Keep Calm (15 page)

“I think that's the only reason that I'm here. Why I was picked to go to Number 10.”

“Well, there had to be a reason, didn't there? What the hell does being a moron and getting landed in a jail cell have to do with Heaton Global business at 10 Downing Street? Explain that one to me.”

“I'm not sure I can. I just know that I'm here to be the fall guy in case something goes bad. He's admitted that to me, Heaton.”

“The fall guy for what, Tatum? Start to make some sense here, please.” He went over to his remote, turned off ESPN, walked to the door, closed himself off from the rest of the office, and waited for a reply.

“The story he gave me doesn't make any sense, Barry. Something about the dossier they accepted was wrong, a number was off. I was going to replace it so they wouldn't be out a billion something a year. ‘No one would ever know.' I'd make out with a contract. Worse comes to worst, the lawyers would all settle it. It was a lot of mumbo jumbo. It was bullshit.”

“Sounds like it to me. I mean I never even met the guy, so I can't give you much advice. I have heard from some London people that he's gone a little scary these last few years or so … but that's all second- and thirdhand.”

“I think he's up to something. I think he's setting me up for something bad.”

“Maybe you should call the police? Has that brilliant thought come to your mind yet?”

Adam explained to him in detail the events with the call girl and the police station. He laid out the whole trip up to then so that Saffron understood how going to the police in London was a waste of time. Heaton was too dialed in. Adam was too on the outside.

Saffron turned off CNN. All three screens were dark now. He went over to the window and looked out at the river ten floors below as he listened to Adam explain his situation over the phone. A pleasure boat had broken down or was out of gas on the waterway. The hapless driver and his wife were trying to get a rope to bystanders on the riverwalk to help him before the current took them for a nasty ride. A commercial boat was coming through the Dearborn Street Bridge. Saffron knew enough about boats to know that the big one wasn't going to be able to stop on a dime. There was a strong chance the maritime incident would end in tears. He was just as powerless to help Adam as he was to help them. The distance was similar. All he could do was peer through the glass and pray for the best.

“I don't understand any of it, Tatum. You may be dead wrong, for all I know. You're not all that bright to begin with so I don't put it out of the realm of possibility, but if you're at all right about any of this shit, if it's even close to what you're saying it is, if it were me, I'd turn in the opposite direction and I'd run like the hair on my balls was on fire.”

 

AFTER
■
7

Bloomsbury goes dead quiet at night. The museums, shops, cafés, and luncheonettes all shutter early. The office buildings empty out by six, and other than the occasional hurried pedestrians coming to or going from one of the very few residences in flats above the shops, the sidewalks at night become lonely country back roads. The late-night wind whips louder than the distant traffic; the few streetlights left on twinkle softly.

The Steel family flat, just eight doors down and across the road from the café, on Theobald's Road, is one of very few residences on the block. It is a tiny two-bedroom pocket of London that no one even bothers to crane their necks up to see as they hustle on toward the city.

Davina's mother, Sheena, half German and half Scottish, and her father, Cawley Danaid Steel, were modest, quiet, and humble to a fault. They kept their heads low and lived their lives grateful for all that they had, all that they had built. The flat was bare-bones simple, but it was home. Warm with wear, the walls housed scripture framed for sharing, the carpets proudly boasting the scent of a thousand pots of homemade soup.

Steel sat at dinner with her mother and father. She was picking at a lamb stew, a plate full of marinated cabbage, and a piece of chocolate cake for dessert. Her parents both wanted to talk about the case she was working on. After all, it was the only thing anyone in the café was discussing. Steel did her best to change the subject. Her father seemed to get it before her mother, who kept on with the questions. Her dad finally, gently, took her mother's hand and ended it.

“She can't talk about it, lady. Don't you get it? It's not hers to discuss, so leave it be. Let her have a meal.”

The truth is she could have spoken about it, could have carefully picked out bits to share, could have given them a pleasing earful. But she didn't want to. She didn't have it in her to engage them in small talk about a case this important.

