Noble Intentions: Season Three (20 page)

Before exiting the kitchen, he
noticed a set of chef knives, ranging in length from eight to twelve inches.
They looked fancy. Jack had seen knives like that sell for as much as five
hundred dollars each.

He continued through the living
room. More modern furniture, leather chairs and metal tables, and a flat panel
mounted to the wall. All wires were hidden. He expected nothing less.

He returned to the front of the
house and started up the stairs. Halfway up, he heard voices outside the front
door. Jack froze. He reached for his handgun and then let his hand fall to his
side. His leg shielded his weapon.

Outside the house, a man and a
woman shared a laugh. High and low. Deep and light. They mixed together to form
the sound of a couple in love.

The home lacks a feminine touch.

One of them knocked on the door.

Jack exhaled. Couldn’t be Mason.
What man would knock on his own front door? That didn’t mean Jack could relax,
though. One of them might be Mason’s partner or maybe even another agent. Cops
hung out with cops, soldiers with soldiers, firemen with other firemen. It
worked the same way for spies.

Jack ascended the stairs backward,
one step at a time. He stopped near the top. He knew he’d be out of view should
they try the door handle like he had.

They didn’t though. Their chatter
faded.

Jack considered returning
downstairs to lock the door. He decided against it, though. Mason was the kind
of man who would know whether or not he locked his door when he left in the
morning. Returning home to find it otherwise would set off alarms in the guy’s
head. Jack needed the element of surprise should Mason show up.

The upstairs consisted of a large
open area near the stairs, and a closed door at the far end. The open area had
a beat up leather couch and a computer desk. Neither new, neither modern. A
hardback book missing its dust jacket was perched on the middle of the couch.
Jack went to the desk. He opened the drawers, noted that they were filled with
files labeled with simple words like snow and dog and misfits.
Code
,
Jack thought.

He left the files alone and went to
the other end and stopped outside the closed door. He tapped on it. The door
sounded solid. He pressed at the top, middle, bottom and sides. It didn’t bend
or bow. He searched the wall for any false panels. Mason could have set a trap.
He could control it from a device hidden inside the wall behind a false panel.
Jack’s search revealed nothing. He opened the door, braced for anything.

All he found was more of the same.
Clean, sleek, modern. The bed was made, the top of the dresser bare. A single
nightstand stood between the bed and the window. The drapes were pulled to the
side. The blinds were drawn shut but made of some kind of material that let the
light in.

Jack checked under the bed. Found
nothing there. He opened the door to the en suite bathroom. It was minimal and
unoccupied, as he expected. He investigated the walk-in closet, found two rows
of clothing on either side. On the right, suits and white button up shirts and ties.
On the left, casual clothing. Ten pairs of shoes ranging from beach to casual
to dress lined the floor.

He exited the closet and went to
the dresser. They were full of neatly arranged clothing, but nothing else.

The answer, if there was one, was
in the files. Jack doubted he’d find anything of use, though. Mason didn’t seem
to be the kind of man who’d bring his work home. But this wasn’t work. This
went far beyond work. Still, Jack had no problem getting inside the house. He
knew that British Intelligence would have even less of a problem. If they
believed the man to be involved in something suspicious and detrimental to
Great Britain’s security, they’d infiltrate and get the evidence they needed.

So Jack returned to the computer
desk. He pulled out the files and went through them, one at a time. It turned
out that the simple words weren’t code at all. Snow apparently referred to
Mason’s ex-wife, Gloria. Snow had been her maiden name. The file labeled dog
contained veterinary records for Mason’s dog, Barnaby. The last receipt
indicated that Barnaby had been put to sleep three months prior due to hip
dysplasia. The misfits file was filled with random receipts from restaurants,
bars and stores. And so it went. Every folder he looked through had a purpose. He
found nothing nefarious or evil. Nothing that implicated Mason or himself.

Jack went back downstairs, grabbed
a beer from the refrigerator and took a seat at the dining room table. His
position allowed him to see the front entrance as well as the back door. And
there he’d wait for Mason to return home.

