A Gentleman's Game (25 page)

32

London—South Lambeth, the Royal Albert
16 September 1503 GMT

The pub was only
half a mile from Vauxhall Cross, an easy enough walk, though in the fifteen minutes it took Chace to cover the distance the mist turned to more sincere rain, surprisingly cold, considering the time of year. She cut through Vauxhall Park, then south on Meadow Road, and when she made the dogleg off Dorset onto Bolney, she stopped abruptly to light a cigarette, hunching her head against the rain, cupping the flame with her hand, then looking back the way she had come, counting to fifteen.

No one came around the corner in a hurry to catch up.

She blew out smoke, frowning as she moved to the entrance of the pub. Bad sign, she thought. It wasn’t an elaborate flush, to be sure, but still, it would normally have been enough to force Box to tip their hand. That it hadn’t worked meant that Kinney was playing cautious and, worse, that he knew she was on to him.

Once inside and out of the rain, she ran a hand through her hair, looking over the room. It was almost entirely empty, which, for the time being, wasn’t a bad thing. The maid at the bar recognized her and had a lager pulled before Chace even reached her.

“Jacket potato?” she asked.

“Just the lager,” Chace said, paying.

“You’re on your liquid diet again?”

“What was it the man said? ‘Beer is food, Lewis’?”

The maid grinned and banged the register, handed Chace her change. Chace took her glass to the table in the corner, put out her cigarette in the ashtray, and promptly lit another. The door opened, and Lankford came in with Poole, and they each hit the bar. Lankford’s manner was easy with the maid, and before they had their drinks, he’d gotten her laughing, twice, and each time honest, and it occurred to Chace that maybe he was better than she’d given him credit for being.

Poole led to the table, parked opposite her, and stole a cigarette from her pack while Lankford was getting settled. They each took a moment to lower the levels in their glasses.

“Well, I’m fucked, boys,” Chace told them.

Lankford nodded, and Poole said, “That was the rumor at the School.”

“What’d you see?”

“Counted six,” Lankford said. “Two in cars, radios, maybe controllers. Four on foot, even split men and women, and they were so blasted focused on keeping you from spotting them, they forgot about us.”

“Two more on motorbikes,” Poole said. “Those are the ones we did see, Tara. Probably double that working you up right now.”

“Probably,” she agreed, and cleared the smoke from her mouth to make room for more of her lager.

“Want to explain this, then?” asked Poole.

“I can’t. Chris?”

Lankford shook his head. “I got into the office, he told me to park and started scribbling the note. Handed it to me, then said that Nicky and I were to follow, to do what you said, and to lie low otherwise. And that we were on no account to talk to the DC or C or anyone about what was going on.”

“There you go, Nicky.”

“You shag Harry or something?” Poole asked. “Why this sudden attention from Box?”

“Why are you so concerned with my sex life, Nicky?”

“Might be because you have one,” Lankford observed.

“Not for much longer,” Chace said. “All right, finish your beer and then shove off. Back to the Pit, do your thing. Assuming Box doesn’t try to grab me between now and darkness—”

“Not a safe assumption,” Poole observed.

She continued without pause, glaring at him. “—find me at Paddington at twenty-hundred, and be ready to play. That’s where I want to lose them, and I’ll need you both to run interference.”

“There’s going to be hell to pay when Kinney realizes what’s going on,” Lankford said. “He’ll start screaming about SIS operations in London, infringement, all of that.”

“He’ll be screaming about something else, we do it right.” Chace looked at Poole. “I need my go-bag, can you bring it?”

“Easy peasy.”

Chace rolled her eyes, and Poole chuckled. “You want docs? Cash? We’re assuming you’re going to ground here.”

She thought, then shook her head. “No, too risky. I’ll handle that myself if I have to. But I will take whatever you two have in your wallets.”

“Don’t you have a bank card?”

“And let Box find me via ATM? Not on your fucking life, Chris.”

