Mrs. John Doe (21 page)

On the road to Norfolk, Nora got the lay of the land. They'd stopped at a petrol station to fill up, and Nora had asked the attendant for a local map. What he'd sold her turned out to be a guidebook to the region with a big foldout map attached. As Craig drove them north from Cambridge along the motorway, she studied the map and read the brief descriptions of the countryside.

The village where they were going, Sedgeford, was a tiny farming community, notable for its round-towered church and for the Magazine Cottage, once an actual arsenal for storing gunpowder and weapons hundreds of years ago. The cottage and Magazine Farm were highlights along Peddars Way, the ancient Roman road that ran through the northern edge of the village. The easternmost royal residence, Sandringham House, was nearby, but the queen was rarely there, according to the book.

Sedgeford was a few dozen kilometers northeast of King's Lynn, where Jeff had last been seen. The Wash, the big estuary carved into the northern side of the Norfolk peninsula, was just to the west, and the North Sea was seven kilometers to the north. The North Sea was where the bird sanctuary Craig had mentioned was located, and—much more important to Nora—the locale of Cowper Field, a private airstrip for cargo planes bringing goods to the local towns and villages. She followed the line of the road north from the village to the airfield on the map, calculating. Seven kilometers: about four miles. Carrying parts for weapons of mass destruction from Laurels to Cowper Field would be a matter of a few minutes' drive, then a cargo plane to an unknown destination, definitely not in England. The Middle East, eventually. She glanced at her watch: 11:07.

She didn't need the guidebook to tell her how flat Norfolk was; she could see that through the windshield. As they neared the easternmost coast of England, mountains and hills vanished completely, replaced by flatlands filled with crops: barley and beets, according to the pamphlet, but also fields of glistening golden wheat, as far as she could see. At one point they passed a lavender farm, and the rich scent filled the car.

What the guidebook did not indicate was the exact location of Laurels, or of any of the larger homes in the area. There was apparently a downtown, or high street or whatever, in the village, but the meager population—just over six hundred at the last census—was spread out over a six-mile area. They'd have to ask someone for directions.

Craig was clearly thinking the same thing. He left the motorway at the proper exit and drove along a small country road, heading north. As they passed the first signpost to mention the village by name—
S
EDGEFORD: 2 KM
—he slowed the car. A tall, thin, elderly man in well-worn tweeds was walking along the verge of the road with a beautiful red setter. The car came abreast of him, and Craig leaned out to speak.

“Morning, sir. We're looking for a place called Laurels. Would you—”

It was as far as he got. With a hearty grin and a bellowed, “G'day to ye, lad!” the old man launched into a monologue, with much pointing and gesticulating, but Nora—for all her dramatic training in speech and regional dialects—couldn't understand a single word. Fortunately, Craig was much more attuned to the heavy accents of rural England.

“Of course,” he said to the man, and he leaped from the car and opened the rear door. The big dog jumped up onto the backseat, followed by its master, who huffed and puffed a great deal as he settled himself. Craig got back in and continued along the road.

Nora smiled at their new passengers and reached out to stroke the dog's soft head, getting a friendly lick of her hand in return. The old man laughed and spoke some more gibberish, and Craig responded to this with a few brisk nods. They came into the village, such as it was, a lovely church and a few other buildings, and Craig pulled over near one of them and stopped. The old man and dog got out, and with a hearty handshake for Craig and a winking smile for Nora, they disappeared inside the door beside a swinging sign. A pub, of course.

“What was
that
all about?” she asked as they drove on.

Craig laughed. “
That
was Mr. Wycliff and Rex, out for a morning constitutional before repairing to their favorite haunt for an early lunch, which I suspect will be mostly liquid. But he told me where we're going, anyway. We turn here. Now we look for Peddars Way, the oldest road in Great Britain. We pass Magazine Cottage, and go on until we reach the forest beyond the fields, then we turn left, and it's a mile down that road to the country estates. That's what Mr. Wycliff called them, anyway. Apparently, Laurels was once a horse farm, but now the
ooties
have arrived.”

