Hercule nodded to Henry, their black-coated waiter, a stiff-necked old geezer who was as much a fixture at the Belamy Club as Claude. Henry placed a carafe of freshly squeezed orange juice in front of him, and beside it a bottle of François Montand Sparkling Brut, the Belamy sommelier Pierre Montreux’s choice, Hercule knew, of the best champagne for a mimosa.
Henry himself mixed the mimosas, bowed, left their table to fulfill their order of croissants and espresso.
Elizabeth clicked her glass to his. “To an excellent performance last night. You controlled the interview, left Atterley looking rather like a landed trout expelling gas.”
It always amazed him how many euphemisms Lady Elizabeth and her kind could dish up. Never a basic Anglo-Saxon word that fit the bill for Elizabeth, far too common, except for her sex words when she hurtled into orgasm. He knew she was the product of weekends skiing in the Alps, vacations in Saint-Tropez, and a renowned Swiss finishing school. What she’d finished, she’d never said. But in this instance, about that ass Atterley, she was right. He smiled. “He is a smart man who has come to believe his own press. I saw your father this morning on my way here.”
“You saw my father?” No doubt she was anxious to hear what her old man had said to him. It was subtle, but he heard the whiff of alarm in her well-modulated voice.
“I was visiting my banker this morning when Lord Thomas happened to come down from his office to congratulate me on the Atterley interview. He informed me I’d been succinct and astute, that my sympathetic attitude toward Muslims had stirred your mother. Then, he gave me this look, and I knew he thought both your mother and I were fools.”
“That’s quite amazing,” Elizabeth said, and took another sip of her mimosa. “I can’t recall my mother ever being stirred by anything—well, maybe a bit for Tommy.”
Her younger brother, the earl’s heir, was last year, on his thirtieth birthday, cut off without a sou. It was proper of the old earl, Hercule thought. Tommy was a useless git with a cocaine habit his doting sister, Elizabeth, could barely keep up with. If he were Lord Thomas, he’d have long ago drowned the little wanker in the Thames.
“Have you ever thought about arranging for a job for your brother, at one of the big banks in Italy, say?”
“Yes, right, certainly. Tommy would insist on traveling first class all the way, he would expect his address to be a suite in the Hassler, and to eat his meals at Alfredo’s. And within the month he’d be back broke, and on his heels a dozen people extraordinarily upset with him, some of them, doubtless, with guns.”
Her occasional show of wit pleased him. He felt a tug of liking for her, a touch of pain for what was about to happen to her. He looked at his watch. “I have an hour, Elizabeth. I have meetings and a graduate seminar this afternoon.”
“There’s Henry bringing our croissants and espresso.”
While Henry meticulously laid out their light midmorning breakfast, Hercule took another sip of his mimosa. It really was excellent. “You and your father are attending one of your friend’s weddings this afternoon, aren’t you?”
She smiled at that. “Yes, I’m one of her bridesmaids, six in all. The bride’s family—you know the Colstraps, don’t you? Lord Palister? He runs the Rothschild banks in London?”
“I’ve met him.” Not really, but Hercule had seen him across the roulette wheel, surrounded by his drinking buddies, at one of London’s private casinos. Florid and pompous, that’s what Hercule had thought, looking at him.
“Ellie and I went to school together in Geneva. The man she’s marrying, Ryan Gray-Murcheson, I don’t think he deserves her. He gambles, you see, too much, like her father.” She leaned toward him, lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’ve heard it said Ryan’s father is a criminal, but his family is old and respected and he’s rich as Croesus, so everyone talks about him behind their hands. Do you know anything about him?”
“I? How curious you’d ask me, a professor of economics. I’ve heard his name, is all.”
Obviously she didn’t care one way or the other. She spoke the moment he finished. “Ah, but trust Ellie’s father, Lord Palister, to provide her with a spectacular wedding; it will be the event of the season.” She shrugged. “We’ll see how the marriage turns out. Ellie wants kids.” She took a bite of her croissant. “Delicious, as usual. Will you accompany me to Lady Brecknell’s card party tomorrow evening, Samir?”
