Hope it helps,
BP
Irish opens the attachment and presses play.
The footage is good quality. An Escalade heads down a slip road. The overhead camera shows the driver. He’s alone. Late-thirties, maybe early-forties. Clean-shaven. Broad. Light hair.
Five cars back, a Lincoln pulls out to the middle lane, stays there and doesn’t zip on by. The kind of thing you do when you’re following someone and don’t want to be noticed.
Irish studies the traffic. The Escalade is doing about sixty. So is the Lincoln. He sure as hell is tagging him.
No sooner do the Dupont signs come on screen, than they both indicate and take their wagon train off the interstate and out of view.
Irish digs out the Scotch for a celebratory belt then rewinds the footage and plays it from the top. This time he sees the small stuff. The Escalade is badged as a hybrid and the Lincoln has a panoramic glass roof. Both vehicles fit with the descriptions Sarah Cohen gave him but the driver of the Escalade doesn’t. He has light hair. The victim in the woods was dark-haired. This must have been the driver parked up outside Amir’s store and the winner of whatever altercation broke out when they drove off after Goldman’s murder.
Irish figures that, given the timing of the footage, the guy he’s looking at on screen is almost certain to be the killer.
The Lincoln comes into view again. It’s an expensive model. One of the new ones.
‘Ho — lee shit.’ He hits pause. ‘Rule Friggin’ Britannia.’
A broad smile breaks out across his face as he stares at what is unmistakably a diplomatic plate.
24
The second semi-final of America’s Got Talent is playing on the new fifty-inch flat-screen in the family lounge. Sword-swallowing dwarves compete with gymnastic nuns for a place in the last show. TV doesn’t get better than this.
At least not when your brain is aching from stress and all you want to do is sit in front of the tube with a drink and snacks.
Ron Briars has had a rough day. Right now he’s wondering if he should have got 3D as a bigger reward for all that hard labour.
Sixty-inch, 3D, internet equipped. Home cinema, surround sound. Sport certainly would have been a blast on that baby.
But — as usual — he’d given in to his wife’s demands and settled for something a bit smaller. More fitting with the layout of the room, the French windows and fireplace. Not that either him or his teenage son can even begin to understand how the fireplace or windows have anything to do with a TV.
Ron’s cell phone rings.
Wife and child stare accusingly at the BlackBerry as it rudely buzzes and flashes on the side table next to his iPhone and almost empty glass of French red.
Not many people have the number and those that do are very important. White House-important. Chief of Staff- or even President-important.
Ron smiles apologetically, gets up and takes the offending phone to the den. A glance at the display shows the caller has withheld the number.
The head of the National Intelligence Agency answers with caution. ‘Hello.’
‘Tole Mac.’ The voice is calm and measured, almost without accent but clearly British. ‘That’s Tango. Oscar. Lima. Echo. Mike. Alpha. Charlie.’
Seven letters and two words agreed by the NIA and the party on the line as a means of identity verification.
The caller is a trusted source. About as trusted as they come.
The principal security advisor to the President of the United States reaches quickly for pen and paper. ‘Clearance noted. Please, go on.’
‘Denny’s Garage and Body Shop, opposite Leonard Gordon Park in Jersey. You have between midnight tonight and sunrise. No later. Four men are sleeping inside with enough explosives to rip up half of New York. One entrance, a roller door and it is alarmed. We wish you good luck.’
25
The Inner Circle disbands and the armour-plated helicopters and cars disperse.
Only Beaucoup and Dalton stay behind. They’re working closely on leads relating to the missing crosses and whereabouts of Angelo Marchetti.
Owain and his wife dine alone. Not in the plush summer room that overlooks the croquet lawn, or in the conservatory that opens out to the rose gardens and southern lake.
They eat in the wild. Out at the summit of Glastonbury Tor, where the sun sets cherry-red across the soft, green, rolling hills.
Hundreds of feet beneath them, armed guards patrol the hill and ensure the couple have their brief moment of privacy. Anyone wishing to climb the very public place will be politely paid off with whatever it takes — thousands of pounds if necessary.
The contents of the wicker picnic basket are as exceptional as the ancient landscape. Rustic bread and Welsh cakes baked within the last hour. Buffalo mozzarella, beef tomatoes and green and black olives delivered that morning from Tuscany. Fresh cockles and shrimps from the nearby coast. Homemade pheasant pâté and an ’82 Lafite from the Rothschild estate in France.
They sit at the top, where thousands of years ago there was a monk’s retreat and then a sacred chapel. From here they can pick out Great Breach Wood, Polden Hills, Brent Knoll and West Mendip Hills.
But Owain and Jennifer see much more. They see the ghosts of Shamans, Druid priests and necromancers. They see St Patrick strolling the land looking for converts. Saxon hermits hiding in the hillsides. Celtic tribes massing. Roman armies marching. The roots of civilization growing.
And they see Arthur and his Queen arm-in-arm, the Knights of the Round Table assembling and the holy goddess Fortuna stretching her sword-holding hand up from the cold water of the lake.
For almost a minute, Jennifer watches her husband stare into the distance. Normally, being here relaxes him, helps him unwind. But today the tension is still there, etched in grooves across his head and in words unspoken. She intertwines her fingers with his. ‘What are you thinking?’
It takes him a second to return from distant thoughts. ‘Many things, but nothing for you to worry about.’
She tugs his hand. ‘Don’t patronize me. What’s troubling you?’
‘Josep Mardrid.’
She shudders at the mere mention of the name. ‘What has he done now?’
‘He and his corporation grow more ruthless by the week. Currently, his bankers are buying up huge stretches of land in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger and Togo. Among others.’
‘Why is that so bad?’ Jennifer asks. We’ve invested out there and a lot of the charities I support are busy there.’
‘He’s trying to create a slave trade just like his family did generations ago. In Togo he’s been paying armed gangs to terrorize farmers and destroy their crops. Hundreds of men and their wives and children have been injured, some killed.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘The gangs rape teenagers of either sex. They break the bones of babies and children, then Mardrid has his suited bankers move in and make the beaten men derisory offers for their businesses. He is emerging as a third-world baron in cocoa, cotton and coffee. In time, he’ll do the same in cattle and will then control all the major food chains.’
‘What will you do about it?’
‘Anything and everything I can. If necessary, we’ll fight fire with fire. If we don’t, then nothing will be grown or raised without him getting his share.’ Owain puts his arm around his wife and kisses her. ‘Let’s not talk about him. He only makes my blood boil and we have so little time together. I have to leave for London tomorrow.’
She squeezes up to him. ‘I don’t want you to go.’