LETHAL SCORE

by Mannock, Mark

  I like to walk. I particularly like to walk in London, where the people and the buildings are a maze of variety, ideology, and perspectives. It was dark by the time I walked across Piccadilly Circus, one of the most hectic and colorful intersections anywhere in the world, and on toward Mayfair. It was there that I would find Dukes Hotel and Bar, and Elena. The cold night air had brought me to my senses after a lazy, contemplative afternoon. I was aware that the meeting with this girl could go in a number of directions, not all of them good. The bottom line, however, was that I wanted answers, and meeting with Elena was the only way I was going to get them.

  Greatrex had wanted to come with me, but I had said no. If Elena was going to reveal anything at all about what was going on in her cryptic world, I felt she would reveal it only if I went alone. Jack was not happy, but he understood the logic.

  As I entered St James’s Place, I was comforted by the upmarket neighborhood. I told myself that nothing bad could happen here. Then again, I supposed Charles Manson’s victims had thought the same thing. Dukes Hotel was at the end of the short laneway. As I walked up the steps, I was greeted by a doorman in uniform. “Good evening, sir. May I help you?” He was all British class, but his build indicated he could take me down just as quickly as he could take my coat.

  “The bar please,” I requested.

  I was shown into a small but obviously exclusive bar. There were plush chairs surrounding small tables. The windows were thickly draped, and pictures with heavy traditional wooden frames adorned the walls. Waiters in white coats and black ties hovered over the few guests. I half expected to see Bond in a secret meeting with M in a corner.

  I scanned the room for Elena, but she hadn’t arrived. A waiter showed me to a table near the bar, where I had a good view across the room. I said I would order when my friend arrived. He gave me a cocktail menu and the Evening Standard to look over in the meantime.

  I must have sat there for around ten minutes. I was on time but not early and had begun to wonder if the girl was going to be a no-show.

  Then she walked in.

  To say the room stopped as she strolled through the doorway may be an exaggeration. I’m sure someone in that room was doing something apart from looking at Elena, but I didn’t notice if they were. Along with everyone else, I was beguiled by the cascading dark hair, the inviting face, the slender frame supporting an exquisite black dress, and those deepest of green eyes.

  As she sat down in the chair opposite me, I felt the envy of every other man in that room. I also felt a little bit afraid. What was I getting myself into here?

  “Hello, Nicholas. It’s been a while.”

  I realized I was holding my breath. Great first impression.

  “Hello, Elena. It has been a while.”

  “It’s good to see you,” she said.

  Her voice was captivating, the familiar traces of her Georgian accent only just evident. I sat there, hypnotized by the deep Atlantic-green whirlpools that were her eyes. I realized I was losing ground here. That had not been my plan.

  “As I recall, the previous times we have run into each other, it hasn’t gone so well for me, Elena. The battle with the thugs at the Marina Del Rey in California and then the more recent attempt to blow up a nuclear power station in Scotland. I think you owe me an explanation.”

  I was gaining ground, but I had to look away. Each time I looked into those eyes, I felt my will abandoning me.

  “Yes, Nicholas, I do owe you an explanation. I can see why you are angry.”

  Angry? I felt like a puppy lying on his back.

  She continued. “It is very complicated, and the lines have been blurred.”

  “Lines—what lines?” I asked.

  “The lines between right and wrong, between black and white.”

  She was right: now I was confused.

  “Before we talk any further, may I suggest a drink. After all, this is one of the most famous undiscovered bars in the world,” she said.

  I nodded my head in agreement and signaled for the waiter.

  Elena continued. “They say this bar was the local London drinking hole of many artists, authors, and musicians, including Ian Fleming. Legend has it that this is where Fleming decided James Bond would be a martini drinker.”

  I was enchanted by her. It also seemed I wasn’t far off about Bond meeting M in a corner after all.

  The waiter came over. “Madam, Sir, what may I serve you?”

  Elena took the choice out of my hands, “Two martinis please—the Vesper.”

  Of course, I thought. Was there ever any doubt?

  We waited as the waiter brought a trolley to our table and made quite a show of mixing the drinks in front of us. He explained every move like a patient teacher sharing his knowledge with a couple of attentive students.

  After he left, we each took a sip.

  The martini’s taste vied with the sight of Elena’s eyes for the most captivating experience I’d had in the last hour or so.

  Attempting to refocus, I brought myself and the conversation back to the point of being here. “Elena, I need some sort of explanation, and I need it now.” Nicholas Sharp, man of steel.

  She sighed. “First, Nicholas, you need to understand that I am not an evil person.”

  I took a sip of my drink and said nothing.

  “I have done bad things for bad people,” she continued, “but I have done them for good reasons.”

  “What exactly do you do?” I asked.

  “You could almost say I work in recruitment, kind of freelance.”

  I looked at her blankly. This conversation was becoming more ambiguous with every word.

  “I do not really expect you to understand,” she said. “In my position I have had limited choices, and sometimes that has meant choosing the least harmful of an array of awful options.”

  “All I’m hearing here is your justification for what you have done, Elena. I’m none the wiser about what happened in California or in Scotland. I need facts.” I thought I sounded quite tough.

