The South Lawn Plot (18 page)

M
ANNING STOPPED A FEW YARDS SHORT
of the front door. He was early for work, though he knew that there would be a couple of his colleagues already at their desks. He gazed at the building. Embassies held secrets and spawned tales but Washington, he had long concluded, was in a league of its own, most especially since the arrival of the new ambassador.

He was on his third overseas posting, and it was easily his most important thus far. The embassy itself hinted at the prestige that came with a Washington assignment. But not too loudly, he had decided. Manning operated his own rough grading system for embassy compounds, their exteriors and interiors.

While most in Washington were roughly appropriate, he felt, some were grandiose and excessive. One or two were downright outrageous given the economic circumstances of the nations they represented.

Manning reckoned that a country's sense of self, or just its sense, could be fairly assessed by what lay behind an embassy's front gate. Ireland's embassy did not have a gate. It had been found wanting for a few other details in the recent time when the Republic had transformed itself from being a small nation on the western fringe of Europe to being a rather rich small nation occupying a kind of bridge between Europe and the United States.

Despite the darker economic outlook, the end of the Hibernian Dream as one colleague had put it, the embassy's move would go ahead as it was deemed time for a larger diplomatic outpost than the Sheridan Circle quarters, one that would more accurately reflect the country's progress, its admittedly stalled ambition, and its hoped-for return to better days. That was the argument in favor at any rate.

This he had learned just a few days ago in a briefing given to top-level diplomatic staff by the ambassador. The news had not taken Manning or his colleagues entirely by surprise. What had taken them off guard was the announcement by the ambassador that a new building had already been located and paid for.

This almost Teutonic efficiency had raised eyebrows and set tongues
wagging. Where was it, they asked, but the ambassador had replied that she could not give the location away just yet because a few papers had yet to be signed. She didn't want to put a hex on the deal, she had said.

“Hex, me arse. You just like keeping your little secrets,” said Manning, glancing at his watch.

The structure that was soon to be the former embassy was, to the more educated eye, a four-floor, semi-detached Louis XV1-style limestone house built in 1906. It stood on a fan-shaped lot across from the traffic circle that was home to the bronze image of General Philip, “Little Phil” Sheridan, a Civil War hero of the Union who had been born of Irish parents, had come into the world on a ship crossing the Atlantic, or had been born in Ireland and carried onto a ship within days of his arrival on earth. Records were a little unclear with regard to baby Sheridan. The destruction wrought by the adult Sheridan on the forces of the Confederacy had, however, been more than well documented.

The previous ambassador had been a bit of a Civil War buff and had regaled visitors to the embassy with Little Phil stories. His successor had merely inquired who the silly little man on the horse was. She had also made it clear that she wasn't interested in any answer.

The embassy's first floor was for receptions, and the new ambassador had plenty of questions about such affairs. Moreover, she expected detailed answers. The first floor had once included the ambassador's office, but with all the confusion over moving, that sanctum had been moved up another level. The building currently housed roughly twenty people, about half of them being accredited diplomats. The overall number of occupants had been edging up in recent months, and with the impending move, more were now anticipated. America was once and again Ireland's best friend in the world, and there would be a need for more Irish hands to pump American ones.

Manning rather liked the soon to be ex-embassy, even though it did seem more suited to diplomacy in the age of horse and buggy. He was particularly curious about what secrets, real and potential, it might have gathered down the years. His lingering paranoia, which had been bolstered by the encounter atop the mountain, had tempted him in the direction of a little more eavesdropping than usual. He had idly considered what might be gained from bugging the place, particularly the ambassador's office. He had done a little private research on the web about listening devices. The embassy, so far as he could gather, had not been swept for bugs in a long time, if ever.

Typically Irish, he thought. Too trusting by far. The British, he knew, would turn a place upside down before moving into it. And they would turn it upside down again once they had set up shop. The British expected to be bugged. They hoped that others would try. It was an acknowledgement that you still counted for something in the world.

Manning was unaware of it, as was everyone else, but the Sheridan Square offices had been bugged once. Not by the British, although they had considered it and once halfheartedly attempted it, but by the Russians in their former guise as the Soviets.

Back in the early 1970s, the KGB had succeeded in planting a device in a phone in the then first secretary's office. Moscow at the time was keenly interested in the events in Northern Ireland. Tapping into the unstated sentiments of the Irish government had been considered a key element in the formulation of Moscow's strategy for the Troubles, how to take advantage and, perhaps, foment even deeper discord.

