Hot Pursuit (17 page)

MILLIE GOT
into her car, an anonymous-looking British Ford, and introduced herself to the driver.

“I’m Denny,” the man said.

“Are you armed, Denny?”

“I have a Glock on my belt and an Uzi in the center console and five magazines for each.” He had, maybe, a Cockney accent.

“Then I am reassured.”

“And there’s a turbocharged V8 under the bonnet and a racing suspension.”

“Just what we need to get to Harrods.”

Denny drove away in a sedate manner.

Her cell rang, and she looked at her watch. Quentin, maybe. She got a little tingle thinking about him. “Hello?”

“My name is Ian Rattle,” a very British voice said. “Do you recall it being mentioned to you?”

“I do,” Millie replied. “How do you do?”

“I do better after a good lunch. Will you join me?”

“Where and when?”

“Where are you now?”

“We’ve just left the embassy.”

“Then meet me at the Grenadier, a pub in Wilton Row, behind Wilton Crescent. Your driver will probably know it. Fifteen minutes?”

“Sounds good.”

“Right.” He hung up.

“Denny, do you know a pub called the Grenadier?”

“In Wilton Row? Of course.”

“There, then. Harrods later.”

“Righto.”

Ten minutes later they came to a barrier with a guardhouse. Denny had a word with the uniformed security guard there, and the barrier rose. They drove into a charming mews and stopped at the end, before the Grenadier.

“I’ll be nearby,” Denny said, handing her a card. “Ring me when you’re ready.”

She climbed the steps to the pub and entered a bar, where a dozen or so well-dressed people and a few men in working clothes were having a pint. She looked up to see a tall, slender man beckoning to her from the adjacent dining room, and she joined him.

He was well-tailored, well-barbered, and looked well-heeled. His suit fit, and his shirt and tie were a little offbeat. “I’m Ian,” he said, “and you’re Millie. Take a pew.” He sat her down at a table with her back to the door, and he took the gunfighter’s seat in the corner.

“Now,” he said, “drink?”

“I’ll have a glass with lunch.” She picked up a menu. “The gammon steak, please, and chips.”

A waitress appeared, and he ordered for both of them, including a bottle of wine. When she was gone he handed Millie a card. “Whenever you need anything from our shop, call me at this number. I can get through faster to anybody than you can going through the switchboard. Half the people who ring that number are crackpots with conspiracy theories.” He had a very upper-class drawl, probably an Oxbridge man, she reckoned.

“I know little about you,” he said. “Mind a few pointed questions?”

“Not at all. I expect I’ll have a few for you, too.”

“Fair enough. Give me a sixty-second bio, please.”

“Born Washington, Connecticut, small village. Educated in the Montessori school there, followed by Harvard, undergrad and law, followed by White House staff.”

“Pretty short.”

“I’m pretty young. You?”

“I’m forty. Born Cowes, village on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast from Southampton. Educated Eton, Cambridge. Royal Marines intelligence, then MI6. How long have you been at the White House?”

“Not too long.”

“Have you had any intelligence experience?”

“Not until recently.”

“Do you
know
anybody in intelligence?”

“My boss was CIA station chief in New York before becoming national security adviser to the president. Her boss was the director of Central Intelligence.”

“Do you know Lance Cabot?”

“Slightly.”

“Have you ever heard of someone called Stone Barrington?”

That stopped her. “Yes, I have.”

“Ever met him?”

“Not yet. How did that name pop into your head?”

“It popped into my computer this morning,” Ian said. “He’s on a kind of watch list—not the pejorative sort, it’s a bit of a compliment, really. His name just pops up when he enters the country, and when it happens, I let my chief know.”

“Mr. Barrington and your chief are acquainted, I believe, and he’s close to my boss and our president, as well.”

“I reckoned something like that.”

“So he’s in the country?”

“Apparently so, though he did not clear immigration at any port or airport. A friend of ours, retired officer, reported him at quite an elegant country hotel in Devon called Gidleigh Park. Heard of it?”

“No, I’ve not been to Devon.”

“Quite posh, I believe. Can you fill me in on Mr. Barrington?”

“He’s a New York attorney with a very prestigious firm, Woodman & Weld. A widower—wife murdered by a former lover a few years back. One son, now a Hollywood producer and director. The dead wife was previously married to the film star Vance Calder, and she left a good deal of Calder’s money to Mr. Barrington when she died. That’s about it. Oh, when Katharine Lee was preparing to run for president, a group of twenty-one people contributed a million dollars each to get her started. Mr. Barrington was one of them.”

Ian winced slightly. “So he is important, then.” It wasn’t a question.

“Important to your boss and mine,” she replied.

“Now I’m left with wondering how the hell he got into the country. Any ideas on that?”

“I’ll see what I can find out,” she said.

Their lunch arrived, and Ian tasted the wine. “We’ll drink it,” he said to the waitress.

They ate in silence for a little while. Finally Millie broke it. “Anything new on Larry and Curly?”

He looked at her askance. “Are we talking about the Three Stooges?”