Both men reached for their wallets, dumped several bills onto the table. Chace counted them up quickly, two hundred and eighteen pounds. With her eighty-seven, enough to buy her way around almost any obstacle. She tucked the bills into her pocket, then came out with the note Lankford had brought from Crocker. She handed it back to him.

“Get rid of this.”

“Thought you’d have already done it.”

“No place to ditch it that Box wouldn’t grab it themselves. Make sure it’s destroyed.”

Lankford finished draining his glass, rose, nodding. “Right.”

Poole got to his feet. “Anything else?”

“One thing.”

“Yes?”

“Wish me luck?” she asked.

Poole stared at her for a moment, unsmiling, and the full seriousness of the situation settled on them all then.

“I would, Tara,” he said. “But I don’t think luck’ll do it.”

33

London—Vauxhall Cross, Office of D-Ops
16 September 1849 GMT

“Where’s Chace?”
Weldon demanded.

“She’s not in the Pit?” Crocker said.

“You damn well know she’s not in the Pit. Where is she, Paul?”

Crocker scratched at his jaw, finding a spot of stubble he’d missed with his morning razor. “I really have no idea, sir. Perhaps you could inquire of David Kinney? I’m sure he knows.”

Weldon’s frustration ran through his neck, turning it crimson.

“It is after six, sir,” Crocker added. “She may have headed home.”

“Wardens clocked her out at half-past two. She never came back.”

Crocker nodded thoughtfully. “She did say something to me about visiting her mother.”

“Her mother lives in Geneva. Do you expect me to believe you allowed her to leave the country without registering the departure? That you’ve sent Chace on vacation without the proper authorizations?”

“I long ago abandoned hope of guessing what you might or might not believe, sir.”

Weldon’s hands opened and closed several times, and then he pivoted and slammed the door to the inner office. The gesture was uncharacteristically violent, and Crocker started slightly with surprise.

When Weldon turned back, his expression had drained of any readable emotion, including fury. His shoulders slumped, and his head lowered, and Crocker felt he was looking at a defeated man. Weldon wasn’t a bad liar, but he wasn’t the expert that Crocker himself was or, for that matter, that most of the Ops Directorate were. His words were good, but his body language had the tendency to give him away. He couldn’t control it, at least not before it could be read.

This was not an act.

Weldon slowly took the chair facing the desk.

“You had lunch with Cheng,” Weldon said. It wasn’t accusatory.

“At the Hole.”

“What did she tell you?”

Crocker didn’t answer.

Weldon shook his head ever so slightly, as if he’d expected as much. “There’s a directive from Downing Street coming, Paul. Probably arrived, though I haven’t seen it.”

“Directives are supposed to come down from C to you before distribution for action.”

“I’m included in distribution after the fact,” Weldon said. “This is coming from C to you.”

“And this directive says what?”

“That Tara Chace is to surrender herself to David Kinney and the Security Services. Immediately.”

“What’s she done?”

Weldon just looked at him, clearly too tired and too defeated to play along.

“You’ve been fighting it,” Crocker said, realizing.

“The last two days, since it was first proposed.” Weldon looked away, to the sole decoration on the walls, the Chinese dragon print that Crocker kept framed behind and to the left of his desk. “Obviously to no effect.”

“Why didn’t you say something to me last night?”

“Because it wasn’t your place, or mine! We serve, Paul, that’s what we do, and we do not have the luxury of picking and choosing which directives to pursue. Every effort, every argument, was put forth on Chace’s behalf. But the decision has now been made, and it is our obligation to follow our Government’s orders.”

“At the cost of Chace’s life?”

“Regrettably, yes,” Weldon said. “She’s one person. For what’s at stake, that’s a reasonable sacrifice.”

“I disagree, sir.”

“I know you do. But your agreement, your disagreement, your cheerful acceptance, it’s all irrelevant now. You will receive the directive, and you will implement it, or it will cost you your job.”

