Severe Clear

by Stuart Woods

  Grace also handed her two new phones. “This iPhone and this BlackBerry already contain all the information in your old phones. They contain a GPS chip not found in commercial phones, which allows the Agency to track you anywhere in the world to a distance of one meter.”

  “I’ll never be alone again,” Holly said.

  “Removing the SIM chip will disable the GPS function. If you don’t want to be tracked, pull out the chip. If you lose a phone, there will be hell to pay.” Grace raked all of Holly’s old credentials and equipment into her envelope and left the room.

  “Where was I?” Kate asked.

  “Ari Shazaz, or Hamish McCallister.”

  “We’ll always refer to him as Hamish, since it is important that his Arab name remain unknown, except where he needs to use it.”

  “Understood. Why am I seeing him in London?”

  “Two reasons: First, since you will be his main contact here, you should know each other. Second, I want you to speak with him about an upcoming event, about which you may have heard—the grand opening of a hotel, The Arrington, in California in a couple of weeks.”

  “I’ve read about it,” Holly said.

  “And of course, you know its namesake through Stone Barrington.”

  “No, we never met, but I certainly know about her.”

  “I’ve received word that an NSA computer picked up a cell phone conversation between someone in Afghanistan and someone in Yemen, during which the words ‘The Arrington’ were spoken. This is of concern to us because, as you may know, the president and the president of Mexico will be in residence at the hotel just prior to and during the grand opening.”

  “I can see how that would cause concern.”

  “I’ve also heard that an e-mail was sent from somewhere in California to a website that the NSA keeps watch on. The message was, ‘All is well. I am fine,’ and it was signed ‘Nod.’ I want you to instruct Hamish to take whatever contacts are available to him to learn if anyone else anywhere has heard anything at all concerning the hotel or anything about the Nod message.”

  “How long will I be in London?”

  “Long enough to meet Hamish and get a first report from him after he has made his contacts. After that, he will phone or send encrypted e-mails to you, using equipment we have supplied to him.”

  “Should I make travel arrangements?”

  “Not necessary. You will be flying in an Agency aircraft, along with Stewart Graves, who is taking up his post as deputy station chief at the London embassy. Greg Barton will be along, too, and after dropping off you and Stewart, the plane will continue to Rome to deliver him there. The aircraft will then return and collect you as soon as your business is done. If it’s needed elsewhere, we’ll send another aircraft or have you fly home commercial. Be at our facility at Dulles at eleven P.M. tonight, and pack for a week, just in case. You’ll be staying at the Connaught Hotel, which is near the embassy. By the way, Stewart is aware of Hamish’s existence, but make no mention of him.”

  “I understand.”

  “No need to contact me while you’re gone, unless it’s urgent. In that case use the communication facilities at the London station. Oh, by the way, one of your jobs will be to travel with me, so you and I will be attending the opening of The Arrington with my husband, and we’ll travel on Air Force One.”

  Kate shook her hand and went back to her office, closing the connecting door behind her.

  Holly continued putting her things away, then she noticed her iPhone vibrating on the coffee table. She picked it up and found an e-mail waiting.

  “Congratulations on the new job,” it said. “Stone.”

  “Now, how the hell did he know so soon?” she asked herself. She e-mailed him back: “Thanks, see you in L.A. for the opening of The Arrington.”

  16

  Holly arrived at Dulles half an hour before flight time, parked in a reserved spot, and unloaded her luggage. The facility looked like any other Fixed Base Operator, or FBO, on the field, though the reception area was smaller than most. Her pass card allowed her through the door.

  “Good evening,” said a young woman behind the front desk. “Your name, please?”

  “Holly Barker.” She produced her Agency ID.

  “Your flight is the Gulfstream 450 parked on the ramp. You may board whenever you like, and your luggage will be loaded into the cabin.”

  “Thank you,” Holly said. She left her two bags and took her briefcase and purse with her.

  A stewardess greeted her at the door of the airplane. “We’ve made up three seats as bunks, Ms. Barker,” the woman said. “You may choose any other seat, and when you’re ready to sleep, a bunk. May I get you anything to drink?”

  “Thank you, I’ll have some fizzy water, please.” Holly found a seat at the rear of the airplane and checked her e-mail. There was one from Kate Lee, announcing her appointment to a list of Agency executives. She forwarded that to her father, Ham, in Florida. “Thought you’d like to see this,” she wrote. “Kiss Daisy for me.” Her workload had been so heavy that she had left her Doberman pinscher with her father and his wife, where there was room for her to run. She missed Daisy but knew she was in good hands.

  Stewart Graves and Greg Barton arrived together, chatting like old friends. She got a perfunctory greeting from both, then they sat down and buckled in. The stewardess closed the cabin door, and the engines started. At the stroke of eleven the airplane began to taxi, and five minutes later they were roaring down the runway.

  When they had been climbing for fifteen minutes the pilot’s voice was heard. “Good evening; we’re now at flight level 450, and we have a ninety-knot tailwind. We should arrive at Biggin Hill Airport, in Kent, at five-thirty A.M., Dulles time, ten-thirty London time.”

