As they made haste through the lobby, Chris threw a quick glance over his shoulder. The Russians followed behind, but they weren’t displaying their weapons anymore. Sonny picked up his pace to a jog. The Russians picked up their pace, too.
Chris and his crew exited the hotel and slipped through the front doors of the Playboy Club. It was a classy joint similar to the first club they’d passed through, with expensive furnishings, a casino, and well-dressed guests. The main difference was the female staff, who wore black pantyhose, corset teddies, cuffs, bow tie collars, rabbit ears, and fluffy white cottontails.
A bunny greeted them at the door, and Sonny swiftly brushed past her. The door bunny cocked her head as if to ask a question, but before she could say anything, the trio had passed her.
Entering the club, Sonny voiced his disappointment. “Where are the naked women?”
Chris shook his head. Only he would think about that at a time like this.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Chris saw Animus and his posse arrive behind them.
Sonny hung a left in the casino and took them through a side exit. Outside, a finely attired elderly gentleman stepped into a black cab. Chris and his friends joined the elderly gentleman in his taxi. The gentleman rattled with surprise, and he seemed about to say something but didn’t.
Chris and Hannah smiled at him politely, but Sonny ignored him.
There was no passenger seat in the front of the cab and probably no room for a trunk in back, but in the middle was a three-seat bench facing two foldout seats. Chris unfolded the foldout seat and sat.
“Where to, sir?” the driver asked.
“Out of here,” Sonny said. “Just drive.”
“I need to know where to,” the driver said.
“Buckingham Palace,” Chris blurted. It was the first place that popped into his mind.
The elderly gentleman shook his head and couldn’t seem to stop trembling as he spoke. “I do not know who you people are, but I am not with you, and I am not going to Buckingham Palace.”
“Where are you going?” Chris asked.
The gentleman took in Chris’s torn and stained shirt and sat still. Inside the Playboy Club, Animus and his goons hurried for the exit nearest the taxi.
“Buckingham Palace now!” Chris pressed.
Animus and his men reached for their pistols.
“Drive!” Sonny shouted.
The trio ducked and pulled the older man down with them. Bullets shattered windows of the Playboy Club, creating a frightening racket.
The taxi spun out, flying northeast on the one-way Brick Street.
“I thought the pickpockets in Madrid were bad,” Hannah said to the driver, “but Madrid is calm compared to London.”
“Shooting is not an everyday occurrence,” the driver said with a quiver in his voice.
“I hope not,” Hannah said.
Sonny peered out the back window, searching for their enemy.
12
Chris checked the GPS map on his smartphone. Because of the one-way streets, the driver would have to circle around to Hyde Park and the Achilles statue before taking a more direct course to Buckingham Palace. The Queen’s Gallery at the Palace was well within walking distance of Victoria Station, which seemed like a great point of egress. If someone later asked the driver where he took his passengers, he’d only be able to tell them Buckingham Palace, and it’d be difficult to figure out where Chris and his companions went after that. “You can drop us off at the Queen’s Gallery,” Chris told the driver.
Chris had been so focused on their immediate survival he’d ignored the old man, who’d closed his eyes and balled up in the corner of the cab, his mouth moving without opening. “We’re not going to hurt you, sir,” Chris said.
The man’s mouth stopped moving.
“We just need a ride to the Queen’s Gallery, and then we’ll disappear.”
The elderly man opened an eye, but when he saw Chris looking at him, he closed it again.
As they neared the Achilles statue, Chris felt his heart rate pick up before he scanned to see if any of the Russian thugs were lingering in the park. When no signs of the thugs appeared, he managed to take in deep breaths, calming his pulse.
Within minutes, the driver stopped near the Queen’s Palace, and Hannah paid him before parting company and melting with Chris and Sonny into the surrounding crowd. They examined the grounds for anyone who might’ve followed them, but there were no signs of surveillance.
When their taxi vanished, Chris said, “I’ll take point to Victoria Station.”
They strolled southwest like other sightseers leaving the palace. “The hotel room was ours for a week, right, Chris?” Hannah asked. He nodded, and she continued. “So that should give us time to get someone in there to make sure we didn’t leave anything behind and check out for us.”
“Someone from the Agency?” Sonny asked.
“The London chief is too much of a chair-hugger to send a cleaner for us,” Hannah said. “Avoids espionage like the plague, but he attends to all the brown-nosing opportunities.”
Sonny huffed. “Then who can help us?”
“I know a guy who might be able to clean up the hotel mess,” she said with a faraway gaze. She pulled out her cell phone and made a call.
As they walked by Grosvenor Park on the way to the station, images of Evelina bleeding in the stairway flooded Chris’s mind. She was untrustworthy and had tried to kill him, but guilt still gnawed at him. A number of the enemies he’d shot, he’d never spoken to, but in Evelina’s case, he’d interacted with her on more than one occasion. Instead of becoming desensitized to killing her, he’d become sensitized. He wondered what exactly her role in all of this was and what she hoped to gain by shooting him. Hannah nudged him as she hung up her phone and put it away.
“You okay?” she asked.
He gave her a tight smile and nodded. None of these feelings or thoughts were conducive to accomplishing the mission, so he needed to pack them in a box, push them into the warehouse of his mind, and stack them with the others. But then he remembered something: he had Evelina’s phone. Maybe thinking about her wasn’t all for nothing.
He put his hand in his pocket, confirming it was still there.
They descended the steps to the Victoria subway station, and Hannah quickly bought tickets and handed them out. “I contacted an old acquaintance, William Teach. He used to work for the Circus,” she said, using a nickname for MI6. “But now he works for himself. He said we can stay at his house, and I’m hoping he’ll be able to help us, too.”
While they rode the Tube, Chris pulled out Evelina’s phone and searched for intel. In her web search history there was UKP’s website and another link for a map of the area around UKP. Then he connected to Young’s website, so he could gather more information from Evelina’s phone and analyze it. Chris shared what he’d found with Hannah and Sonny, and they agreed her web search history supported the theory that Xander’s next target was UKP headquarters.
After five minutes, the train stopped, and the SOG trio exited at South Kensington Station, where Hannah led them on a walk several blocks to a house on Queensberry Place. Parked in front was a red Ferrari. Behind the car stood a six-story white stucco Victorian. A small set of outdoor stairs led to what the British called the “ground” floor. Below was a basement, and above the ground floor were the first, second, third, and fourth floors. The building shared walls with the houses on either side and had no front yard, but in this upscale neighborhood of London, the house was probably worth over twenty million dollars.