“For some reason they wanted only the cup,” Scripps pointed out. “By the way, it was very foolish of you to try to recover it on your own.”
“I was only protecting my wife,” VerPlanck said.
“So you knew she helped them?” Scripps asked in surprise.
There was a shocked silence in the room. Sinclair, Gardiner, and Holly exchanged worried glances. Had they helped VerPlanck cover up a criminal act!
“That’s not true! She had no connection to any of this!” His words rushed out in a torrent of denial.
Scripps looked grim and waited for VerPlanck to calm down. Ted pulled out his silk pocket square and mopped his forehead with it, then stuffed it back into his jacket.
“I was only protecting Tipper from bad publicity, nothing more,” VerPlanck explained.
“Your wife was working with Charlie Hannifin,” Scripps repeated.
“No! I assure you, she couldn’t stand him! They never exchanged two words.”
He stopped and looked thoughtful. “Well, that’s not entirely true. I just realized they sat together the night of the gala. Not by choice. Tipper was livid that Hannifin was seated next to her.”
Scripps shook his head sadly.
“We have traced a fifty-thousand-dollar check from the Manuccis to Mrs. VerPlanck.”
VerPlanck stared at Scripps bleakly as he went on.
“She was helping him steal your Cézanne also.”
VerPlanck sat shaking his head in disbelief.
“We found your Cézanne in the warehouse in Queens with Hannifin’s signature on the paperwork. As a director of the Met, he was in the perfect position to ship it without raising comment.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Sinclair cut in. “But I can’t just sit here talking about art when Cordelia’s life is in danger!”
“You will be debriefed on Ms. Stapleton in another meeting,” Scripps replied.
Sinclair’s temper suddenly flared.
“Damn your meetings! We’re wasting time!”
“Mr. Sinclair, I understand your frustration. But this investigation is bigger than my section.”
“What do you mean by that?” Gardiner asked.
“We are bringing in the Secret Intelligence Service, the Security Service—MI6 and MI5. They’ll take you and Mr. VerPlanck to a secure location just west of here for a debriefing session.”
“My God, I can’t believe this is happening!” Sinclair said, hurtling to his feet and pacing the room like a caged animal.
“Please, Mr. Sinclair, bear with us. In cases of this magnitude, we coordinate all our intelligence. I’ve arranged transportation.”
On cue, the door opened and the two police guards stepped back inside.
“Gentlemen, if you would follow us.”
The door closed behind them and only Holly and Gardiner remained. Sinclair, VerPlanck, and Peter Scripps were on their way to the next meeting. Gardiner was hurriedly gathering up his raincoat and briefcase.
“How can I help?” Holly asked as she watched him limp painfully about the room.
Gardiner turned to her with embarrassment.
“I could use your arm for support. My balance is not quite what it once was, and I need to locate Paul Oakley.”
“I’d be happy to walk with you.”
“I should warn you, this is not a pleasant place. Dr. Oakley is underneath the city at an urban archaeological site.”
“Why does everyone want to talk to Dr. Oakley?”
“Paul often works for British Intelligence on terrorism issues.”
“I see.”
“He’s my partner,” Gardiner explained. “We’ve been together for about a year. That’s why the police called me. I’m here to find him.”
“Oh, now I understand why we are in Edinburgh.”
“I was here talking to Peter Scripps about locating Paul when we got word that Cordelia had been kidnapped.”
“I feel awful about that,” Holly commiserated.
“This is not really your problem. You were asked only to help find the cup, and here you are in the middle of a terrorist investigation.”
“I know, but Sinclair is an old friend, and I promised to help Mr. VerPlanck. So count me in.”
“Well, your presence is very much appreciated, my dear, even if everyone is too distracted to tell you so.”
“There’s no need to thank me. I’ll do anything I can to help,” Holly said, starting for the door.
Gardiner picked up his cane and turned to her with an apologetic smile.
“Holly, I hope you’re not afraid of ghosts. They say it’s haunted down there.”
Ayrshire, Scotland
SINCLAIR AND TED VerPlanck sat in the back of the military helicopter. The thwump, thwump, thwump of the rotors cut off all conversation as they lifted off the compound and banked sharply to the left. VerPlanck sat immobile, lost in his own dark thoughts. Sinclair had two questions swirling around in his mind. Where was Cordelia? And where were they going?
The officer at the controls hadn’t revealed their destination, but the compass on the flight panel indicated west-southwest. Sinclair also noticed the pilot’s right sleeve was emblazoned with an embroidered SAS parachute patch. The Special Air Service was an elite counterterrorism force. That insignia was an indication of the level of meeting they were headed toward—this unit didn’t play taxi driver for just anyone.
The aircraft gained altitude and skimmed over the Scottish countryside at 160 miles an hour. Below, the landscape looked like a large pasture dotted with cotton balls of sheep. They flew above the silver ribbons of country road for a while and then banked sharply over open terrain. The landscape became rougher, steeper, with fewer houses.
After twenty minutes of flying time, Sinclair suddenly got a glimpse of cliffs and the blue ocean. From the direction their flight had taken, he presumed it was the west coast, an area he knew well. Every year he drove through here to catch the ferry to the Isle of Man TT motorcycle races.
