Collateral Damage

by Stuart Woods

  “God, this looks wonderful,” Holly said. “I’m glad you ordered something simple.”

  “Did you talk to the director?”

  “This morning. I owe her a call, but I’ll wait until she wakes up tomorrow. I woke her at four A.M. this morning.”

  “The papers are over there,” Stone said, nodding toward the coffee table. “The bombing is wall-to-wall—on TV, too. Did you speak with Felicity?”

  “Not yet. I’ve just been trying to absorb what the staff here told me. I think it’s unlikely that she knows anything I don’t.”

  “You never know,” Stone said. “It’s her ‘patch,’ as the Brits like to say.”

  “I’ll call her in the morning. What did you do today?”

  “I visited my tailor, or rather, the tailor who has replaced my tailor. Doug Hayward died three years ago, and his shop was bought by another, larger shop. Most of Doug’s people have been let go. It was depressing.”

  “Poor baby. I wish I had had that good a day.”

  Stone laughed. “I wasn’t making comparisons. How long do you think you’ll have to stay?”

  “Three or four days, maybe a week. If I know Lance, he’ll be here as soon as he can. Of course, he had to travel all the way from Japan, so he’ll be terminally jet-lagged. I think I’ve found a possible replacement for Tom Riley, so I’ll recommend him. Lance may have other ideas, who knows? He was supposed to have replaced Dick Stone here.”

  Stone’s cousin had been London station chief, until he was promoted to deputy director for operations. He died before he could take that office, and Lance had moved up.

  “Yes. He’ll probably want someone who can replace him at Langley, if he gets Kate’s job when she retires.”

  “Any ideas about who the bombers were?”

  “Likely al Qaeda,” Holly replied. “I’m meeting with the Metropolitan Police tomorrow morning to find out what they’ve learned.”

  “Maybe I’ll have some shoes made tomorrow, or buy a hat,” Stone said.

  Holly began laughing. “You sound like the little woman on a business trip with her husband.”

  “That’s pretty much my role, isn’t it?”

  “Tell you what, just to make you feel necessary, why don’t you join my meeting with Special Branch tomorrow morning? You have all the clearances you need, and you’re a paid consultant to the Agency, so you might as well earn your keep. You could have some insights into how their investigation is going, too.”

  “Love to. You think Jasmine Shazaz did this?”

  “I’m trying not to make that a supposition in order to keep a clear head, but probably.”

  “There has to be a major manhunt on for her.”

  “Oddly, no. Not yet, anyway. So far, they’ve limited their hunt to circulating her photograph to employees of several ministries. That’s how they nearly got her the first time and lost six men doing it.”

  “I read the account in the Times,” Stone said. “They’ll have to go all out in their search now. For what it’s worth, that’s what I would have done when the foreign minister bought it down the street.”

  “Was that near here?”

  “Maybe a hundred yards. The Porsche dealership is just before you get to Berkeley Square.”

  “I suspect that Special Branch will agree with you on that. I hear they felt excluded when Felicity sent in her own team.”

  “I expect so.”

  “Stone, let’s try not to get embroiled in their politics, shall we?”

  “I’ll just listen,” Stone said.

  The following morning a car, less grand than the ambassador’s, called for Holly at the Connaught, and Stone accompanied her to the American Embassy.

  “It’s only a short walk,” Stone said, getting into the rear seat with Holly.

  “They don’t want me on the sidewalks,” Holly said.

  “Ah.”

  “Yes.”

  They arrived on the floor of the London station, where Stone was presented with a laminated ID card with his photograph on it, apparently from Agency records.

  “You can hang on to the ID card,” Holly said. “It might come in useful someday.”

  Stone looked carefully at the card: the letters CIA were printed large, background for the printed information. They would make the first impression if the card were flashed at someone. “I’m ‘deputy assistant director’?” Stone asked, reading from the card.

  “I thought it sounded better than ‘consultant,’” Holly replied.

  “Let’s see, that makes me your deputy, doesn’t it?”

