Swanson turned toward him. “I talked to the prisoner about nukes. He knew nothing. Is the White House considering a strike?”
“They consider everything. Now that we can prove the sniper was Iranian and his orders came through the Iranian command structure, political pressure will build to do something.”
Summers, wearing battle dress fatigues, crossed her legs and picked at her boot laces. “We will be extra cautious, sir. Nobody wants to be wrong about this one.”
General Middleton absently waved a hand. “What has gone on before is ancient history, Summers. I want you to continue working the sniper angle. See where it leads.”
Swanson’s eyes moved from face to face. “Then my next move should be to get to the U.K. and see if Jeff can help us unravel it. He gave MI6 everything he remembered about the accounting deal, but if the two of us go through it a couple of times together, maybe something else will pop up.”
The general nodded in agreement. “OK. Get your butt over there. Remember you’re a Marine and you’re working for me, not him. Do that Excalibur shit on your own time.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“And give my regards to Sir Geoffrey and Lady Patricia.”
Lady Pat loved the theaters of London, having never totally extinguished the actress spark. She had abandoned a stage career when she met and married a rugged, handsome young captain in the Special Air Service, Geoffrey Cornwell. That had been years ago, and many things had changed. They had become wealthy, received awards, and seen the world, but she still dearly loved the boards. Instead of begging for a minor role in a play, perhaps being rejected because the director didn’t like the shape of her nose, she was now courted as a potential investor. Being a financial angel opened all doors. Although she was now sixty years old, she yearned for the burn of a spotlight.
She and her private secretary, the beautiful, dark-haired, and efficient Delara Tabrizi, had been making the rounds all day. A new musical was being cast, and they lunched with the producer before moving on to a fringe venue that was struggling to put together a small production by a dynamic new writer. She was unimpressed but gave compliments to the creator and his four-member cast. Lady Pat always had kind things to say to actors, whose fragile egos could be crushed with a glance. She gathered this group in a hand-holding circle, smiled, and started reciting “An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,” the first line of the alliterative poem by Alaric Alexander Watts. The verse was about a battle fought so long ago that it had been forgotten, except for the poem about it that became a voice exercise practiced by almost all actors.
“Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade,” continued the ingenue, and the leading man boomed out, “Cossack commanders cannonading come,” then the breaking voice of a boy, youngest of the troupe, followed with “Dealing destruction’s devastating doom.” They continued, line by line, through the entire alphabet. She led them in applause and hugs, for she was one of them.
Then it was out to the West End for some street shopping at the Chapel Market before a rehearsal at the historic King’s Head Theatre, of which she was a patron. She and Delara preferred to leave the car behind on such days and do their London prowls by taxi, foot, and subway, for they could see so much more. The chauffeur, alerted by Delara’s cell phone, would be waiting to take them home when they got off the train. If need be, they could always spend the night in the city. They were in no rush, and now that the workday was over, they decided to take the tube back to do some more shopping.
They joined the steady, jostling crowd entering the Islington High Street station and stepped carefully onto the first of two long, steep escalators heading down. Staying to the right side to allow others to pass on the left, Delara found herself wedged between a large man immobile on the step in front of her and Lady Pat behind her shoulders. They rode down with the crowd in silence and made the right-angle turn for the second escalator, facing another sharp decline. Delara was jammed against the same man, and when she glanced back, there was another large man right behind Lady Pat. Turning to face forward, she tapped her left hand against Pat’s leg hard to alert her to the possibility of trouble.
Almost immediately, Lady Pat felt a sharp point against her back, and the man behind her, with a knife covered by a folded jacket, leaned in close and said with a soft but threatening voice, “You and your friend will be coming with us now, ma’am. Any trouble, and I will be havin’ to put this blade between your ribs.” The man in front of Delara turned and glared at her.
Lady Pat took a deep breath and unleashed a tremendous scream from deep in lungs that had been trained to reach people in the last rows of a theater, and it almost stopped time. The eyes of the man in front of Delara Tabrizi widened in surprise, and Delara hit him on the bridge of the nose as hard as she could with a downward strike of her fist. The nose cracked, blood flew out, he saw stars, and his knees went wobbly on the moving escalator. Everyone was turning to stare.
The man with the knife momentarily froze, which was enough time for Lady Pat to turn and jam a wedge of stiff fingers into his testicles. The sudden pain made him drop the knife, and she grabbed the front of his shirt and jerked him forward and to the side, letting gravity and momentum roll him over her left hip. She had not lived with an SAS officer for so many years without learning some self-defense tricks. The attacker went tumbling past her, then past Delara, who kicked him in the face as he went by. Both of the men were down and entangled in a clump as others in the crowd piled on them in a noisy rugby-style scrum.
By the time the escalator emptied onto the long station platform, a pair of constables of the British Transport Police were waiting with handcuffs to take charge of the bewildered assailants. Delara gave them her business card and said that charges would be pressed against the hooligans who tried to steal her purse.
Lady Pat had stepped into the background and refused to be fussed over. She was fine, she said, but had a constable escort them back to the surface and into a taxi. When they were finally alone, she told Delara to immediately call for the Bentley to come into the city and pick them up at Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair as soon as possible. The chauffeur should bring along a few of Jeff’s security lads, for there had been a spot of trouble.
7
Swanson was looking forward to a good night’s sleep. He had been on the go almost constantly since the telephone call from Sybelle had jerked him away from his California vacation. Catnaps in cars and planes could not replenish the energy his body craved, and the fatigue of sleep deprivation was setting in. He locked the door of the Georgetown apartment, and the safe familiarity of the place eased him down so that he was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow an hour later.
The transatlantic telephone call came from England at one o’clock in the morning and changed him instantly from sound asleep to wide awake. It was Sir Jeff, sounding weary and worried as he described the attack on Lady Pat and Delara in the tube station. They were fine, he said, although he could not say the same about the two thugs who botched the attack. Jeff said he already had everyone under tight security, so there would be no repeat of such a thing, but Pat had wanted Kyle to be personally told before he heard about it from some other source. The older man’s voice choked up when he said the company jet had already been dispatched to fetch him to London. It would meet him at Reagan International.