The pilot pointed down at a gray stone fortress with crenellated towers—just like a fairy-tale castle.
“That’s Culzean,” he shouted over the noise as he prepared to land.
The words meant nothing to Sinclair. He leaned toward the window to look out at the structure. They circled and swooped lower. A gorgeous estate was perched high on the cliffs, surrounded by acres of formal gardens and manicured grounds.
No activity, however. One car was parked in the oval drive and three Land Rovers were in the back. The chopper hovered over the vast lawn, then dropped slowly. The landing gear kissed the grass and settled.
With the rotor blades still whirring, a military officer yanked the door open and motioned for Sinclair and VerPlanck to climb out.
“What is this place?” Sinclair shouted to VerPlanck over the sound of the chopper taking off again.
“Culzean Castle.”
“So he said. But who lives here?”
“Nobody. But it once belonged to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The people of Scotland gave it to him as a private residence.”
“Really? I’ve never heard of it,” Sinclair said as they sprinted across the lawn.
“Eisenhower saved the British Empire when he was Supreme Commander of the Allied forces during the Second World War. It was a thank-you present.”
“Did he ever come here?” Sinclair asked, surveying the towers.
“Yes, often. He loved golf. Played here . . . after his presidential terms until his death in 1969.”
“Interesting, but why are we here now?” Sinclair asked as they followed the officer toward the castle.
“MI5, MI6. That’s shorthand for the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service. Rumor has it they hold high-level meetings here in times of national emergency.”
“Sort of like the COBRA meetings in Downing Street?”
“Yes. Except these are a lot more clandestine. If the heads of security from the United States have to fly in, they t
ake a private jet to the USAF base in Alconbury or Lakenheath and then fly here by helicopter. They’re in and out without being officially in the United Kingdom.”
“How do you know so much about all this? You’re not a spy, are you?” Sinclair asked, nearly stopping in his tracks.
“Oh, goodness no!” VerPlanck assured him. “But I’ve crossed paths with intelligence services on both sides of the pond. In the shipping business, we often get access to information that might be valuable.”
They had reached the wooden door of the castle, and two military officers carrying weapons came out to greet them. Sinclair and VerPlanck stepped through the door as another helicopter passed overhead.
“You may be right about this meeting,” Sinclair said. “That’s a military aircraft coming in right now.”
Mary King’s Close, Edinburgh
HOLLY AND JIM Gardiner walked down a dim tunnel that was lit by bare electric bulbs strung on a wire. Their footsteps echoed in the empty subterranean corridor. The passageway sloped sharply downhill and disappeared into the gloom. It was extremely cold, and Holly shivered in her light raincoat. What a sinister place! Despite her earlier bravado, she was beginning to regret she had agreed to come.
Gardiner had explained that this was the entrance to Underground Edinburgh—a rabbit warren of dark streets beneath the modern city. Until a few years ago, not many people knew the old neighborhoods still existed. The labyrinth of medieval passageways had been sealed and abandoned. City planners had simply built over the top, using the four-hundred-year-old structures as foundations for the new construction.
Archaeologists were now excavating the old boarded-up stone houses below the modern city. Paul Oakley was working with them.
“We’ll have to walk all the way down,” Gardiner apologized to Holly. “Paul’s cell phone doesn’t get a signal this far underground.”
Holly was supporting Jim Gardiner with all her strength. His left leg dragged, deadened from nerve damage. Castle Rock, the city’s original bedrock foundation, was directly underfoot and he was having trouble with the uneven surfaces.
“I apologize for having to lean on you like this. I’m not quite ready for this terrain.”
“You’re doing fine,” Holly replied. “If you don’t mind me asking—what happened to your leg? Was it an accident?”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
“I’ve heard a lot of crazy things. Try me.”
“A female Russian spy put poison in my coffee at Heathrow Airport. It was a powerful nerve agent, nearly killed me, and left me with a lot of damage. . . . And no, that’s not a movie plot. It really happened.”
“Oh, my God, that’s awful!”
“I’m glad it was me. They were actually after Sinclair and Cordelia. It was a close call.”
Holly wondered what Sinclair was doing with Russian spies but didn’t inquire.
“What does your doctor say about recovery?” she asked instead.
“My doctor is Paul Oakley,” Gardiner said with a laugh. “He thinks I might get back to normal, eventually.”
They walked for a few moments in companionable silence as she looked around at the vaulted ceilings. It was eerily quiet in the old abandoned street, except for the faint rumbling of traffic overhead on the Royal Mile, the city’s main thoroughfare.
“Tell me about this place. I’ve never heard of it before.”
“This little lane is Mary King’s Close. We are walking down the actual street that ran between the houses. A ‘close’ is short for ‘enclosure’—or ‘alley.’ It was named after Mary King, a textile merchant who had a shop here in the 1600s.”
“Why was this neighborhood abandoned?”
“Sanitary considerations. This was a poor section of the city . . . a breeding ground for disease. So the city council voted to brick it off and build a more modern city on top. They only discovered that the old structures were still down there a few years ago.”
“What is Dr. Oakley doing here?”