“The twins,” she replied. “Moe is the one we’re tracking in the States.”

“Ah, the twins.”

“Did you know them at Eton?”

“I was at Oxford when they were at Eton.”

“Does your service have any assets in Dahai who could be of help?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that. Suffice it to say that they are scratching around the edges of the sultan’s court for word of the boys. Optimism is high.”

“It would seem that the boys were trained to be British, and that Moe, as we call him, was trained to be American.”

“Yes, it would seem so. Worrying, isn’t it? It’s so much easier to spot them when they wear turbans and costumes and speak in tongues.”

“Isn’t it? Easier, too, when they have names and photographs and fingerprints in our databases.”

“That would be convenient, yes. But someone has gone to a great deal of trouble and expense over a period of many years to hide those things from us, and I find it very annoying. Perhaps you and I and your FBI friend can do something about that.”

“It’s why I’m here,” Millie said. Her cell phone rang. “Hello?”

“It’s Quentin. We have a photograph of Moe.”

THEY WERE
at mid-morning before leaving Gidleigh Park, after a hot breakfast and hot sex. Pat’s packing took longer than Stone thought it should.

They loaded the car, paid the bill, and made their way back up the single track between the hedgerows, not meeting any opposing traffic on the way, and were soon on the motorway, headed north, then east. They stopped at a restaurant recommended by their GPS, for lunch, and then they pulled up in front of Cliveden House, a huge residence going back to the eighteenth century, lately a hotel. They had barely gotten out of the car when Dino and Viv arrived in a chauffeured Mercedes.

“Holy shit,” Dino said quietly, looking at the imposing house, “I hope the concierge didn’t take the whole place for us.”

They entered an enormous hall furnished with scattered furniture, and with a huge fireplace at one end. An assistant manager registered them and delivered them to their suite, and their luggage was not far behind. Stone poured them all a glass of sherry from a decanter on the coffee table, and they relaxed.

“This is wonderful, Stone,” Viv said. “Can we live here, please?”

“Sure, if Dino can convince the mayor he can run the NYPD from here, and he can get a bill through the city council to pay for it.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Dino said.

“I saw something about Lord Astor in a brochure downstairs.”

“This was his home, and his wife, Nancy, who was American, became a member of Parliament. This house was the center of an amazing group of characters called the Cliveden Set, which included people like George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin, and a few Mitford sisters, one of whom was married to Sir Oswald Mosley, the British fascist who was imprisoned during World War Two to keep him out of mischief. Also a part of the crowd was John Profumo, minister of Defence at the time, who met a young woman here called Christine Keeler, a sort of part-time prostitute, I think, who was also having an affair with the Soviet military attaché. Between the three of them, they nearly brought down the government. Profumo lied to a parliamentary committee about it and got sacked for his trouble.”

“I’m not sure I can keep that pace,” Viv said. “Dino will have to trade me in on a racier model.”

“You’ll do,” Dino said.

“Now all that remains,” Stone said, “is to wait for Paul Reeves to show up.”

Viv and Pat excused themselves to unpack, and Dino poured himself and Stone another glass of sherry. “So,” he said, “bring me up to date on Reeves.”

Stone told him about the events of yesterday.

“I’d better call Sir Martin and give him the latest sighting of Kevin Keyes,” Dino said.

“They may have already left the country by now. We last saw Reeves’s airplane at Coventry when we landed. It might be a good idea to alert U.S. Customs that they’re on their way home. They have to file a notice of when and where they’ll cross the border and clear customs. Keyes won’t put his name on it, but Reeves will, and that will be a good excuse to throw a net over both of them.”

“I’ll call everybody,” Dino said.

“What bothers me is I think Pat is still holding out on telling me the whole story. I’ve gone at her three or four times, and on each occasion she’s told me a little more, but I still don’t think I have it all, and I’m worried that she won’t confide in me.”

“What do you think she’s hiding?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be worried.”

“When are you and I headed back?”

“The day after tomorrow. Pat will drop us at Coventry Airport, then we’ll go on to Reykjavik from there, about a three-hour flight. Pat will drive on to the Cessna Service Center north of there, where her client is having the pre-purchase inspection done on his new airplane.”

“Will she take the same route back as we do?”

“No, she’s got a twenty-five-hundred-mile range with the CJ4, so she can refuel at Shannon, then go nonstop to Newfoundland.”

“Alone?”

“No, her client is going along, because he has to train for his new airplane in Wichita. She’ll deliver him there, then fly commercial back to New York.”

“What about Reeves? What route will he take?”

“The Blue Spruce route, like us. His airplane has less range than mine.”

“And where will he clear U.S. Customs?”

“Bangor, Maine, I guess.”

“So that would be the place to interrupt his trip and bag Keyes?”

“I guess. He has to clear customs at the nearest airport of entry after crossing the Canadian border.”

Dino got out his phone and started making calls.

They had dinner in the main dining room, and Stone kept expecting to see Paul Reeves stroll in.

