The receptionist spoke again, now that the formalities were out of the way. ‘Mr Hansard sends his apologies, but he is running a little late. He invites you to relax and have a drink at the bar while you wait.’ The woman gestured through one of the arches behind her. ‘I think you’ll find it quite comfortable.’ Thanking her, Cole strolled through the vaulted entrance to the left of the desk.
The lounge bar, which he had seen partially from the reception area, was even bigger than he’d imagined. Sporting the same rich mahogany panelling and thick carpets as the anteroom behind him, the lounge was designed in open-plan. Quiet booths with deep leather bench seats and solid wood dining tables were spread along the walls to the left, and there was a long, gleaming bar stretching fifteen feet down the right hand wall. The rest of the floor space was adorned with various Chesterfield sofas, sumptuous leather wing chairs, and an assortment of antique coffee and lamp tables. Landscapes adorned the walls, and were illuminated subtly by the dull glow of the brass-pedestaled lamps that were scattered around the room. A galleried library looked out over the lounge from the mezzanine level above, its dark wooden bookcases stretching from floor to ceiling.
Cole found his breath was taken away by the sight. The room was not only inordinately luxurious; it was also vast. It wasn’t the high ceilings or the great depth that most surprised him however; it was the sheer width that really did it. Spanning a little over seventy-five feet in Cole’s estimation, it was three times the width of the house he had entered. Cole realized that his earlier thought about the CIA owning the entire street might not have been mere idle supposition. The organization certainly appeared to own at least the two houses to either side of the first, and Cole found himself wondering just how big this safe house really was.
After he had taken in the scale of the lounge bar, he began to observe its occupants as he walked slowly to the bar itself. There were about a dozen people there in all, only one of whom was female. Most were in their middle age, from what appeared to be a variety of ethnic backgrounds. All were smartly dressed. They were mostly reading the morning newspapers as they sipped at their dainty cups of tea or coffee, although a couple were perusing the leather-bound volumes up in the library. One or two sitting in the lounge had already started on the brandy.
Cole noticed that the nation-wide ban on smoking in public places obviously had no sway here, and he could detect not only the rich aroma of pipe tobacco, but also the expensive scent of cigar smoke.
None of the room’s residents looked at him, even in passing. They had all obviously passed the stage of interest in the comings and goings in the strange house. Cole guessed that they would be people who had already received their initial, and extensive, preliminary debriefings, and who were now waiting to see what would happen next; if they were going to be sent elsewhere for further interviews, or granted freedom to stay in the country, or perhaps even shipped home if they had been of no use. Whatever the case, Cole was sure that new arrivals to the house would not be allowed to congregate in the public rooms; they would almost certainly be ‘confined to quarters’, at least initially.
Cole wandered over to an old, button-back leather armchair that faced the twin arches at the entrance to the lounge and sat down, picking up a copy of The Times from the little table next to him as he did so. He opened the pages, and read them with interest.
There was nothing of major importance that he hadn’t learned from the television news he’d watched in his room that morning. A more thorough run-down of press interviews and statements from Abrams, Danko and Feng, but not much else. What was more interesting was what wasn’t there. Cole could find no mention on any of the pages of the death of William James Crozier.
He was not surprised at the omission of Crozier’s tragic, if necessary, demise. The CIA would think long and hard about how they were going to release the information, and make sure that there was a competent man waiting to take over Crozier’s responsibilities. The last thing James Dorrell, the Director of the CIA, would want would be a power vacuum. Bill Crozier, as Director of NCS, had been ultimately responsible for all international initiatives, and Dorrell would have to be sure his replacement was fully up to speed on all aspects of the Directorate’s activities. Dorrell would certainly not want the international press to start reporting on Crozier’s sudden and unexpected death; such an event would delight the intelligence services of America’s many enemies.
What would happen, Cole was sure, was that the death would be reported in a day or so, mentioning how Crozier had long been suffering from ill health, and how he had been working closely with his successor for the last several months in preparation for the tragic, but inevitable, passing on of the current DNCS. This would send out the right sort of message — that the death, although tragic, was nevertheless expected, and the CIA had made preparations for the event that would ensure operations could continue without skipping a beat.
The truth, Cole knew, would be somewhat different. There would be panic at the highest levels of the CIA as they struggled to find someone to take over and bring that person up to speed, then further panic when they realized that all sorts of operational secrets had gone to the grave with Crozier. But that panic would never be made public, and the transition to power of the new DNCS would appear to be smooth sailing, at least on the surface.
But, Cole wondered, could there be another reason that Crozier’s death had not been mentioned? Could he have failed in his mission? Could Crozier have lived?
Cole silenced the doubt as soon as it arose. He knew the man could not have lived. At the cemetery, Cole had struck three of Crozier’s vital nerve points, in quick succession. As he’d stepped ‘accidentally’ backwards into Crozier, the point of his elbow hit a nerve inside the man’s forearm, next to the long radiobrachialis muscle. It was fairly harmless in itself, but Cole’s steel-like fingertips had then grasped one of the series of nerves lying near the medial deltoid muscle of the shoulder, and he had then lightly tapped the Seventh Cranial nerve near the hinge of the jaw.
After the initial impact felt by Crozier when Cole had stepped back into him, the next two nerve manipulations had appeared to be nothing more alarming than natural moves by Cole to check if the man he’d bumped into was okay. But they had made the initial, otherwise harmless strike into a deadly one, interrupting the flow of blood to both the brain and the heart with devastating effect. Cole knew the results would not be instant, but also knew they would be permanent. Cole had estimated that Crozier’s death would occur approximately one hour later.
Such nerve strikes were known to the Chinese as dim mak, and to the Japanese as atemi; to the Indians, from whom Cole had learned the art, it was known as marma adi, the most advanced stage of knowledge in the ancient Indian martial art of kalaripayattu. To its adepts, the title didn’t matter, only the results. Depending upon the skill of the practitioner, these could range from temporary paralysis, to instant death, to a certain death, delayed up to several hours. It was a deadly art indeed, and Cole had learned its secrets well.
Having studied martial arts from his youth, Cole had thought only of strength and aggression; he had had little time for rumours of such mystic ways. He had won countless fights with basic moves, honed through thousands of repetitions, and with a brutal and aggressive application of those moves. He had trusted nothing that couldn’t be both learned, and retained, easily. But that was before his capture in Pakistan, and before he’d met Panickar Thilak, an Indian ‘cross-border terrorist’ who had occupied the cell next to him for over a year. Panickar had shown him that such skills were no myth; they were real, and could be used.