“I would be delighted. Didn’t you tell me Lord Harlow and Major Hornsby would be there?” His voice was light, only mildly interested. She couldn’t know that Lord Harlow, actually an associate of the groom’s father, was a kingpin in London’s criminal underworld, far removed from the daily grind, to be sure, but he had a number of very rich, very determined enemies. It was hard to get to him. He wasn’t stupid and was very well protected. But in two hours, when Elizabeth stood at the altar beside her friend and her parents were doubtlessly seated near Lord Harlow, it would all end.
It was a pity. He would mourn Elizabeth, sincerely. But the opportunity to once again combine a wonderfully paid assassination with a terrorist attack was too splendid to ignore.
FEDERAL PLAZA
NEW YORK CITY
Monday morning
The young man’s fingerprints identified him as Mifsud Shadid, age twenty, younger than any of the terrorists at the Lake Pleasant cabin. He sat in an uncomfortable chair on one side of the table in a small white-walled windowless interview room. He was sitting very still, trying to look arrogant and unconcerned, but too young and too scared to pull it off. He kept rubbing at the sling on his arm. He didn’t look to be in any pain. His lips were moving in repetitive Arabic phrases, probably repeating a prayer over and over.
Sherlock, Kelly, and Cal, along with a half-dozen other agents, stood in the next room, watching Shadid closely through the one-way glass. All of them knew he was their last hope to get any useful information. They’d spoken to the teenage girl who’d blown up the house in Brooklyn the night before, Kenza the name on her passport. They’d found her lying in her hospital bed under guard, her right arm elevated and her wrist wired, her arm swathed in bandages to her elbow. Without the cap she’d worn the previous night, her short dark hair stood in spikes around her face. She looked like a young East Ender. How strange someone so young had already been twisted into a terrorist. They’d hoped they could use her pain, or the drugs they’d given her. They’d tried shaming her, threatening her, lying about Mifsud, the young man they were looking at through the glass, but she’d stared out at them through large dark eyes, eyes that had seen too much in her seventeen years, and looked contemptuous. It was only when they told her Shadid had given up the Strategist that she’d said anything at all. “You’re a lying bitch,” she’d said to Kelly in a clipped British accent, and then she’d closed her eyes and turned away on the pillow.
“Zachery said to give Shadid a little more time to think about his sins,” Kelly said to the other agents. “He’ll be coming in soon, to observe.” She waved a hand toward the muted flat-screen TV on the wall behind them that was tuned to an Al Jazeera newscast. “Isn’t it amazing that Al Jazeera already knows our three terrorists are British citizens? According to that pretty young Arabic woman in her bright red Western suit, the American FBI brutally attacked three Arabs, killed one and injured the other two. Yet another racially motivated violent act is perpetrated by American law enforcement. Someone had to have leaked it last night. It was a zoo.” She shook it off. “Okay, so how do we approach Shadid?”
Cal said, “Shadid’s very young. He’s never been arrested, certainly not for a terrorist act and not in the United States. We don’t need him to talk about last night, we’ve got him cold on that.” He grinned, said in a proper Oxford English accent, “Why don’t I play the part of a British lawyer, sent from the British consulate to defend one of Her Majesty’s put-upon citizens from the big, bad American FBI? I can at least try to
keep him talking longer than he would otherwise.”
She stared. “That’s impressive, Agent McLain. Are you part British, like Agent Drummond here in our New York office?”
“Nope, pure mongrel American. I did some acting way back and my dad’s an incredible mimic. I inherited his talent . . . well, some of it. You should hear him sing Elton John.”
Kelly said thoughtfully, “Nothing he says would be admissible, but who cares? If you think you can pull it off, it can’t make him trust us any less than he already does. I doubt he saw you at the house, Cal, not well, anyway. Let’s try it. Sherlock, you up for being überbitch?”
“I’m up for anything now that I’ve had a shower and cleaned up. First, though, we need to get Cal dressed up a little, find him a fresh dress shirt and tie, and a briefcase, if he’s going to be coming straight from the British consulate.”