The Soviets had monitored Irish chat, both in the building and on the phone for about six months. The listeners had discovered that some rural Irish accents could be difficult to decipher, that diplomats were sometimes less than subtle in their romantic dalliances and that there was, not infrequently, vigorous debate in the embassy with regard to Northern Ireland and what to do about Irish American supporters of the IRA. The phone was eventually changed and the bug went into the garbage with it. The KGB did not attempt to replace its device.

Now, three decades later, the embassy was throwing things out again in anticipation of the move to new and better digs. So much stuff and so little room, the ambassador would say as she supervised the clearing out of anything she declared to be sinful clutter. Nobody dared point out that the new place would actually have more room.

The ambassador had also made it abundantly clear that with new quarters firmly established she was going to take on the British in the social stakes. As the peace process had lumbered on, not always in the direction anticipated or hoped for in Dublin, Her Majesty's diplomats had stepped up a kind of hearts, minds and stomachs campaign aimed at convincing anyone who cared that London's intentions were in the right place and its way of moving the Irish situation forward, was, naturally, the most advantageous to all. The tactic had been pursued with vigor at the spacious British Ambassador's residence on Massachusetts Avenue.

By way of a barely subtle response, it had been decided in Dublin that Sheridan Circle, and the nearby but separate ambassador's residence on S Street, would both go on the block. What would then be sought was a building and compound large enough to combine both residence and embassy. The British would no longer be allowed to go unchallenged in the never-ending game of ear bending.

This was, more or less, the official rumor.

One or two of Manning's colleagues had, rather unkindly he thought, suggested that the appointment of Phillipa Evans as ambassador had been necessitated by her well known, or at least well rumored, private lifestyle and the many connections it brought with it.

Whatever the reason for the shipping out, it didn't really matter all that much to Manning. He wasn't sure if he wanted to remain a diplomat for much longer anyway. He reckoned he would never make ambassador to a first rate capital such as Washington, no matter how evident his style or talent.

Manning had walked to work. He had left his sleeping wife and daughter at the Georgetown house and had covered the distance with an even, steady stride. There would be few mornings as cool as this once the month turned. Already, the city on a swamp was beginning to heat up as spring advanced.

A few minutes and ritual greetings later, Manning walked slowly up the winding staircase that led to the ambassador's office. Ambassador and her first secretary had agreed to set aside time to discuss the grand move.

It was perhaps a coincidence, perhaps not, he thought but the transfer of the embassy from its present location to its new, decidedly upscale address, was about to occur, serendipitously some were saying, under the gaze of an ambassador who was herself known to be something of a mover in matters including, but not entirely confined to, real estate. The thought made Manning smile.

The stairs duly conquered, as if some mountain's precipitous ridge or col, Manning stood at the door of the ambassador's office. He tapped gently before turning the handle and stepping smartly into the perfumed preserve of his superior. She was, however, absent from the room. It was a couple of minutes beyond their scheduled meeting so Manning decided to wait. Might as well get it over, he thought.

The office was unrecognizable from the form it had taken under the new occupant's predecessor, and this, to just about everybody, had seemed more than a little over the top with the decision to vacate now revealed.

Still, the lady's style was above reproach, all had agreed. Manning walked
over to the sideboard that was crowded with framed photographs. Some were professional, but most were family snapshots, Phillipa with siblings, parents and cousins, her husband, who always seemed to be in another country doing business, a few of mother with daughter at various ages. There seemed to have been quite a few garden parties at a large country house. Most of the recent photos were of Evans on the job.

Evans was, no doubt about it, a woman of stunning good looks. She was close to fifty, for sure, or might have even reached that landmark. But the years had treated her very kindly. Her upbringing had doubtless helped. Her family, more than financially comfortable, had ensured that their daughter's had been a life of few material worries.

Phillipa, so the arbitrators of such matters had concluded, could be described as latter day Anglo-Irish, though not entirely big house Protestant.

Either way, she was a vivacious, utterly worldly woman, an Irish Pamela Harriman, her chosen work a glove fit for her many evident talents. Manning was by no means the only one who had been just a little smitten.

Manning turned sharply as he heard Evans enter the room. She beamed, and he nodded and smiled in return. He was surprised, and though he would not admit it to anyone, a little disappointed that she was accompanied by a man that he had never seen before.

“Good morning, Eamonn,” said Evans. “Sit down, will you? We have some serious matters to discuss.”

Here we go, Manning thought as the ambassador's companion extended his hand.

S
AMANTHA WALSH
opened her eyes. It took a couple of seconds before she quite remembered where she was.

“Oh, Nick,” she said. But Bailey was not in the bed beside her.

She sat up, pulling the bed covers upwards as she did so. She glanced at the clock.

“Oh, Christ,” she said. But just as quickly she settled back into the mattress. She was not working today. Finally she had some time to herself after what had been an especially intense immersion in the shady art of protecting very important persons.

