“What’s it like?”
“Palatial. Got to run.” She hung up.
Stone, Dino, Viv, and Pat were finishing lunch at the Waterside Inn in Bray, a spectacular French restaurant in the village of Bray on the banks of the upper Thames River, not far from Cliveden, when his phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Stone Barrington?”
“Speaking.”
“My name is Millicent Martindale. I work for Holly Barker.”
“You’re a lucky woman, then,” he said. “How is Holly?”
“She’s very well. She’s with the president in Paris right now, and she asked me to call you.”
“Oh?”
“Are you still in England?”
“At the moment I am in surroundings so French that I could doubt that.”
“MI6 said you were in the country.”
“How the hell would they know that?”
“Apparently, they know when you enter and leave Britain, but I understand that you flew yourself this time, so somehow you slipped past them. Someone at a country hotel spotted you — a retired MI6 officer.”
“Well, that’s fairly creepy,” Stone said.
“It gets creepier. I was at lunch today at a restaurant called La Famiglia...”
“I know it well.”
“... and I was seated next to two men and a woman — all Americans — and I heard your name mentioned.”
“In vain?”
“Maybe.” She told him about the overheard conversation.
“Well, he’s wrong, I haven’t been taken care of. Any idea who they were?”
“The table was booked in the name of Reeves. That’s all I know.”
“Swell,” Stone said with some feeling.
“I hope that’s not too upsetting. Holly felt you should know.”
“And I’m glad you called. Thank you very much. Can you describe the two men?”
“One was in his mid to late thirties, very beefy-looking. The other was, maybe fifty, florid complexion.”
“I believe I know them,” Stone said. “How long ago did you see them?”
“I left twenty minutes ago. They had just sat down for lunch.”
“That’s good to know,” Stone said.
“I’m based at the American embassy for a few more days. Is there anything I can do for you in London?”
“I don’t think so, but I’ll be in touch if anything comes up.”
She did, and Stone wrote it down. He hung up. “Another coincidence,” he said to his party.
“Reeves again?”
Stone nodded. “This time in a London restaurant, sitting next to one of Holly Barker’s people.” He told them about what she had overheard.
“You’ve already been taken care of?” Dino asked. “Is that what Reeves said?”
“Apparently. Do I look taken care of to you?”
“Nope.”
“Then that must lie in my future,” Stone said.
“I think you’d better be careful until we’re out of the country,” Dino said. “And right now, I’m going to have a look around this place.”
“I think you should call Sir Martin and tell him that Reeves and Keyes are at La Famiglia, World’s End, Chelsea.”
“Right.” Dino got up and left the table.
“Well,” Stone said, having some more cheese, “I’m not going to let this ruin a good lunch.”
45
Quentin Phillips got into the office an hour before hardly anybody else did, and he found Lev Epstein at his desk.
“Good morning,” Quentin said.
Lev looked up. “What the hell are you doing here at this hour, sucking up?”
“I suck up only when absolutely necessary. I’ve heard from Millie Martindale in London: Moe has been made and located.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I shit you not. Our lab couldn’t match the snapshot to anybody in our database, but they did two drawings of how he might look now. Holly Barker made one of them as somebody she saw at an inaugural party. His name turns out to be Ali Mahmoud, and he’s the chargé d’affaires at the embassy of Dahai.”
“I know that son of a bitch! I’ve had dinner with him at a big party! He is Moe?”
“He is also Jacob Riis and Harold Charles St. John Malvern.”
“Let this be a lesson to you on the importance of even tiny pieces of evidence. If that snapshot hadn’t been taken fifteen years ago, we might never have found the bastard.”
“The White House has requested maximum surveillance on Mahmoud around the clock. Shall I move on that?”
“What’s your idea of maximum surveillance?”
“Eight four-man teams working around the clock, a dozen different vehicles and disguises for them, full electronic surveillance on office and home, fixed and mobile.”
“And how much is that going to cost?”
“Half a million dollars for the first week, maybe three hundred thousand a week after that. Can you authorize it?”
“I can get it authorized.”
“Today?”
“This morning!” He opened his laptop and started typing. “I’m calling an agency-wide emergency conference, everybody from assistant director up.”
“Hang on a minute, Lev.”
Lev stopped typing. “Don’t slow me down.”
“We promised the White House absolute secrecy, closely held. You’re talking about at least three dozen people when you include deputies and secretaries.”
“My boss is in South America,” Lev said. “There’s nobody between me and the director.” He picked up his phone and dialed a number from memory. “Good morning, sir, it’s Lev Epstein. I’m sorry to have to trouble you at home.” He didn’t apologize for the hour. “I need an immediate appointment with you. It’s an emergency. Let me brief you when you come in. How long? Thank you, sir.” He hung up. “You and I are seeing the director at eight-thirty. We’ve got less than an hour to put our briefing together.”
“Right.”
“You put together a list of agents and equipment you need, and a list of tech people, as well. We’ll meet in my conference room at ten AM. Oh, request a fully teched-out conference room in the basement, in my name. You ever done a stakeout, Quentin?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s going to bore the ass off you.”
Millie was stretched out on the bed in her suite, trying to make sense of a cricket match, when her cell went off. She muted the TV. “Hello?”
“It’s Quentin. Listen fast, I’m on the run.”
“Go.”
“Lev and I just met with the director, and it’s a go. We’re starting a meeting of the team in five minutes. They’ll be on the job by noon. It’s a maximum effort.”
“Go, then!”
“Bye.” He hung up.
Millie punched the air. “Yes!” she screamed. She called Holly.
“Yes?”
“Big news — the Bureau will be all over Moe by lunchtime in D.C. Maximum effort.”
“That’s great news, Millie. Congratulations on moving it so fast. Right now, I’m half dressed for a state dinner that started ten minutes ago. Gotta go.” She hung up.
Millie called Ian Rattle.
“Hahlew,” he drawled.
“The FBI has just uncorked a maximum-surveillance effort on Moe. I thought you and Dame Felicity would like to know.”
“She will be very pleased to hear it,” he said, “as am I. Will we get to watch any of this in progress?”
“Ian, it’s surveillance, not a raid. What’s to watch?”
“Oh, all right. When you do make a move, please remember that Dame Felicity becomes orgasmic when watching an operation in real time. It makes her feel omniscient, I think.”
“Whatever turns her on,” Millie said, then hung up.
After Dino had cased the neighborhood to his satisfaction, checking out the rowers, the fishermen, and the swans on the Thames, they got into Pat’s borrowed Jaguar and left the restaurant. Stone drove quickly, turning down country lanes, seemingly at random.