Rules of Vengeance (34 page)

“Russell stopped at Sloane Square after visiting his parents’ home the night he was murdered,” said Kate.

“So he did.” Graves rose and circled the desk, picking up his car keys and dropping them into his pocket. “The Windsor Club. Peers of the realm, bluebloods, that kind of thing. Like I said, stupid of me.”

“Why stupid?” asked Kate, rising and accompanying him out of the office.

“Isn’t it obvious? Russell met someone at the club who clued him in to what ‘Victoria Bear’ meant.” Graves stopped at the door. Kate was standing barely a foot away. He noticed that she had a few freckles across the bridge of her nose and that her hair was naturally blond. Nice eyes, too. Something kind lurking behind all that steel.

“Good luck in Italy,” he said. “Find him. Find Ransom.”

And without a backward glance, he hurried down the corridor.

   Alone. That was the problem, Graves decided as he drove through the streets of Westminster. Too much time on the job and too little time for himself. He was forty years old, married once, for all of two years. She’d kicked him out after he’d returned from a nine-month tour in Iraq during the first dust-up, in ’91, or rather, she’d kicked out his suitcases, his football trophies, and his cockatiel, Jack. He had a scar and a medal to show for his efforts, but she wanted more. She wanted
him
.

Back then it had been the Parachute Regiment, with a stint at the SAS, the Special Air Service. Today it was Five. Both demanded the lion’s share of a man’s time, and he gave it willingly. Eagerly even. He didn’t know any other way. He’d thought about ditching it all. There were plenty of offers in private security these days. Big-money jobs hobnobbing with corporate bigwigs, helping this insurance company guard against fraud or that bank choose the most state-of-the-art alarm. But that’s all he’d done: think about them. In the end, he didn’t give a tinker’s cuss about money. He made enough to see to his needs and to buy the occasional toy. It was about more than that, wasn’t it? It was about something bigger. Christ, if he knew the word for it. It was about whatever it was that you felt when you got them before they got you.

He caught his eyes in the mirror and scowled.
Forget it
, he chastised himself.
Don’t get all grandiose on me. A regular Edmund Burke. Just concentrate on your job. Find out what Emma Ransom was up to and do it fast
.

He turned the corner into Sloane Square and spotted his destination. Still, he was haunted by his sudden melancholy. He didn’t expect anyone to understand.

Anyone except Kate.

   An inconspicuous brass plate, its engraved letters worn to near obscurity, was all that noted the establishment at No. 16 Sloane Square. Graves pressed the Windsor Club’s buzzer. A female voice answered, and he gave his name and occupation. “It’s an emergency,” he added. “Open up.”

A buzzer sounded and he pushed open the door. The foyer was wood all around, light courtesy of a chandelier that had seen service with Nelson. The floor was scuffed and in need of polishing. Shabby chic for those too rich to be bothered.

“Colonel Graves, I’m James Tweeden, the club manager. How can we be of service?” He was tall but stocky, conservatively dressed in a navy suit and tie. His handshake was iron. Former military, guessed Graves, as Tweeden showed him into a deserted lounge.

“Always keep long hours?” Graves asked, unbuttoning his jacket and sitting down.

“Nothing fixed, really. We open at eleven in the morning. Keep the staff around as long as needed.”

A waiter materialized and Tweeden waved him off before Graves could ask for tea.

“I’m here about Robert Russell. He was here two nights ago. I’d like to know whom he met.”

“We don’t discuss our members’ activities,” said Tweeden. “That’s why the establishment is a ‘private’ club.”

“What about your
ex-members?
Russell’s dead.”

“Same difference. It’s the Russell family we’re concerned about.”

“All well and good. Under normal circumstances, I’d leave it at that, but something’s come up. We’ve got pictures of his car parked just outside.”

“Does this have something to do with his murder?”

“More than that, actually.” Graves cocked his head and leaned in, whispering confidentially. “Look, Mr. Tweeden, you may keep late hours, but I don’t. If I’m coming here at half-past one, it’s because something serious is up. A question of national security. If you’d like, you can phone the director general.” Graves held out his phone.