  “I know you think I have used you, and I probably have. The situation required it, and dreadful circumstances have turned out well because of it.”

  I’d had enough. I took a large sip of my martini and said, “Cut the crap now, or I walk.”

  Suddenly, she looked sullen and vulnerable. The girl in front of me then took a long gulp of the very strong drink in front of her and declared, “All right, I will tell you what I can now, and later, at a more appropriate time, I will explain the rest.”

  It was a start.

  “I can tell you nothing about California; you would get too angry. But I can tell you about Scotland. You see, I needed you to be there. I needed you to stop them destroying that power station. A nuclear detonation would have cost too many people their lives.”

  “Go on,” I said, dumbfounded.

  “I could do nothing to stop those men, but you are resourceful and clever, Nicholas Sharp. When someone is in trouble, you help them. I’ve seen it.”

  “How did you know about the plan to blow up the power station?” I asked.

  “I cannot tell you that. In fact, if some people knew I was talking to you tonight, my life would be forfeited.”

  I wasn’t sure if Elena was being entirely honest, but all my senses were telling me she was in sincere fear for her life. I looked down: our drinks were empty. Apparently, honesty makes you thirsty. I ordered two more.

  We spent the next few minutes in a considered silence as I weighed the impact of her words.

  After the drinks arrived, Elena continued. “I know you need more from me tonight. I will give you what I can.”

  I just looked at her. The martinis were making me a little more contemplative and a little less judgmental, or maybe just a little more drunk.

  “Why didn’t you go to the authorities with your information?” I asked.

  “If I had done it anonymously, no one would have believed me. If I had gone to them in person, I w
ould have been arrested.”

  That sounded a little like how I had felt at the power station. I recalled thinking it was better to sort things out myself than bring in the authorities and be arrested. I gave her an inch of wriggle room.

  “So, you accidentally came across me on the highway, knowing I would follow you into the power station?” I questioned.

  “It was no accident, Nicholas. I left Edinburgh a minute before you. I was parked around the corner from your hotel, waiting. That was my plan.”

  “Now we’re getting a little honesty,” I said.

  I was maneuvering into position for the big question. Then I fired. “What, if anything, does Antonio Ascardi have to do with all of this? I know that you know him. I saw you at his castle, that evening in the courtyard. I want the truth here, Elena.” My voice sounded harsh and confrontational. I was okay with that.

  There was a silence between us. Silence usually means someone is thinking up an answer, often a mistruth. We looked at each other and drank some more.

  “Nicholas, you won’t believe me, but I cannot answer you.”

  She was right. I didn’t believe her.

  “I do not know Tony that well. He is, well, a friend of a friend. We have a few mutual friends actually. He had asked me to come to Scotland to meet him.”

  I thought for a moment. It was hard to identify the truths among the deceptions. I was, however, certain she was in some sort of significant trouble.

  “Did he tell you why he wanted to see you?” I asked.

  Elena looked away, across the small room. Then she looked at her drink as though it was fascinating, and then she looked at me. I could tell she was worried about answering the question.

  “Yes,” she said. “He wanted to see me in Scotland because he’d discovered that I knew you.”

  There it was—the bombshell.

  I sat there for a few minutes, soaking it all in. The truths, the lies, the martinis. I think in essence, I believed that Elena was not a terrible person, although I had a hundred reasons to convince myself otherwise. I looked across the table at her. Her eyes were drawing me in again. I could see defiance and fear in the swirling green Atlantic mist of her soul. I didn’t know which was stronger, the defiance or the fear.

  Elena just sat there, alternating between staring sadly around the room and then turning back to me. Each time she looked at me, I felt a little of my resolve disappear. I was becoming a moth to her flame.

  Finally, as if making up her mind, she threw her head back and broke the silence. “Really, I do not care anymore what you or anyone else thinks, Nicholas. I have made my bed, as they say. I will lie in it.”

  Ah, defiance.

  Then Elena looked at me. I saw the depth of emotion in her eyes.

  “Nicholas, I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

  Ah, fear, but I didn’t know if it was hers or mine.

  The memory I will always hold from that night was the generous and open way in which Elena gave of herself after we went upstairs to her room. She was passionate and aggressive but also timid and coy, but then again so was I.

  I knew that in the morning I would consider myself a fool for my weakness. I also knew I would never regret it.

  Chapter 10

  “So, now you’re emotionally involved.” Greatrex made the statement sound like a judge handing down a sentence.

  “Not so much involved as emotionally kidnapped,” I responded.

  Even I didn’t believe me.

  We were onboard the Eurostar, having left St Pancras Station in London an hour or so earlier. At two hundred miles per hour, it wouldn’t take us long to get to Paris. Jack sat opposite me, a table separating us, in a first-class carriage. Other members of our tour group were scattered around the carriage. Antonio Ascardi preferred us to travel in a manner that left a smaller carbon footprint. Train was better than plane.

  “Well, what did you find out about the elusive Elena? At least, what did you find out that will help us work this thing out?”

  I told him about the conversation in the bar.

  “There’s still a lot of gaps in her story,” he said when I had finished.

