Severe Clear

by Stuart Woods

  “I hear she’s quite a pianist.”

  “You’ll hear her tomorrow night. She’s going to open the concert and do a number with Ms. Gotham, too.”

  “That will be quite a showcase for her,” Lee said. “Don’t let her go all Hollywood on you.”

  Peter laughed. “We’re all going to go Hollywood next year. We’re going to have a production deal at Centurion Studios and make our own movies. Ben will produce, Hattie will score them, and I’ll write and direct. Oh, and I haven’t told Dad about it yet, so keep it under your hat, will you?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m accustomed to keeping secrets,” Lee said.

  “By the way, congratulations on your agreement with President Vargas. It’s already on MSNBC.”

  “Thank you, Peter. It’s just one more box to check off before my term ends.”

  “What are you going to do then?”

  “I’m going to go back to Meriwether County, Georgia, and write my memoirs. I have to—the publishing deal is already done. And by the way, keep that under your hat until you hear about it on the news, which won’t be long.”

  “I’ll look forward to reading it,” Peter said.

  “And I’ll look forward to seeing more of your movies.”

  —

  Dino sidled over and caught Viv by herself for a moment. “How you doing?”

  “Just great, thanks. You know, that Immi is quite a nice lady.”

  “I noticed that for the last twenty years,” Dino said.

  “What are you doing over here talking to me, when you could be talking to her?” Viv asked.

  “I just wanted to tell you something.”

  “I always like to know something.”

  “Something might happen here that will come as a surprise.”

  “Pleasant or unpleasant?”

  “I’m pessimistic.”

  “So what is it?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “You said you were going to tell me something. That was nothing.”

  “I can’t tell you, because Stone wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know, but I know Stone well enough to know that if he could’ve, he would’ve.”

  Viv sighed. “Sheesh, you guys!”

  47

  Holly finished her fried chicken and called Langley again, asking for a position on Hamish McCallister.

  “Stand by,” the officer said. Then, a moment later, “Got it. Position is now Chelsea, right by the river.”

  “Do you have a home address for him?” Holly asked.

  A brief silence. “Negative, I have nothing. When I run the name a note comes up saying, ‘Contact the office of the director.’ That’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Right,” Holly said. “Thanks.” She hung up and went to find Kate Lee.

  Kate was standing by the pool, talking to Stone, and Holly gently pulled her aside. “Do you know where Hamish McCallister lives?”

  “In London,” Kate replied, “when he’s not traveling.”

  “Where in London?”

  “He has a house on the Chelsea Embankment—very expensive neighborhood.”

  “By the River Thames?”

  “Good guess. What’s going on, Holly?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. I’m just very concerned to hear that Hamish has a half brother whose name has come up in a search for a bomb factory in this country.”

  “I agree, that’s not happy news. My recollection, though, is that Hamish and his brother are not close, having grown up in different families.”

  “Is that what Hamish told you?”

  “It’s what Dick Stone told me.”

  “I called Hamish after you and I talked earlier. He told me that he was at Annabel’s, in London. A position track confirmed that.”

  “Good.”

  “But when I asked him about the whereabouts of his brother, Mohammad, he told me that Mo was sitting across the table from him, drinking champagne, and that Mo had spent the past month at the McCallister place on the Isle of Murk, having just arrived from there by train yesterday. That raises the question: if they’re not close and were raised by different families, why is Mo spending a month at a time on Murk with a family that is not his?”

  Kate frowned. “I can’t come up with even a hypothetical answer to that question. Call London and have them investigate the whereabouts of Mo.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Holly said. She went back to the study and called the CIA station at the American Embassy in London.

  A woman answered. “Please state your business.”

  “This is Assistant Director Holly Barker. What time is it in London?”

  “Seven A.M.,” the woman replied.

  “Is the station chief in his office at this hour?”

  “He gets in at seven. I’ll connect you.” There was a click, then a pause.

  “Good morning, Holly, this is Tom Riley.”

  “Good morning, Tom. Scramble, please.”

  There was some noise on the line, then, “We’re scrambled.”

  “I’m calling from Los Angeles, where the director is traveling with her husband, and we need a position check on somebody, stat. His name is Mohammad Shazaz, known as Mo.” She spelled it for him. “He was alleged to have been at Annabel’s an hour or two ago, and for the month before that, visiting a prominent family called McCallister, on the Scottish isle of Murk.”

  “Got it,” Riley said. “Do we know him?”

  “We know his half brother, Hamish McCallister, who is our asset, reporting directly to the director’s office.”

  “The director has an asset in the U.K. that’s reporting not to me but directly to her?”

  “That is correct. It was approved by Dick Stone. I’d also like a position check on Mr. McCallister. His agency phone locator puts him currently at his house on the Chelsea Embankment, London. If that is correct, Mr. Shazaz may be staying with him.”

  “We’ll start there,” Riley said, having apparently gotten over the fact that his boss had bypassed him in running an asset.

  “Thank you. Are you reading my cell number?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it.”

  “It’s eleven P.M. in L.A. Call me, no matter how late it is.”

  “Will do.” Riley hung up.

