by Gayle Lynds
“What’s he saying?” Asher asked.
“Shhh.”
Now she knew what Malko looked like—sturdy and muscular, dressed in an expensive business suit. He had one of those long, ordinary faces that was forgettable. The kind of man easily lost in a crowd, an advantage for a janitor. He wore sunglasses and was talking into a cell as he walked alone down below, along the cliff. He gazed around as if the manicured grounds hid hordes of adversaries. He showed no signs of nervousness, just the high alertness of the professional. Beyond him spread the sea, gray and churning from last night’s storm.
“…in Alloway,” Malko was saying. “Of course, everything will be ready there. You don’t have to worry, sir. There’s plenty of time. I’ll get the message to his assistant. You can count on me.” There was a pause, then his voice grew soft, and she strained to hear. “Thank you, sir. Yes, thank you.”
As he severed the connection and dropped the phone into his pocket, Malko turned to face out to sea, his shoulders square. She had an odd sense about him, as if he were an eager killer dog whose master had just stroked him well.
Abruptly, he turned and strode off around the building, purpose in every step. When he was out of sight, she slid down the cot and told Asher what she had learned.
“Isn’t Alloway in Scotland?” she finished. “That’s where Robert Burns was born. You must be right about where we are.”
He nodded. “When you were looking at the sea, did you see any islands?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. It must be an island, but it looks like a big fat rock. Or a big round loaf of bread.”
“Ah! That’s got to be Ailsa Craig. Now we’re getting somewhere. We’re on the Firth of Clyde, in southwest Scotland. I was here a few years ago, passing through to Glasgow. So let’s get the hell out of here. If this is a golf resort, then there have to be cars. I’m ready to escape, aren’t you?”
Dreftbury, Scotland
The A77 highway skirted the Firth of Clyde and curved up among undulating green hills where brown-and-white Ayrshire cattle grazed in the lacy shade of great-limbed pines. Simon was driving a new Land Rover, while Liz watched for exit signs for Dreftbury. He checked his rearview mirror often.
Every time she looked at him, she had a strange sense. At some point during the last forty-eight hours, he had ceased being an artifact from her childhood. Now he sat next to her in disguise—dirty blond hair, sunglasses, a cheap sports jacket, and a polyester tie. With his broad face and oversized nose, he could be an undertaker—or a government agent. She doubted anyone, even his closest friends—if he still had any—would recognize him.
“You’re looking at me,” he said.
“You’re not blushing.”
“Should I be?”
“I was simply admiring the new you.”
“Oh.” He flashed her a grin.
Using one of his aliases, he had rented the Land Rover outside Dumfries, where they abandoned the Jeep. In town, they bought two prepaid cells and clothes and hair coloring and found an inn, where they paid for the night but stayed just long enough to clean up, bleach their hair, and change. She still had euros left over from Sarah’s wallet, which she split with him. With the instant camera from his gym bag, they took each other’s photos, and he doctored two MI6 credentials he carried. She became Veronica Young, and he, Douglas Kennedy.
Finally, they returned to the A75, following it west to Stranraer on the huge inlet of Loch Ryan, where they turned north onto the A77.
“I’m excessively impressed by your disguise, too,” he told her. “Nothing like being seen with a gray-haired sex pistol.”
“Excuse me?”
“What did you expect? You’ve got the hair of a seventy-year-old but the face of a college girl. And that black pantsuit is too proper to be believed. Just the right combination for certain kinds of sexual fantasies.”
“You’re messing with me.”
“Only a little.”
“You’re ignoring all of the wrinkles I applied so carefully.”
“It’s easy to.”
Traffic grew thicker and slowed as he drove around a long bend. She scanned the area. Ahead to their left, on a hill above the sea appeared a stately white building with pillars and arches and a red-tiled roof.
“There it is. That’s it—the Dreftbury hotel.” Liz nodded, wondering what they would find there.
