As Parker walked through the doors, both floor attendants looked up. The older one, the one with wavy, pure white hair and a face that had spent most of his life taking hunters north, in the sun on the moors of Scotland hunting grouse, smiled a wide, toothy smile. His eyes, however, squinted in just such a way as to show a degree of doubt. The customer was dressed in a fairly new clover green jacket, but otherwise he looked very common. His pants were baggy and well worn, and his shoes — more like boots, although black — were scuffed so badly as to show cuts into the gray leather below. His early growth beard was starting to show curls; above, a crushed chocolate-brown felt hat pulled down to his ears.
“Can I help you, sir?” The white-haired clerk said the words pleasantly, but the tone was doubtful.
Purdey’s sold some of the best shotguns in the world, and Parker looked nothing like their typical customer. The walls were lined with cabinets stacked deep with blue and black steel shotguns in glass cases, engraved with gold and silver pigeons in flight, and outfitted with marbled glossy stocks of walnut and burl. The small white tags on the trigger housing showed prices of 85,000 and 92,000. Some showed 110,000. All of the numbers meant British pound sterling. Above the cases, mounted antelope, stags, and boars looked down.
Parker picked up one of the shotguns. It was an over-under with two barrels riding one on top of the other. It felt light in his hands. He pulled it up into his shoulder and aimed down the line of the weapon. He stroked the stock with his hand, feeling the glass-like finish over the burl wood, his slight smile a show of appreciation for a craftsman’s work of art.
He turned to the clerk. “I’m looking for the Long Room.”
“Oh, yes, sir. Please come this way.” The clerk took the shotgun back and put it in the cabinet. He talked as he led Parker. “That one is a favorite. It’s a twenty-bore, with rose and scroll engraving, done by Martin Smith.”
“Very nice.” William Parker knew that the 20-bore Purdey would be bought and used and then handed down to generations of sons, followed by their sons. It would kill with perfect accuracy thousands of doves and quail in its life. It would age and be seasoned and smell faintly of burned gunpowder, spending most of its life in some rustic country cabin.
“Eighty thousand pounds, that one.” He led Parker down a hall, to a door on the back corner of the store, twisted the handle, and swung it open for the guest who stepped in. The long room’s central space was occupied by a long, red felt table, with the walls of the room adorned with paintings and photographs of the great Purdey men and their royal customers over the centuries.
“Well, here he is!” Sitting at the end of the table was none other than Gunnery Sergeant Kevin Moncrief.
“Gunny.” William Parker walked over and gave him a bear of a handshake.
“Charlie, this is my friend Colonel William Parker.”
The clerk stuck his hand out. “It’s a pleasure, sir. A friend of the gunny’s is always welcome.”
“Charlie is related to the Purdeys somehow, but what he is known for is his career as a Royal Marine Commando. He’s a retired WO-1.”
“I’m impressed. But how did you get to know this troublemaker?” Parker pointed to Moncrief.
“He’s one of our best customers.”
“No!”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” tut-tutted Moncrief with a smirk.
“With your new sportster, how many in your collection, Gunny?” asked Charlie. “Six?”
“Well, I have a Holland and a Rigby.” Moncrief was naming some of the best shotguns in the world.
“Yes, we must count those, mustn’t we?” Charlie humorously acknowledged the competitive brands.
“Charlie, we need to talk. Can you give us a second?”
“Absolutely, the long room is yours for as long as you need it.”
“And let us know if you see anyone.”
“Our security system covers two blocks. We saw the colonel from the alleyway on.” Charlie closed the door as he left. Besides making shotguns, discretion was another Purdey skill.
Parker pulled up the seat at the corner of the table. “Good friends to have, I’d say.”
“Charlie’s been a pal for years. The room is one of the most protected rooms in downtown London. And there is no chance that the wrong type will wander into this store. Hell, they probably have fifty million in inventory in this little building alone.”
“Does Scott know you’re here yet?”
“No, he thinks I’m coming in tonight.”
“Good. I need you. But remember: Both Yousef and Scott will be shadowing me. No phone calls, no e-mails, nothing that we can’t assume isn’t being read or listened to.”
“How’d you do getting here?”
“Switched the tube six times in six different directions. If they followed me here, they are very good.”
Moncrief laughed.
“What more do we know on Yousef?”
“Well, he’s a first-class bastard. That’s one thing. He’d throw his four-year-old under the bus if it helped the cause. The Semtex I told you about had a chemical marker that tracks directly from a Czech factory. The chemical gave the explosive a unique smell that could be easily detected by the dogs. It’s called DMDNB.”
“So what does that do for us?”
“We know that the explosives in Lockerbie and in Doha had the same tracer. Both were part of the original sale of seven hundred pounds that went through Libya. And both bombings were arranged and financed by Yousef. Oh, one other thing: the same tracer showed up in UTA Flight 772.”
“UTA 772?”
“A passenger jet blown out of the sky in Africa to get back at the French. And my source found something else.”
“The guy we spoke with?”
“Sorry, Colonel, yes.”
“The Mossad source?”
“Yeah.”
“What else?”
“There’s a theory that the CIA let the Samsonite containing the Semtex onto 103. Witnesses said it passed through customs that day without anyone even lifting a finger to inspect it.”
Parker sunk down into the leather chair.
“Why?”
“They thought they were running a tag on a heroin cell. Pure dope from Afghanistan being used in New York to raise bucks for the jihad.”
Parker didn’t want to believe that his own country shared culpability in the death of his parents. But it made sense. No one would ever admit it, though. It would remain buried deeper than the Mariana Trench.
“MI6 was working with the Agency at the time.”
“I’d say they had to be. Flight 103 coming out Heathrow.” This was the one fact that didn’t cause Parker much surprise.
“And guess who was assigned to Heathrow out of MI6 at that time?” Instead of his usual smug look, Moncrief looked dead serious.
“Who?”
“One James Scott.”
Parker shook his head in disgust. Nothing surprised him anymore. But it wasn’t like he had trusted Scott implicitly to begin with. This served as an important reminder, though, that the only people Parker could trust were Moncrief and his own team.
“I am going to be off the net tonight.” Parker switched the subject. Off the net meant he was going somewhere beyond communication, somewhere off the communications net.