Stephanie paused to get her bearings, then followed the signs to the taxi queue along the west facade of the building. Moments later, she was tucked inside one of the boxy black cabs heading toward London.
A sedan with U.S. military insignia affixed to the visor came from the restricted parking area adjacent to the terminal. Apple-gate accelerated around a bus that blocked his view and followed the taxi into the thickening stream of vehicles exiting the airport.
About an hour later, Stephanie checked into the Hilton on Park Lane opposite Hyde Park in London’s fashionable Mayfair district. She tried to nap but couldn’t fall asleep and spent the remainder of the afternoon reading in the plainly furnished room. Her mind kept drifting and she was staring out the window at the park far below when the phone rang, startling her.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Shepherd?” Spencer asked, in his mild cockney. He was calling from a street corner booth, which he had done several times daily for the last three days — a routine Shepherd had worked out in the event Stephanie arrived in London prior to the earliest possible date he had estimated. “I’d like to confirm that you called for a taxi?” Spencer prompted.
“A taxi?” Stephanie answered cautiously. She sensed this might be her husband’s way of making contact, but was uncertain how to respond and decided to be truthful. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t believe I did.”
“Actually it was a gentleman who rang me. He gave the name Viper, he did; said to say, Happy anniversary.”
Stephanie’s heart fluttered, any misgivings she had vanishing. “Oh yes, yes, now I remember.”
“Good. The taxi will pick you up at the Hertford Street entrance at precisely six o’clock this evening.”
“Yes, six o’clock,” she replied, her pulse surging. “Hertford Street. I’ll be waiting.”
In the room directly below, Applegate glanced to a CIA communications technician and smiled. Shepherd’s tape had alerted them to where Stephanie would be staying; she had made the reservation at the Hilton prior to departure, and they had had more than sufficient time to learn which room she had been assigned and tap the phone.
Applegate took the elevator to the lobby, crossing to a bookshop off to one side of the entrance. Its open facade afforded a clear view of the entire lobby area.
“She’s been contacted,” Applegate said to the agent stationed there, who was browsing casually through a rack of magazines. After reviewing the details, Applegate left the hotel via the Hertford Street entrance and briefed the second agent, who was stationed in the doorway of a building across the street; then he went to his car, which was parked just down the hill, and waited.
Stephanie was excited and shaken by the message from the mysterious caller. She showered, dressed, and, at exactly 5:55 P.M., slipped into a raincoat and went to the lobby.
The agent in the bookshop saw her leave the elevator. He palmed a small walkie-talkie and clicked it on. “Target is moving,” he reported softly.
Applegate smiled and lifted the microphone from the sedan’s dash. “Hertford Street?”
“Affirmative.”
“Okay. Stay on her,” Applegate instructed. “The taxi may be some kind of diversion.”
Stephanie spun through the revolving door and walked tentatively to the curb. There was no taxi waiting. It seemed like an eternity, though barely a minute had passed before the clatter of a diesel rose and she saw the headlights coming up the hill.
The agent across the street backed into the darkness as the cab rumbled to a stop next to her.
“Please step in, Mrs. Shepherd,” Spencer urged. Shepherd’s description and Stephanie’s clearly anxious demeanor had made her easy to recognize.
“Walt?” she blurted as she opened the door, hoping to find him tucked in the backseat. Her spirits plunged on discovering he wasn’t.
“She’s getting in the cab,” Applegate said into the microphone. “Better move it.”
Stephanie pulled the door closed and perched on the edge of the seat. “My husband, he’s okay?” she said, leaning anxiously toward the driver. “You’ve seen him? He’s alive?” she went on in a rush.
“He most certainly is,” Spencer replied, going on to introduce himself and give Stephanie a note.
Friday, 24 April. Welcome to London, Babe, it began. Stephanie brightened at the sight of Walt’s handwriting. In an economy of words, the note confirmed that Spencer was a friend and outlined precisely what she was to do.
“Shouldn’t we be going?” she prompted, her heart thumping from the surge of adrenaline.
“Soon as I’m sure we won’t be leaving that car behind,” Spencer replied, eyeing the rearview mirror.
Stephanie turned to the window and saw two men getting into a gray sedan down the street. As soon as the doors slammed, the taxi drove off slowly.
The sedan pulled away and followed.
As the taxi made its way south on Park Lane, Stephanie was taken by the glittering cityscape, a tableau of centuries-old buildings that defied the soaring towers of glass and steel. Spencer swung east into Piccadilly, taking Shaftsbury through the theater district to the Holborn Viaduct, which bypassed the City, as London’s financial heartland is called, angling across the boroughs of East Cheapside and Fenchurch, skirting the forbidding streets of Whitechapel, finally turning north into Bishopgate, where the russet colonnade of Liverpool Street Station loomed like a Victorian backdrop.
“Ready?” Spencer asked, as he cruised to a stop in front of the ornate turn-of-the-century edifice.
“Yes, yes, I think so,” Stephanie replied hesitantly.
“You’ll do fine. It’s that one right there,” Spencer said, pointing out one of the many arched entrances. “The one with the big clock.”
Stephanie got out of the taxi and approached the facade of finely pointed brick at an easy pace, easy enough to be followed, as Shepherd’s note had instructed.
The train station was alive with weekend travelers hurrying beneath the delicate latticework of steel and glass that spanned slender cast-iron columns. The space below the rhythmic vaults was brightened by lush ferns cascading from baskets hanging above the platforms.
Stephanie entered beneath the clock, heading for the endless rows of tracks. She was aching to see Walt, wondering if she ever would, her heart thumping so loudly she could almost hear it over the public address announcements that echoed through the cavernous station:
“Miss Moore, Miss Tessa Moore, please meet your party at track twelve… Mr. Colchester, Mr. Nicholas Colchester to a courtesy telephone please… Your attention please, the six-forty express to Cambridge will be departing from track eighteen this evening…”
Shepherd was on a pedestrian bridge above the Bishopsgate colonnade, his eyes riveted to the arched entrance below the clock. The anticipation had been building since Spencer reported he had made contact with Stephanie.
The clock read 6:34 when Shepherd saw her striding beneath it. His head filled with the memory of her scent; he had an impulse to dash down the staircase and embrace her. The sight of Applegate and the two Special Forces agents snapped him out of it.
For once, Shepherd was relieved to see them. All along, he had anticipated that his adversaries would intercept the tape he had sent to Stephanie, and he had shrewedly counted on their zealous bent for manipulation and deviousness to use it against him. He knew that Stephanie would be surveilled until he had been terminated, knew that her watchdogs would let her lead them to him. Shepherd had made that the cornerstone of his plan. Now he knew it had worked.
On the other side of the station, Stephanie was approaching a row of ticket windows where people were standing in long queues. The two agents following her exchanged puzzled looks as she continued past, not buying a ticket as they expected she might. Applegate was in the lead, deftly slipping between travelers to maintain visual contact with her, when the public address announcer intoned, “Major Applegate, Major Paul Applegate, please come to a courtesy telephone. Major Applegate to a courtesy telephone please.”