Riders of the Pale Horse (6 page)

“Only way you can trust anybody once you've left civilization behind,” Robards replied, moving forward with deceptive speed. “By sleeping with one eye open and not ever trusting anybody completely. Come on, let's go take a look at those trucks.”

2

The storm raged so hard the night of her meeting with the infamous Colonel Mendez that Allison could feel the entire United States Consulate building shake on its foundation. But she had no time to worry about her own safety. Papers representing a dozen different crises were spread across her desk, all screaming a silent warning of the coup that was about to happen.

Lightning blasted outside her window, illuminating the stark and frightened features of her two assistants. They stood helplessly, waiting for her to make her decisions and order them into action. But she could not focus. There was too much going on.

The phone rang. She picked it up. It was her boss.

“There's been a cable from Washington,” he reported. “Your budget has just been cut by fifty percent. And your mother wants to know why you haven't called her in almost a month.”

Allison struggled to keep her voice calm. She knew that it was important to remain calm in such circumstances. The examiners were always watching for the applicants who broke under pressure. “But I have a government to prop up here.”

“You'll think of something,” her boss replied. “And call your mother.”

As she hung up the receiver, another lightning blast split the night, illuminating scores of dark-clad men scurrying under the trees beyond the consulate compound. They were all headed her way. They carried weapons.

“What do you want us to do?” her number one assistant whispered, fighting back panic.

“I want us all to stay calm,” Allison replied. Stay calm above all else, they had told her.

With a horrendous groan, a corner of the roof was lifted
by the wind. A massive tree limb crashed through the window. Wind and rain whirled a maelstrom of paper around what before had been her office.

“It's too late for that,” her assistant wailed. “Too late! Too late! Too late!”

Allison was just going to tell him that it wasn't too late, she still had another twenty minutes before the exam ended, when she realized that the assistant's chant had changed to, “Raggedy Ann, can't keep a man...”

Then the intercom suddenly announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have now begun our descent into London's Heathrow Airport. We ask that you now return to your seats and fasten your seat belts....”

Allison opened her eyes and grimaced away the last of her dream. Four years since she had passed the Foreign Service Exam and entered the Commerce Department, and still she had nightmares over the high-pressure crisis control test.

She watched as the plane swept through the cloud covering and London appeared beneath them. It could have been worse, she reflected; at least the dream ended before she realized she wore no clothes.

To her everlasting delight, there was a uniformed chauffeur holding up a sign for her as she exited the customs hall. Allison walked toward him, very glad she had stopped long enough to repair her makeup. She felt as though every eye in the building was upon her.

“I am Allison Taylor,” she said.

One gray-gloved hand rose to touch the bill of his cap. “Good morning, ma'am. I am Jules, Mr. Price's driver. May I help you with your luggage?”

“Thank you.” She let the chauffeur lead her around clusters of foggy-eyed tour groups who whispered among themselves as they tried to figure out if they recognized her. They walked down the passage toward the parking garage, then detoured
by a guarded barrier and entered a signposted VIP lot. This is just too cool, Allison decided silently.

“Mr. Price has made a reservation for you at a rather pleasant establishment on the outskirts of Oxford,” Jules reported, once they were under way in a royal blue Daimler. “But I suppose you have already been informed of these arrangements.”

“I wasn't told anything,” Allison replied. “Everything was so rushed.” There had been a mere forty-eight hours between notification and departure. Not that she was complaining. The offer of a three-month assignment in Europe had come at the perfect moment, as both her personal and her professional lives were in a major slump. “I just hoped somebody would see to things on this end.”

“Indeed he has, miss. Mr. Price has given his personal attention to your needs.”

Allison tried to recall what she could of her father's old friend. Cyril Price held some important post with the British government, but exactly what she did not know. When she was younger, he had been a top-ranking official at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. Since his departure, his visits had been infrequent and consisted mostly of being closeted away with her father for long and serious discussions. Still, whenever his attention turned her way, Cyril Price had always displayed great charm.

An hour later, the car scrunched down a graveled path and halted before a vast ivy-covered manor house. Allison rubbed the sleep from her eyes, took in the diamond-shaped lead-paned windows, the dual turrets, and the liveried doorman hurrying toward them.

Once Allison had been bowed through the registration process and shown upstairs, the chauffeur busied himself at the telephone while Allison admired her two-room suite. “Miss Taylor?” The chauffeur offered a telephone. “Mr. Price is on the line.”

Allison accepted the receiver. “Cyril?”

“Hello, my dear Allison.” The familiar upper-crust voice
brought back a flood of memories. “I am terribly sorry not to have been able to greet you myself, but something rather unexpected came up this morning.”

“Your driver has taken the very best care of me.”

“Splendid. I do hope the accommodation is up to your standards.”

Allison glanced around the palatial suite, and replied, “It's almost enough for me to forgive you for forcing me to come.”

“Not force. Please. Nothing so drastic as that.”

“I don't know what else to call it, when I'm ordered to drop everything and fly to England for a conference with you.”