Crocker stared at Weldon, saw in his expression that it wasn’t a threat. Just another statement of fact.

“I don’t know where she is, sir,” Crocker said.

“But she’s running.”

“Perhaps.”

“Did you speak to her?”

Crocker shook his head.

“I’d like to hear you say as much.”

“The last time I spoke with Minder One was this morning,” Crocker replied. “She was in the Pit until two-thirty, then left the building. I do not know where she went, nor do I know why.”

Weldon frowned, measuring Crocker’s words, probing their truth. “What did she say to you this morning?”

“That she was being targeted. That she suspected Box.”

“That was all?”

“That was all.”

“Did you confirm it?”

Crocker scowled. “Of course I didn’t.”

“Then why did she bring it to you?”

“To let me know she knew.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“She was confirming it was Box.”

“But you said you didn’t confirm it!”

“That’s correct. Chace knows that I’m to be informed if any of the Minders are under security check. She also knows I can’t confirm it if they are. And since I didn’t leap to my feet and start screaming that she was the target of a hostile party, she reasonably concluded that the check was in-house and routine, performed by Box.”

“Routine, you say?”

“Elaborate but, yes, routine.”

Weldon’s thick fingers played absently with the tail of his tie. “She wouldn’t believe that, would she? Not after being vetted so recently?”

“It’s possible. She’s my Head of Section, I’m inclined to grant her a modicum of sense.”

“So she’s running.”

“I really can’t say. I haven’t heard from her.”

“You’re her D-Ops, no one in the world knows her better.”

Wrong,
Crocker thought.
One man knows her better.

“I can’t say, sir.”

Weldon expelled a breath, frowning, obviously and deeply troubled. He smoothed his necktie, got to his feet. “When the directive arrives, you will follow it.”

Crocker allowed himself the glare, both because he wanted to and because it was what Weldon expected of him.

“She’s to be detained for Box,” Weldon continued.

“She’ll resist.”

“Then steps will have to be taken to subdue her.”

“You’re authorizing violence against one of our own officers?”

“It won’t be us who initiates violence, Paul, if that’s what it comes to. If that’s what it comes to, she’ll be bringing it on herself.”

“You’ll destroy this Service, you realize that?” Crocker said, and all the anger he had been fighting against began erupting, and he heard his voice gaining volume and decided he didn’t care. “We sell her like this, we’ll never come back from it, we’ll never regain what we lose. Sacrificing an agent in the field, on a mission, for a goal, that’s one thing, that’s something they all acknowledge, something they come to terms with as part of the job. But you bastards sell her to the enemy, condemn her to humiliation and death, all for the sake of a political expediency that’s only required because she did exactly what you asked of her!”

“The Saudis, as I have said again and again to you, are
not
our enemies,” Weldon retorted.

“How can you say that? You read the same packs from D-Int that I do! The Saudis harbor, supply, and provide comfort to our enemies, and
that
makes them
our
enemies! For Christ’s sake, the camp in question is in the bloody Wadi-as-Sirhan, not in fucking Chipping Norton!”

Weldon became absolutely still, his look as jagged as broken glass. Raised voices approached the line but didn’t necessarily cross it. Admitting that he knew the whys and the wherefores after denying them was perhaps insulting but expected. It was Crocker’s profanity; that was another matter entirely.

“How can I say it?” Weldon repeated tightly. “Because it’s what Downing Street says, Paul. It’s what C says. And it’s what you’re going to say as well.”

Crocker closed his mouth, breathing through his nose, feeling his heart pounding about in his chest as if it had been kicked free. Too much, he knew that, he’d pushed it too far, but the anger was righteous to him, and he didn’t want to let it go.

He tried again, calmer. “You’ll destroy the trust that exists in this building, in this service. You’ll destroy the Special Section. None of them will ever trust any of us—me, you, C—again. It will kill us.”

