THIRTY-SEVEN
THE HILTON WAS more than adequate for our needs. A generic name, but they had maxed out the fanciness in honour of the Park Lane location. And the prices. And the snootiness. They started out a little dubious about our lack of luggage. All we had was the bag of bullets. And they started out equally sniffy about taking cash, but then they saw our many thick rolls of bills, and instantly upgraded us in their minds from budget tourists to eccentric oligarchs. Not Russians, probably, because of our accents, so Texans, maybe, but in either case they became extremely polite. The bell boys were especially disappointed we had no other bags to carry. They were smelling fifty-pound tips.
Our rooms were on different floors, but we headed together to Nice’s first, for a safety check, and because I felt she should have a box of ammunition with her. A lone last stand in a hotel room was highly unlikely, but highly unlikely things can happen, in which case a hundred and sixteen would be a much more interesting number than plain old sixteen straight.
Her room was empty and unthreatening. It had the same basic architecture as a thousand motel rooms I had seen, but it was prettied up to a far higher standard, including literally, in that it was twenty floors from the ground with a view of the park. I put her box of a hundred Parabellums on her nightstand, and glanced around one more time, and headed back towards the door.
She said, ‘I’ve still got two left. I feel good now.’
I said, ‘Tell me about when Bennett got in the car.’
‘That’s what he did. He just got in the car. I saw him on the opposite sidewalk, dialling his phone, and then listening, like people do, and at that point he was just some guy, but then my phone started ringing, so I answered, and it was him. He crossed the street and got in right behind me. He told me General O’Day had given him my number, and that General Shoemaker had confirmed it, and that we should move off the kerb and drive around the block because we were in a no-parking zone and there was a traffic cop behind us.’
‘So you moved off?’
‘He was clearly legitimate. I thought to know the names of both generals showed he was on our side.’
‘What do you think now?’
‘Not entirely legitimate, but still on our side.’
I nodded. ‘That’s what I thought, too. Did you believe the things he said?’
‘I think there were some exaggerations. Unless he was being suicidally candid about a programme that must still be deeply classified. On the British side, certainly. Who would react, surely, if their biggest secrets were being talked about in the open.’
‘Some guys can be suicidally candid. They grow to hate the bullshit. There’s no reaction because it doesn’t really matter anyway. People like that are not security risks. Having everything out there is the exact same thing as having nothing out there. The Brits are hacking our signals. The Brits are not hacking our signals. Both things are up there under the spotlight. Which doesn’t help us know which one is true.’
‘So are they hacking our signals?’
‘Think about the things he didn’t exaggerate.’
‘Which were what?’
‘He came right out and said they were getting nowhere with the activity at Little Joey’s house, and nowhere with tracking down the paymasters on-line.’
‘So?’
‘Poor performance.’
‘No one bats a thousand.’
‘But the Brits are very good at this. They invented most of it. I’m not buying the big gap between them and the NSA, but they’re at least equal. We have to admit that. Maybe a little better. They’re a subtle people, deep down. In the best sense of the word. Good card players, generally. And they’re tough, when they need to be. Ultimately they always do what it takes. But they’re getting nowhere.’
‘It’s a tough case.’
‘Tough enough that neither the NSA or GCHQ can get a foot in the door?’
‘I guess.’
‘So how likely is it a rookie analyst and a retired military cop are going to provide the vital breakthrough? What are we going to see that they haven’t seen?’
‘There might be something.’
‘There’s nothing. Because Bennett is now thinking the same way O’Day was thinking. A few days late. Bennett was in Paris. He knows Kott was aiming at me. Now he knows Kott is in London. He thinks he can shake something loose by pushing us out there, front and centre. As targets. It’s a Hail Mary pass. And it’s all about him. He doesn’t care what happens to us. He’s watching for the muzzle flash. That’s all he wants. Before the politicians panic.’
‘I’m sure you planned to be front and centre all along.’
‘Not as a target.’
‘Does it matter what someone else calls you?’
‘Exactly. We have to do it anyway. We don’t get a choice. Same with the phones. We have to update O’Day. Bennett gets what he wants, both ways.’
