybody watching Ibrahim? It’s possible he could actually be in danger.”
She nodded. “We have a surveillance team on him,” she said. “His family, as well. They’ll move, of course, at the slightest sign of a problem.”
Neil turned suddenly and grinned at Noah. “Bingo!” he said. “I found a match. I don’t know if it’s actually Tushar, but that same voice has made several other calls today. Three of them were made on a single phone, and it’s still on. I got a location for you.”
Noah got to his feet. “Send it to my phone,” he said. “Catherine, I’m going to need a car. Marco, you come with me. Sam, Denny? Why don’t you come along, as well?”
“It’s about time,” Denny said. He and Sam were already up.
“We don’t have weapons yet,” Sam said.
“Here,” Catherine said. She opened a small cabinet that was against the wall and passed over a pair of pistols. “I had them ready for you, but didn’t think about them until just now.”
Both men checked the guns, then tucked them into their waistbands. “Let’s roll,” Sam said.
Noah nodded, leading the way out the door. Catherine followed, and then took them out a back exit. She handed Noah and Sam each a set of keys, then pointed at a pair of black Volvo sedans. “Take those,” she said. “We keep them for visiting dignitaries, but they are quite reliable.”
Noah slid behind the wheel of one of the cars, but Sam tossed his keys to Denny and got into the passenger seat. Both of them started up and Denny followed Noah out of the parking lot.
The address Neil had sent to Noah was on Chaucer Road, not far from Brockwell Park. The drive took them almost twenty minutes, and Sam wasn’t surprised when Noah rolled past the house without stopping, then pulled over to the curb a block further down. All four of them got out and gathered beside the two cars.
“Marco and I will go in,” Noah said. “Sam, I’d like the two of you to wait outside. Turn your car around and watch for any sign of somebody getting away, then do your best to follow. If Tushar is there and escapes, I want somebody tracking him.”
“All right,” Sam said. “Give us a couple of minutes to get into position, then we’ll be ready.”
Noah waited until Denny and Sam had gotten into their car and turned it around, then he and Marco started walking toward the house. As they approached the yard, Marco cut off and went around the side of the house toward the back.
Sam and Denny were parked half a block away, where they could keep a close eye on the front of the house and the cars parked on the street in front of it. Both of them were holding their guns, with their eyes fixed on the area just in front of the big house.
Noah reached the front door and rang the doorbell. He stood there for a moment, waiting for any kind of response, but nothing happened. He rang the doorbell again and waited, but when another minute had passed with no response, he drew his pistol, stepped back, then kicked the front door open.
At the rear of the house, Marco heard the crunch of the breaking door and did the same to the rear entrance. The doorjamb splintered as the door flew open, and Marco raced inside with his pistol in front of him. A shape appeared suddenly in front of him, stepping out of the hallway into the kitchen that he had entered, and Marco’s training kicked in as he recognized the threat. He squeezed the trigger once and the swarthy-skinned man fell.
“One down,” he shouted, and then he heard Noah’s gun go off. It fired three times in rapid succession, and Marco put his back against the wall next to the door into the hallway. He looked quickly into the hall, saw that it was clear, and stepped out.
“I’ve got three more,” Noah called out. “Watch the stairs.”
Marco, in the hallway, saw the stairs just ahead and to his right. He braced his back against the side of the hall and kept his gun leveled on the stairway.
Noah checked the rest of the downstairs and declared it clear, and then started up the stairs. Marco fell in behind him, keeping his gun pointed toward the second floor. They got to the top of the stairs and separated, Noah going right while Marco went to the left.
A moment later, Marco heard Noah shouting at someone to get down on the floor. He quickly checked the two rooms on his end of the hall, then spun and hurried back to where Noah stood in a doorway.
“What did you find, boss?” Marco asked.
“I’m not sure,” Noah said as Marco looked at the old Pakistani who was lying painfully on the floor. “But I suspect it’s going to piss Tushar off something fierce.”
* * * * *
Tushar entered the chip shop and looked around for only a moment before he saw the men he had come to meet. The mask he was wearing had a mustache and beard, giving him the same appearance they would remember from the last time they worked with him. He slid into the booth beside them.
“Right nice to see you again, Billy,” said the larger of the two men. He was a rough-looking sort, the kind of man who was often involved in criminal activity. “You got some work for us, do you?”
Tushar smiled and shook hands with both of them. “Don’t I always, Harry? This is going to be something bigger than last time, though, and it might even be too big for you. I won’t get mad if you feel like you can’t do it, but just be straight with me on that, all right?” His accent sounded Welsh, rather than English.
“I shouldn’t worry,” Harry said. “Lenny and me, we both like a challenge, you know. What’s the job?”
Tushar looked around, then leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Big do at Westminster Abbey on Saturday,” he said. “You’ve heard about it?”
“O’course,” Harry said. “All the nobs getting together to make more nobs, right?”
Tushar nodded, grinning. “Yeah, but maybe it’s time we had fewer nobs, don’t you think? I want to send them a bit of a surprise, and I figure you boys are just the blokes to do it.”
Lenny leaned across the table. “What, a bomb? Be awfully hard to get a bomb in there. Might even be impossible.”
Tushar nodded. “Completely impossible,” he said. “But that’s not what I got in mind, not at all. Actually, I just want to send some gifts.”
Harry leaned forward. “Gifts? Where’s the joke, then?”
“Just gifts,” Tushar said. “You know the nobs, they’r
e real big on giving presents away at these do’s. Everybody who’s going, they’re going to get a little bag full of presents. I just want to add something to the little bags. If I can tell you who’s putting them together, do you think you boys could make sure my little presents get added to the bags?”
“All depends,” Harry said. “Who’s doing it, and how do we get your goodies into the bags?”
Tushar smiled. “That’s what I like about you blokes,” he said. “You are not afraid to take on a tough job. The gift bags are being put together today at a place called Mrs. Arthur’s, on Dunhill Street. It’s just little bags with candies and nuts, but I’d like to add some chocolates of my own. The place has an alarm system, but no security guards. Shouldn’t be all that hard for a couple of experienced lads like you.” He reached into a pocket and took out an envelope. “Fifteen thousand quid up front,” he said, “and fifteen more after the job is done. That good enough for you?”
“Lot of money for an easy job,” Harry said. “I’m thinking we might want to disappear for a while, after it’s over?”
Tushar chuckled. “I suppose that might be wise,” he said. “Likely the bobbies will be looking pretty hard at everything afterward. Be sure not to leave any fingerprints or anything, I don’t want anything to happen to my two favorite boyos.”
Harry and Lenny looked at one another, then both of them turned toward Tushar. “We don’t leave signs,” Harry said, “and we’ve been thinking about taking a trip, anyway. Get the other half ready, because we’ll be coming for it.”
Tushar nodded again. “I have it all ready to go,” he said. “You want to move quickly, though, because the bags have to be ready before morning.”
Lenny smiled. “We’ll be done before then,” he said. “In and out, right, Harry? That’s us, in and out.”
“Right,” Harry said. “Now, what about the chocolates you want us to put in the bags? You got them with you?”