Millie switched off the TV in her room next to Holly’s suite at the Connaught. CNN was wall-to-wall on the attack on the president, and she was sick of hearing about it. Holly’s name was mentioned in the reports but she, herself, had been referred to only as a “staffer,” and that was all right with her. Her cell phone came alive. “Hello?”
“It’s Quentin.”
“How are you?”
“I’m perfectly fine, thanks, but how about you? I assume you were the staffer the news keeps referring to.”
“I’m just fine, thanks. It was over very quickly, so I didn’t have time to get too scared.”
“The news said the car was engulfed in flames.”
“That’s how it looked from the inside,” she said. “Kate was marvelous, though, very cool and unaffected. The exciting part was when we drove through the middle of the park in Grosvenor Square, when the driver took evasive action.”
“You’re calling her Kate, now?”
“That’s what Holly calls her in private, so I guess I do, too. Do you have anything new on Harold what’s-his-name?”
“Harold Charles St. John Malvern,” Quentin said. “The St. John is pronounced ‘sinjin.’”
“Sounds almost Arabic, doesn’t it?”
“The San Francisco office has located a woman who went out with him when he was at Berkeley, and she’ll be going into the office tomorrow with her lawyer for an interview.”
“Her lawyer?”
“Everybody lawyers up these days — it’s TV. Pisses me off.”
“Now, now, it’s everyone’s right to have an attorney present when questioned.”
“Yeah, but it’s a pain in the ass, especially when someone like this woman isn’t suspected of anything.”
“Oh, I managed to get a good word about you into a conversation with Kate.”
“No kidding? That will be the first time she’s ever heard my name.”
“It won’t be the last,” she said. “You can tell your boss she had good things to say about him.”
“What did she say?”
“She said he was considered for attorney general, and that he turned down head of criminal investigations at Justice.”
“I didn’t know either of those things.”
“She also said turning it down was a smart move, though I’m not sure why.”
“Because he can make more of a difference at the Bureau,” Quentin said. “He can actually stop terrorist acts, instead of just prosecuting them after they’ve happened.”
“She said she would think of him again another time. That sounds good.”
“It sure does.”
“Quentin, how many people at the Bureau are working on finding Harry Sinjin?”
“Fewer than a dozen, in three offices. We’re holding this very tight, as you asked us to do. We don’t need this to get into the papers or on TV, because he’ll disappear into the Middle East somewhere.”
“Speaking of the Middle East, I have something else that might help you. Have you ever heard of a country called Dahai?”
“Vaguely.”
“It’s a sultanate south of Saudi Arabia, between Yemen and Oman.”
“Oh, right, the sultan is one of the world’s richest men, on a par with the sultan of Brunei.”
“Did I tell you about the twins? I can’t remember.”
“No.”
“In addition to Sinjin, there were mysterious twin boys who were sent to Eton under false names. They were educated there, and when they left, they were whisked away to Dahai on the sultan’s airplane.”
“I’m sorry, but that sounds preposterous.”
“Well, I heard a report from the head of MI6 about it today.”
“Directly from the head of MI6?”
“From Dame Felicity Devonshire herself. Holly and the president and I had lunch with her today. She’s got agents tracking the boys. Apparently, they kept to themselves at Eton — no participation in sports or clubs. Their bills were paid from an account at Devin’s Bank, and the funds were traced to a Sheik Hari Mahmoud, who is close to the sultan. And this was around the time that Sinjin was in California.”
“Verrrry interesting. Lev will be excited to learn about that. Anything else to report?”
“Not for the moment.”
“Tell me, are you naked?”
“Near enough.”
“One hand is holding the phone — where’s your other hand?”
She laughed aloud. “Wherever I want it to be. Good night, Quen.” She hung up, still laughing.
37
Stone was getting out of the shower when Pat walked into the room, her arms full of coats and rubber boots. She dumped them onto the bed. “I think the gum boots are the right size. I compared them to your shoes.”
“I’m sorry,” Stone said, “but you’re way ahead of me. What’s going on?”
“We’re going for a walk on Dartmoor — that’s the moor where we are.”
“I know that. I didn’t know you did.”
“I’ve been reading about it in the brochure. There are walking trails marked on their map, and we’re going to take a walk.”
“Okay, I’m up for a walk. Are we going to do it underwater?”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard about this,” she said, “but it sometimes rains in this country.”
Stone went to the windows and swept back the curtains, letting in a gray light. It was drizzling outside. “I believe you may be right,” he said.
“Get dressed, then.”
He looked at his watch. “Half past ten. What about lunch?”
“They’re packing one for us as we speak.”
They left the hotel, their lunch in a waterproof backpack worn by Stone, crossed a bridge over a fast-running river, and headed, according to their map, toward the heart of Dartmoor. Shortly, they had left behind the trees in the vicinity of Gidleigh Park and were on a rocky, green, treeless expanse of moor, a place where trees could not thrive because there was too little depth of soil to support them. Gorse grew, though: a hardy shrub sporting yellow flowers, and there was plenty of that about.
The ceiling was low — Stone reckoned a couple of hundred feet — and the mist cut the visibility down to half a mile or so. He was glad he wasn’t landing an airplane in the circumstances.
They walked until they began to get hungry, and they looked around for a place where their food would stay dry while they consumed it. They came upon a shed with a bench, which might have been placed there for hungry hikers on a damp day, and took possession of it.
There were smoked salmon sandwiches and potato salad in their pack, and a slightly chilled bottle of white wine, which had had the cork pulled far enough to remove by hand. Pat dug out two plastic glasses and some utensils, and they ate everything and drank most of the wine. There were a couple of slices of moist cake, too, and those went down well.
Then, when they had packed their trash and started to walk again, the moisture in the air turned from mist to drizzle to steady rain in a matter of about two minutes, and they reversed course. Stone found a tweed hat in the pocket of his Barbour jacket, and that kept most of the rain off his head. Pat found a plastic scarf that did much the same for her.
They were proceeding back up the path that had brought them there, which now sported a great many puddles, when one of the puddles exploded a few feet ahead of them. Stone stopped for a count of about one, then grabbed Pat’s arm and hustled her behind a large boulder.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “I’m sitting in a puddle.”
“Something just happened,” Stone said.
“I saw that puddle ahead. Is somebody throwing rocks at us?”
“I hate to put the worst possible slant on events,” Stone said, “but I think somebody is shooting at us.”