Later in the evening, as her father watched the TV news on the bombing, while she and her mother cleaned up from the meal, she wanted to apologize for shutting them out. She wondered why she couldn't bother to be nicer to them, or at least think nicer thoughts toward them. But she couldn't, and that made her profoundly sad and even angry because she loved them both so very much.

*   *   *

DAVINA WOKE SUDDENLY
from a deep sleep in her bedroom in the middle of the night. Her eyes popped open, having felt something pressed down on her face. She fell back blissfully asleep before she could figure out what it was that had been pushed down across her nose and around her mouth.

When her eyes opened the next time, what seemed like a few hours later, she realized that a man was sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at her. It was pitch-dark in the room; she couldn't make out anything about the man, his face, his height, or his weight. He was there on the bed beside her, that's all she knew. She felt his presence more than actually saw him, felt the way his weight dipped the mattress's edge as he perched there on the side of her bed. She realized that she couldn't move her arms or her legs at all. They were locked in place somehow.

It was when she decided to scream that she realized that there was a gag in her mouth. She couldn't make a sound and she couldn't move her limbs.

She began to struggle but the man leaned into her, put his finger to his lips, gently and sternly at the same time, motioning for her to be quiet.

He lit a match. The room awoke with a dancing orange flickering curtain of light, revealing that it was the redheaded stocky man who worked for Heaton, the one she saw in the hallway outside Heaton's private suite at the Heaton Global building that afternoon. The match gave off just enough flare to illuminate the outlines of another man behind him, sitting in the one chair in the tiny bedroom, up against the desk. It was the bald man. He was there, too. The flickering flame also told enough for Steel to see that her arms were firmly bound to her bedpost with heavy duct tape. She assumed that was the case with her legs as well.

She twisted against her restraints. She wasn't going to go without a fight. She squirmed and wriggled, cursing at them both even if she could only grunt or groan through the gag. The match went out. The blackness snapped back on. She continued to flail. The man on the bed left her to her battles, confident in the confining tape.

After a beat, there was a knock on her bedroom door.

“Davina? Darlin', are yous good?”

It was her father. She stopped twisting. The redhead lit another match, the flame and its shadows dancing around the walls, almost laughing at her. She had the clarity now to see the bald man with a shotgun walk slowly, carefully, toward the door. He held it right to the spot on the door opposite her father's head. The redhead slowly took the gag out of her mouth. No point in words. Steel knew exactly what she needed to say.

“Yeah, yeah, go on back to sleep. I'm good. I was dreaming. Go on.”

The baldy kept the gun cocked at the door while all three of the occupants of the room waited for what seemed like forever for an answer.

“All right. Have a sweet rest of the night then.”

They all waited and listened as the older man's footsteps creaked up the hallway, the second bedroom door shut, the far-off bed bristling under his body's weight as he burrowed back into his sheets.

As the redhead stuffed the gag back into her mouth, she tried to bite him. She even got a nick off, but it was no use. He shoved it in deep; she had to fight too hard to breathe through her nose to worry about nipping him.

The redhead lit another match. He smiled softly, almost warmly, and said nothing.

Before long she felt him finding and then lifting up her nightgown, slowly traveling down her stomach, his stout clammy hands, scratching their way into and under her panties as he looked straight into her terrified eyes. When his deadened fingers found what they were looking for, they plunged deep into her, two of them, as far up as he could go without dropping the match and starting a fire.

She wept, yet only because that's all she could do. She didn't dare put up a struggle or make so much as a sound. She knew on the next walk down the hall that her father would demand a talk, maybe some milk and another piece of cake. She knew it would be the last walk down the hall he'd ever take, so she didn't struggle. She let the man's grizzly fingers go wherever he needed them to go.

Once sure he'd made a point, he pulled his hand out, gently straightened back her panties, settled her nightgown down. The baldy came over. The redhead stood up, let the baldy sit down in his place. He stared at her, just gazed into her eyes for the longest time with a grin. She knew he had something on his mind, this one, something more than to make a point.