The resort’s famous links spread on either side, a perfect carpet of vivid green, spotted with pot bunkers and bordered by a high, ragged rough of blowing coastal grasses. A few golfers swung at balls while the sun glinted out from gathering storm clouds. Black shadows snaked across the landscape.
As she studied it, memories came back to her—the grand salon, the bar with the congenial stone patio overlooking the firth and the valley, elevators, long hallways with crooks and side halls, and the way servants had hovered.
Simon hit the brakes. The traffic ahead slowed, the average speed dropping to less than thirty miles an hour.
“What happened?” Liz looked around as the road straightened.
“There’s the answer.” He fought memories of Viera and that last violent night in Bratislava. “The antiglobalists are here in force.”
They now had a sweeping view not only of the magnificent hotel but all the way down to the base of the hill, where a two-lane country road was also snarled with traffic. Dreftbury’s high stone wall fronted the road. Slowed by security checks, limousines with smoked windows queued up at the main entrance, while trucks and delivery vans waited in single file at the service gate.
But across the road from this orderliness were shouting ranks of demonstrators, thousands of them, lined up five and eight deep behind sawhorses and cordons monitored by uniformed police. Dressed in casual clothes and wearing backpacks, the massed protesters pumped signs up and down. Above them, on the crest of a hill, was their command station, where a cadre of men and women orchestrated the protest’s progress, binoculars to eyes, walkie-talkies to ears.
“Turn on the radio,” Simon said tersely. “I see reporters and cameras.”
As she searched for a news station, he told her about the antiglobalists’ frustration that the mainstream media seldom took their charges and complaints seriously. That they felt marginalized, voiceless, unheard.
“I’m not surprised they’re here,” he explained. “I’d warned my boss something was brewing. They’ve been looking for a way to open the public’s eyes, and Nautilus is a natural target. Whether they can force it nationally…even internationally—”
Liz interrupted, “There’s the exit sign to Dreftbury.”
She found a station and turned up the volume. As Simon sped off the highway and around onto a country road, a newswoman reported, her voice raised, “…at the very exclusive Dreftbury resort.”
On the radio, car engines revved and idled, people shouted orders, while others chanted slogans. The din was unrelenting.
“We’re standing across from an estimated three thousand demonstrators,” she continued. “Some are sending aloft a huge flamingo pink balloon in the shape of a pig. They seem to have a sense of humor—it’s labeled CAPITALIST PIG EQUALS HOT AIR. More agitators arrive by the hour. They dart under the barricades and rush to Dreftbury’s two entrances but are arrested before they can force their way inside. Then the police pack them into lorries and send them off to jail. Inspector Hepburn, of the local constabulary, declares there have been no injuries, but he urges the public to stay away. Standing here, we can only agree. We’ve never experienced such congestion and chaos in so small an area. At the service entrance, Glasgow’s string orchestra was ordered off its bus and told to remove all their instruments for inspection. They were most unhappy, but no one is exempt from being searched. Now we’re walking toward the limousines, where we’ll speak with some of the guests. They’re the planet’s elite, according to the protesters, and they’re here to conspire about how to run the world over the next year.”
Her voic
e faded and suddenly rose. “Stand aside, young man. We are Edinburgh radio. You are not the police. How dare you! You really can’t stop us. Mister! Mister!” They could hear someone tapping on glass. “Roll down your window so we can talk!”
Liz lowered the volume as Simon braked. They were approaching the tangle of traffic that crawled in front of the Dreftbury resort.
“At least we’ve reached the stone wall,” she said.
“Look inside that stand of trees.”
As the Land Rover rolled forward, bumper-to-bumper with the car ahead, she studied the dense timber edging Dreftbury’s grounds. A leashed German shepherd stepped out, head high, quickly followed by his handler, who was dressed in combat black and carried an automatic rifle. The armed man and trained dog were policing the perimeter. Soon she saw more men, more dogs.
Her rib cage tightened. “Daunting,” she said. “Private security?”
He nodded. “Thought you’d like to know.”