  “I thought you’d notice that.”

  They were taken down the hall to Tom Riley’s office, and Holly introduced Stone to Ann Tinney, who took their coats and brought a pot of coffee. “The others are due shortly,” Ann said, then left them alone.

  “Who’s coming?” Stone asked.

  “A contingent from Special Branch,” Holly replied. “I don’t know whom they’re sending.”

  Stone poured them some coffee, but before they could take a sip, Ann was back with two gentlemen, one tall, slender, with an impressive military mustache and beautifully cut clothes, the other shorter and heftier, wearing an off-the-peg suit and a crafty look.

  Ann made the introductions: “Assistant Director Holly Barker, her deputy, Stone Barrington. May I present Chief Inspector Sir Evelyn Throckmorton and Inspector Harry Tate?”

  Throckmorton managed a warm smile with his handshake. “Hello, Stone, it’s a very long time since we met.”

  “Sir Evelyn,” Stone said. “Good to see you.”

  “You know each other?” Holly asked incredulously.

  “Sir Evelyn, or rather, just plain Inspector Throckmorton as he then was, once investigated me for something—I forget what.”

  Sir Evelyn stroked his mustache with a knuckle. “Let’s see,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “I believe it was murder.”

  “Fortunately, I was innocent,” Stone said.

  “I don’t believe we ever actually determined that as a fact,” Sir Evelyn said, and got a laugh from everyone.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Stone said to Holly.

  Holly waved them all to seats, and Ann poured coffee for them. “Gentlemen, thank you for coming. Naturally, we’re very anxious to hear what you’ve learned over the past forty-eight hours.”

  “Harry,” Sir Evelyn said, “give our friends the short version.”

  “I’ll skip the damage and the casualties,” Tate said, with a Cockney accent that had been mostly trained away by his advancing rank over the years, “since you’ve already heard about that. We’re very short of living witnesses, since almost everybody who was close enough to see the explosions was injured, or died either immediately or shortly thereafter. You’ve seen the surveillance footage?”

  Holly nodded. “Yes, in great detail.”

  “Then you know pretty much what we know. Our people are out there now, shaking down every Arab, Afghani, and Pakistani snitch we have, and combing the files on every nascent terrorist group. It always takes more time than we mean it to.”

  “I’d hoped for more,” Holly said, half-absently.

  “I’m so sorry we don’t have more,” Sir Evelyn said, with more than a trace of British irony.

  “I didn’t mean to be critical, Sir Evelyn,” Holly said. “It’s just that we’re not equipped here—or for that matter, authorized—to conduct the kind of investigation that you’re conducting.”

  “Quite,” Sir Evelyn replied, with an air that said anyone could place any meaning he or she liked on that word.

  “Are there any living witnesses at all?” Stone asked.

  “One,” Harry Tate replied. “She had a good view and as a result was badly injured, but I hope she can give us something. I’m seeing her in hospital when we finish here.”

  “Has the name of Jasmine Shazaz come up?” Holly asked.

  “I thought you’d ask that,” Sir Evelyn replied, “as did your counterparts at M
I-6. The short answer is: not yet, but nobody will be shocked if we hear that name spoken.”

  “I would be shocked if it weren’t spoken,” Holly said. “She’s got to be at the root of this.”

  Stone spoke up. “If you’ll forgive me, Sir Evelyn, I wonder why I didn’t see her name and photograph in this morning’s papers. Are you not conducting an all-out hunt for her?”

  “We are,” Sir Evelyn replied, “but rather quietly. Every police officer, taxi driver, airport porter, ticket agent, security officer, and milk deliveryman has her photograph, but we’re not ready to have her splashed all over the tabloids just yet. We think, at this point, that a general alarm would produce more false sightings and phantom leads than we could deal with, and would waste a great deal of our time. We’re better off concentrating our search on the places I’ve mentioned.”

  “Perhaps so,” Stone said.

  “She’s not walking the streets and dining in restaurants,” Harry Tate said. “She’s gone to ground, and she won’t pop out again until she’s ready for another bombing.”