“I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“Who’d you serve with?” asked Graves.

“Grenadiers.”

“Parachute Regiment, myself,” volunteered Graves.

“Wankers.”

“Look who’s talking. Got to be a fairy to wear those bearskin caps.”

The men shared a laugh. Tweeden motioned Graves closer. “Look, Colonel. This billet’s a sweet bit of work. Remuneration’s competitive. Members are a nice lot. Russell’s father, the duke, saw my boy into Eton. The only things they ask of you are loyalty and discretion. When a member passes through these doors, he doesn’t want the world following him.”

Graves said that he understood. “This is between you and me. You have my word that it won’t come back to bite you in the arse.”

“All right, then,” said Tweeden. “Guess a little chin wag won’t hurt. But between us and us alone. Lord Russell was here. He arrived at midnight. I greeted him. He wanted a private room. He had a guest coming and he wanted to use the back entry…” A footstep sounded in the doorway behind them. Tweeden shot from his chair. Graves glanced over his shoulder and caught sight of a longish, bony face familiar to every Briton from the age of two up. One of a dozen or so men entitled to use the title HRH, His Royal Highness. The man’s eyes looked Graves up and down, none the happier because of it. A second later he was gone.

The effect on Tweeden was immediate. “You’ll have to leave now, Colonel,” the club manager said icily. “I can’t help you any further.”

Graves rose. “Who was it?” he whispered. “Who did Russell meet with? Give me a name.”

“Foreigner,” said Tweeden. “Name you see on the football pages.” Then, in a louder voice, for public consumption, “It was a pleasure, sir. My assistant will see you to the door.”

“Come on,” said Graves, taking hold of Tweeden’s elbow. “One name. You can do that much.”

Tweeden yanked his sleeve free. “Good evening, Colonel.”

   Graves dropped into the front seat of his Rover and slammed the door. “Damn it all,” he muttered under his breath. He’d been a second away from getting the name, and then who of all people should show up? If he weren’t a rationalist, Graves would think that the gods had something against him. He considered running home and packing a bag to join Kate. Her plane was set to leave at five. He might just have time to get an hour or two of sleep.

He felt his phone vibrate and saw that he had received an incoming message from the AVS, Automobile Visual Surveillance. He crossed his fingers. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, Lord…”

He downloaded the message from his in-box into the car’s command center. It was nothing James Bond-like, just a scratched-up color monitor like any other police car had these days. One after another, pictures taken from surveillance cameras in a four-block perimeter of Sloane Square appeared on the screen. He scrolled through them until he caught sight of Russell’s Aston Martin DB12 parked in the same spot he now occupied.

Graves scrolled through the next few photos more slowly. A time stamp on the bottom corner indicated a lapse of two minutes between each picture. It would be sheer luck if he found anything. A Lamborghini passed by, then a BMW, a Mercedes, and an unmissable Rolls-Royce Phantom. He wondered if anyone in London drove a car costing less than a hundred thousand quid anymore.

The source of the pictures switched to the camera at the rear of the club. Graves sat up, remembering that Tweeden had vouchsafed that Russell’s guest had entered via the back door. He scrolled through thirty or forty images before stopping abruptly.

It was the Rolls-Royce again: a black Phantom, the flagship of the brand. It had pulled up opposite the club’s back entrance. Its passenger door was open, but no figure was visible. Tinted windows prevented him from seeing inside the vehicle.

Graves magnified the photo. The license was a vanity plate bearing the number ARSNL 1. Every soccer fan in London knew whom the car belonged to. He recalled the stack of sports magazines about the Arsenal Football Club he’d discovered in Robert Russell’s flat. One more mystery explained.

He called in the plates to AVS, requesting all pertinent registration information. A name, phone number, and address were waiting when he arrived at Thames House nine minutes later. Not an HRH, exactly, but hardly a commoner either, at least not in the general sense of the word. Men and women whose personal fortunes exceeded a billion pounds constituted their own aristocracy, whether they were English or not.

Justice waits for no man
, thought Graves as he picked up the phone and dialed the home number listed on the automobile’s registration. He wondered how a billionaire felt about being roused at two in the morning. An angry voice picked up on the seventh ring.

