26
NORFOLK, ENGLAND: 10:34 P.M., MONDAY
The same bright moon that hung over the plains of northern Germany was visible in the skies above the Norfolk coast that evening as Marcia Cromwell, an unmarried woman of thirty-six, headed down the sandy pathway to the beach at Walcott with Ginger, her Welsh springer spaniel, following closely at her heels. Questions about the morality of torture or even the fate of the missing American woman were of no concern to her at that moment. She had just been informed by her latest lover that, after much deliberation, he had decided not to leave his wife and children for her after all. Marcia Cromwell, a lifelong resident of Norfolk, had decided to deal with the pain the same way she had dealt with every other setback, by taking a late-night walk along the North Sea.
At the end of the pathway the beach opened suddenly before her, flat and seemingly limitless in the darkness, with wind-driven waves breaking in a phosphorous arc along the crest of hard dark sand. Ginger was behaving oddly. Usually he was straining at his leash at this point, anxious to be let loose on the beach so he could torment the gulls and sandpipers. Now he was sitting warily at her feet, peering intently into the grove of pine trees at the base of the dunes. Marcia Cromwell removed his leash and encouraged him to head down to the water’s edge. Instead, he immediately trotted off into the trees.
Marcia Cromwell hesitated before going after him. The police had recently uncovered an encampment of vagrant travelers there, and the trees were always strewn with empty beer cans and litter. She called out to Ginger several times, then removed a flashlight from her coat pocket and went in search of him. She spotted him a moment later, pawing at something on the ground at the base of one of the trees. Marcia Cromwell walked over to investigate. Then she began to scream.
The discovery of a corpse on the beach at Walcott immediately triggered activation of the Norfolk Constabulary’s Major Investigation Team. Established in September 2004 to conduct probes into crimes such as homicide, manslaughter, and rape, each team consists of a senior investigating officer, his deputy, an exhibits officer who processes crime-scene evidence, and an inquiry officer who interviews witnesses and suspects. Within thirty minutes of receiving Marcia Cromwell’s call, all four officers were on scene. Only two, the SIO and the exhibits officer, entered the trees at the base of the dunes. They wore yellow protective shoe covers in order to preserve any forensic evidence and examined the corpse by flashlight.
“How long has he been here?” asked the SIO.
“Between forty-eight and seventy-two hours, I’d say.”
“Preliminary cause of death?”
“Single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Execution-style, by the looks of it. But here’s the interesting thing.”
The crime-scene analyst shone a small Maglite at the lower right leg of the corpse.
“A splint?”
“Quite a good one, actually. But look at the wound. The coroner will have to make the final determination, but I’d be willing to wager it was caused by a bullet.”
“Caliber?”
“Looks like a nine-millimeter to me, but that’s not the interesting part. It’s several days older than the head wound, and whoever treated it knew exactly what she was doing?”
“She?”
“Elizabeth Halton is an emergency-room surgeon from Denver, Colorado. I could be wrong, but I think this corpse could well be one of the terrorists from Hyde Park. Didn’t COBRA and the Home Office tell us to be on the lookout for unexplained bullet wounds?”
“Yes, they did,” the SIO said.
“The wound and surrounding tissue exhibit signs of severe infection. I’d say our man was wounded by that Israeli chap during the actual kidnapping. His comrades tried to keep him alive, but apparently they finally gave up and put him out of his misery with a neat bullet in the back of the head. He probably suffered terribly. I suppose there is some justice in the world after all.”
SIO crouched next to the body and examined the lower leg of the corpse, then began searching the corpse itself for evidence. The coat pockets were empty, as were the front pockets of his trousers, but in the back right pocket he found a single sheet of paper, folded in quarters and flattened by many days of pressure. The SIO unfolded it carefully and read it by the beam of his flashlight.
“Draw me up a list of supplies one would need to treat a bullet wound in the field—things that can be purchased over the counter at an ordinary chemist’s shop. And put a very wide cordon around this scene. If your theory about this chap is correct, this beach is going to be invaded soon by several hundred men from the Anti-Terrorist Branch, MI5, the FBI, and the CIA.”
“Done.”
The SIO turned and walked quickly out of the trees. Two minutes later he was behind the wheel of his car, speaking by radio to the duty officer in the Operations and Communications Center. “It looks like the body might be linked to the missing American woman,” he said. “Get the chief constable on the phone immediately and bring him into the picture.”
“Anything else, sir?”
“I found a receipt in his pocket for the Portsmouth–to–Le Havre ferry. If this chap is really one of the terrorists, it could mean that the American girl is now in France.”…
The series of events that occurred next unfolded with precision and remarkable swiftness. The Operations and Communications Center immediately located the Norfolk chief constable, who was dining with friends and family in Norwich, and told him of the discovery. The chief constable stepped away from the table and quietly relayed the information to his superiors at the Home Office, who in turn informed the COBRA committee and the Police Nationale of France. Fifteen minutes after the SIO’s initial dispatch from the beach, news of the discoveries reached the American team at Grosvenor Square. A secure cable was sent priority status from the embassy to all federal agencies involved in the search for Elizabeth Halton, including the CIA.
At 6:18 P.M. Eastern time, a copy reached the hands of Adrian Carter, who at that moment was seated in his regular chair in the CIA’s Global Ops Center, monitoring a highly illegal clandestine interrogation now taking place at a derelict farmhouse in the plains of northern Germany. He read the note quickly and for the first time in more than a week felt a fleeting sense of hope. Then he set the cable aside and stared at his monitor. The feed had been silent for five minutes. Gabriel, it seemed, had taken a break for dinner.