  “Naturally,” Sir Evelyn said, “we’ve taken every possible precaution at the sort of targets she’d be interested in.” He looked regretful. “I’m sorry we didn’t include American targets.”

  “Quite,” Holly said, gaining a clamped jaw from Sir Evelyn.

  “Well,” the chief inspector said, “if there’s nothing else at the moment, I’d better let Inspector Tate go and see our witness.” The two Englishmen stood, and Holly and Stone stood with them.

  “Would it be inconvenient if I came along?” Stone asked. “Merely as an observer, of course.”

  The two policemen exchanged a glance and Sir Evelyn nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Glad to have you, Mr. Barrington,” Tate said. “I have a car waiting downstairs.”

  —

  Stone sat in the rear of the unmarked police car and stole a sideways glace at Harry Tate. “Been at this a long time, Inspector?”

  “Call me Harry,” he replied.

  “And I’m Stone.”

  “I heard about you from Sir Evelyn,” Tate said. “He remembers you fondly from your past meetings.”

  Stone laughed. “I’m sure that’s not quite true.”

  “To answer your question, Stone, I’ve been at it for nigh onto thirty years, and it’s nice to get out of the bloody office.”

  The car stopped at the entrance to a large hospital.

  The hospital was much like any of its large New York City counterparts: everybody in green scrubs, patients on gurneys in the hallways, nurses looking overworked. They were met by a doctor, a Sikh, bearded, with a large turban. He introduced himself, and his English was impeccable.

  “Mrs. Margaret Meyers-Selby is an American woman, thirty-seven years old, five feet six inches tall, nine stone three pounds,” he reported, as if they were med students doing rounds. “She was standing in front of a window when a large explosion took place in the street and has suffered the loss of her left eye and sustained a large head wound, as well as many cuts made by flying glass. You will note that, except for her eye, most of her wounds are not bandaged, as the result would give her the appearance of a mummy. She is remarkably well, considering what happened to her, and you will find her articulate.”

  “Thank you,” Harry Tate replied. He led Stone into the room, which was curtained off into four cubicles, Mrs. Meyers-Selby’s by the window, which overlooked a rear utility area of the hospital. The woman sat up in bed, reading a magazine with her remaining eye, and the sight of her face was horrific. Seemingly dozens of wounds, some of them two or three inches long, had been sutured, painted with iodine, and left bare. Her face had swelled to what Stone imagined must be twice its normal size, and he thought that once she might have been very pretty.

  She looked up from her magazine. “Don’t worry, gentlemen,” she said, “it’s nothing a little pancake makeup won’t fix.”

  Stone avoided laughing and pulled up two chairs. Harry introduced them. “We’d like to ask some questions, if you’re up to it,” he said.

  “I appreciate the break in the otherwise constant boredom,” she said. “If you don’t like Cockney soap operas, soccer, or cricket, there’s nothing to watch on TV.”

  “Can you please relate to us what happened, as best you can remember?” Harry asked.

  “I remember every bit of it,” she replied in a clear American accent, “and I’ll be happy to. I had received an applicant for a job as a translator,” she said, “and she was sitting at the window, filling out the application form and taking her own sweet time about it. She excused herself to go to the ladies’, and perhaps a minute later there was an awful explosion outside somewhere. I went to the window to see what the hell had happened and saw a police car upside down in Burnes Street, and what appeared to be a policeman’s body, hanging on a wrought-iron fence.

  “I stared dumbly at it for perhaps half a minute, then I went back to my desk, got an outside line, and called nine-nine-nine. I told them who I was and what had happened and requested every available ambulance and policeman to come to the scene at once. I could already hear sirens. After I had told the officer everything twice, I hung up and went back to the window. At that moment, the window blew into my face, and I flew backward. I may have been out for a few seconds, but then I managed to get to my feet and walked through a lot of glass back to the window and looked out. It was carnage, pure and simple. There were the remains of cars, taxis, and trucks everywhere, and bodies and pieces of bodies strewn all over the place. I stood there until the EMTs got to my floor, then they put me on a stretcher and got me to the hospital. I didn’t even realize at first that I was blind in one eye. Sorry, missing an eye. I didn’t know that, either.”