“Don’t be dramatic. We will survive. We have survived worse, much worse.”

“Betrayal from outside isn’t the same as betrayal from within. This won’t be seen as a Philby.”

“No, it will be seen as a rogue SIS officer being taken in by Box.”

“She’s not rogue.”

“If she doesn’t report tomorrow morning, she damn well will be.” Weldon stabbed a finger at Crocker. “If she isn’t in the Pit by oh–nine hundred, you’re to flash-signal all stations that Minder One is AWOL. One way or another, Paul, Chace is coming in, and she’s coming in to Box.”

34

London—Bayswater, Paddington Station
16 September 1959 GMT

Poole and Lankford
had been wrong. There weren’t eight of them following her, there were at least sixteen, and those were only the ones she’d been able to make in the hours since leaving the Royal Albert pub. They cycled quickly as well, and she was having a damned time keeping up with the changes and long since had passed the point of being able to track them all.

They dogged her in cars and on motorbikes where they could, alone or in teams of two or three on foot where they couldn’t.

She hadn’t made it easy on them, but she’d yet to make it hard, so their cautiousness bothered her, because she felt it was unwarranted. Aside from the dogleg she’d made before entering the pub, she hadn’t tried any other moves to flush or shake them. She’d remained on foot the entire time, walking back toward Vauxhall Cross upon departing the Royal Albert, passing Century House along the way, the old home of SIS, then turning east to follow the Albert Embankment along the Thames, taking her time, growing steadily colder and wetter in the rain.

She’d crossed Lambeth Bridge, turned north on Millbank, passing the Houses of Parliament, deep into the heart of government, which Chace was sure had confused the hell out of them. She’d had minor amusement scaring them as she mixed through a group of tourists at Westminster Abbey, certain that her multiple shadows were all scurrying, waiting for her to jump.

But she played it straight, turned north again, now in the direction of Whitehall with the FCO, the Treasury, the MOD, and then turned left again at the north side of Parliament Square, making toward St. James’s Park. There was a small pub off Birdcage Walk, and she ducked inside to dry off and have a quick dinner, a jacket potato washed down with two pints of lager. The day’s work had ended, and the pub was at capacity and spilling out onto the street when she left, the drinkers oblivious to the dreary weather, far more concerned with the task of washing away the remains of their day.

She cut north through St. James’s into Green Park, but veered farther west, realizing that if she continued on her original path she might force their hand; north would take her to Grosvenor Square, the American Embassy, and if they thought she was reaching out to the Americans, they would have to move.

Which made her wonder again why they hadn’t already. What were they waiting for? Sixteen plus people all acting as her shadows, they had to be planning a grab. But something was staying their hand, and there was simply no way for her to discern it. She didn’t even know why she was doing what she was doing in the first place now, except that Crocker had ordered as much of her, and really, that was all it took.

Put your faith in yourself, Tom liked to say. And when that fails, put it in D-Ops.

She still had faith in herself.

But it was a comfort in the rain and in the falling darkness to have some of it in Paul Crocker, too.

•

Chace entered Paddington Station at a minute to eight, passing Poole just inside the western doors, not stopping and not looking at him. She wished she had a radio, an earpiece, so she could hear the babble of traffic now flowing over the Box surveillance net. They’d be switching on, full alert, certain that she was about to rabbit. They’d be arguing as to whether to collapse on her or let her run awhile longer, to see which way she was going to jump—or even if she was going to jump at all.

She was banking on them taking the wait-and-see approach. It had been their guiding principle thus far, and unless she forced their hand, she was relatively certain it would last at least a little longer. But it wouldn’t change the fact that she was now making them very nervous, and as she moved farther into the station, toward the café and kiosks clustered by the ticket booths, she began to see the evidence to prove it, glimpses of her various shadows moving to different posts, trying to cover all of her possible escapes.

Chace kept herself from smiling.