Ten minutes later, Kelly looked Cal up and down in his borrowed shirt, and Zachery’s leather briefcase. “The shirt’s a little tight, Cal, but it’ll do. Keep on the suit coat to cover it. Here, let me straighten the tie.” When she stepped back, she nodded. “You’ll do.”
The three of them walked into the interview room together. Kelly sat down, crossed her arms over her chest, and introduced herself and Sherlock. Then she eyed Cal and dropped all warmth. “Mr. Shadid, this is your counsel, sent by the British consulate, Mr. Jonathan Clark-Wittier.”
Good name, Cal thought. Where did she come up with that? “Mr. Shadid,” he said, and nodded to the young man.
Kelly looked at the young man staring back at her, trying too hard to look uninterested. She turned to Sherlock. “Mr. Shadid and his imported fellow assassins tried to murder you last night, so why don’t you speak to him first?”
“A moment, Special Agent Giusti,” Cal said. “I would like to speak to this British citizen privately before you begin questioning him.”
Kelly, not looking away from Shadid, said, “You can forget that, Counselor. The man tried to kill federal officers, here on American soil. You’re here only as a courtesy.”
Sherlock was aware Mifsud Shadid was staring at her, hate beaming out of dark eyes, for her specifically and for her as simply one of the enemy. She sat back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, and pulled a full-bodied sneer out of her bag. “Mr. Shadid, how old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen? Is that your sister in the hospital with a shattered wrist?”
“I am twenty-one years old, not fifteen!”
“No, you’re not, you turned twenty a month ago.”
“She is not my sister!”
Interesting, Kelly thought. His eyes fell to his hands, clasped in front of him on the scarred table, to the shackles encircling his wrists.
Sherlock shook her head, marveled aloud, “And you consider yourself a fighter? A professional? I don’t think so. I’ve got to say, though, that young girl you brought with you to set the bomb in the house? To burn all of us alive? She was the only one of you who showed some grit and courage. Is that how a fighter behaves, cowering in the bushes after sending a little girl to her almost certain death?”
She lunged forward, banged her fist on the table, making him jump. His eyes flew to her face. “You expected to kill me? You couldn’t kill this stuffed-shirt lawyer the British consulate sent to defend your wretched hide, not even if I handed you my gun.”
Young Mifsud Shadid yelled, “I will kill you myself, you whore! You are an enemy of Islam, a blight to be erased and forgotten, cursed in life and in death.”
What a lovely British accent, Kelly thought. It sounded to her trained ear straight out of Manchester.
“Yeah, yeah, quite your party line,” Sherlock said, and looked like she wanted to yawn. Then her face hardened. “Mr. Shadid, why did you bring along your sister to do the dirty work for you?”
“I told you, Kenza is not my sister!”
“That is enough, Agent,” Cal said. “You are bludgeoning this young man with accusations, insulting him—”
“We are not in a court of law, Mr. Clark-Wittier,” she snapped out at him, without giving him the courtesy of a look back.
Mifsud said, “Kenza is well trained, and her heart is with us. Not even you saw her slip into that house. You should not have heard her slip out. She would have succeeded if you hadn’t been waiting for us with those floodlights and so many guns.”
Sherlock was shaking her head. “And you can’t imagine why we were armed and ready for you? Did you believe us fools? Or didn’t you question it at all? Did you believe the Strategist and the imam are very sophisticated, that they know what they were doing? I mean, they did manage to blow up that high-speed train in France, did they not? But then look what the Strategist did—he sent only the three of you to attack me, a well-guarded FBI agent; I don’t think that shows much talent at all.
“The old man who died last night, Mohammad Hosni, was he your handler, your boss, your grandfather?” She paused for an instant, but got no reaction from Shadid.
“You spoke of Kenza being so quiet. Well, she wasn’t, because I heard her. I’ll tell you, Mifsud, I still can’t believe you had to rely on a little girl to plant the bomb so that you and grandpa could shoot us dead if we managed to come running out of the burning house.” She gave him a contemptuous look. “Impressed by the imam and the Strategist? I don’t think so, look at the three pitiful tools he sent.”