Walsh was vaguely unsettled by the fact that the first person she had sought out once she had obtained her free weekend was Nick Bailey. She had imagined that their affair had been casual and unlikely to progress very far. But last night had changed that, somewhat at any rate.

The sound of a door closing with a thud brought Walsh's eyes to bear on the bedroom door. Bailey tiptoed into the room, barefoot but otherwise fully dressed, with the look on his face of a boy sneaking out of school.

“It's all right. I'm awake,” Walsh said.

“So you are, so you are,” said Bailey. “I popped out for a quick smoke. Wasn't going to do that in here because you don't, and besides, I don't want to be accused of nailing a copper with secondhand smoke.”

“Very kind of you, Nick. You should give them up. It's a disgusting habit.”

Bailey ignored the jibe, walked over to a dresser, pulled open a door and extracted a pair of blue socks. He examined the socks, with his nose as well as his eyes. Seemingly satisfied, he sat in the cat-scratched jumble sale cloth chair that doubled as a clothes horse and pulled them on. Walsh watched and wondered quite what she saw in him.

“You were very lively last night,” she said after a few moments. “Anyone would think you had been celibate for a year, not just a couple of weeks. Or has it been three?”

“Was it that long? Seemed like just a couple of days,” Bailey replied. “Sorry I forgot to ask you last night, but how was that place? Were you shooting guns all the time or what?”

“Milton,” said Walsh. “And no, we were not shooting guns all the time, though we did manage to put quite a dent in the ammunition supply.”

“So,” said Bailey, “there I was between the sheets last night with Deadeye Jane. Are you a decent shot?”

“I certainly wouldn't miss you from this range,” said Walsh.

She slipped sideways out of the bed, walked across the room and sat down on Bailey's lap. She could feel his body grow taut and allowed him to surround her with his arms. They kissed, furiously, slowly and furiously again, before she pinned him to the back of the chair with a forearm to his windpipe.

“Now, Mr. Bailey,” she said with mock seriousness, “are you going to peacefully make breakfast, or am I going to have to clap you in irons and haul you off to the clink?”

“Can I plead inability to function in a kitchen?” Bailey said, faking a choking voice.

“No pleas,” said Walsh as she stood up and stretched. “Unless it's temporary insanity.”

“I'm quite sane, Samantha,” said Bailey. “More than I've ever been in my life.” He stood up and took hold of her. She allowed him to kiss her neck and caress her hair but after a few moments gently pulled herself away. She wasn't quite sure yet. She patted her stomach and Bailey laughed.

“They say it's the way to a man's heart, but that's only half the story, not even that, just the lead paragraph,” he said.

“And by the way, you've been doing a lot more at that coppers' camp than just gently squeezing triggers. I didn't know girls were allowed muscles like that. Remind me not to meet you in any dark alleyways.”

Walsh and Bailey enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and were well into their second pot of tea when a ringing doorbell reminded both that there was a world beyond the flat and their nascent relationship.

“That will be the post,” said Bailey.

“The postman rings the doorbell when he delivers? Nice of him,” said Walsh.

“Well, yes,” Bailey responded. “When he found out that I was in the newspaper game he decided that I was not to be kept waiting. Tip-offs, informers, sources and all that. He thinks I'm Woodward and Bernstein, and whopping exclusives arrive by snail mail.”

“How sweet,” said Walsh as she finished off a slice of toast and marmalade.

Bailey stood and moved to the door. “Back in a second,” he said. “Help yourself to more toast, or anything your little heart desires for that matter.”

“Cheeky boy,” Walsh said. She smiled as she reached for another slice. It was strange, she thought, so peaceful, domestic and normal. Could she get used to this, a life with Nicholas Bailey?

Before she could even begin to answer her own question, Bailey had returned, shuffling in his hands an inch thick batch of envelopes along with a single magazine.

“What's the magazine?” Walsh said. “Oh, a gentleman's publication. Give us a look.”

Bailey handed her the magazine, a sheepish look on his face. “A trial subscription,” he said, though not with much conviction.

He glanced at the envelopes. “Usual rubbish,” he said. “Except for this.”

He sat back in his chair and placed the pile of post on the table. He lifted the letter of interest in front of his face and examined it intently.

“Nice handwriting. Who from? I wonder; no return address. Perhaps it's a tip-off about a scandal at Scotland Yard. Plod on the take.”

Walsh ignored his dig as she devoured the toast and magazine at roughly equal speed. It was only after several minutes that she noticed the silence and sensed Bailey's concentration. Bailey was staring at the letter that she could see ran to a second page.

“Something wrong?” she said.