Their numbers had made it near-impossible to lose them on the street, to ditch them from block to block, in the open. There were just too many of them, and each could respond quickly, ahead of her or behind her, she wouldn’t be able to shake them.

But in Paddington Station she could use their numbers against them, stretching out their coverage in an attempt to watch her every possible exit. And Paddington gave them too many choices; for every train that was preparing to depart, a man had to be positioned on the platform, just in case she sprinted to board at the last moment; each of the station exits had to be covered, inside and out; the tube entrances had to be covered, the escalators, and the entrance to The Lawn, the sprawling shopping addition beyond the glass walls; even the ticket booths, in the hopes that, should she move to purchase a fare, they would be able to discern her destination.

It would make them nervous, and it would put their eyes on her as they tried to understand what she was thinking, what she was planning. As they tried to guess what she was going to do.

Chace loved it, she admitted it to herself. This was her pleasure, more than booze or sex or smokes, the moments like this, when she knew the stakes and felt the adrenaline. When she saw the test coming, and measured the chances of success and failure, and rolled the dice regardless.

They were all waiting for her, waiting to see what she was going to do.

What she did was this:

Stopping halfway to the block of shops that stood between the main platforms and the ticket booths, Chace removed her jacket and folded it beneath her arm, for no other reason than to give them something to talk about. Was she getting ready to rabbit? Was she armed?

She moved to the kiosk at her right, adorned with stuffed bears in red hats and powder-blue coats, all clutching their tattered valises in one paw, tagged with their earnest request to be looked after. The man working the stand was Indian, and he smiled at her but let her browse without comment, perhaps seeing that she wasn’t a tourist.

Chace looked at the bears, examining one of the larger ones, turning it in her hands, as if considering its relative merits.

“How much?” she asked.

The vendor looked surprised. “Twenty pounds.”

“Robbery,” Chace told him, smiling, and she paid him with some of the bills from her wallet, then accepted an opaque plastic bag to carry her purchase.

She ducked into the WHSmith’s and bought copies of
The Guardian, The Telegraph,
and
The Mirror.
She also bought a Lion bar and then examined the display of disposable lighters at the counter. There were seventeen of them, molded plastic, cheap things.

She bought all of them, imagining the consternation on the net.

With all the purchases in the bag with her bear, she worked her way around one of the information points, giving the appearance of heading toward the platforms before curving back and making for the glass doors that marked the entrance to the Yo Sushi eatery. At another newsagent’s, she stopped and bought all of his disposable lighters, bringing her total to thirty-one. She also purchased a new pack of Silk Cut, and that went into her jacket pocket rather than the bag.

The eatery was mostly empty, and Chace took a seat, draping her jacket over the back of a chair and setting her bag on the table, turning to look out through the wall of glass back into the station. She looked around, making no bones about it. There was no one in her immediate vicinity. She nodded to herself and rested the bag on its side, removing the bear and the newspapers, setting them beside it. Then she took out the Lion bar and ate it.

Next, she fashioned a paper hat for the bear and put it on his head. It was too big to fit properly, falling over his felt hat, but she did it anyway, just to annoy them. They’d see it and swear and call her unkind things, convinced she was mocking them. As that was precisely what she was doing, she didn’t mind in the least.

Taking
The Guardian,
she opened the paper and draped it over the bag, still on its side, to create a makeshift privacy screen. Then she put her hands into the bag and began playing with the lighters, doing nothing more than sliding them back and forth, mounding them into an unstable pile, spreading them out and doing the same thing again. Most of the time, she looked in the bag at her hands, as if watching her work, then looked up and around, as if concerned she was being watched. She saw a woman she was certain she’d seen on her earlier walk hovering outside the doors, watching as she moved to enter, then thought better of it and fell back.

Good,
Chace thought.

