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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to my editor, Marcia Markland; to my agent, Kirby Kim; to Laura Bonner for representing international rights, and to assistant editor Kat Brzozowski; production editor Elizabeth Curione; designer Phil Mazzone; publicist Justin Velella; jacket designer James Iacobelli; and copyeditor Carol Edwards at Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press.
And a special thanks to Rebecca Oliver, my first agent, who believed in these books early on.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Also by Michael Robertson
About the Author
Copyright
1
LONDON, JANUARY 1998
When Arthur Sandwhistle woke up on the morning of what he knew would be the greatest day of his life, he couldn’t get the bloody rhymes out of his mind.
One, two, unbuckle my shoe.
That one went through his head, unbidden, as he was pulling on his Doc Martens.
He threw an overstuffed rucksack over his shoulder and grabbed a hard black pudding off the kitchen table on his way out the door.
“You’re twenty-four,” shouted his uncle, standing at the stove. “Get off the dole. Get a real job!”
Arthur didn’t answer. He knew he no longer needed to.
Three, four, shut the door. And he slammed it.
Now he was out on the street.
Five, six, she’s turning tricks.
Okay, he’d just made that one up on his own. The team had changed that rhyme, as it had many of the others. But it had become “throw down sticks,” instead of “pick up sticks,” and it certainly wasn’t “turn tricks.”
But tricks were what she’d been turning, and a trick is what he’d been, though she hadn’t let him know until the very end.
When he did find out, it had been almost enough to make him bail on the whole deal. But not quite.
“I don’t know who paid me,” she’d said, with one hand clutching her purse and the other on the door. “I got a phone call and a few quid put under my door, but I never saw his face, and I never got his real name, just like you never got mine.”
“You mean your name isn’t even—”
“Of course it isn’t. Grow up. I was to sweeten the deal. I was paid to be the sugar on your cornflakes. And breakfast is done. Get over it, sweetie.”
And then she was gone.
But she was right. He’d get over her quick enough. And he bet that if she knew just what the cornflakes were—just how much he was getting paid for his own part in it—she’d have thought twice about skipping out.
She had no idea how important he really was. Without him, the whole thing would be a bust.
Programming and installing the microchips had been easy. No one was better at that. Certainly no one who had to live and work in his uncle’s cellar.
The problematic part had been the degrees of separation—all this insistence on the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing, the anonymous, encrypted communications—just so much cloak-and-dagger twaddle. A gigantic pain in the bum.
Personally, he didn’t care one way or the other about the royals. And he himself was no anarchist, so far as he knew. He wasn’t even sure what one was.
But no matter. His own part of it was finished and delivered. When he got his money, the birds would flock. And the tail in Rio would have an all-over tan.
Now he would just pick up his payment at King’s Cross station. Then it was forty minutes to Heathrow for the flight to Brazil.
Perhaps he’d even learn to surf. They did surf in Rio, didn’t they? For a moment he had a vision of himself, tanned and buff, riding the crest of a twenty-footer, like some Hawaiian god—or Brazilian, whatever—to the giggling applause and adoring stares from the smoothly waxed—now that part was Brazilian, he was sure—beauties waiting on shore.
His adrenaline was pumping now.
Seven, eight, lay ’em, mate.
Seven, eight, don’t be late.
He laughed. The damn singsongs were swimming in his head. It was a bloody good thing he had already sent the code, or the whole thing would be completely bollixed up, the way he was making them up now. Hey, how about “Little Jack Horner craps in the corner”? Why didn’t they use that one?
He reached the corner of Euston Road and Upper Woburn Place, and the light was against him; he had to stop to let the traffic go by.
Across the street, a bobby stepped out of the small Indian grocer. That was no concern. If necessary, Arthur could outrun and lose him in a block. But there was no need; the bobby did not even look in his direction.
The light changed; Arthur stepped back from the curb as a delivery van sped through, and then he trotted on across. He dodged and weaved around other pedestrians, keeping an eye out all the while, until he approached Euston and Midland.
Now he looked toward the intersection ahead. There was a Tesco convenience store on the corner, and he didn’t like what he saw standing at the entrance.
Not bobbies. It was worse than that. Probably MI5.
Three men, two tall, one short, all in their early or mid-thirties, and each wearing the sort of Marks & Spencer friendly gray suit that business gits like to wear on casual Friday.
Only it wasn’t Friday.
And now they’d seen him. They were all three pretending to be arguing about something in the sports section of the Daily Mirror, but Arthur knew that was a sham. He had been warned about their type. He knew what to look for. He knew to check their shoes.