  The stewardess appeared again. “Would you like dinner?” she asked.

  “No, thank you,” Holly said.

  “Breakfast will be served an hour before we land. What would you like? We have cereals, pastries, or scrambled eggs with bacon.”

  “I’ll have the eggs,” Holly said. She settled in to read the Agency’s handbooks for her two phones and discovered that both could send and receive encrypted messages. Forward of where she sat Graves and Barton were in earnest conversation. Holly chose the aftermost bunk, set her watch forward five hours, and was soon sound asleep.

  —

  The stewardess woke her at nine o’clock, and she went to the toilet and freshened up. When she returned she raised the shade of her window and got an eyeful of bright sunshine. There was an undercast far below. She switched on the screen at her seat and found the moving map. They would make their landfall south of Land’s End soon, and their arrival time had not changed. The breakfast was much better than she had expected.

  —

  They touched down at Biggin Hill three minutes early, and her luggage was taken into an FBO, where a customs and immigration official awaited them. She was unimpressed by Holly’s brand-new diplomatic passport and gave it its first stamp.

  “There’s a van waiting for us,” Stewart Graves said. He had eight or nine pieces of luggage; this was a move across the Atlantic for him.

  Greg Barton shook her hand. “Good luck in the new post,” she said to him.

  “Thanks. You, too.” Those were the only words he had spoken to her since they had boarded the airplane. Holly thought he might have given her a few pointers on her new job, since she was replacing him, but apparently he was not anxious for her to succeed. Stewart Graves was similarly tight-lipped. After a hideously long drive through the south London suburbs, the van stopped at the Connaught, and the doorman unloaded her bags.

  “Good luck,” she said to Graves, and he nodded. “You, too.” Then he was gone.

  Holly checked in and was walked upstairs by a young woman. She was delighted to find that a suite had been booked for her, a first since she had joined the Agency. She showered, then dried her hair and had a light lunch. She was dozing on her sitting room sofa
when her iPhone rang.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Hamish. Seven P.M. at a pub called the Grenadier, in Wilton Row. Any cabdriver will know it.” He hung up.

  “Okay,” she said into the dead line. She watched a cricket match for an hour, trying to figure it out, then gave up and watched an old movie.

  17

  The cab dropped Holly at the doorstep of the Grenadier, which was located in a pretty mews behind Wilton Crescent, in upper-upper-class Belgravia.

  She walked up the front stairs and into a cozy barroom. A fire crackled in a hearth to her left, and the room was crowded with expensively dressed young people. Holly ordered a scotch over ice and found a spot to sit near the fire. She had begun sizing up the young men in the room, when somebody stepped in front of her. She looked up to see a trim figure in clothes that were clearly bespoke. He had a bald head with a fringe of dark hair and he had, of all unexpected things in London, a suntan.

  “Holly Barker?” he asked.

  Holly stood up and found that the top of his head came to about the tip of her nose. “Hamish?”

  They shook hands, and Hamish guided her into an adjoining dining room, where a single table had been set for two. “Please,” he said, pulling out the table so that she could get behind it and sit on the banquette. He set his own drink on the table and waved at a waitress. “May I have a large Lagavulin with a single ice cube, please?” He had dark, almost black eyes and perfect teeth.

  “Lagavulin?” Holly asked.

  “It’s a single-malt scotch from the island of Islay,” he replied.

  “It’s hard to keep up with single malts.”

  “Don’t even try,” he said, smiling. “Kate didn’t make it clear that you were beautiful, as well as smart. I particularly like the red hair. Tell me, is it from a bottle?” His English was entirely upper class, reflecting his Eton and Oxford education.

  “It’s from a salon,” Holly replied. What would he want to know next, her bra size?

  He moved a hand up and down. “It’s all a very pleasing combination. You chose exactly the right things to wear to a fashionable pub.”

  Holly had chosen tweed slacks and a jacket and a cashmere sweater, all covered by a trench coat, which she now struggled out of. “Thank you, Hamish.”

  A young woman brought them menus and a wine list. “The food here is very good, for a pub, and they have some decent wines. What did Kate do with Greg Barton?” he asked, as his eyes roamed the wine list. “Take him out and shoot him?”

  “On the contrary,” Holly said, “Greg was rewarded with a very nice job in Rome. He’s already there.”

  “I heard Stewart Graves will be coming to London.”

  “We were all on the same aircraft coming over.”

  “Did Greg fill your ears with descriptions of my exploits?”

  “Neither of them had anything to say, so I got some sleep.”

  “Ah, yes, the woman thing. I don’t think either of them liked working for Kate, then to have yet another woman inserted between them and Kate must have been a blow.”

  “As I said, they didn’t share. What I know of you came from Kate.”

  Hamish nodded. “I’m sure she was objective and fair.”

  “Always, in my experience.”

  “What job were you in before?”

  “Assistant DDO.”

  “And now you are assistant director! A great leap. I’m sure Kate was very deliberate in leaving out the ‘to’ between ‘assistant’ and ‘director.’”

  Holly smiled. “She’s always deliberate.”