Asher seldom worried. It was not his nature. For him, worry felt more like a sense of heaviness, of uncertainty. But from the moment Sarah was kidnapped, his guts had been in twisted knots. That was how he knew he was worried. Their reunion in Paris had relieved him at first, because she was alive. After that, it was all downhill again. She was still in danger, and he was still out of commission.
Her plan could work, but the rock they needed had not materialized, although they had carefully inspected three walls and were now on the fourth. They searched for flaws and tugged at any irregular protrusion.
Then with a suddenness that stunned him, a chunk of ragged red stone about six inches wide and a foot long popped out a few inches.
With a simple tug, Asher held it in his hands.
She watched, her eyes as wide as pizzas. “You found a piece. It’s perfect!”
He did not answer. He was staring into the hole.
The metallic rasp of the door’s bolt being thrown made them wheel and stare.
“Take that rock over there, quick,” she said. “Get ready to pretend you’re going to attack him!”
“No! Wait. Emergency change of plans. Go to the door and make nice. Do not kick or clobber him.” He jammed the rock back into the wall. Brushing sand from his hands, he hurried to the cot and collapsed. The door swung open.
She was there, waiting. “Thanks,” she told the same armed man as before.
Lack of interest had deepened on his irregular features. He still carried the rifle and wore the cell phone attached to his belt. He grunted, handed over two more bottles of water and another paper sack, and left. Again the door closed solidly and the bolt slammed home.
Asher smiled. “Nice.” It pleased him that she occasionally did what he asked.
She whirled. “Whatever you found in that wall better be a miracle.”
Forty-Eight
As soon as Sir Anthony Brookshire checked in, he went straight to his suite, disgusted by the mobs of crazed agitators who were obviously intent on ruining what should be a quiet working weekend of ideas and consensus. Dressed in his favorite corduroy jacket with the leather elbow patches, he stood at his window, hands clasped behind, gazing down into the valley, where the idiots milled and screamed.
He felt an odd numbness, as if time had sped past too quickly. Something had gone wrong somewhere. Was he no longer in step with the future?
“I’ve spent my life trying to understand how the world works,” he ruminated. “What makes civilization. What over-arching meaning is behind our triumphs and failures, our ability to find happiness and to endure sadness. Since we’re all part of the same world, the same species, it seemed sensible that we act like it. To be against globalization is to want to turn back the clock. To believe the earth is flat. To believe in fairies and witches, and to pray to pagan gods.” He sighed.
When there was no response, he turned. He did not like where his path was heading, but he could see no way off. Standards must be upheld, and one must stay the course. In the end, endurance was perhaps the greatest virtue.
“What do these demonstrators want?” he demanded.
César Duchesne had been standing just inside the door. Dressed in a tan knit shirt and tweed jacket and brown slacks, he wore a yellow assistant’s badge clipped to his front pocket, although he continued to function as Coil security.
“To re-create the IMF and World Bank,” Duchesne said. “To end all Third World debt. To put a one percent tax on speculative financial transactions worldwide in order to raise a trillion-dollar fund for underdeveloped countries to direct their own growth. To bring to a Nuremberg-style trial those they hold responsible for the new global economic disorder and vast shift of wealth from the poor and middle class to the already rich.”
“Is that all?” Brookshire said bitterly, tired of those with neither the wisdom nor experience to see the complexities involved. They worried about their own survival, not the world’s. Petty and unproductive. His voice rose. “They’re ignorant, and they hold on to their ignorance as if it were a talisman or some religious relic. They’re bloody fanatics. If they want change, they need a realistic understanding of the modern world!” He paused, sighed. “Is there any particular reason they’re harassing us right now?”
“To expose Nautilus. Force you and your guests onto the international stage. To lift the curtain, if you like. They want substantive inquiry.”
“Do they, now? They’re not going to get it by acting like spoiled children. Shouting, jumping up and down. Look at them. They’re having fits like two-year-olds.” He turned back from the window and sat. Gloomily, he studied his security chief. He forced himself to calm down to return to business. “Is Henry Percy dead?”
