“I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure? When will you be?”
“I won’t know until you tell me if there is something HMG needs to concern itself with,” Telford replied after giving the matter some thought.
“You do appreciate this isn’t Belfast,” Andy muttered, making no effort to stifle the irritation he felt over the manner with which his friend was playing upon his dedication to queen and country to back him into a corner. “If I’m hearing what you’re saying right, there’s not going to be an all-powerful brigadier watching my back, ready to come galloping in to pluck me out of the muck if I step on some very sensitive toes.”
After drawing in a deep breath, Telford took to looking about at everything around him save Andy as he slowly let it out. “I know,” was all he said by way of response.
Realizing he wasn’t going to get a straight answer, Andy shrugged. “When do you need an answer?”
“Two days ago.”
Unable to help himself, Andy rolled his eyes. His friend’s response was as predictable as it was vintage Edward Telford, one Andy suspected he used to motivate otherwise slovenly government bureaucrats who had the unfortunate need to answer to him.
Having gotten as much from Telford as he suspected he was going to in regard to the forlorn hope he had been volunteered for, Andy moved on to more practical matters, the kind he, as a businessman, needed answers to. “Who’s picking up the tab?”
“A retainer that should be more than enough to cover your travel expenses, billeting, and subsistence, as well as an advance you’ll probably need to pay your American associate will be wired into your account by the end of the day,” Telford informed him in an offhanded manner without letting on where the funds were coming from. “The balance of what’s owed you will follow when the job’s done.”
Again, seeing there was no point in pressing him for a straight, no-bullshit answer, Andy moved on. “Since you’re so hell bent on keeping this sub rosa, when and where do we meet again?”
“At the game on Saturday next, if that’s possible.”
“I don’t have tickets for it. It’s sold out, remember?”
Telford stopped and waited for Andy to do likewise before stepping in front of him. “There’s one for you in the newspaper,” he informed his friend as he handed over the paper he’d had tucked up under his arm.
Unable to help himself, Andy chuckled. Like so many other veterans he knew from his time in Belfast, Telford never missed a chance to play secret agent man. “I hope the seats are better than last time,” he informed the Guards officer turned government flunky.
“You get what I can afford. After all, I’m just a humble servant of HMG.”
“Yeah, right,” Andy sneered as Telford turned and walked away.
Only after Telford was gone did Andy find himself wondering if one of the people who had been on the shit list Randolph Mullins was rumored to have kept was Telford himself. Not that it made any difference, Andy told himself as he turned away and headed off in the opposite direction.
From the doorway of the Calico Row office belonging to Century Consulting, Andy took a moment to look about. “Where’s Spence?”
Without bothering to look up from his monitor, Tommy grunted, “I sent her to fetch tea, biscuits, and milk.”
“You sent her?” Andy asked incredulously as he made his way to his desk.
Tommy grinned. “In a roundabout way, I did.”
Unable to help himself, Andy chuckled, for he knew Tommy’s ways. Rather than coming out and telling Karen Spencer they needed to restock various items they were out of, whether it be office supplies or tea, he’d make a great show of noisily poking around the office searching for things he knew they were out of until Spence, unable to concentrate on her work with him noisily thrashing about, asked him what he was looking for. After informing her, she’d save her work, get up, and go over to the cabinet where the item Tommy was looking for was kept. If they really were out of something, she would inventory their supplies and draw up a list of items they were out of or low on before heading out the door to the local corner shop.
Chuckling to himself, Andy took a seat at his desk. “You know, one day that girl is going to catch on to that little charade of yours and tell you to stuff it.”
Tommy was unfazed by Andy’s warning. “I daresay if she hasn’t figured it out by now, she never will.”
After enjoying a chuckle over this, Tommy turned his attention back to what he’d been working on while Andy took a few minutes to poke around the Internet, pulling up whatever he could find concerning the death of the media mogul. Now that he knew there just might be more to the story, he took care to see if there was anything hidden in the published stories he could follow up on. When he found none, he next turned his attention to handwriting a letter to a former NYPD detective named O’Conner he’d worked with before when he’d been tasked to track down a notorious Russian computer expert living in New York who had had links to the IRA.
After finishing the letter, Andy eased back in his seat, wondering how she would react to his letter. It wasn’t the nature of the request he was making to Susan Giovanna O’Conner, whom everyone called Susan G., that worried Andy. Like him, she was a consummate, tenacious, take-no-prisoners professional. What concerned him was whether the two of them would be able to work together as effectively as they had in the past, even providing she was willing to. She’d changed since he’d last seen her. She might not be keen on renewing their relationship, even if it was a purely professional one, just as the last case they’d worked on together had started out, for he imagined it might be just as awkward for her as it would be for him.
Setting that thought aside, Andy lurched forward and read the letter to her he’d drafted. Satisfied with it, he turned his attention to addressing an overseas express envelope. If there was, as Telford had put it, a “there” there, the last thing Andy wished to do was to send anything regarding the case bouncing about the globe via the Internet, ricocheting off one server to the next where anyone tapped into the Web who was interested in any traffic regarding Mullins’s death could pluck it out of the ether and find out what he was up to.
Finished with addressing the envelope, Andy glanced over to Tommy, who was hunched over his keyboard in a pose that always put him in mind of a tech-savvy version of Quasimodo. “Whatever it is you’re working on, finish up as best you can by noon. Then go home, pack your kit, find your passport, put your household on lockdown, and be ready to pull pitch either tomorrow or oh-dark-thirty the day after.”
Ever eager to go off on one of Andy’s adventures, provided it didn’t involve tromping up and down Hadrian’s Wall or meandering about some other tumbled-down edifice left behind by the Romans whilst listening to a drier-than-dirt description of how the damn thing was built, Tommy asked what he needed to pack. “What’s it going to be? Brown stuff, green stuff, or gray stuff?”
“Gray,” Andy replied, using Tommy’s terminology for clothing appropriate for an urban environment. “Definitely gray. About a week’s worth.”
“We taking Tinker Bell with us?” Tommy asked cautiously.
Andy had considered doing so, but only briefly. If it did turn out Mullins’s death was the result of carjacking by remote control, the method used would involve hardware, which was Tommy’s field of expertise. Spence was the software wiz of the team, well-schooled in the dark art of navigating her way through vast oceans of code. As true as that was, the real reason he’d dismissed the idea of including her on this foray was personal. Andy wished to spare himself the necessity of taking on the role of mother to a pair of bickering siblings. While Tommy Tyler and Karen Spencer were consummate professionals whose technical expertise was second to none, the two were like vinegar and oil — palatable in small doses but difficult to mix. This had proven to be especially true in the wake of the Kirkland Hospital case. As much as he liked Tommy’s brash, no-nonsense demeanor and his ability to get right to the heart of a problem, the man had the unfortunate habit of going from tolerably annoying to downright aggravating when gloating over his latest triumph. “No, not this time.”