“Call it the application of appropriate pressure,” he replied smoothly. “Unfortunately I could not spare the time for lengthy and roundabout requests.”

“So what is this all about?” Allison gave a little wave as the driver tipped his hat and bowed himself from the room.

“Perhaps it would be advisable for you to enjoy a rest just now,” he countered. “I shall join you in three hours, if that is suitable. We shall then discuss all matters great and small over dinner. Is that acceptable? Splendid. Until then, my dear.”

The dining chambers were straight from the tales of King Arthur—forty-foot ceilings, Cotswold stone walls, medieval tapestries, paintings of grim-faced royals, vast chandeliers, candles everywhere. Allison felt like a little girl playing grownup as she sat across from Cyril and listened to him discuss their orders with three hovering waiters.

“I think a claret would be best with the duck,” Cyril had decided. “Would that be acceptable, my dear?”

“Perfect.” Allison glanced about the room, immensely glad she had decided to bring her only formal dress.

Once the serving entourage had departed, he said, “Tell me what you've been doing with yourself all these years.”

“Nothing could be more boring. I assume you've heard
that I work with the Office of Export Administration. Talk about a snooze.”

“On the contrary, I am positively riveted.”

She smiled at a sudden memory. “Pop always did say you could charm the pants off the prime minister.”

“What a horrid thought. I'm quite sure he said no such thing.”

“I was actually supposed to be somewhere else, but the export people were tremendously understaffed. Commerce assigned me there ‘temporarily.' ”

“I see. And that was...”

“Three and a half extremely long years ago.”

“Once they realized just how good you were at your job,” Cyril interpreted, “they insisted on keeping you.”

“Until now. But with all the budget cut-backs, the entire staff is suddenly looking for new jobs.” Allison met him with a steady eye. “But you know all this.”

Cyril's cool aplomb was momentarily shaken. “I beg your pardon?”

“You wouldn't have brought me over without first having checked me out.”

“I must remind myself not to allow your attractiveness to blind me. You are more like your father than I first thought.”

She gave him a look developed during years of sorting through Washington baloney. “And just what special ability am I supposed to have that no one else does?”

He collected himself. “An ability to adapt to the unforeseen. The very same ability which, within six months of your arrival in this horrid dead-end position, caused you to devise a computerized interagency tracking system—”

“How did you hear about that?”

“—A system which proved so successful that you were then seconded to three other agencies to adapt the same system to their needs. All the while you were still held on to tightly by the Export Administration, who by this time had awakened to the fact that they had stumbled upon a real prize.”

Allison did not contradict him. “So how did you pry me loose?”

“By appealing to a higher authority,” he replied. “Much higher, as a matter of fact. One which had the clout to order this agency to finally relinquish their most beautiful charge.”

Her host paused as the wine waiter arrived and presented the bottle to Cyril. While the wine was being opened, tasted, and poured, Allison caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror hanging on the opposite wall. She was tall and slender and crowned with abundant red curls. In her younger days, tall and slim had meant skinny and gawky. She had learned not to smile. She had learned to bend her legs and crouch slightly when standing in line so she would not be taller than everybody else, including the boys. She had learned not to lie out in the summer, since fifteen minutes, even with sunblock, was enough to turn her lobster-red. She had learned not to pay her hair any attention at all. She had learned to retreat into her books, staying at the top of every class. She had learned to keep her loneliness hidden deep.

Allison smiled nowadays with ease, a beautiful even-toothed smile. Fair skin was suddenly fashionable. Women singed their hair with chemicals in a vain attempt to copy her curls. Lean and rangy figures were in. Her friends spoke of Allison's ideal beauty. Still, Allison had numerous ways to divert the attention, laugh it off. For when Allison Taylor looked into the mirror, her heart still told her she was seeing Raggedy Ann. She was precocious, intelligent, able, eloquent. But on the social side, Allison Taylor walked with two left feet.

“My dear,” Cyril said, raising his glass and drawing her attention back to the table. “Thank you so much for joining me.”

She clinked glasses, smiled, watched as their duck arrived. Each plate was carried by a different waiter—two for the duck, two for the side plates of steamed vegetables. The main ones were set into place and the silver covers raised in unison to reveal thinly sliced fowl in a rich Madeira sauce. “If this
is the way I'm going to be treated for the next three months, I may never go home.”

Their talk turned light and reminiscent until the meals were completed. Allison allowed Cyril to steer the conversation through numerous lighthearted veins until she set down her utensils and declared, “All right, I've finished. Time to tell me what's going on.”

“Very well.” Clearly he had been waiting for that moment. Cyril signaled for the waiter to clear the table. “The situation, as you Americans would say, is beyond critical.”

He fiddled with his glass until the waiters had departed, then leaned across the table and said quietly, “At present, there are only nine countries that publicly acknowledge having nuclear weapons: they are Great Britain, France, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, China, and the United States. South Africa recently claimed to have developed four nuclear bombs, then dismantled all of them. Three other nations are widely believed to possess such bombs—Israel, India, and Pakistan.”