‘Only because we get what we want, too. First, in fact. So it doesn’t really matter.’
‘It makes a total of two governments thinking of us as nothing but bait. Which is one government too many. We’re depending on them in a lot of ways. What they feed us depends on what they think of us. Subconsciously, I mean. They can develop a bias. We have to be ready to recognize it.’
‘And do what?’
‘We need to think strictly for ourselves. There may be orders we need to ignore.’
She looked away and said nothing, but then eventually she nodded, in a way that could have been deeply contemplative, or ruefully determined, or somewhere in between. It was hard to tell.
I said, ‘Still feeling good?’
She said, ‘We have to do it anyway.’
‘Not what I asked.’
‘Should I still be feeling good?’
‘No need to feel anxious, anyway. Not about which agency will betray you, and which won’t. Because they all will, sooner or later.’
‘That’s really going to cheer me up.’
‘I’m not trying to cheer you up. I’m trying to get us on the same wavelength. Which is where we need to be.’
‘No one is going to betray us.’
‘You would bet your life on them?’
‘Some of the people I know, yes.’
‘But not all of them.’
‘No.’
‘Same thing.’
She said, ‘Which bothers you.’
I said, ‘Which bothers you more.’
‘Shouldn’t it?’
‘You know what your biggest mistake was?’
‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
‘You should have joined the army, not the CIA.’
‘Why?’
‘Because this whole stress thing you’ve got going on is because you think national security is on your shoulders alone. Which is an unreasonable burden. But you think it because you don’t trust your colleagues. Not all of them. You don’t believe in them. Which leaves you isolated. It’s all down to you. But the army is different. Whatever else is wrong with it, you can trust your brother soldiers. And believe in them. That’s all there is. You’d have been much happier.’
She was quiet for a beat, and then she said, ‘I went to Yale.’
‘You could switch right now. I’ll take you to the recruiting office.’
‘Right now we’re in London. Waiting for a text from Mr Bennett.’
‘When we get back. You should think about it.’
She said, ‘Maybe I will.’
The text from Bennett came through two hours later. I was alone in my own room, which was the same as Nice’s, but on a higher floor, and facing in the opposite direction. My view was of Mayfair’s prosperous rooftops, all grey slate and red tile and ornate chimneys. The American Embassy was close by, somewhere just north of me, but I couldn’t see it. I was on the bed, and my phone was charging on the night stand, and it buzzed once and the screen lit up: Lobby 10 minutes. I called Nice on the house phone, and she said she had gotten the same message, so I lay back down for five more minutes, and then I put my reloaded Glock in my coat pocket, and I headed out to the elevator.
Nice was already in the lobby, and Bennett was already in a car at the door. The car was a local General Motors product, called a Vauxhall, new and washed, midnight blue, so completely anonymous it could only be a law enforcement car. I guessed the Skoda had already been wiped and dumped, or set on fire. It was early in the evening, and the sun was very low over the park.
I got in the back seat, and Nice sat up front next to Bennett, who hit the gas and launched out into the traffic. I asked him, ‘Where are we going?’
He didn’t answer for a long moment, because he had to get off Park Lane heading south and back on Park Lane heading north, which because of construction involved a high-speed 360 all the way around Hyde Park Corner, which was a hub just as crazy as the Place de la Bastille. Then he said, ‘Chigwell.’
‘Which is what?’
‘The next place north and west of Romford. Where you go when you get a little money. Some of it is very suburban. Big houses, and plenty of space between them. Walls, and gates, and things like that. Some trees, and open spaces.’
‘And Little Joey lives there?’
‘In a house of his own design.’
We saw plenty of houses and plenty of designs before we saw Joey’s. The trip was slow. Traffic was bad, because we were heading basically out of town, along with about a million other people trying to get home. Every light and every corner had a traffic jam. But Bennett didn’t seem worried about time. I guessed he was happy to wait for the sun to go down.