  “When you were looking out the window,” Harry asked, “did you see any people walking about?”

  “You must be joking. Anybody in the block was maimed and dead or dying, even those who had been running toward the blast when it occurred.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Meyers-Selby,” Harry said. “I don’t think we need trouble you any further.” He looked at Stone. “Unless you have something, Mr. Barrington.”

  Stone reached into an inside coat pocket, removed a sheet of paper, unfolded it, and handed it to her. “Have you ever seen this person before?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Meyers-Selby said unhesitatingly. “She is the woman who was filling out the employment application and who left my office a minute or so before the first explosion.”

  “What sort of accent did she have?” Stone asked.

  “BBC English.”

  “And what language did she wish to be hired to translate?”

  “Arabic and Urdu.”

  “Do you remember the name she used?”

  “Khan,” Mrs. Meyers-Selby replied, and spelled it. “I don’t remember a first name.”

  “How was she dressed?”

  “Like a British office worker—dark skirt, Liberty print blouse, and gray cardigan. She had a Burberry raincoat, looked like a knockoff. She left it in my office when she went to the ladies’.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Meyers-Selby,” Stone said. “I hope you have a speedy recovery.”

  “I could go back to work now, if anybody could stand to look at me,” she replied, sounding sad for the first time.

  Harry thanked her again, and they made their exit. “I want that raincoat,” he said, taking out a cell phone.

  —

  Jasmine sat in the back of the van and waited while Habib took some packages from it and handed them to a uniformed pilot at the cargo door of a medium-sized jet airplane. When he had finished, he got a plastic shopping bag from his car and brought it to her. “Inside is a kind of money vest. I have removed your funds from the deposit box in the London bank, changed them into more convenient currency, and placed the notes in the vest which, worn under your clothes, will give you the appearance of having gained weight.

  “You will be met at the airport and driv
en to a safe house, changing cars along the way. Our people there have already located some possible targets for you to consider in the city, and we would like an attack as soon as possible. Any questions?”

  “Yes. Why am I being moved?”

  “Jasmine, you are too hot to remain in Britain. Everybody is searching for you.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  He looked around, then waved her out of the van, up the aluminum ladder, and into the airplane, tossing in her roller suitcase behind her. Habib unhooked the ladder and tossed it into the airplane, then, with a wave, closed the door.

  “This way,” said the pilot, who was a young, skinny East Asian in black trousers, white shirt with epaulets, and a black, gold-trimmed hat. He led her forward to the cockpit and settled her into a seat immediately behind and between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats. Another young man in uniform was in the left seat, running through a checklist. Shortly, he started one engine, then the other. The copilot handed Jasmine a headset.

  “You can listen if you want to. The chat with the controllers gets boring, but we’ll have some music later.” He handed her two folded newspapers. “Here’s the Times and the Sun, depending on your tastes. We already have our clearance, and if there’s no delay for takeoff we should be landing in Reykjavik in about two and a half hours.”

  The airplane started to taxi, and Jasmine strapped herself in and opened the Times. Big headlines and photographs of the bombing scene. She involuntarily smiled.

  The copilot looked at her curiously, then turned around.

  She put on her headset. “Southampton Tower, AeroCargo 3 ready to taxi to the active runway.”

  “AeroCargo 3, Southampton Tower, taxi to runway 18 without delay. We’ve got light aircraft traffic on a ten-mile final, so we can squeeze you in ahead of him.”

  “Roger, Southampton Tower, taxiing to 18, no delay.”

  Two minutes later they were over the English Channel, making a right turn to the north.

  The copilot turned and looked at her. “You should have more than two hours to make your flight out of Reykjavik,” he said, “and the weather forecast is for a smooth flight.”