And though it was hard to tell from this distance, he was pretty sure they were wearing rubber-soled Oxfords.
Not good, the rubber-soled part.
Arthur quickly looked away from the three gray suits and continued walking. He was not far now from King’s Cross at Pancras, and the pedestrian crowd was getting thicker; he would make his move there and lose the gray suits.
Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw the man with the tabloid lower it suddenly and look straight in his direction.
Bloody hell. They’d read his body language, just like he was reading theirs.
No point in disguising things now.
Arthur stepped behind an old man with an umbrella. He skipped aro
und a woman with two children and a stroller.
And then he took off running for all he was worth.
He was only blocks from the entrance to Kings Cross station. He could make it; once in the station, he could disappear in the crowd. They wouldn’t know whether he was heading for the tube or the trains, and there were too many exits for them to cover. King’s Cross, and he’d be home free.
Arnold looked back over his shoulder. Bloody hell, they were gaining. The shorter pursuer was faster than the others. Bloody overcompensater. He was catching up.
But now Arthur was at the intersection of Euston Road and Pancras. King’s Cross was within sight.
The light was red and there was heavy morning traffic—and that was perfect. Arnold knew his pursuers would slow down and try to be safe; he would not. All he had to do was time it right and pick his spot.
He saw the entrance to King’s Cross station across the street, heard the roar of trains pulling into the station, and he bolted suddenly, quick like a rabbit, into the street—for King’s Cross and freedom.
King’s Cross, King’s Cross, you can’t touch me now.
It was his last thought. The impact from the lorry he didn’t see left no room or time for anything more.
The sickening sound of the impact carried the length of the block.
The shorter gray-suited man, the first in pursuit, ran up to the intersection and saw that Arthur Sandwhistle had been separated from his Doc Martens, and most of his blood, by about fifty yards.
The second gray-suited man arrived on the scene. He allowed himself the luxury of leaning forward, hands on his knees to catch his breath, and then he said, “There’ll be hell to pay when the director hears of this.”
“I can’t see we could have done anything differently,” said the first man.
The third gray-suited man trotted up and looked the scene over. “You know the rules,” he said. “Do not pursue into dangerous traffic unless there is risk of imminent harm to civilians.”
“Well, I’d say delivery of an explosive device poses a risk of harm, wouldn’t you?” said the first man.
“Unless he already delivered it. And now we’ll never get to question him. Was he a pawn, or a planner?”
“He ran too fast for a planner,” said the first man.
“Well, whatever he was,” said the second man, as an emergency crew put Arthur’s body onto a carrier, “he’s no good to us now.”
“Or to anyone else,” said the first man. “I’m feeling winded. Let’s get a pint.”
2
TWO WEEKS LATER
In his penthouse on top of the Daily Sun headquarters in Tobacco Wharf, Lord Robert Buxton was about to commence a milestone celebration.
He had already checked the headlines for the next day’s papers, as he always did in the evening. Nothing extraordinary happening, nothing worth shouting about in any of the papers that he owned. His editors had done their best to exaggerate and insinuate where they could. Some royal events were coming up this week, which he gave more play than usual, with the slant that there hadn’t been many of those recently. Aside from that, it was an unremarkable news day, at least for the kind of headlines he liked to run.
But he had something else on his mind tonight anyway.
It was late evening in London, a chilly winter rain had passed through, and there was no fog as he looked out over the Thames. The clarity and brilliance of the reflected lights just made the disappointment he was feeling now all the more keen.
In the Buxton family tradition, one’s twenties were for randy romping and honing one’s skills—mostly the financial ones—for one’s thirties, which were for expanding the family fortune. One’s forties—the corner Buxton was about to turn—were for truly getting down to business and expanding the Buxton family itself.
But there was a problem.
The rich and famous and powerful partygoers had already assembled downstairs, drinking and gossiping by the river, ready to be escorted up to the penthouse to flatter Buxton.
But Laura Rankin was not among them.
It was hard to believe; things had been going so well just a few months earlier. But there it was—he had proposed, and she had said no.
Well, not quite no. She had asked for more time to think about it, but Buxton was no fool, and he could guess what that meant. Probably.
He was astonished. And now he found himself reevaluating his criteria:
Of all the women he knew, who had the grace and presence to make the best impression in public? Laura Rankin.
Of all the women he had ever known or met or seen, who had a body structure that would most likely yield three children and still maintain the perfect curvature of her figure? Laura Rankin, although it was a close call between her and several other possible candidates, because sustainable figures are not nearly so rare as excellent public presence.
