Teddy’s mind began to work at top speed, calculating time and distance and plotting an escape route over a road through the hills. All this just in case the opportunity arose. He had thought about doing this many times but he had devoted his energies to eliminating Croft and duBois; Sir Winston would be more complicated, he knew, and he had not done the planning, and he was cautiously excited.
He watched as the Mercedes entered the outskirts of Markstown and came to a screeching halt. Children dressed in their Sunday finest were pouring out of a church and crossing the road toward three school buses, apparently for an outing of some sort. A nun stood in the road holding a stop sign.
Teddy stopped some distance back and watched; then Sir Winston made his decision for him. He got out of his car and waded into the group, kissing them and touching their hands. The nun remained at her station, stopping traffic, as did another nun on the other side of the children.
Teddy turned right and up a hillside, then made a left into a dirt track that ended in a small clearing. Occasionally, he caught sight of the Mercedes and the crowd. He turned his vehicle in the clearing and pointed back toward the road; then he got out, grabbed the rifle case and started back on foot, looking for gaps in the foliage. He came to one that gave him a view of the rear of the car and part of the crowd, knowing that Sir Winston was a few steps away, among the children.
Teddy was not willing to risk hurting a child, but Sir Winston would have to return to his car, and when he did, Teddy would be waiting. He knelt, opened the case and quickly assembled the weapon. It would be a standing shot, and he clipped on a shoulder strap, wound his arm through it and sighted. He had a window about a yard square, and he knew he would have only a second or two to fire.
Then Sir Winston appeared in that frame, his driver holding the door open, no policemen in sight, and he did something unexpected: he stopped at the open door, turned and stood waving at the departing children.
Teddy got off his shot, and he was reminded of the effect the bullet had had on Colonel Croft’s head. He carried the rifle back to the vehicle, trying not to hear the screams of the children, tossed the weapon onto the front seat, started the truck and drove. When he came to the road, he turned left, away from the scene of the shooting, and began climbing into the hills.
The road turned to dirt, and Teddy drove through a series of crossroads, always turning right, making his way back to the main road. Along the way he stopped for a moment, disassembled and repacked the rifle, then continued on his way. He reached the main road and stopped to check for traffic. He turned left and made his way back to Black Mountain Road. In the distance he could hear sirens.
Back at the house he noticed that low clouds were moving over Black Mountain. He went over every surface of the truck with a cloth soaked in Windex, then locked the vehicle in the garage and went back to his workshop. He switched on his police scanner and began to wipe down every surface of the workshop. The scanner was alive with police broadcasts, directing cars both to duBois’s building and to block off streets around the church.
He turned on the local radio station to hear the first news reports; TV wouldn’t come on until seven o’clock.
Stone woke up a little before seven, got out of bed and switched on the TV; out of habit, he wanted to get the local weather before flying. He went into the bathroom, peed and brushed his teeth, then came back into the bedroom, where Holly was sitting up in bed and pointing silently at the TV.
First reports from the police are that Colonel duBois was standing on the terrace of his penthouse apartment when he was struck in the chest by gunfire. This recalls the death earlier this week of his predecessor in the police, Colonel Croyden Croft, who was shot by a sniper while he sat in the courtyard of the police station.” The reporter accepted a sheet of paper from off-camera. “We have a report that an attempt has been made on the life of the prime minister, Sir Winston Sutherland, but no confirmation yet.”
“Holy shit,” Stone said quietly.
“You’re damned right,” Holly said.
“What do you make of it?”
“I make of it that Teddy Fay is alive and well and shooting people,” Holly said.
“And what do you want to do about it?” he asked.
“I don’t know what to do about it,” she replied, “but I’m going to ask Lance.” She got her satphone, switched it on and went outside for reception. No answer on Lance’s satphone; no answer on his office phone, so she left a message about what had happened; no answer on his home phone, either. Where the hell was he? She looked up at the sky: looked like it was going to be a cloudy day, the first since they had arrived.
Lance had left his house, on his way to Langley, five minutes before Holly called him there. He picked up coffee, a Danish and copies of the Sunday New York Times and Washington Post at a deli near his house, then drove in a leisurely fashion, listening to local news radio, alert for any story that might involve the Agency on a Sunday. He was waved through the front gate, after showing his ID; he parked in his reserved spot in the basement garage, near the elevator, swiped his ID card at the door and went upstairs to his office, clearing three more security checks.
He put the papers and his breakfast on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa, glancing at the headlines while he sweetened his coffee and munched on the Danish, not noticing the tiny, flashing red light on the phone behind his desk. He switched on the TV, which was already set to CNN.
He had finished his breakfast and was halfway through the Times when he glanced at a clip of yesterday’s golf tournament and, almost simultaneously, caught sight of the tape crawling across the bottom of the screen:…TWO POLITICAL SHOOTINGS ON CARIBBEAN ISLAND OF ST. MARKS
Lance walked around his desk and picked up his phone, noticing the flashing red light. He dialed voicemail and listened for a moment, then dialed Holly’s satphone number. “You’d better answer the bloody thing, girl,” he said aloud to himself.
55
Holly grabbed the ringing satphone and went outside.
“Hello?”
“Where the hell have you been?” Lance demanded.
“Right here,” she said. “I left a message for you.”
“I just got it; do you know who got shot on the island?”
“Only what I’ve seen on local TV,” Holly said. “A policeman named duBois was shot, and they’re saying there was a reported attempt on the PM’s life, but no confirmation yet.”
“Jesus, that has ‘Teddy’ written all over it.”
“I don’t know what we can do about this, Lance; our search for Pemberton and Weatherby came up dry, and we don’t have any other suspects for Teddy.”
“Did you go over the photographs I sent you?”
“What photographs?”
“Check your e-mail; our photo analyst says Pemberton and Weatherby are the same man, and she’s made up sample photos of what he might look like in different disguises.”
“I’ll check that out right now,” Holly said.
“Forget about Robertson; he turns out to be one of the Heathrow Robbers, a guy named Barney Cox. Call me back if you have any ideas. You know about the airplane?”
“Yes, at noon; I hope he can land; they’ll probably shut down air travel again.”
“I’ll get word to the pilot to declare a fuel emergency, if necessary; then they’ll have to allow him to land. You just be there.”
“Okay.” She punched off the connection and ran into the house.