  There was a knock at the door, and Felicity Devonshire poked her head in. “Are you receiving company?”

  “Sure,” Holly said, “come on in.” Felicity took a seat next to her on the sofa. “I think there’s some brandy over there,” Holly said, nodding toward a bookcase. “Can I get you one?”

  “A small one, please,” Felicity replied.

  Holly walked across the room and poked around a row of books until a panel came down, revealing a fully stocked bar. She returned to the sofa with a bottle of Rémy Martin and two snifters. She set them on the table. “You decide what a small one is.”

  Felicity poured herself a stiff cognac, and Holly followed suit. “There’s something in the air,” Felicity said. “Anything I can help with?”

  Holly took a sip of her brandy. “Now that you mention it, yes. Can you call your service and see what, if anything, you have on a Mohammad Shazaz, called Mo?”

  “Certainly,” Felicity said, reaching into her handbag for her phone. “Just give me a moment.” She pressed a button. “Architect here,” she said. “Director of records, please.” After issuing instructions, she hung up. “There. Shouldn’t take long.”

  “We haven’t had much of a chance to talk,” Holly said.

  “Busy, busy, both of us.”

  “I was looking forward to a little R&R when the agreement was signed, but now I don’t know.”

  “I suspect you’re talking about the discovery of the bomb earlier today, and about Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.”

  Holly nodded. “My best guess is that one of them is connected to the bomb and that the other two are lurking somewhere nearby.”

  “That seems a logical conclusio
n,” Felicity said. “But after today’s search of the property, it would seem that they haven’t got the other two on the property. Yet.”

  “You think they’re going to try?”

  “One would suppose.”

  “Your people at GCHQ picked up some of the same e-mails as NSA did, didn’t they?”

  “That is so.”

  “You know what bothers me about that?”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s too easy.”

  Felicity took a sip of brandy. “How so?”

  “I mean, if you were running three operatives in a foreign location, would you pick easily connected names for them? Say, Tom, Dick, and Harry?”

  “Or Wynken, Blynken, and Nod? That would be rather poor tradecraft, wouldn’t it?”

  “It’s so stupid, it would have to be deliberate,” Holly said.

  48

  Holly and Felicity had nearly finished their cognac when Felicity’s phone rang. “Yes?” She listened intently. “You’ve checked every database? Thank you.” She hung up and turned to Holly. “We don’t know him.”

  Holly sighed. “How has this person, who we know exists, eluded both our services’ attention until the past couple of weeks?”

  “Holly, there are zillions of people on earth that we have no record of. Maybe in the next century or two we’ll know everything about everybody, but not yet.”

  Holly’s phone rang. “Barker.”

  “It’s Tom Riley. Scramble.” They both scrambled.

  “Okay, shoot,” Holly said, putting her phone on speaker so Felicity could hear.

  “A Bentley Mulsanne registered to Hamish McCallister is parked outside a house on the Chelsea Embankment, with a neighborhood parking permit stuck to the windshield, also registered to McCallister. A housemaid entered and a couple of tradespeople have been seen to come and go. We sent two operatives to the front door, posing as Mormon missionaries. The door was answered by a uniformed butler who said that Mr. McCallister was not at home, which in butlerese means he might be there but isn’t receiving callers. Our ‘missionaries’ tried to engage the butler further, but he closed the door in their faces.”

  “So we don’t know who’s in the house, besides a butler and a housemaid?”

  “We called the house, which has an unlisted number, posing as alumni relations from Christchurch College, Oxford, and asked for Hamish. The butler said he was not at home. That’s it. If we want to know, fast, who’s in the house, nothing short of phoning in a false fire alarm is available, and that might get more of Mr. McCallister’s attention than we want.”

  “Anything on the presence of Mo on the Isle of Murk?”

  “One of our people phoned the post office on the isle, posing as a Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs official, and inquired about mail deliveries to the house. The postmistress said that the post delivered had seemed routine for the past month, nothing addressed to a Shazaz. The most interesting delivery to the house was a package from Paxton & Whitfield, a well-known London cheese shop, marked ‘Perishables enclosed. Kindly deliver without delay.’ The evidence will probably have been consumed by now.”

  “So we don’t know if Mo was there or if he wasn’t?”

  “Correct.”

  “Did you find out anything at all about the man?”

  “A birth certificate, records of graduation from Eton and Oxford, a British driving license, no photograph. His address is the same as his brother’s, no employer stated on his tax returns, so he must have a private income. We haven’t been able to locate a photograph since he left Eton—none at Oxford—and he’s never made the papers or been arrested, except for two speeding tickets on the M4 motorway, four and seven years ago, both promptly paid. He’s a member of Annabel’s, Mark’s Club, Harry’s Bar, and George, all founded by Mark Burley, deceased, now owned by his heirs. He has charge accounts at Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, Kilgour, French & Stanbury tailors, Turnbull & Asser shirtmakers, and John Lobb bootmakers. Clean credit record. All this adds up to an overprivileged upper-class twit, except that his father was Syrian and his mother Egyptian, both deceased.”

