Mrs. Foy from Travel Documents was crossing the lobby, her high heels clacking on the tiles, a statuesque widow in her late thirties. Quite a number of denizens of Century House had tried their luck with Suzanne Foy, but she was not known as the Fortress for nothing.
Their paths crossed. She stopped and turned. Somehow, McCready’s tie-knot had arrived at the area of the middle of his chest. She reached out, tightened it, and slid it back toward the top shirt button. Gaunt watched. He was too young to remember Jane Russell, so he could not make the obvious comparison.
“Sam, you should have someone take you home for something nourishing,” she said.
Denis Gaunt watched her hips sway across the lobby to the lift doors. He wondered what it would be like to be given something nourishing by Mrs. Foy. Or vice versa.
Sam McCready pushed open the plate-glass door to the street. A wave of hot summer air blew in. He turned, reached into his breast pocket, and brought out an envelope.
“Give it to them, Denis. Tomorrow morning. It’s what they want, after all.”
Denis took it and stared at it.
“You had it all the time,” he said. “You wrote it days ago. You cunning old bastard!”
But he was talking to the closing door.
McCready turned right and ambled toward Westminster Bridge half a mile away, his jacket over his shoulder. He loosened his tie back down to the third shirt button. It was a hot June afternoon, one of those that made up the great heat wave of the summer of 1990. The early commuter traffic poured past him toward the Old Kent Road.
It would be nice out at sea today, he thought, with the Channel bobbing bright and blue under the sun. Perhaps he should take that cottage in Devon, with his own boat in the harbor, after all. He could even invite Mrs. Foy down there. For something nourishing.
Westminster Bridge rose before him. Across it the House of Parliament, whose freedoms and occasional foolishness he had spent thirty years trying to protect, towered against the blue sky. The newly cleaned tower of Big Ben glowed gold in the sunlight beside the sluggish Thames.
Halfway across the bridge, a news vendor stood beside his stand with a pile of copies of the Evening Standard. At his feet stood a placard. It bore the words; BUSH-GORBY—COLD WAR OVER—OFFICIAL. McCready stopped to buy a paper.
“Thank you, guv,” said the news vendor. He gestured toward his placard. “All over, then, eh?”
“Over?” asked McCready.
“Yeah. All them international crises. Thing of the past.”
“What a lovely idea,” agreed McCready, and strolled on.
Four weeks later, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Sam McCready heard the radio bulletin while fishing two miles off the Devon coast. He considered the newsflash, then decided it was time to change his bait.
About the Author
FREDERICK FORSYTH is the author of eight best-selling novels: The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, The Devil’s Alternative, The Fourth Protocol, The Negotiator, The Deceiver, and The Fist of God. He has also written an acclaimed collection of short fiction, No Comebacks. He lives outside London.
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