“The
ooties
?”

“
Outies,
in our language. Outsiders. Worse:
Londoners
! The locals are still getting used to the recent influx of tourism and all the new bed-and-breakfast hotels in the area, but actual city dwellers
moving
here to
live
has caused no end of a scandal. He knew the previous owner of Laurels, and he met Mr. Howard once, in the pub, with—with Solange. But he hasn't seen them in a while, and now, in the last few days, there are some
real
ooties about the place.
Blackies,
to use his word. Foreign nationals, I should think.”

Nora thought about this. Nassim Gamal and the man and woman from Libya. And others, perhaps, British citizens from that part of the world, converging at Laurels for the exchange or the sale or whatever it was. And in the middle of all this activity, her husband. She shut her eyes, willing herself to remain calm, reminding herself that the cavalry—the local police and MI5—were on the way.

The pretty stone Magazine Cottage came and went, then more fields, and finally the trees. Craig slowed the car and turned left, driving along a bumpy lane beside the outer edge of what appeared to be a substantial forest. It was then, gazing out at the trees, that Nora remembered her remarkably similar journey three days before, in France. Pinède had been high in the mountains, and Sedgeford was on level ground, but her paths to them had been the same. Both times, she'd left the capital city and traveled to the easternmost boundary of the country, to a tiny forest village. Remembering what had happened to her in the first one, she glanced over her shoulder at her bag on the backseat, grateful for the little revolver wrapped in her shawl at the bottom of it.

She wondered if she'd need it.

They passed a big stone house set well back from the road, with iron gates blocking the entrance to a long driveway, and Craig slowed the car again, studying the view ahead of them. A few more yards, and he suddenly turned right, into the trees. Nora stared as two huge evergreens appeared before them, then relaxed when she saw that they were actually driving on an unpaved track between the trunks, heading directly into the dark woods. She glanced over at Craig, deciding not to question him as he navigated the car along the incredibly narrow path.

The scents of pine and green grass drifted through her window, and she breathed deeply. She assumed this was the way to Laurels and at any moment they would emerge from the trees to find a farmhouse and stables surrounded by fields like the ones they'd been passing all morning. She was bracing herself for her first sight of her husband's prison when Craig suddenly stopped the car and cut the engine.

“Okay,” he said before she could speak. “The rest of the way is on foot.”

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Well, if I caught everything Mr. Wycliff was saying a mile a minute, Laurels is the next farm that way.” He waved an arm to his left. “But we can't just roll right in and say howdy. We don't know what we're facing, but we will before we do anything. Let's spy on them for a while, see what we can see, then I can call my friends. I think we'll need them.”

Nora nodded, remembering Leicester Square yesterday afternoon. “Yes, Andy Gilbert and Yussuf were planning to arrive at noon. I guess Andy won't be showing up after all, but the other one might. That's one more for their side.” She checked her watch again: 11:42.

Craig grunted, frowning. “Yes, it is.” Nora got her bag from the backseat, and Craig reached into the glove compartment in front of her and took out a pair of field glasses. “Okay, come on.”

They got out of the car, and Craig locked it and dropped the keys into the pocket of his jacket before marching off through the trees to their left. Nora followed, instantly regretting that she'd left the cheap gray coat in the car. It was chilly in this thick forest, even with the late-morning sunlight bearing down through the leaves above them. They crunched their way through dried leaves, moving at an uphill slant. Nora glanced around, wondering what animals lived here. If there were any, they weren't making any noise; even the birds were silent. Aside from the crackling of the leaves, there wasn't a sound in the world.

The sunlight through the branches brightened, and they emerged from the forest into open space. A split-rail fence was here, and Craig immediately dropped to one knee, pulling Nora down beside him. They knelt behind the fence, looking out at the wide vista before them.