“Da?”
demanded the man nicknamed the Great White.

Graves had his answer. He didn’t like it much at all. They weren’t very different from us, after all.

   Ghosts in the gathering light, the figures floated across the docks, gathering nets, hauling tackle, and coiling ropes as they fitted their craft for sea. It was not yet 5 a.m. and the port of Civitavecchia was wide awake.
The docks never sleep
, thought Jonathan as he trudged along the quai. He was tired and hungry and his pants were wet from sleeping on the grass in a field outside of town. To the north, intermittently visible through the patchy morning fog, lay moored the massive oceangoing ferries waiting to board at first light and deliver their passengers to ports in Corsica, France, and Spain. To the south, an armada of fishing boats bobbed inside the jetty, readying for another day’s labor.

Jonathan bought a bag of warm roasted chestnuts and found a place to sit, anonymous among the passing seamen. The port looked neither familiar nor strange. Eight years had passed since he’d visited. It had been February, not July, the streets cold and empty, the town melancholy. Hardly a place begging to be visited.

Yet Emma had insisted they come.

“No one stays in Rome,” she’d said. “It’s much too expensive. Civitavecchia is the real thing. You practically feel as if you’ll run into Nero around every corner.”

He knew now that her reasons were excuses. She hadn’t come to escape the high prices or the tourists. In February, there weren’t any. She’d come for the same reason that had brought her here three months earlier.

She’d come because she had to see someone. And he had a suspicion that that someone’s name had the initials S.S.

He crunched on a chestnut, dredging up memories of their visit. Eight years was a long time, and he’d been too preoccupied with the last-minute change in posting that had cut short their honeymoon to play the eager tourist. He glanced over his shoulder at the cafés and coffee bars that lined the seafront. All were dark, awnings retracted, chairs stacked next to the door and chained to prevent theft.

And then he saw it. Large, colorful block letters unchanged since that day in February so long ago. He read the words, and it came back to him in a torrent. The quicksilver feelings of confusion, apprehension, and anger.

The sign read, “Hotel Rondo.”

How was it that he had forgotten?

   Emma threw her camera onto the table
and collapsed on the bed. “So what do you think? Wasn’t I right to suggest we come?”

It was four in the afternoon. Jonathan was drenched from an afternoon squall that had come in from the sea, taking them by surprise. They had made a tour of the ancient port city of Civitavecchia that would have exhausted even the most ardent sightseers
.

“I think I’ve seen enough Doric columns to last me until I’m forty.”

Emma punched him on the arm. “Be happy I only insisted on visiting the most important sites. Three hours isn’t so much.”

“Three hours? I thought it was three days.” Jonathan watched as Emma peeled off her wet togs. First the jacket, then her blouse, the pants and socks. She turned, clad only in her underwear, which were sensible women’s Jockeys. But on Emma, even a paper bag looked sexy
.

“What are you looking at?”

“You.”

“Why?”

“Because I think I deserve a reward. You know, for actually paying attention when you read all that stuff from the guidebooks.”

“Do you, now?”

“I do indeed. Something that will make me forget that we could have been admiring the Sistine Chapel instead of all those ancient craphouses.”

“You just like the sight of all those naked women.”

“Michelangelo’s eye for beauty was almost as good as mine.”

“Really?” Emma gave him a look as if to say he was too arrogant by half. “Well, then, I think I can do something about that,” she said, matching his tone and upping him one. “And I can give you your tour of the city at the same time.”

“Interesting. I’m curious.”

“Take a seat on the bed. And not too close. No touching the docent.”

Jonathan jumped onto the bed and arranged the pillows behind his back as Emma disappeared into the bathroom. When she returned three minutes later, she had let her hair down, and the damp tresses fell onto her bare shoulders. A towel covered her chest, and she held one hand hidden behind her back. “Close your eyes,” she said
.

Jonathan complied
.

“All right. Open them.”

Jonathan opened his eyes. Emma stood at the foot of the bed, naked. One hand cover her pubis. The other held a polished red apple and was extended toward him. She was Eve from the Sistine Chapel
.