“Excuse me, sir?” The voice behind him was low but firm and he turned to see Merlyn trailing behind him.
“Yes?” he said.
She inclined her head and he followed her toward the exit, stopping beside a marble column, as if she wasn’t supposed to be talking to him.
“Can you tell me if he’s OK?” she said.
“Harper?” A Goth and a groupie, Hugo thought. Great.
“He’s a nice guy and what happened,” she shrugged and looked away. “Seems like people are being extra hard on him because he’s so famous.”
“Do you know him?” Hugo asked.
“A little.” She looked up at him. “That’s why I stopped you. If you’re from the embassy, you’re here to help him, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“OK. Well, I don’t know what’s going on with him or anything else, but he does have a room. He and his wife.”
“So he didn’t check out?”
“Oh, he did. Or someone did. From here.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he has a room at another hotel. A couple of streets away. He and his wife use it as a getaway I guess. They seem really nice and in love, so I suppose they want to be able to sneak away without anyone finding out.”
“How do you know this?” Hugo asked.
She hesitated, but not for long. “I work at that hotel, too. A six-hour shift here, then one there. It’s decent money and I need it.”
Hugo felt his pulse quicken. “What’s the name of the hotel?”
“The Cork Hotel. Not even a mile from here, on Cork Street.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s a boutique hotel,” she said. “Used to be a pub and has a butcher’s shop next door. Has fifteen rooms, and a reputation for being quiet and discreet.”
“What do you mean ‘discreet’?”
She had given him that lingering look again and now she winked. “Thick walls.”
“OK, thanks.”
She nodded. “You are … you really are trying to help him, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Hugo said. “I really am. Which is why I need to get over there right now.”
Merlyn looked over her shoulder, then back at Hugo. “Wait here, I won’t be a sec.”
“I have to—”
“You won’t get anywhere over there without me,” she called over her shoulder as she strode toward Caleb. “Discreet, remember?”
“Right,” Hugo muttered. “Discreet.”
She followed him out to the car and climbed into the front seat.
“So you didn’t make fun of my name,” she said.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to.”
“You’re about the first person who didn’t.”
He looked over as he buckled up. “I assume there’s a story behind it. Your dad was a wizard?”
“I was born Hailey,” she said. “When I was ten my parents had a baby boy and called him Merlyn. I think they were high when they named him, and probably when they conceived him. Anyway, he died when he was five. I changed my name so he’d always be around.”
“I’m sorry to hear he died, but that’s very sweet of you.”
“I used to hate the name. Made fun of my parents for giving it to him. But now, every time I hear it, I smile.” She shrugged and touched the wood dash of the car. “Anyway, nice wheels. You Yanks always get the biggest and best, huh?”
Hugo suppressed a smile. “Where to?” he asked.
“Cork Street is one-way, so probably best to go down Albemarle Street and around.” She pointed. “That one.”
Hugo checked the mirrors and pulled out, the tires under the heavy vehicle screeching on the damp road as he accelerated across the intersection into Albemarle Street.
“Go all the way to the end, then follow the road to the right into Old Bond Street.”
Hugo grunted, his eyes scanning the sidewalk for careless pedestrians as he zipped along the narrow road, scanning also for Harper. Just in case. He fought the car around a tight corner bringing them into Old Bond Street, slowing as he caught sight of a small, slim figure closing the door of a red phone booth, swearing under his breath when he saw the man was older and bald. Merlyn pointed and he turned left into Burlington Gardens for one short block, then left again onto Cork Street.
“There’s an alley on the right,” she said. “Park in there. It’s a dead end so it won’t matter if you block it.” Hugo looked over and a smile twitched on her face. “You probably have diplomatic plates, don’t you?”
“I probably do,” Hugo said, slowing and easing into a side street that was barely wider than his car. “This good?” he asked.
“Yep. We can go in through the service entrance.”
Out of the car, they walked twenty yards farther down the alley, then Merlyn stopped at a pair of innocuous, green metal doors. A waist-high trash can next to them tinged the air with the odor of rotting food, wearing its circular lid at a jaunty angle like a drunkard unable to hang onto his cap. She waved a keycard over a pad on the wall and the right-hand door clicked. She tugged it open and they walked into what Hugo saw was a storage bay, its tile floor damp from a recent mopping. Crates of fruit and vegetables lined the walls, and ahead a curtain of thick plastic strips hung between them and what he assumed was the kitchen.
“Follow me,” Merlyn said. She pushed her way through the plastic curtain and strode past two men in white smocks, a tubby older man with white hair, and a scrawny kid who looked more like an apprentice than a chef. Hugo was right about it being a kitchen, a compact one, with an eight-burner stove to his right, several refrigerators and a sink on the left wall. “Hey guys, don’t mind us,” she said with a wave.
The two men gave Hugo barely a glance before going back to work, the chef chopping and his helper dropping dirty pans into a tank-sized sink brimming with bubbles.
They passed from the kitchen into a narrow hallway, the tiles replaced by flagstones, the walls beside him white stone. They paused at an archway; to their left, a reception area continued the stone motif. He could see several arches, all adorned with tortured angels or grotesque demons. It reminded Hugo of a church crypt or the cellar in an old monastery. He half expected to see spider webs on the ceilings and rats scuttling across the flagstone floor, but the place was immaculate and the ornate wooden reception desk, almost black, so perhaps teak, looked sturdy and new.
“Hang on, I’ll get a key,” Merlyn said.
Hugo waited by the archway and watched as Merlyn walked over to the reception desk, looking around as if she were surprised to see it unattended. She circled the end of the desk and typed something into a computer. Then she took a blank key card and swiped it through a machine, punched a couple more buttons on the computer, and started out from behind the desk.
She stopped in her tracks and Hugo heard a woman’s voice, deep and scratchy.
“Hey hun, what are you doing here so early?”
A short, round woman with tight red curls waddled into view, bumping Merlyn out of the way with a playful hip as she rounded the reception counter. She waved a stack of cash at her employee and winked before stashing it below the counter. Merlyn shot Hugo a look and turned the key card over and over in her hands.
“Hi Rose, what’s up?”
Rose stopped in front of the computer and frowned, then looked at Merlyn. Then she saw Hugo and looked back and forth between the two. “Everything OK, hun?” she asked.