There it was: Laurels. It was slightly below them; the forest was apparently on a hill of some height, rare for this region of fens and fields. The main house was an impressive, long, two-story manse of white brick and stone, with a sloping slate roof and a porch at the entrance. The drive leading to it curved into a circle in front of it, and there were other buildings beyond it, a big barn and attached stables. The fields she'd been expecting were modest, perhaps fifty yards of grass at the back and on this side, closest to where they crouched. The far buildings, the barn and stables, were at the edge of the woods, with trees around and behind them. There was a big circular area in the nearer field beside the house, enclosed by split-rail fencing, and Nora realized that it was a disused corral.

Craig raised the field glasses to his face, and Nora tried to see where he was looking. A low-slung, jazzy-looking gold sports car was parked between two laurel trees near the barn.

“Mr. Howard's pride and joy,” Craig said. “That's an Aston Martin from the sixties, exactly like the one in the James Bond movies. He bought it after—um—after he separated from Mrs. Howard. It's the car your husband drove to King's Lynn. Now it's back here. I think that tells us something.”

Nora leaned forward to peer at the rows of windows on the big house below them. She wondered which window was the room where Jeff was being held. She was lowering her hand into her shoulder bag, feeling for the shawl that was wrapped around the revolver, when Craig pointed down the front drive in the direction of the main road.

“Look,” he whispered.

Nora looked. As they watched from their hiding place, a big canvas-covered military-style truck turned in at the gates and rumbled slowly up the drive toward the house. It came around the curve and stopped at the porch steps. Two men got out of the cab, and the canvas at the back suddenly lifted. Two other men jumped down from the tailgate and joined them. All four men were wearing dark jackets and jeans and work boots, and all four had brown skin and black hair. South Asian, Nora thought, or Middle Eastern.

The front door of the house opened, and two men came out to join the four in the driveway. The first man was big and as dark as the others, and Nora didn't recognize him. But she immediately recognized the man who stood behind him in the doorway.

When she saw his face, she froze, clutching the fence rail in front of her. She blinked and looked again, peering more closely at the figure on the porch down the hill. No, she hadn't been mistaken. Everything inside her went numb.

In that moment, kneeling at the fence above the distant house, Nora Baron realized that she'd been conned. From her arrival in England four days ago—no, before that. From the phone call at her home, when she'd been standing on the widow's walk. That's when it had begun, and now the game was complete. The dizzying, wrenching shock overwhelmed her, blurring the scene before her eyes.

The man who now stood in the doorway of Laurels was its owner, Bill Howard. He wasn't dead; he was far from dead. He was smiling as he greeted the other men. It couldn't possibly be happening, and yet it was. Then, of course, the second, even bigger shock arrived, as inevitable as it was unexpected. Beside her, Craig Elder the younger turned his head to face her, and he began to laugh softly in her ear.

Bill Howard. Craig Elder.
Not
Maurice Dolin of the SDAT,
not
an international plot,
not
a nefarious, extended gang of fanatics and traitors and mercenaries. Merely two men—that man on the porch down there and this one, his apprentice, his young recruit, his partner in crime, laughing at her. Everything else had been pure theater. Smoke and mirrors. And she—the trained, professional actor—had fallen for it.

She willed herself to move. Automatically, as if of its own accord, her hand in her purse closed around the wool-wrapped LadySmith and yanked it out, and then she was frantically tearing the shawl away, fumbling with the small silver weapon. She fitted it into her right hand, closing her fingers around it, her index finger finding the trigger. She swung it to her left, aimed it directly between the eyes of the laughing man beside her, and fired.

A hollow click, nothing more. Again.
Click.
Nothing—and now the space beside her was empty. He had risen to his feet, and he was somewhere just behind her. She glanced down at the gun, realizing. He'd removed the bullets back at the Oasis, while she slept. Every action he'd taken—Russell Square Gardens, the French getaway, Louis Reynard, the Lucky Dolphin, last night in London and at the motel, all the way here, now, today—he'd done it all for one reason: to get her here. Now they had her, and they had the envelope, and they would torture her in front of her husband until he finally broke and told them what they wanted to know. Then her friend Bill Howard and his laughing acolyte would kill them and hide their bodies.