Then there was an ear-shattering blast that shook the house. “Sherlock!” Cal raced down the hall, Kelly on his heels. They ran into the kitchen in time to see a small figure leaping out the window. The kitchen was fast filling with smoke and flames, licking toward the cabinets. Sherlock was scrabbling up on the counter to go out of the kitchen window. The heat was suddenly incredible. Cal yelled, “Sherlock, we’re going out the front. Stay on the kitchen side! Be careful!”
Sherlock dropped to the ground outside the kitchen window and into a yew bush, pushed herself behind it. She yelled, “Larry, it’s Sherlock!” She felt the heat of a bullet pass by her cheek, and flattened herself to the ground, tasting dirt. She yelled again, “Larry, there’s another one, he firebombed the kitchen! I’m pinned down!”
Sherlock elbow-walked around the yew bush, looked carefully past it. She saw a slight figure moving fast to hide behind a skinny oak tree on the far side of the yard, maybe thirty feet away.
She yelled, “Drop your gun and get your hands up. We won’t shoot you. Do it! We have you surrounded, there’s no way out. Your two friends are already shot! Don’t make us shoot you, too!”
The figure’s arm jerked up and fired toward the sound of Sherlock’s voice. The bullet struck the house a few feet above her head. She heard the pounding of FBI feet coming closer, came up on her elbows, fired. There was a yell, and the gun went flying as Larry and four more FBI agents came racing around the side of the house, crouched over, fanning out into the backyard.
“He’s down!”
She saw them approach the moaning figure, guns trained center mass, going to their knees to restrain the terrorist, who was crying and cradling his wrist.
The terrorist stopped crying and looked back toward the madly burning house, casting the inferno’s glow on all of them. Orange flames gushed out toward them, and black smoke ate the oxygen out of the air, making it hard to breathe. The backyard looked like high noon.
“Hey, it’s not a man, it’s a girl!”
Sherlock ran to the fallen girl, who was clutching her hand. She was dressed in black, even her face blackened. She was trying not to cry now, doubtless it was humiliating, but still, tears seeped from beneath her lashes and trailed through the black paint on her face, cutting knifelike tracks. Sherlock knelt down beside her, saw another agent had applied a pressure bandage to the wrist. “You’re going to be all right, lie still. An ambulance is on the way.”
The girl raised dark pain-filled eyes to her face. “It was a trap.”
“Yes, it was a trap,” Sherlock said. She felt Cal’s hand on her shoulder, heard Kelly speaking to the agents. Cal said, “You were sent in to set the bomb, right? Because you’re so small? How’d you get into the kitchen?”
The girl turned her face away and didn’t say anything.
Cal continued: “She didn’t break the kitchen window, we’d have heard her. That window is too small for either of the men to get in, so she was elected. She cut a hole in the kitchen window and wriggled in, set the bomb, right?”
The girl looked up at him, said nothing.
“Her job was to set off the bomb between the kitchen and the living room, say, and then run as fast as she could and climb back out. If the bomb or the fire didn’t kill us, we’d be forced out of the house and her two friends outside would be ready to mow us down.”
“Didn’t work out, did it?” Kelly said, standing over the girl with her legs spread, her arms crossed over her chest.
They heard fire engines and sirens in the distance. Soon, she knew, neighbors would venture out to see what had happened on their quiet street.
Sherlock sat back on her heels, looked at the raging fire. It didn’t matter, a house was just a house, after all.
Everyone had done their job. One terrorist was dead, but two of them were alive, and one of them was this slight girl lying at their feet, cradling her shattered wrist.
BELAMY CLUB
LONDON
Monday, late morning
Dr. Samir “Hercule” Basara entered the sacred portal of the Belamy Club of Piccadilly Circus, nodded to the doorman dressed in the two-hundred-year-old club colors, deep blue with gold trim. Hercule always thought it looked ridiculous, a pretension that was a waste of time and money, but the upper class liked to cling to their old traditional ways. How else could they continue to regard themselves as different and above the rest? One of the only changes he knew of in the last decades was that women were now allowed to dine here for breakfast and lunch, but after two in the afternoon, no female was allowed through the door. Compared to White’s and Boodle’s, the Belamy Club was an upstart, but he liked the eighteenth-century building with all its gilded moldings, its impossibly high ceilings, its mahogany antique-filled rooms.
There were a dozen ladies and gentlemen in the receiving room, talking in low voices, all looking at home there. The majordomo, Claude, who looked nearly as old as the building, glided forward to give him a stingy smile. Dr. Basara was foreign, after all. He followed it with a small bow, another formal ritual that meant nothing. Then ancient Claude, his back straight as a Horse Guard’s, his circle of gray hair hugging his skull, gave him yet another small bow, surprising Hercule.
“Sir, if you do not mind my saying so, I wish to compliment you on your superb commentary last evening with Mr. Atterley. Your discourse was spot-on. These are indeed difficult times.”
“Thank you, Claude.”
“Lady Elizabeth is in the Cloverly Alcove. If you would follow me, sir.” Claude led him through the dining room, refinement and pride dressed in a shiny black suit, a red carnation in his lapel. The room’s long, narrow windows rarely let in sunlight, since there was so little to begin with in England. The white-covered tables were elegant, glistened with silver, and were mostly filled, as usual, well-bred conversations low. They stopped at one of the dozen discreetly named alcoves, reserved for those diners who wished for privacy. Hercule wondered if Elizabeth was surprised to be in an alcove this gray Monday morning. He usually pandered to her wish to flaunt him to her friends, to her family’s friends as well when the opportunity presented itself. An earl’s daughter, after all, could allow even an Arab to court her and remain on the best guest lists.
He leaned down, kissed her cheek, and slid into the rich mahogany leather booth. “You are looking particularly fetching today, Elizabeth.” She was wearing a stylish black Dior suit, her streaked blond hair in a severe chignon, which, oddly, suited her fine-boned face. She looked straight out of the boardroom, aloof, in control, indeed the epitome of cool English control. He wanted to laugh. She’d lost all her vaunted control in bed with him last night. And she would present yet a different face at the wedding she would attend with her father at St. Paul’s this afternoon.
“Thank you.” She scanned his Armani, admired its fit on his aesthete’s body, wondered how much he’d paid for it, and thought of her brother, who’d texted her thirty minutes ago, begging for more money. After last night, she expected at least a diamond bracelet, which should keep her brother off the streets and in cocaine for a month.