Alex Parkin watched the images of
the bombing on the television for the hundredth time. Each viewing caused him
to feel sicker than the last. Inside, he bled and burned with every soul who perished.
And he’d say as much in his address to the people of Great Britain. That was
his duty as the Prime Minister.

“Sir?”

Alex set his pen down on the legal
pad on his desk, pushed back in his chair and looked up at the man wearing a
blue pinstriped suit. Jon Hayes brushed back his thinning hair then placed both
hands on the Prime Minister’s desk and leaned forward.

“Sir, I need to speak with you.”

“Then speak,” Alex said.

Jon looked over both shoulders.
“There’s too many people in here, and I need to be frank with you.”

Alex leaned to his left, looked
past Jon. Select members of his cabinet sat near one another. They all stared
at the flat panel televisions mounted to the walls. Every one of them, lost in
thought. None had offered much advice to Alex up to that point. As far as he
was concerned, there was little point to them being in the room.

“Everyone out,” Alex said.

Heads turned toward him, stares of
disbelief. He gestured toward the door with his head. They rose and staggered
into the hall.

“Better?” he said.

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“For Christ’s sake Jon, we’re alone
now. We go too far back for this sir talk.”

The men had a history. They’d
served in the SAS together. Alex was an officer, Jon his top NCO. Their
difference in rank meant nothing. They’d become best friends and still were to
this day. Alex dragged Jon along for his meteoric rise through the political
ranks. Unheard of, some had said, for him to become Prime Minister at the age
of forty-five with only six years of public service. But his party had spoken,
and so did the same public that he had served. And now he faced what he feared
was the first in a series of attacks on London.

Jon said, “I’m getting conflicting
reports, Alex.”

This was the first he’d heard of
any reports at all. “What are you hearing?”

“Some are saying this is most
certainly an attack by a group led by a man named Naseer Shehata. Recognize
that name?”

Alex nodded. “What about the
conflicting report?”

“That this was carried out, at
least in part, with the help of someone in MI5 or MI6.”

Alex rose, slammed his palm against
the desk. “Who would have authorized this?”

“It’s not like that,” Jon said.

“Then how is it?”

“We’ve got a rogue agent.”

Alex didn’t want to believe that
anyone sworn to protecting Great Britain could be a part of such a nefarious
act. “That’s just as bad. Maybe worse. Any other theories floating around?”

“No.” Jon paused. “Well, one more.”

“What is it?”

“It’s not really a third theory,
more of a blend of the first two.”

“Meaning?”

“Someone from MI5 or MI6 is working
with terrorists.”

“Why?”

“Any multitude of reasons I’d
imagine.”

“Such as?”

Jon held out his hands. “Take a
guess.”

“I don’t have the patience for
guesses. Why that hotel?”

“I’ve got a guy who is checking
records, matching names, and so forth. It’s tedious, he says, but he should
have a yay or nay to us by six this afternoon.”

Alex glanced at his watch. He
wasn’t sure he could wait two hours for the news. “Yay or nay on what?”

“If there was a specific target at
the hotel.”

“How will he know?”

“There’s a limited number of names
that run in these circles, Alex. If one pops up, it’s not a coincidence.”

“What if the hotel was a decoy?”

“You’re thinking of the
restaurant?”

“Yes, that cook, on the telly, the
one with the red beard—”

“I remember him.”

“—he mentioned men in masks with
guns. They came in and shot up the restaurant.”

Jon crossed his arms, rubbed his
jawline. “What if that was the decoy?”

“What if every last bit of it was a
decoy, Jon?”

“Get us to focus all our efforts on
that one area and carry out a bigger attack.”

“That’s what I fear most.”

Alex walked to the bank of windows
on the outer wall. He looked out over Downing Street. Spring was in full bloom
and he’d hardly noticed. Cherry blossoms, maybe an inch deep, covered the
sidewalk. He shook his head at the reporters who never seemed to leave the
front of Number 10.

Reporters,
he thought.
Tabloid
rubbish.

