The Baker Street Translation (12 page)

In the predawn darkness, this was all undoubtedly sufficient for the man's purpose; Laura could see nothing about his face that she would be able to recognize again.

“Show it to me,” he said.

The man's voice was muffled by the scarf. It was a deep voice, but not naturally deep, it seemed to Laura; rather, it was deliberately deep, like that of a radio announcer who was trying too hard. But more than anything else, the voice was just plain whiny. Laura was sure she would recognize that voice if she ever heard it again.

The leather bag full of one million pounds was beneath Laura's feet at the stern of the boat. She bent down and raised the bag up so that the man could see it.

“Put it there,” he said, pointing to the stern of his own boat.

Laura immediately and deliberately dropped it back again into her own boat, keeping it out of his reach.

“Show me Lord Robert Buxton first.” Laura said this in the same quiet tone of voice the kidnapper had used; she made it as much of a command as she could.

The man stared at her, and for a short moment they both just sat there in their respective boats, glaring their respective glares, in silence except for the faint sound of the pond water lapping ever so slightly against the boats.

Then the man turned and flicked a large flashlight one time in the direction of the island.

It was a small island—less than a hundred yards across. But the bushes and trees were densely packed along the shore, and in the dark Laura could see only the general outlines of the foliage.

After a moment, someone flashed a light back in response.

“Well?” said Laura to the man in the boat.

He flashed his own torch once again. And then the shoreline light came on again, briefly. But this time, instead of pointing out, it was held chest-high and pointed upward, illuminating a mans' face, from the chin up, in the way that children would do to frighten each other.

There was tape over the man's mouth, and Laura guessed that his hands were bound and someone else was holding the flashlight on him.

Now the lamp was switched off.

This all took place at some distance, in an instant, and in the dark. From the outlines of his torso, and the general shape of the captive's head—minus the nice, expensive hair—it might very well be Buxton.

Or it might not.

“I need another look,” said Laura.

“No,” said the man in the boat. “That's all you get. Take it or leave it.”

Laura hesitated.

The man in the boat pointed at the leather bag at Laura's feet and gestured for her to transfer it to his boat.

“Throw it in,” he said.

Laura considered it.

She didn't give a damn about the money. Even if it had been hers—well, a million quid could not be hers, but if it had been something like it, relatively speaking—she still would not have given it a second thought at all.

It just seemed to her a poor negotiating tactic.

But Buxton's chief of staff and the security chief had both said to give the kidnappers the money. And what reason would they have for not releasing Buxton once she had done so?

And surely they would not simply kill him. Not in a location in the heart of London, where they had to anticipate that the security team was scattered all around, watching, as in fact it was, and with daylight approaching.

They could not hope to escape. They could only take the money and hope that no one really tried very hard after that to apprehend them.

“Now, please,” said the man.

Laura nodded. She bent down and grabbed the bag with both hands. She hoisted it up onto her lap.

She looked at the man in the boat, who looked expectantly back at her.

Then she grabbed the bag from both bottom corners, raised it up off her lap, got her arms levered underneath it, and threw it from her boat into his.

The bag landed in the man's boat with a loud plop; Laura, adrenaline coursing, was surprised at how much force she'd put into it.

So was the kidnapper. His boat actually tipped back a bit, but he righted it quickly and threw an angry glare at Laura.

She shrugged. “Sorry,” she said. “I've never done this before.”

The man grabbed the bag, opened it, and looked inside.

Then he closed it, looked at Laura, and nodded.

“Now there's just one more thing,” he said.

“Don't you even think about it,” said Laura, not certain at all what he was about to say, but certain that it wouldn't be good.

She looked again at the shore of the island: no sign of Robert, or of the kidnapping accomplice with the flashlight.

“Just one more thing,” repeated the man calmly.

“Give me Lord Buxton,” said Laura.

“You will get Lord Buxton back. You have my word. But the money is only a down payment.”

“I knew it!”

“Relax. We aren't going to ask for the moon, though I wouldn't be surprised if he has some sort of leasehold on it. All we need is for you to do a small task for us. Then your great man will be released.”

Laura glared across at the other boat. If she had brought the pepper spray, she would have used it.

“What sort of small task?”

“We want the letters.”

“What letters?”

The two boats had drifted apart just a bit. The man hooked the gunwale of Laura's boat with the end of an oar and pulled her boat up against his.

He lowered his voice.

