"Intelligence gathering?" Corry ventured. "They wanted to know if you'd seen him before."
"But they had to have access to the same sources Robert has," Natalie insisted. "Which means they had reason to believe Oxford is on the move, and potentially moving against Lady Ainsley-Hunter."
Dale shook his head. "They know something that they aren't sharing. Something about Oxford or Drama. A connection between the two, maybe."
"Like?"
"Like maybe they're working together," Corry said.
"Okay," Dale said. "But I have to ask, is that likely? We know for a fact that Drama works alone, and that's not unusual for someone in her line of work."
Moore said, "If Oxford's hunting Her Ladyship, he's hunting alone. There's been nary a whisper about Drama."
"It doesn't hold, anyway," I said. "Drama doesn't have a partner."
"Doesn't have to be a partner," Corry countered. "Just someone she's working with on this one job."
"That's a lot of money to spend to take Her Ladyship," Natalie pointed out. "Just guessing, but if it costs a million dollars to hire one of The Ten, it's got to be at least twice that for two."
"Some people might think it was a bargain," Corry said.
Natalie frowned and turned in her seat, tossing her empty soda can into the trash by the desk. "I agree with Atticus on this. Drama and Oxford are not working together. Doesn't fit the M.O."
"But it would explain why both are coming to New York, if in fact both are," Dale said.
"We don't know if either of them are coming to New York," Moore said. "All we know is that Oxford is on the move in the U.S., but not where. And if we believe what Atticus was told, we have the same problem. It's the same problem as ever with this lot, children – we know just enough to be justly dribbling down our legs, and not enough to do anything more."
"We also know that The Ten work constantly to preserve their anonymity," Natalie said. "If two work together, all of that gets blown to hell. The difficulty doesn't double, it explodes exponentially. Alone, Drama and Oxford can keep their own counsel, modify their plans as they see fit. If they partner up, they've got to worry about all sorts of new problems – including communication. And the more they communicate the greater the chance of being discovered or compromised. It'd be too risky. Even if we assume both of them are on the move, that both of them are coming to New York, that both are after the same mark, we still can't assume they're in it together."
Corry grunted, ceding the argument.
"There's one more strike against Oxford, now that I think of it," Dale said. "If he's after Lady Antonia, he'll have to get her alone to stage the hit. He needs to assassinate character along with life, right? So he's got to make her look really bad, and we know that he'll try to make that bad be some sort of sex thing. He'd need to get her alone to make that work."
"And he'd need prep," Corry added. "A lot of prep. We're talking not only props, but another person, potentially."
"Not necessarily," Natalie said. "He could use one of us."
We all looked at her.
"He could," she said. "Bodyguard in Tryst with British Peer would make great copy. Any of us would do."
"Wouldn't work," I said. "Oxford would want it to look like Lady Ainsley-Hunter was the perpetrator, not the victim. The nature of the relationship between us and her is such that no one would buy her taking advantage of us. If Oxford sets it up to look like any of us jumped her, it'd make Her Ladyship into a martyr."
Dale coughed. "Make us look pretty bad, though."
"Oh, that's a lovely thought," Natalie said. "Oxford's not after her, he's after us? Why?"
"Maybe Drama hired him," I said. It was a joke. No one laughed.
Moore cleared his throat, then asked if we had any new information on Keith.
"Logan called from Philadelphia," I said. "Joseph Keith is turning into a very interesting guy. He is on record as saying that he and Her Ladyship were, once upon a time in ancient Sumer, husband and wife. And he was expelled from Philadelphia Community College for possession of a knife."
"He cut anyone?"
"No, but that may be for lack of trying. Details of the actual event are sketchy."
"The photograph is being distributed?"
Natalie reached into her blazer pocket, produced one of the flyers we'd run off, offering it to Moore. "We've run off a hundred and fifty copies to hand out at every location. They'll go to local security and the like, mostly."
Moore stared hard at Keith's portrait before flipping the paper over and reading the back. We'd done the original on a color inkjet printer and the reproduction had worked very well. On the back of the sheet we'd printed out the protocol we wanted followed in case Keith was spotted. It wasn't terribly elaborate, the instructions straightforward – if Keith was seen, the protection team was to be notified in person immediately. We didn't want Keith engaged, simply monitored. We would take it from there.
The corner of Moore's mouth curled in a slight smile. "Very dolly, very nice."
"Glad you like it," Natalie said. "It'll be included in the bill."
Moore dropped the sheet into his equipment bag. "I gave Her Ladyship and Ms. Chester the standard briefing on the plane. Both of them had heard it before, but it never hurts to emphasize the particular bits. I made certain they understood that when we were mobile they were to take direction from us without argument or hesitation."
"Chester was good coming off the plane," Corry said. "She done this before?"
"Not like this, actually. But she's a quick study."
"How long's she been on Lady Ainsley-Hunter's staff?" Dale asked.
Moore grinned. "She's safe. I vetted her myself. She's been Lady Antonia's PA for almost a year, now. If she's working for one of The Ten, she's been waiting a long time for her opportunity."
Dale brought his hands up with a shrug, and then we moved on to the other topics at hand, beginning with Her Ladyship's plans for the evening. Lady Ainsley-Hunter had a dinner at eight-thirty with some of the U.N. folk that would be held at one of the consular residences. After that, the plan was to return her to the hotel and button her up for the night. The next day would be the big one, with the formal announcement and ensuing press brouhaha.
Everyone had finished eating, and I pushed the cart back into the hall, returning to find that Moore had already retired to his room for a quick nap. Dale and Corry left to check the cars, which left Nat and me alone in the sitting room.
It grew very quiet, the way silence spreads in a space where more people are asleep than awake, and it was infectious, and neither of us spoke. Natalie read the complimentary copy of New York magazine that had been put out with the phone book and the hotel directory, and I dug out my copy of the flyer and spent some time memorizing Keith's face.
He looked utterly normal. Black hair and brown eyes, and perhaps his nose was a tad sharp, but not so sharp that it was a distinguishing feature. His expression in the photograph was mild, as if he'd been about to laugh, and the photographer had jumped the smile by a fraction of a second.
I set the paper back down and sighed heavily, despite myself, and Natalie looked at me over the top of the magazine.
"Relax," she said.
"Two members of The Ten and one lone nut, and you tell me to relax? You are bossy."
"We're just getting started."
I nodded slightly, thinking that it wasn't the start that had me tense.
It was wondering how it was all going to end.
Chapter 9
We were rotating the live-in duties at the hotel, and the night after the U.N. appointment my turn came up and I slept at the Edmonton, on the sofa bed in the suite's main room. The previous day had been exhausting, and the sofa bed comfortable enough, and I slept deep and well, but woke early all the same to hear Fiona Chester cursing softly.
She was working at the desk in the main room, dividing her attention between the laptop open in front of her, the fax machine positioned at her left elbow, and the telephone to her right. My understanding was that she always started work early, but all the same I was surprised to see her up. The light seeping through the windows was just beginning to hint dawn, and from the look of Chester, she'd been up for a while. She'd switched the desk lamp on, and the illumination was enough to see that she was already dressed for the day, skirt and blouse and makeup all perfect. I got my glasses on while she continued with the phone, and I could tell she'd been trying to keep her voice low, but her frustration was getting the better of her.