  “Good job, Tom, thank you. Please stay on locating Mo and call with any news.”

  “Will do.” He hung up.

  Holly pressed the end button. “I’m surprised your people didn’t have any of that,” she said to Felicity.

  “You asked what we had, not what we could find out,” Felicity replied archly. “Still, your people did very well in the course of a single brandy.”

  “They did, didn’t they? I’m pleased.”

  “You should be—that would have taken my lot half a day.”

  “Algernon,” Holly said.

  “What?”

  “The signer of the e-mails. He’s running Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, and he doesn’t care if we find them, as long as it takes our eye off the ball—off him, Algernon.”

  “In that case, you’re unlikely to find the trio alive.”

  “Are you thinking suicide bombs?”

  Felicity shook her head. “The only suiciders al Qaeda has used in the States are the 9/11 hijackers. I think it’s more likely that Algernon will erase the three himself when he’s done with them. If caught, they might identify him.”

  “It bothers me that we haven’t found out who brought in the bomb found in the wine storage room.”

  “I expect the Secret Service are working that very hard. They’ll be interviewing the restaurant and kitchen staff.”

  “I suppose it could have been brought onto the premises by somebody delivering wine or booze,” Holly said. “Which will make him harder to find.”

  “I don’t know,” Felicity said, “I think it might more likely be an inside person, who brought the item in and hid it. Otherwise, some worker might have stumbled on it while unpacking bottles.”

  —

  At that moment, Special Agent Steve Rifkin was sitting in The Arrington’s main restaurant with two of his agents and a list of food and beverage staff. “And you’ve interviewed all of these?” he asked, holding up the list.

  “Every one,” an agent replied.

  “How did you classify them?”

  “We didn’t. We just talked to everyone, in alphabetical order.”

  “Let’s take another look at this,” Rifkin said. “I think that whoever brought the device in is more likely to be in a supervisory position, because he knew where to put the bomb where it wouldn’t be found before he needed it.”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  “All right, then,” Rifkin said, handing the man back his list, “eliminate all the waiters, bartenders, busboys, dishwashers, and cooks from your list, and let’s see who we have left.”

  The two men divided the list between them and went to work, crossing out names. After a few minutes, they handed back the list to Rifkin. “We’re down to a dozen,” one of them said.

  “Now, let’s eliminate everyone who does not deal directly with wines and spirits.”

  That took another minute. “In this building, three,” he said. “The restaurant manager, the headwaiter, and the chief bartender, who oversees all the bars.”

  “Read me a profile of each of them,” Rifkin said.

  “All right,” an agent said, consulting his notes. “Restaurant manager, Enzo Pagani, born Naples, fifty-six years ago, came to New York at eighteen, worked his way up from busboy to maître d’ over twenty-odd years, worked two years in that position at a Las Vegas casino, promoted to restaurant manager, then hired out of there by The Arrington.”

  “Did he apply?”

  The agent looked at his notes. “No, they approached him.”

  “He’s not our guy,” Rifkin said. “How about the headwaiter?”

  “Pierre du Bois, born Marseilles, forty-nine years ago, came to U.S. as a child, to New Orleans, long career in restaurants there, then hired from Commander’s Palace by The Arrington.”

  “Not our guy,” Rifkin said. “Who is the other one?”

&
nbsp; “Chief bartender, Michael Gennaro. Born U.S. of Italian parents thirty-eight years ago, worked in his family’s restaurant in Studio City since childhood, doing pretty much everything. Applied to the Beverly Hills Hotel eight years ago for a bartender’s job, then came to The Arrington, answered an ad in a restaurant trade magazine for a bartender’s job, got hired as chief bartender.”

  “That’s interesting,” Rifkin said, “that he got hired for a bigger job than they advertised for. I don’t think he’s our guy, either, but find out more about him fast. Start with the guy who hired him. And find out what his religion is.”

  “How are we going to do that?” an agent asked. “They can’t ask for that information on an employment application.”

  “Ask Michael Gennaro,” Rifkin said.

  The two agents got up and left the room. Rifkin looked at his watch; he was hungry. He got up and went in search of food.

  49

  Steve Rifkin had already talked to the food and beverage manager; now he was staring across the table at Michael Gennaro, the chief bartender. Rifkin looked for trembling, rapid respiration, sweat on the brow or lip, and rapid blinking. Nothing: cool, calm, and collected. He gave Gennaro a little smile. “Good morning,” he said.

  Gennaro returned the little smile. “Good morning.”

  “My name is Steve Rifkin. May I call you Michael?”

  “Sure.”

  “Your boss has given you a glowing report,” Rifkin said. “First, he liked the way your job interview went, then he liked the way you’ve done the job he gave you.”

  “I’ve hardly done it yet,” Gennaro said. “Our first guests are just arriving, and nobody’s asked for a drink, so far.”

  “I guess not,” Rifkin said, chuckling appreciatively. He looked at Gennaro’s employment application. “I guess you know just about everything about restaurants, don’t you?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “Why did you leave the family business?”

  “I had two older brothers who wouldn’t go first.”

  “No room at the top, huh?”

  “And my father is still running the place.”