If you had a gun you’d shoot me dead, wouldn’t you, Shadid? But he kept himself silent. Sherlock gave a slight nod to Kelly.
Kelly picked it up. “Perhaps, Agent Sherlock, we’ve reduced the Strategist to using amateurs. I mean, after the three of you flew into New York yesterday, what did you do? Eat pizza and sleep in your rental car? Wouldn’t the Strategist and Imam Al-Hädi ibn Mirza spring for a cheap hotel room?”
“See here, Agent Sherlock,” Cal said, jumping to his feet, “enough of these puerile insults. You are not asking legitimate questions of this young man—”
Kelly snorted. “Maybe you’d better define puerile for him, Mr. Clark-Wittier, he doesn’t look very bright. His actions sure prove me right, don’t they? What will the Strategist say about you, Mr. Shadid, after seeing the three of you screw everything up?”
Sherlock said, “I don’t know if you care, Mifsud, but Kenza will never use her hand again, too many bones shattered from my bullet in her wrist.”
“The Strategist will kill you!” Mifsud yelled, and leapt to his feet, shaking his fist at them, his shackles clanging. “There was no way for you to know we would attack, we were very careful when we followed you.” Tears came into his eyes, choking him. “It was a trap, you were waiting for us to come, you wanted us to come. We couldn’t know there would be so many of you—”
Sherlock gave him another push. “Of course we knew you were following us. The Strategist failed you, didn’t he? As did your precious imam. They sent you into a trap. Which one of those brilliant men selected Nasim Conklin to blow up the security line at JFK? Which one of them sent the three of you?”
Shadid flew out of control. “You shut your mouth, you accursed woman! Your laws are absurd, sending two useless women to insult me. As for the imam, yes, I know of him. So does every true Muslim in London. He is a great man, a holy man. The British will never be able to arrest him, he is too well protected by their own laws.”
Kelly buffed her fingernails on her sleeve as she said in a bored voice, “Sit down, Mr. Shadid, calm yourself. You should know that Imam Al-Hädi ibn Mirza isn’t going to be giving any more orders. We’ve heard the good news that the imam has been formally arrested in London. MI5 is providing his lodging now, no cell phones or visitors allowed. Your great holy man has had his teeth pulled. Next comes his head,” and she made a chopping motion.
“There is no hangman’s noose in England!”
“Oh, yes, true enough, Mr. Shadid,” Kelly said. “But from where you com
e from, all you need is a knife, do you not, to cut off a hand, an ear, a head?”
Mifsud Shadid spat toward Kelly again, but Mr. Clark-Wittier’s leather case was in the way. “No, you are lying to me. What you are saying is impossible.”
Kelly shook her head at him. “Your counsel here can tell you it’s true. As we speak, MI5 is searching the imam’s office and home on Camden Street.” She rose and slammed her fist on the table in front of Mifsud. “Your imam was as convinced as you that he was untouchable. I doubt he took all the precautions. They will find names, times, and places. They will find your names, too, won’t they? Your precious imam will never again see the light of day, and neither will you.”
Kelly leaned close. “In spite of her tender years, Kenza will be imprisoned for life, or, more likely, she’ll get a shiv in her back within her first few months in prison. All civilized countries hate terrorists, and that includes their criminals in prison. Kenza won’t be able to protect herself, not with a shattered wrist. She’ll end up in a potter’s field, a cheap gravestone to mark where her bones lie.”
Mifsud was breathing fast and hard, his mouth working.
One more push, Sherlock thought, and said, “MI5 passed us a report that the Strategist has a young Muslim girl as a mistress. Is it Kenza?”
“No! That is a lie!” Mifsud leapt to his feet, chains banging against the table. Then he sank back down in his chair, lowered his face in his hands. “No,” he whispered, “that is another of your lies. Kenza hasn’t even met him. He is too important for the likes of her.” He raised his face to Sherlock. “She would not sleep with anyone, Kenza and I—” He shook his head, shut his mouth.