  “Yes! Not a hothead, our Kate.”

  “Not in my experience.”

  “I expect her cool confidence comes from the proximity of the man who appointed her.”

  “I think it comes from her core, and I think being married to Will Lee has as many pitfalls as advantages.”

  “I can’t keep up with American politics.”

  “Don’t even try.”

  He laughed. “And soon she will be gone, with her husband. What then for the ambitious at Langley?”

  “Anxiety, I should think.”

  “And it’s already begun, hasn’t it? The removal of Stewart and Greg must have got their attention!”

  “I left the country only hours after I was appointed, so I wasn’t around to hear the chatter. I hear you roam far and wide, Hamish. What brings you to London?”

  “Why, the pleasure of meeting you, Holly,” he replied smoothly, “and also my curiosity about what message Kate has sent me. She has sent me a message, hasn’t she?”

  “She has.”

  “Well, let’s order first to get the waitress out of our hair—pardon me, your hair,” he said, stroking his bald pate.

  “I’ll have the steak-and-kidney pie,” Holly said, “and whatever wine you’re ordering.”

  Hamish crooked a finger at the waitress, who came over. “Each of us will have the steak-and-kidney pie, with chips,” he said to her, “and a bottle of the Corton ’99.”

  The woman jotted down the items and left.

  “And now,” Hamish said, “I can’t wait to hear from Kate.”

  “Have you ever heard of a hotel in Los Angeles called The Arrington?”

  “Of course. Opening soon, isn’t it?”

  “Quite soon, and with a big splash. The presidents of the United States and Mexico will be in attendance, which, as you might imagine, has cranked up the Secret Service and the hotel’s security operation.”

  “I can imagine.”

  The waitress delivered their food and wine, and they spent a few minutes eating and chatting idly.

  —

  Later, as they were finishing the wine, Holly got back to business. “Something troubling happened recently. The NSA in-tercepted a cell phone call from Afghanistan to Yemen, in which the words ‘The Arrington’ stood out.”

  “Well, I don’t imagine that the hotel’s public relations people had reached as far as Afghanistan.”

  “Apparently, neither did anyone else imagine that,” Holly said.

  “So what would Kate like me to do?”

  “She’d like you to canvass your contacts in Europe and the Middle East for anything pointing to a possible planned attack on the hotel. There could be mischief afoot.”

  “I suppose I could do that,” Hamish said, “but if I start calling around, then the NSA would suddenly be picking up mentions of The Arrington all over Europe and the Middle East, which would disturb them even more.”

  “You have a point,” Holly said. “Let’s not get them any more excited than they already are.”

  “Then I will need to speak to some people face-to-face, if we wish not to provoke a red alert in American intelligence circles.”

  “A wise suggestion, I think. How long will it take you to manage it?”

  “I think that, if I leave tomorrow morning in a small jet, I could do it in four or five stops: say, a week?”

  “Are you contemplating chartering a jet aircraft on our nickel?”

  Hamish smiled. “That is exactly the question Kate would ask, were she here. Fortunately, I have access to a Citation Mustang belonging to a friend. All it will cost Kate is the fuel.”

  “What about the pilot?”

  “Oh, I am the pilot,” Hamish said, “and I am already bought and paid for.”

  “I have a friend in New York who flies that airplane,” Holly said, thinking of Stone, something she had been doing a lot lately.

  “How fortunate for him,” Hamish said. “Do you fly?”

  “A Piper Malibu,” Holly replied. “No jet time, as yet.”

  “Lovely airplane. Of course, there will be the usual attendant expenses: airport handling, hotels, etcetera.”

  “Within reason,” Holly said, imagining Hamish in a huge suite in a fabulous hotel.

  “Always,” Hamish replied. “Would you care to come with me? It should be an enlightening and pleasant trip.”

  Holly thought that traveling t
o exotic places in a jet with Hamish McCallister at the controls would not be unpleasant. “I’m required elsewhere,” she said.

  “Perhaps another time,” Hamish said, locking his eyes on hers.

  Holly felt a blush coming on and coughed into her napkin. “There’s one other thing to look for: any mention of the word ‘Nod.’”

  Hamish frowned. “In what context?”

  “Any context you might come across. It appears to be the code name of an operative. It was sent in an e-mail from California to a suspected al Qaeda website that is being watched.”

  “Was the message translated?”

  “It read, in its entirety, ‘All is well. I am fine. Nod.’”

  “I see. Sounds like someone has accomplished some task.”

  “That’s how it seems to us, too. We need to know more.”

  Hamish handed her a card. “These are all my contact numbers and e-mail addresses, should you ever need to reach me.”

  “Thank you.”

  Hamish glanced at his watch. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have some flight planning and other preparations to make, so that I can get an early start tomorrow.” He tossed off the remainder of his wine. “Would you mind getting the bill? It should be easier for you to reclaim expenses than I.”

  “Not at all.”

  Hamish stood and offered his hand. “A great pleasure. Must run. Will you be in London when I get back?”

  “Maybe, I’m not sure. In any event, you know how to reach me.”

  “Of course. Must run.” And he did.

  18