If they had been switched on before, they were boiling now, certain she was planning something big, and most likely with flames. Some of them would be agitating to move, but Kinney—if it was Kinney running this show—would be snarling at them to stand down, to stay at their positions. He was probably with the station security, watching it on the surveillance monitors, having commandeered the post for the time being, trying to keep his people in line from there. And much as Box might want to move on her, they hadn’t yet, which meant they were waiting for something. And if all Chace did was annoy them, well, that wasn’t enough reason to grab her. After all, she wasn’t running; she was sitting at a table, playing with a stuffed bear and some lighters. And even the lighters wouldn’t overly concern them. Sure, there were thirty-one of them, but that much lighter fluid wouldn’t create an incendiary of merit. They’d have concluded she was creating some kind of distraction, and so thinking, they would then plan to ignore it.

They’d wait until they were sure she was running. That’s when they’d move.

But they couldn’t risk ignoring her entirely, and that was part of her plan, too.

Chace finished fiddling with the lighters, took the copy of
The Telegraph,
and crumpled several of its pages, stuffing it into the bag. Then she stuffed the bear, hat and all, inside after it. She got to her feet, slipped back into her jacket, then bent and stuck her hand into the bag a final time, as if reaching around. She counted to five, then withdrew her hand and started resolutely toward the doors back out to the station, taking her time, passing the woman still lingering at the wall without a glance. Chace paused at the newsagent’s again, glancing back in time to see the action in the eatery, six of them all descending on her table, anxious to extinguish the conflagration they were certain was about to erupt.

She turned toward the platforms, making a purposeful beeline toward the second from the left, to where the London-Heathrow Express was waiting, accelerating, almost jogging now. A man emerged from the train, from the doors nearest to her. He was an inch or so shorter than she, broad at the neck and shoulders, and she thought she recognized him from earlier that day, but it could have been from the night before, or from a pub a year ago, or never at all.

When he emerged and turned toward her, she saw his earpiece, almost flesh-colored, and he was already raising a hand to stop her.

“All right, Miss Chace,” he said.

There might have been more he had to say, but she never gave him the chance. Without breaking stride, almost plowing into him, she smiled and raised her right hand as if in greeting before driving it down, index and middle fingers jabbing into the notch beneath his Adam’s apple. She felt the soft skin crush into the thickness of his collarbone, and he gasped, crumpled, already choking, while she put her left hand on his shoulder to guide him down to his knees.

He gagged, pitched forward, and she was past him now, and only then did she pivot left, sprinting for the edge of the platform. She leaped, landing between rails, nearly twisting her ankle on the ties, caught the opposite edge, pulled herself up on the next platform, then repeated it all again until she had vaulted onto the last one and righted herself. She saw the exit forty feet away, and Nicky Poole was there, standing over two men from Box. One of them was flat on his stomach; the other was on hands and knees, vomiting.

“Rabbit!” someone was shouting, and in the noise and echo of the station, the word seemed even more absurd. “Rabbit, she’s gone
rabbit
!”

Chace ran, flying up the steps, passing Poole again, touching his hand as he held it out to her, taking the radio and earpiece he was holding. She burst through the doors, stuffing them into her pocket, felt the wet air slap her skin. She turned, looking for Lankford, saw another of the boys from Box coming at her, wincing at the lone headlight shining down on her. The man from Box turned, hearing the bike, trying to step out of the way, and Lankford clubbed him alongside the head with the helmet in his hand plus twenty miles per hour, sending him sprawling, before lobbing the helmet her way.

She caught it, swung onto the back of the bike as it pulled up, noting that they’d remembered her go-bag, trapped against the back of the seat with elastic netting. Chace had to sit half on it to fit, wrapping one arm around Lankford’s waist while jamming the helmet down on her head with the other, and he sped them away so quickly, it was as if he hadn’t stopped at all. The bike jolted, hopping down the curb, and the rear tire slid as Lankford drove the wrong way through traffic, slicing between cabs and cars, speeding them away from the station.

Over the engine and the traffic, Chace heard herself, muffled in the helmet, laughing with joy.