We made it through some historic districts, and then out into the further reaches, heading always a little east of north. We drove a short stretch on a motorway, one ramp to the next, and then we were in Chigwell, and we soon saw streets that would have melted the iciest heart, with the setting sun golden behind them, with substantial houses all in glowing red brick, some with iron fences, or walls and gates, like miniature Wallace Courts, most with trees and shrubberies, all with expensive late-model automobiles on their driveways, their chrome ornaments flashing bright wherever the sun escaped the shadows.
I said, ‘Are we driving right up to his door?’
Bennett said, ‘No, it’s a lot more complicated than that.’
And it was, at least geographically. We parked the car in a lot made of crushed grit, behind a pub, but we didn’t enter the establishment. We walked right by it. Maybe there was an arrangement with the owner. Nothing said, nothing asked, nothing offered, but a clear understanding all the same. Don’t call the tow truck, and don’t ask questions. Then we made a left and a right through leafy streets, no doubt closely observed from behind lace curtains, but the British are cautious people, and we fell squarely on the right side of the benefit of the doubt. Just three random people, taking a stroll. We watched the sun go down, finally, and the sky went dark, and we passed a long board fence, and then just before another started up there was a yard-wide gap, which was the entrance to some kind of a public footpath, long and straight and narrow, with trodden-down weeds and a meagre scattering of black grit underfoot, and high board fences either side, exactly a yard apart all the way. We walked single file, Bennett first, then Nice, then me, a hundred and fifty paces, until we came out in a grit clearing with a green garden shed in it, which was recently painted, with two words over the door picked out in white: Bowling Club. Behind it was an immense square of perfect lawn.
‘Different kind of bowling,’ Nice said.
‘Very popular sport,’ Bennett said.
‘Hence the enormous clubhouse,’ I said. ‘But I guess they need to accommodate everyone at once. That would explain it. For the grudge matches.’
‘There are many other clubs,’ Bennett said. ‘All of them larger.’
He bent down and took out a key from under a stone. The key looked freshly cut. He put it in the door. He had to jiggle it a little. But he got the job done. The door swung inward, and I saw gloom inside, and caught a musty smell, of wood and wool and cotton and leather, all stored too long in damp conditions. He held the door with spread fingers and used the other hand to motion us through.
I said, ‘What’s in there?’
He said, ‘Check it out.’
What was in there was a whole lot of bowling club stuff, but it was all piled to one side, leaving a clear lane in front of the windows, which looked out over the immaculate grass. Neatly spaced in the clear lane were three kitchen stools, each one set out behind a pair of huge night-vision binoculars, each pair mounted on a sturdy three-legged frame.
Bennett said, ‘We had gales last winter. Nothing very serious, but one fellow lost a panel out of his fence, and another lost a twenty-foot conifer. Which by chance opened up a direct line of sight from this shed to Little Joey’s house. Which was lucky, because we can’t get any closer. We assume his immediate neighbours are either working for him or loyal to him or scared of him.’
‘So this little shed is surveillance HQ for Joey?’
‘You get what you get.’
‘You sit for hours with your back to the door?’
‘Take it up with whichever carpenter died fifty years ago.’
‘With the key under a rock?’
‘It’s a budget issue. It’s the sort of thing they suggest. Why not share a key instead of cutting ten? So they can buy a new computer.’
‘No video?’
‘That kind of thing, they like to spend money on. Wireless upload straight out of the binoculars. All day and all night. High definition, but monochrome.’
‘Does the bowling club know you’re here?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Good,’ I said. I figured swearing a busybody committee chairman to silence was like taking out an ad in the newspaper.
Nice said, ‘Suppose they come in to play a game of bowls?’
Bennett said, ‘We changed the lock. That one is ours, not theirs. They’ll think there’s something wrong with their keys. They’ll call a meeting. They’ll vote on whether to spend club funds on a locksmith. They’ll make speeches for and against. By which time either it won’t matter any more, or we’ll have changed the lock back again and gone home happy.’
I said, ‘How well can we see from here?’
He said, ‘Take a look.’
So I shuffled in, and sat down on the middle stool, and took a look.