Duchesne inclined his head respectfully. “As ordered.”
“And Sansborough and Childs?”
“They escaped ahead of my people.”
“What! Duchesne, I’ll—!”
Duchesne interrupted quickly. “There’s more. They’ve deduced not only that the blackmailer was behind the death of Franco Peri a few months ago but that the execution was a ploy to speed Carlo Santarosa into taking charge of the Competition Commission. I think they’re right. They believe the blackmailer needs Santarosa’s approval for some action. Henry Percy told them he thought it likely Santarosa would be at Dreftbury.”
Sir Anthony placed his elbows on the arms of his chair, steepled his fingers, rested his chin on top, and studied his security chief, who remained standing, his posture seemingly relaxed. Still, Sir Anthony thought not. For the first time, he saw hints of worry, of anger. Good. He needed Duchesne to be fully motivated, to be more wary, more clever than ever, because Duchesne had indeed brought something useful.
Sir Anthony said, “You think they’ll come here to use Santarosa to find the blackmailer. You’re probably right. Once Sansborough went on the run, who could’ve predicted she’d get as far as she has? Of course she’ll come here. I assume you’ve set a trap to catch both Sansborough and Childs, as well as the blackmailer.”
Duchesne described his precautions and his ambush.
Sir Anthony made a few modifications.
As soon as he was alone, Sir Anthony pushed himself out of his chair. He had been a hunter his entire life, and he knew and enjoyed firearms. He had owned his first rifle at eight, his first shotgun at fifteen, and his first handgun at sixteen. From a bureau drawer he removed his favorite Browning.
Before he left London, he had cleaned and loaded it. He did not expect to need it, but a wise man took precautions. As he hefted the weapon, he caught sight of himself in the mirror, his thick silver hair brushed back, his large head, his cheeks baby pink and freshly shaved, his chin jutting forward, his clothes natty in the way of old money. His beefy, athletic build. And the stern look of sagacity he had spent a lifetime cultivating. Yes, he was Old World, but woven through it was both pragmatism and idealism. He remembered what Plato had told the Athenian democracy: The penalty for not participating in political affairs was to be ruled by
one’s inferiors.
Under the roiling gray sky, Simon grabbed his gym bag, and Liz took her new shoulder bag. They left the Land Rover parked at the side of the road and advanced through the no-man’s-land between the agitators, who waved their signs and shouted, and the security forces, who clasped their weapons and glared. The air stank of ozone and sweat. It was well past five o’clock, and the long caravans waiting to enter Dreftbury had shortened. Still, it was much faster to walk in.
As they passed the service entrance, policemen used dogs to sniff vehicles while security frisked drivers and checked loads. One poured out a carton of milk; another sliced open a package of frozen peas. They were probably looking for small weapons or Semtex. At the same time, four elderly protesters scrambled under the barricades and rushed across the road toward the gate, white hair and wrinkles shining in the afternoon sun. Security clasped their weapons and raced to intercept.
“This reminds me of Bratislava the night Viera set herself on fire,” he said uneasily. “After that, people rioted.” Through his sunglasses, he scanned the crowds, assessing the tension. There were a few faces he recognized—the usual teachers and laborers, housewives and students, speaking German, Polish, Slovak, Czech, English.
“I’m not surprised.” Her gaze moved with his, her senses on high alert. “Rioters can never win, you know.”
“No way they’d believe that. Look at those old people. They’re not giving up.”
Police handcuffed the elderly quartet and shoved them toward a paddy wagon. They smiled grimly, almost as if they were off to a party.
She said, “They aren’t rioting. Protesters start by wanting to make things better, even if their idea of ‘better’ isn’t. They want a positive revolution. But rioting’s not revolutionary. It’s reactionary, and it always ends in defeat. The only payoff is an immediate emotional catharsis. That’s followed by a sense of futility, because the coin of whatever power they felt in the beginning is spent. The next step is helpless rage.”