Bailey did not immediately reply. “I'm not quite sure.”

“Something is certainly up, that's for certain. Did I mention to you that I recently met this guy, a colleague? I don't really know him personally. His name is Sydney Small, our Buckingham Palace man. A bit of a legend in his own reign. Henderson is certainly a fan, and that says something.”

“You never mentioned him Nick, nor your meeting,” said Walsh, putting down her toast and closing the magazine.

“Didn't I? Well, I did meet him a couple of weeks ago in a pub on the south side of the river. A real out of the way place. Never heard of it, and believe me, I've heard of most of them.”

“No doubt,” said Walsh.

Bailey, with a mock smile, continued, “Well, there he was, tucked into the back of the place with his glass of gin, all on his lonesome and looking like some toff in the paddock at Sandown Park. Certainly didn't quite match my
mental image, though when I thought of it afterwards it made perfect sense to have a man who looked like part of the royal rat pack covering the dear noble things.

“Well, we sat and chatted for a few minutes. He was a nice bloke, don't get me wrong, and he cracked a joke or two about Henderson which helped me ease up a bit. You never know what gets back to Henderson except that everything gets back to him. Anyway, he was going on about the dead priests, certainly giving the impression that if he had not direct knowledge he had certainly formed a theory based on something firm.”

Bailey stopped and looked at the letter again.

“Yes, go on,” said Walsh.

“Well, he was about to get really stuck into the matter when his cell phone went off. He had a quick conversation, said something about the palace being on the line and took off. He said he would be in touch, but that I wasn't to say a word to anyone. I wouldn't have known what to say anyway, and that's where we left it. But now this letter.”

“Can I read it?” Walsh said, her hand reaching across the table.

Bailey stood up, walked back to the table, passed the letter over and stood with his arms folded.

“Very bloody odd,” he said, as much to himself as to Walsh who was now scanning the letter with what seemed to Bailey a well-practiced eye.

“Nice handwriting,” said Bailey, but Walsh did not respond.

She read it once and then began to read it again.

“Dear Nicholas,” it began. “I must apologize profusely for my rude behavior the other day in the pub. I hope you will forgive me and trust in the fact that my sudden departure was absolutely unavoidable. A matter of life and death, you might say. I had started to tell you about my theory with regard to the deaths of those unfortunate priests.

“Had I been able to tarry, I would have taken my position beyond the realm of mere theory. There is a connection between the four, though just what the common denominator is I had no clue on the day we met. I have a rather better idea now, and to tell you the truth, it rather scares me out of my wits. As a result I am having to make myself scarce for a while. Don't bother trying to find me because you will not succeed. It's a big world, and I know one or two of the darker corners.

“I must warn you that while I expect you will want to inquire more deeply into the deaths of the good fathers, there are risks involved in such work,
extreme risks, so for God's sake be careful. As I stated, I have yet to fill in the complete picture. It's a bit like the first part of a steeplechase on a foggy day; one must wait until the nags come out of the murk before drawing any real conclusions as to the result. I must apologize for not being entirely clear in this correspondence, and I am sure you are asking yourself why I would be remotely interested in this matter, or even involved in a mere peripheral way. But I am involved, Nicholas, and not just around the edge of what could turn out to be a most shocking affair.

“Let me repeat: do not even think of seeking me out. Nevertheless, I suspect that you will try. A story is a story, and I well understand that. I do not trust even the Royal Mail enough to elaborate any further. But I had a sense about you, Nicholas. You're a man with a good nose, the kind that finds the most extraordinary truffles. I am not sure if I will be able to contact you again in the near future, if at all. But again, Nicholas, please watch your back. Yours faithfully, Sydney Small.”

“Truffles,” said Walsh. “Oink oink.”

“Odd, isn't it?” said Bailey.

“Odd, indeed,” said Walsh. “But there could be more to this letter than that.”

“Yes, go on,” said Bailey.

Walsh, reaching for the teapot bit her lip and narrowed here eyes. “What exactly is it? A hint, a lead, a guarded come-on and a warning all rolled into one. Beyond that, and most importantly, is it just gossip, information, or is it evidence of a quadruple murder?”

“That's quite a lot,” said Bailey. “I should make a fresh pot before we try to decide, or do anything else.”

Walsh was reading the letter again, her brow was furrowed, and the fingers of her left hand were drumming furiously on the table.

“Do you know what?” she said. “Your friend is hinting strongly at some kind of conspiracy, a murderous plot. I don't care what he says, or how good he is at losing himself. I think we should find him.”

“Sí, inspector,” said Bailey.

“Shut up and make the tea,” the woman Bailey suspected he might be falling in love with replied, without sympathy.