And of all the women he had been with, who was the best shag? Well, that was a German pantyhose model from the ad pages of a Der Spiegel wannabe magazine that Buxton had bought last year, but no matter—he did not plan on giving up that occasional entertainment in any case. It was fine for sex and marriage to overlap, but no need to get carried away and make one a subset of the other.
There were other criteria, of course, but these were the big ones, and when he added them all up, they still came to the same result: Laura Rankin.
Therefore, “No” would simply not do, and neither would “I need to think about it, if you don’t mind,” at least not for very much longer.
But in the past several weeks, Laura had found reason on several occasions to be at Baker Street Chambers until well after dinnertime. And rumor had it, as reported by Buxton’s own security team, that she had been seen driving back across the bridge from Butler’s Wharf.
Laura seemed to be slipping back toward Reggie Heath, her earlier love. It made no sense that she should do so; Buxton racked his brain trying to think of what had changed.
It was not Buxton himself, surely. His own power and prestige were simply increasing. And his physical appearance was only getting better with age; he knew this, because half the partygoers downstairs had said so at one time or another, and without any prompting whatsoever. And in his gut he knew it was true.
Then it occurred to him—given that he had not changed, and Laura had not changed, then it must be his rival—Reggie Heath had changed.
Not physically. In that respect, in fact, the two rivals had some similarities—Heath was perhaps two or three years younger than Buxton; equally tall at just over six feet. Heath was thin; Buxton was proud of his own girth, of which there just enough to show the world that he was established and unapologetic about it.
But something had changed.
The surface events were obvious: Less than a year ago, Reggie Heath had been nothing more than a self-important London barrister who waffled rather than commit to a woman who was plainly above his league. Laura had tired of waiting and was about to dump him. Lord Buxton had stood at the ready; indeed, as he thought about it now, he took some satisfaction in having done everything he could to help push things along.
But then something unexpected had happened—Heath, who in Buxton’s opinion still carried a chip on his shoulder from his East End upbringing, established his new law chambers at Dorset House, a building that comprised the entire 200 block of Baker Street. Most of Dorset House was occupied by a bank, Dorset National, and all of it was miles away geographically and eons away socially from the traditional confines of the Inns of Court. A barrister would have to be a complete git to locate there; it was more foolish a move than even Buxton had hoped for. Surely Reggie Heath’s career and fortunes would flounder—and indeed they did, at first—and Laura would finally cut the ties.
But no. She didn’t. Reggie floundered, but she didn’t cut him loose. Not quite.
And then there were the letters to Sherlock Holmes. Within weeks of locating his chambers at Dorset House on Baker Street, Reggie Heath had beg
un receiving the letters that previously had been dealt with by the Dorset National clerical staff. Then, in reaction to one of those letters, Heath and his younger brother Nigel had jetted off to the States, dragging Laura into an adventure that she surely regarded as embarrassing, to say the least.
Or so Buxton had assumed. He had made much of those events in his tabloid publications, and for a while, that seemed to have had the desired effect on Reggie’s career.
But not on Laura.
He had misjudged the situation, Buxton realized now. Whatever Reggie’s attitude toward them, Laura apparently did not regard those letters as an embarrassment. She seemed to regard them as a good thing, almost as if—though it was hard to say why—they represented some sort of opportunity.
For exactly what, Buxton could not quite say—but he was certain that Laura’s renewed attraction to Reggie had something to do with the letters to Sherlock Holmes. Receiving them had somehow given him a panache that he had not heretofore possessed.
Buxton considered it carefully. He could see no other cause. It was the letters.
Something had to be done.
Buxton looked out on the Thames reflections again, feeling better now. He had decided what to do. And he knew he had the resources to do it.
But that was for tomorrow. For tonight—having now decided on a course of action—he could enjoy his party.
Buxton directed his chief of staff to open the doors and admit his birthday guests—and first among them, the blonde from the ad pages of Der Spiegel.
3
On the fourth floor of Harrods department store, in the toy section for preschoolers, twenty-two-year-old Emily Ellershaw was using all the skills she had learned in her new-hire training—and still she was having a rough go of it. She couldn’t quite understand this customer’s complaint, and she was having a hard time mollifying him.
“I’m very sorry for the mistake, Mr. Aspic,” she said as she placed a medium-size boxed toy on the counter between them, right next to another one, already opened, that to her eye was exactly the same. “Do you mind very much—explain the problem to me again?”
The customer was in his mid-fifties, with wispy brown hair, pale skin even by English standards, and a vague scent of vanilla that seemed to waft whenever he moved his heavily calloused hands—which he was doing now as he took the toy out of the box that was already open.
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