“Studying the plague. He’s a virologist. This entire area was quarantined in 1644, and he’s working with the archaeologists to find out more about the contagion.”
“What could he possibly learn from the ruins?”
“The city of Edinburgh had a disease-control system—a quarantine that was both humane and effective. Because the street was sealed in 1753, urban archaeologists can still enter the homes where the victims lived. This is the only place in the world where they can still do that.”
Holly looked at the gaping doorframes along the street. The hollowed-out shells of the houses were cavelike and frightening.
“And these are the actual houses where the victims lived? How interesting!”
“Actually, I find it a bit horrifying,” Gardiner admitted. “This place is rumored to be filled with paranormal activity.”
“Really?”
“Psychics come here from all around the world to speak to the dead. Some get so overloaded, they have to leave. Supposedly, there is a plague victim, a little girl named Annie, who communicates with people.”
“How incredibly creepy!” Holly said nervously. “I can’t imagine what it was like to live here.”
“Paul told me that people were packed together in the cellars of the buildings, sleeping on lice-infested straw, freezing in winter, constantly breathing in smoke from the coal fires.”
Holly nodded, horrified.
“People who had a little more money, merchants’ families, lived on the upper floors. Only the rich could afford light and air in those days,” Gardiner continued, indicating the upper floors of the old buildings.
The houses on each side of the passageway were seven stories high, covered with vaulted ceilings of stone.
“It must have been terrible.”
“Ripe for plague, that’s for sure. Rats everywhere.”
Holly glanced down at their feet with apprehension, but Gardiner took no notice.
“This street we’re walking on right now was slick with human refuse in the old days,” he went on. “There was no sewage system. People would just throw their slops out the windows from above.”
“They’d just empty their chamber pots out the window?” Holly asked, appalled.
“Yes. Apparently they’d yell ‘Gardy-loo’ and then fling the contents of the chamber pot out the window. The expression was a corruption of the French Gardez l’eau—which means ‘watch out for the water.’ ”
“No wonder they boarded up the street. Did many die from the plague?”
“It was devastating for many families, but not as bad as in other places in Europe. That’s why Paul is trying to find out how so many survived.”
“Any idea?”
“Not yet, but there are clues. Paul is sifting through the physical evidence, going over old city plans, and reading public-health accounts from that time. He hopes to develop a quarantine system for our modern cities.”
“Paul Oakley is trying to figure out how to deal with an outbreak of the plague today?” Holly asked. “Is that why we need him now?”
“Yes. They believe terrorists are going to attack a major city with bubonic plague.”
“So that’s what this is all about!” Holly gasped.
“MI6 is in the process of briefing Sinclair and VerPlanck about it. We’ll join them right after we collect Paul.”
At the far end of the long passage, the harsh glare of LED lights illuminated a team of workers carefully removing a brick wall. Gardiner and Holly headed toward the activity.
The electric lanterns distorted the shadows of the workmen. Holly imagined ghostly human figures patrolling the parameters of the original tenement houses. She repressed a shudder. Who knew what horrors had occurred here. This was the most morbid place she had ever seen!
“There he is,” Gardiner said, pointing toward a man working at a crude trestle table fashioned out of two sawhorses. He was seated on a wooden crate, writing on the makeshift desk. Oakley was not
yet aware of their arrival, so Holly had time to study him. The virologist was thin, youthful, with sandy hair, seemingly in his mid-forties. The glow of the electric lantern picked up the angular shape of his face. From time to time, he blew on his hands to warm them. A white cloud of vapor rose as he did this.
“Paul!” Gardiner called.
The man looked up, startled.
“Jim! What are you doing down here?”
Oakley jumped up, knocking over the crate with a clatter that echoed in the empty tunnel. The workmen turned and froze in surprise.
Gardiner labored up to Oakley and spoke quietly.
“I’ve been contacted by New Scotland Yard. We need your expertise.”
“What are you talking about . . . ?” Oakley replied.
“I hesitate to tell you here. But it has to do with what you have been working on at Porton Down,” Gardiner said.
“Oh, my God! Let me get my things. I’m coming.”
Culzean Castle, Ayrshire
SURVEYING THE EISENHOWER drawing room, Sinclair could easily picture the ex-president in his later years, reading a book or writing his memoirs. The grand salon was oval in shape, with a fireplace at each end. There was a stately elegance, but the room was also comfortable in the typical English country-house style: deep-seated armchairs surrounded the hearth and a cheerful blaze burned at the grate.
They had just been told that officials from the British Home Office would be arriving in a few minutes, along with the head of MI6. Sinclair knew that the inclusion of MI6 meant the terror threat was international—that organization supplied the British government with foreign intelligence.
But what did all this have to do with Cordelia? No one had said anything about her!
Sinclair walked over to the bay windows and looked out at the coastline. VerPlanck silently joined him. On either side of the castle’s promontory, the rugged cliffs stretched away in both directions. The sea was bashing the rocks, sending up plumes of white spray.
“This is the Firth of Clyde,” VerPlanck remarked. “On a clear day, you can see all the way across to Ireland.”
The Stolen Chalicel Page 19