The flame went out on the redhead's third match.

The stocky little man walked back to the edge of the bed and handed the taller, balder one a large object. He nodded his head as if telling him to get on with it. As Steel's eyes finally adjusted to the light coming in from the street, she saw that the object he was handed was a gas mask connected to a metal canister. He leaned down and put it against her face. She understood now that this was what she had felt on her mouth and across her nose earlier. This is how they had bound her so unaware. The lights outside dimmed for some reason; the room went as dark as a cave. The two men had still not said a single word. They never did. It was just their way. Words to Harris and Peet were a waste. Actions were all that ever mattered.

*   *   *

WHEN SHE WOKE
, it was morning. The predawn light came streaming in through her window off Theobald's Road. It was chicken-time early. She could hear her parents shuffling off and out the door on the way to the café, hear them discussing her night, a nightmare that she had had, her mother worrying about her as always. She looked down—her arms and legs were free. There wasn't a trace of the tape on any of the bedposts.

She was woozy, numb, and unsure of each movement she took. She needed to walk her body through each new function as if it were the first time. Sit up. Feet on the floor. Stand up. She wondered for a brief moment if maybe the entire thing had in fact been a nightmare, if it had even really happened?

Three burnt matches were left carefully on the desk across from the bed, a gentle reminder of an event purposely staged to not easily be forgotten.

*   *   *

GEORGIA MET WITH
Major Darling and the home secretary at six a.m. the next morning. It had been five days now since the bomb went off in the cupboard at the back of the White Room. The chancellor's day was completely scheduled away, wall-to-wall meetings with urgent matters to tick off the list both at Treasury and in the prime minister's diary—important business that couldn't wait. On top of that, there had been a hostage situation in the middle of the night in Lebanon that had involved four British soldiers. Details were only dribbling in, but either way, it would be another crisis for her to deal with. The foreign secretary was due in half an hour with the latest report.

Georgia's pills were almost finished. She had been getting them from the back shelves of her father's pharmacy up in Finchley. It would soon be time for Early to drive her up at the crack of dawn one morning and for her to go into the shop through the back to replenish her supply. She hated doing it this way. Of course she had access to the staff physicians at Downing Street, but she wasn't the least bit interested in word getting out that she had gotten addicted to those lovely little pills of hers, not at the start of what would be a coming party struggle over leadership once it became obvious that Roland wasn't coming back to Number 10. No, she chose to get her medicine on her own, in the only way she knew how.

Meanwhile, Major Darling had news on Adam Tatum.

“The fingerprints and dental records the FBI have offered are distinctly not a match for the body found in the back of the Tatums' rented Ford. It appears the American may not be dead after all.”

“Well, whose bleeding body is it, then?”

“We aren't sure yet, ma'am. This is all new and fluid. We'll know soon. The point is, he's out there, alive, which we feel is good news for us. I don't see any way Tatum acted alone. We need to know who he's involved with and why. Our best bet will be to find him safe, bring him in, and get him talking before the people who murdered whoever was under that tarp get to Tatum. The people that need to shut him down permanently.”

Georgia agreed. She asked nonchalantly about Steel. She was told that the young inspector had taken a personal morning leave and that she'd be back this afternoon. Georgia expressed hope she'd be all right, quickly moving on to another subject, not wanting to give Darling or Burnlee any sense that Steel meant any more to the chancellor than any other civil servant or government helper who came in and went out of the offices all day at Downing Street.

The truth is that Georgia had spent a good part of the night lying awake in her bed, wondering, ruminating, pondering over Steel. She wanted to see her again, talk to her: discuss the case, her life, her hobbies, her family, and of course her perfume. She desperately wanted to chitchat with the youthful Steel about her perfume. She could see in Steel's eyes, when she had brought it up, a longing to have that kind of girl talk with Georgia, a similar urge.