  “I found out at least one important thing. While there’s no doubt that Elena is not a totally innocent party in all this, I do believe her intentions are essentially good.”

  “Is that an unbiased assessment?” the big fella asked.

  “As unbiased as I’m capable of right now,” I said sheepishly.

  “When will you be speaking to her again?” Greatrex probed.

  “Well, there’s the thing,” I said. “When I woke up this morning, she was gone, checked out, no forwarding contact.”

  Greatrex didn’t say a word; he didn’t have to.

  “All right. I suppose in all your undercover activity”—he laughed—“sorry, in your investigation of the girl’s activities you may have missed this in the news.” He passed me his cell phone, open at a news website. “This was posted late last night.” The headline read:

  MYSTERY DEEPENS IN NUCLEAR POWER STATION BREAK-IN

  The copy went on to say:

  A radical environmental protest group known as the Natural Earth Army has not only claimed credit for the recent break-in at the Cinaed Nuclear Power Station in the east of Scotland but has claimed the media did not report all the facts. The group says that several cakes of C4 explosive were planted in one of the station’s nuclear reactors and that they had intended to destroy the power plant. The Natural Earth Army are quoted as saying, “No matter the human cost, we must save the planet from the excesses of mankind.” The group did not elaborate on why their plan did not “succeed.”

  Inquiries by this news agency and other mainstream outlets have yielded no further information about the group or their objectives. It is, however, clear that the group was very active on social media. Apart from the NEA’s initial statement, all their current social media sites have been taken down and their digital footprint effectively wiped. A representative of the Scottish police stated, “It is as though the Natural Earth Army never existed.”

  Since the NEA posted their statement, a significant number of people have now gathered at the site of the Cinaed power station to protest the facility’s apparent vulnerability to attack.

  I stared at the article for a good five minutes, thinking about the events in Scotland a few nights earlier. The Natural Earth Army had certainly got their facts straighter than the initial media coverage. But no mention was made of the two intruders I had left behind or of my own role in the affair.

  “Perplexing,” I said. “It takes a great deal of technical know-how to come close to wiping someone’s digital presence.”

  “There’s one more thing,” added the big fella.

  “Of course there is,” I responded, waiting patiently for Greatrex to continue.

  “That news site that posted the article. It was the first source to uncover the link to the supposed Natural Earth Army.”

  “So?” I said, feeling a little less patient.

  “So, that site is owned by the Ascardi Media Group,” replied the big fella. I was sure I saw a slight smirk on his face.

  “Crap.”

  “Perplexing,” said Greatrex.

  “Totally,” I eventually responded. “I wonder if it was possible that Elena worked in some way for the Natural Earth Army?”

  “But that wouldn’t explain why she wanted you to stop them,” said Jack.

  “An enigma wrapped in a situation that makes no damn sense at all,” I said.

  We sat in silence looking out the window at the fast-changing view.

  It didn’t help.

  “I don’t understand why this NEA group would make a claim like that and then disappear. Wouldn’t they have been better off keeping quiet and then planning another attack?” I asked.

  “Maybe there’s more to this than we can see. There are too many players and too many pieces for any picture to be clear,” said Greatrex, the chess master
.

  “So, we can do nothing but wait,” I said. “I don’t like waiting when I feel something ominous is lurking around the next bend.”

  As I thought about it, I realized that again we were at an impasse. There was nothing we could do. We still didn’t know for sure if Antonio Ascardi was involved in any of this. We didn’t know if nor when Elena would reappear. We didn’t know how the hell the self-proclaimed “Natural Earth Army” fitted in. Each day added more questions and subtracted more answers.

  It was time to change our focus and concentrate on the tour and making music. That’s what we were here for. As far as everything else went, we would have to bide our time.

  “We wait,” I repeated. “We have no choice.”

  Factories flicked past us. Peering out the window, I saw the language of their signs and billboards had changed: we were now “waiting” in France.

  As we climbed down from our carriage at the Gare du Nord train station in Paris, we were met by our drivers and a few security personnel Antonio Ascardi had arranged. We were not well enough known to require massive protection, but Ascardi had certainly provided VIP treatment for the group. Ascardi himself was not with us; we were told he would be arriving in Paris later that evening.

  Like any major transport hub, the Paris Gare du Nord was hectic. The French set about their business in a no-nonsense manner, their foot traffic frantic but purposeful. We worked hard to keep up as Patrick Jay, Aislinn, and I remained glued to our escorts hustling through the crowd. Aislinn pointed to a piano sitting in the middle of the station concourse. “What is that for?” I asked one of our guides.

  “It is not that unusual in Europe. Anyone can play it. We like to promote culture among the people,” was his response.

  Patrick Jay looked at me questioningly. I was tempted to sit down and play, but the thoroughfare was just too crowded. “Music for the people,” I thought out loud.

  Before long we were flying through the streets of Paris in two dark-gray luxury SUVs on the way to our hotel.

  Once again Ascardi had provided us with obsessive luxury. The Four Seasons Hotel George V was situated only a few steps away from the Champs-Élysées. I thought our host couldn’t beat the Savoy in London, but this place would’ve made the Sultan of Brunei jealous.