“Yeah, this time we got to do to him what they tried to do to you. It’s not our fault he’s a bad guy. It’s not our fault he thought the mall shoot was almost as good as getting laid. He did have it coming. Maybe he didn’t shoot anybody, but he damned sure bought the guns, okay?” Dominic asked as reasonably as circumstances allowed.
“I ain’t going to light a candle for him. Just—damn it, this isn’t what we’re supposed to do in a civilized world.”
“What civilized world is that, bro? We offed a guy who needed to meet God. If God wants to forgive him, that’s His business. You know, there’re people who think anybody in uniform is a mercenary killer. Baby-killers, that sort of thing.”
“Well, that’s just fucked up,” Brian snarled back. “What I’m afraid of is, what if we turn into them?”
“Well, we can always back off a job, can’t we? And they told us they’ll always give us the reason for the hit. We won’t turn into them, Aldo. I won’t let it happen. Neither will you. So, we have things to do, right?”
“I suppose.” Brian took a big pull on the beer and pulled the gold pen from his coat pocket. He had to recharge it. That took less than three minutes, and it was again ready to rock and roll. Then he twisted it back to a writing instrument and put it back in his coat pocket. “I’ll be okay, Enzo. You’re not supposed to feel good about killing a guy on the street. Though I still wonder if it doesn’t make sense simply to pick the guy up and interrogate him.”
“The Brits have civil-rights rules like ours. If he asks for a lawyer—you know he’s been briefed to do that, right?—the cops can’t even ask him the time, just like at home. All he has to do is smile and keep his trap shut. That’s one of the drawbacks of civilization. It makes sense for criminals, I suppose, most of them, but these guys aren’t criminals. It’s a form of warfare, not street crime. That’s the problem, and you can’t hardly threaten a guy who wants to die in the performance of his duty. All you can do is stop him, and stopping a person like that means his heart has to discontinue beating.”
Another pull on the beer. “Yeah, Enzo. I’m okay. I wonder who our next subject is.”
“Give ’em an hour to chew on it. How about a walk?”
“Works for me.” Brian stood, and in a minute they were back out on the street.
It was a little too obvious. The British Telecom van was just pulling away, but the Aston Martin was still in place. He wondered if the Brits would put a black-bag team into the house to toss it for interesting things, but that black sports car was right here, and it sure looked sexy. “Wish you could get it in the estate sale?” Brian asked.
“Can’t drive it at home. Wheel’s on the wrong side,” Dominic pointed out. But his brother was right. It was felonious for such a car to go to waste. Berkeley Square was pretty enough, but too small for anything except letting the infants crawl around on the grass and get some fresh air and sun. The house would probably be sold, too, and it would go for a large sum. Lawyers—”solicitors” over here—to tie things up, taking their cut before returning the residuary property to whatever family a snake left behind. “Hungry yet?”
“I could eat something,” Brian allowed. So they walked some more.
They headed toward Piccadilly and found a place called Pret A Manger, which served sandwiches and cold drinks. After a total of forty minutes away from the hotel, they headed back in and Brian lit up his computer again.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED CONFIRMED BY LOCAL SOURCES. MISSION CLEAN, the message from The Campus read, and went on: SEATS CONFIRMED FLIGHT BA0943 DEPART HEATHROW TOMORROW 07:55 ARRIVE MUNICH 10:45. TICKETS AT COUNTER. There was a page of details, followed by ENDS.
“Okay,” Brian observed. “We have another job.”
“Already?” Dominic was surprised at the efficiency of The Campus. Brian wasn’t. “I guess they’re not paying us to be tourists, bro.”
“YOU KNOW, we need to get the twins out of Dodge quicker,” Tom Davis remarked.
“If they’re covert, it’s not necessary,” Hendley said.
“If somebody spots them somehow or other, better that they should not be around. You can’t interview a ghost,” Davis pointed out. “If the police have nothing to track, then they have less to think about. They can query the passenger list on a flight, but if the names they look for—assuming they have names—just go about normal business, then they have a blank wall with no evidence hanging on it. Better yet, if whatever face might or might not have been spotted just evaporates, then they have gornischt, and they’re most likely to write it off as an eyewitness who couldn’t be trusted anyway.” It is not widely appreciated that police agencies trust eyewitnesses the least of all forms of criminal evidence. Their reports are too volatile, and too unreliable to be of much use in a court of law.
“AND?” SIR Percival asked.
“CPK-MB, and troponin are greatly elevated, and the lab says his cholesterol was two hundred thirteen,” Dr. Gregory said. “High for one his age. No evidence whatever of drugs of any sort, not even aspirin. So, we have enzyme evidence of a coronary incident, and that’s all at the moment.”
“Well, we’ll have to crack his chest,” Dr. Nutter observed, “but that was in the cards anyway. Even with elevated cholesterol, he’s young for a major cardiovascular obstruction, don’t you think?”
“Were I to wager, sir, I think prolonged QT interval, or arrhythmia.” Both of which left little postmortem evidence except in a negative sense, unfortunately, but both of which were uniformly fatal.
“Correct.” Gregory seemed a bright young medical school graduate, and like most of them, exceedingly earnest. “In we go,” Nutter said, reaching for the big skin knife. Then they’d use the rib cutters. But he was pretty sure what they’d find. The poor bastard had died of heart failure, probably caused by a sudden—and unexplained—onset of cardiac arrhythmia. But whatever caused it, it had been as lethal as a bullet in the brain. “Nothing else on the toxicology scan?”
“No, sir, nothing whatever.” Gregory held up the computer printout. Except for reference marks on the paper, it was almost entirely blank. And that pretty much settled that.
IT WAS like listening to a World Series game on the radio, but without the color-commentary filler. Somebody at the Security Service was eager to let CIA know what was going on with the subject about which Langley clearly had some interest, and so whatever dribs and drabs of information came in were immediately dispatched to CIA, and thence to Fort Meade, which was scanning the ether waves for any resulting interest from the terrorist community around the world. The latter’s news service, it appeared, was not as efficient as its enemies had hoped.
“HELLO, DETECTIVE Willow,” Rosalie Parker said with her customary want-to-fuck-me smile. She made love for a living, but that didn’t mean that she disliked it. She breezed in wearing her visitor’s badge and took her seat opposite his desk. “So, what can I do for you this fine day?”
“Bad news, Miss Parker.” Bert Willow was formal and polite, even with whores. “Your friend Uda bin Sali is dead.”
“What?” Her eyes went wide with shock. “What happened?”
“We’re not sure. He just dropped down on the street, just across the street from his office. It appears that he had a heart attack.”
“Really?” Rosalie was surprised. “But he seemed so healthy. There was never a hint that anything was wrong with him. I mean, just last night . . . ”
“Yes, I saw that in the file,” Willow responded. “Do you know if he ever used drugs of any sort?”
“No, never. He occasionally drank, but even that not much.”
To Willow’s eyes, she was shocked and greatly surprised, but there wasn’t a hint of tears in her eyes. No, for her, Uda had been a business client, a source of income, and little more. The poor bastard had probably thought otherwise. Doubly bad luck for him, then. But that wasn’t really Willow’s concern, was it?
“Anything unusual in your most recent meeting?” the cop asked. “No, not really. He was quite randy, but, you know, some years ago I had a john die on me—I mean, he came and went, as they say. It was bloody awful, not the sort of thing you forget, and so I keep an eye on my clients for that. I mean, I’d never leave one to die. I’m not a barbarian, you know. I really do have a heart,” she assured the cop.