Jon joined him by the windows. He
placed a hand on the Prime Minister’s shoulder. “It’s just a test, Alex.”

“I hope to God you are right. You
know, I always knew this was a possibility. But I never expected it to hit so
close to home.” He pointed toward the plume of smoke that rose into the air and
hovered over the site of the bombing. A surreal reminder of the attack carried
out just a few hours before. “What if there is another attack while we’re
chasing down this possible rogue agent?”

Jon nodded and remained quiet.
After a minute, he said, “We’ve got the best of our intelligence agents looking
at this from every angle, Alex. We’ll get them before they get to us.”

There was something in Jon’s words
that dragged up one of Alex’s deepest fears. He’d be the next target.

Mason waited at his desk until the
last person left the office. The short-walled cubes made espionage at work
difficult even for a trained spy. If someone saw him pulling files from his
desk and then leaving, they might stop and question him. Better to leave
nothing to chance, Mason figured.

He pulled his bottom right drawer
open, gathered a stack of files from his desk, dropped them inside. Before
sliding the drawer closed, he grabbed a green folder. At the top of the folder
the word “Jack” had been written in permanent marker. Mason inspected the
folder. The strands of hair he had taped on the top and bottom of the folder
were intact. While not foolproof, it gave him an indication that no one had
accessed the file. He opened the folder, breaking the hairs in the process. At
first glance everything appeared to be as he left it. He scanned through the
papers contained within the folder. Nothing seemed out of order.

Mason rose and took a step back
from his desk. He dropped the folder into his briefcase. A full day at the
office never left him feeling well. He arched his back, stretched, kicked his
chair away and turned. He had a clear path from his desk to the exit door.
Before he reached it, his boss entered.

“Need a word with you, Mason,”
Cameron Mills said.

Mason nodded and followed Mills.
They stepped inside his boss’s glass-walled corner office. Five floors up, it
had a view of the river and of Legoland, the intelligence community’s nickname
for MI6’s building. From a distance, the green and off-white building looked
like a castle made from the children’s play toys.

Mills sat down, gestured for Mason
to do the same.

Mason settled into his seat and
said, “What’s going on, boss?”

“Any word on Noble?”

Mason avoided looking at his
briefcase. “Nothing yet, sir. I’d hoped he would reach out, but he hasn’t.”

“Do we think he’s connected with
the bombings today?”

“Why would we?”

“He had reservations at that
hotel.”

Mason nodded. He hadn’t revealed
that information to his boss.

“I’m afraid the link ends there,”
Mason said. “Besides, why would he blow up the place he’d been staying?”

“Maybe to fake his own death?”

“Unnecessary, sir. He’s clean as a
whistle now. The only reason he showed up on our radar was because of an old
travel warning we had in place arising from an incident in 2006. In fact, a
brief came through today advising to remove him from our list.”

“A man like him should never be
removed from our lists.”

“I agree, sir. But it is what it
is.”

Mills nodded, coughed. The order
would have come from above him, so he had little recourse.

“Anything else, sir?” Mason said.

“Not for now. Tomorrow I want you
to go to the site of the bombing, then to the hospital to interview witnesses.”

“The hospital?”

“Anyone that saw what happened is
either dead or in a hospital bed, Mason.”

Mason considered this kind of work
to be below him and his skill set. But orders were orders.

“Yes, sir.” Mason rose, grabbed his
briefcase and started toward the chrome-rimmed glass door.

“Mason.”

Mason stopped, turned. “Yes?”

“This is no coincidence.”

“What’s that?”

“The bombing, a billionaire being
murdered, and Jack Noble being in town. We need to find him.” Mills paused,
removed his glasses. He chewed on the frame for a second. “Understand?”

Mason nodded, said nothing. He
stood in the open doorway for a minute, then headed toward the elevator. The
empty elevator whisked him to the ground level floor. He ignored the security
officers positioned there. He placed his gun and holster and briefcase on the
conveyor belt. The items passed through the x-ray machine. Mason retrieved them
and headed for the door.