“Relax, Stone,” Dino said. “You’re looking way too nervous for you.”

Stone ordered another bottle of wine.

MILLIE GOT EXCITED.
“That’s great news. Can you e-mail it to me?”

“Already done,” Quentin said. “Mind you, the photo is fifteen years old, and it’s not perfect, but our lab can do some work on it to help bring it up to date.”

“And when will we see that?”

“Later today, maybe tomorrow. I’ve put a rush on it.”

“That’s terrific. I’ll pass it on to MI6. Talk to you later.” She hung up and turned back to Ian. “That was my FBI guy. He’s turned up a fifteen-year-old photograph of Moe.” She went into her phone and found the e-mailed photo. “There,” she said, holding it up for inspection. The photo showed a young couple sitting on a stone wall with some mountainous scenery in the background.

Ian examined it closely. “Not bad,” he said. “Pity we can’t judge his height, since he’s sitting down.”

“I’ll e-mail it to you,” she said, and did so, copying Holly.

“I’ll send it on to our wizards and see what they can tell us from it.”

“The FBI is doing the same.”

Ian asked for the check, and Millie excused herself and went to the ladies’ room. Once there, she called Holly.

“What’s up?”

“Quentin just called. He’s found a photo of Moe, and I’ve e-mailed it to you.”

“Just a minute,” Holly said. “Okay, got it.”

“Both the FBI and MI6 are working on it. I’ll copy you on any results.”

“You do that.”

“Something else: I’ve just had lunch with Ian Rattle, from MI6, and he’s concerned about Stone Barrington.”

“Why on earth would Stone concern him?”

“Stone is on some sort of watch list that alerts MI6 when he enters the country.”

“That sounds like Felicity wanting to know when he’s here, for her own purposes. Is he in the country?”

“They got word that he was reported at a country inn in Devon, but he’s not shown as having entered at any port or airport of entry.”

“Let me call you back,” Holly said.

Millie used the toilet and was freshening her makeup when Holly called back. “I talked to Stone’s secretary. Here’s what happened: Stone flew his own airplane across the Atlantic and landed at Coventry Airport. They have customs there, but apparently didn’t check him in. That sort of thing happens with general aviation.”

“Okay, I’ll pass that on.”

“Anything new on the Stooges from Ian?”

“Not yet.”

“Where did Rattle take you for lunch?”

“A pub called the Grenadier, in Belgravia.”

“I know it well. Word has it, Rattle is something of a rake, so watch yourself.”

“I’ll watch
him
,” Millie said. They said goodbye and hung up, and she returned to the table. “I have some news on Stone Barrington,” she said.

“Fire away.”

“He flew his own airplane across the Atlantic and landed at Coventry. Apparently, the officials there didn’t bother checking him in.”

“Ah, makes perfect sense. I’ll pass that on.”

“To Dame Felicity?”

“To a list of people who will want to know.”

He walked her back to her car, which was waiting nearby. “I see you’ve got Denny for a driver,” he said.

“You approve?”

“He’s good. He’ll get between you and any passing bullet, and he’s a damned good shot.”

“I’m delighted to hear it. Can I drop you anywhere?”

“Where are you headed?”

“To Harrods.”

“I’m going the other way. I’ll find a taxi.”

She shook his hand, got into the car, and Denny drove her away.

“Interesting companion, your lunch mate,” Denny said.

“He speaks highly of you, too.”

“I saved his arse once. Don’t be misled by the good suits and haircut. Ian is very good at what he does, and that includes killing, when he needs to. He’s almost as good a shot as I am.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“He’s honey for the honeybees, too, if you catch my drift.”

Millie laughed. “I believe I do.”

She spent two hours in Harrods, then Denny drove her back to the Connaught, where a fax from Quentin awaited her.

“The lab ran Moe through our facial recognition software and came up with zilch,” he said. “Attached are two versions of how he might look today.”

She looked at the photos: one with a receding hairline and a little more weight; one with a short beard. She studied them carefully, committing them to memory.

Holly arrived around six, and they ordered drinks.

“I just got this fax from Quentin,” she said, handing her the report.

She read it carefully. “Let me see the photographs,” she said.

Millie handed them to her. She studied both carefully. “Holy shit,” she said.

“What?”

She handed Millie the photo with the beard. “This one. I saw him at a party in D.C. the night of the Inaugural Ball. I thought he looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Someone told me he was some sort of official at the Saudi embassy.”

“Could it have been the Dahai embassy?”

“Maybe.” She got out her secure cell phone and called a number.

Millie waited to see who she was calling.

“Lance? It’s Holly.” She gave him a description of the man, while Millie photographed the image and e-mailed it to Lance Cabot.

“Do you know him?”

“No,” Lance replied.

“I saw him at a big party in D.C. on inaugural night. I remember he had a good-sized diamond in one ear, I’m not sure which.”

“I’ll get somebody on it.”

“We need a name and a location,” Holly said. “This one is very important.”

“We’ll do our best,” Lance said.

Holly hung up. “Progress at last,” she said.