“Bring me the Baker Street letters.”

Laura considered that for a moment.

“Can you be a bit more specific?” she said.

“Specifically, bring me a few bits of nonsensical paper and canceled stamps, and I will give you the richest man in the world in return.”

Laura did not like this man. She was not fond of sarcasm.

“I didn't say to rephrase,” replied Laura. “I said to be specific. Many letters are delivered and sent up and down Baker Street every day. Precisely which ones are you referring to?”

“You should not play games with me,” said the man.

“I am damp and cold and beginning to want breakfast. You should not play games with
me,
” said Laura. “If you want me to trade letters for lords, you must, unavoidably, tell me which letters you mean.”

The man hesitated. Laura was afraid for a moment that he was about to let go of the oar and the whole arrangement.

But then he leaned in.

“All of them,” he said. “All the letters delivered to Sherlock Holmes at Baker Street Chambers in the past month. I want every one of them. If I don't get every one of them, complete, then you will not get Lord Buxton back, complete.”

The man jerked his head just slightly back toward the shore, where his accomplice was presumably still standing with Buxton. In the dark, it was difficult to tell.

And now, apparently, Laura was taking too long to respond.

“Can you do this?” said the man quite impatiently. “I understood that you have access. I understood that you can do this.”

Of course I can,
thought Laura, but she wasn't sure she should say it.

“It won't be easy,” she said instead. “I will need some time.”

The man released her boat.

“You have twenty-four hours,” he said.

Then he put the oar against the side of her boat and pushed off.

Laura's boat turned in a half circle; she quickly got it pointed right again, but now his boat was several yards off, and about to vanish in the fog.

Laura looked back toward the shore, where the security team was still in the Range Rover. Then she looked toward the dark little island where she had last seen Robert Buxton.

She began to row toward it.

She knew she wasn't supposed to. But she didn't like it that the demands had changed. She didn't like it that she had been allowed only a distant glimpse of Robert—or the man who presumably was Robert. She didn't like the way this show was being run at all.

Her adrenaline was pumping; she put everything she had into the row, not worrying at all about proper form, drops of water flying down on her on each upswing of the oars.

It felt like forever. But it wasn't. When she felt the bow of her little boat slam into the shore mud, she turned and caught a glimpse of someone running toward the brush on the opposite side of the island.

Laura scrambled out of the boat. Her shoes immediately sank into the soft muck. She abandoned them and began running barefoot on the wet ground.

There was no clear path. She simply had to push on through the branches, dead leaves and twigs crackling uncomfortably under her feet, until she reached the shore mud on the opposite side of the island.

She had made it through. She looked quickly left and right and saw no one.

But then, to her right, in the dark between the island and the opposite Regent's Park shoreline, she heard the sound of an outboard engine.

The kidnappers had another boat.

She heard the motor sputter, then roar; then it whined in acceleration. She couldn't see it; from the sound of it, she presumed it was heading to the far end of the lake. But there was no way to know just where it would put ashore.

Laura stood in the darkness on her side of the shore and could do nothing. The sound of the outboard grew more distant.

Laura shoved her way back through the thicket of trees and trudged toward her own little boat, hoping that even in her haste she had managed to pull it enough onto the shore for it not to have drifted away.

Nothing else had gone right.

Mercifully, it was still there.

She got in and started rowing back toward the shore where she had gotten out of the Range Rover.

This had not gone as planned. But surely, surely, the security team had done what they'd said they would do and would nab everyone before they could leave the park.

It was just barely dawn now; the obscuring dark was beginning to yield to obscuring fog. The park would begin to get populated, especially on the edges, with health-crazed Londoners looking for their thirty minutes of cardiovascular exercise to start the day. Laura continued to row and just hoped the hordes of security operatives presumably watching the perimeter knew what they were doing.

She was getting close to the shore; now she could see Alex and the security chief and all the personnel from the Range Rover standing and waiting for her at the shore.

Somehow, that did not seem like a good sign.

Laura's arms ached as the bow of the boat struck up against the shore.

Alex came down from the road, intending, she presumed, to help her pull the boat up onto dry land, but then he stopped on the edge of the mud, hesitating, looking down at his Italian shoes.

Laura hoisted the boat halfway out of the water herself. Then she got out, and in her bare feet—she had not thought to retrieve her own shoes from the island—tromped up through the several yards of muck.

A passing jogger, and an old man feeding ducks, and a young woman with a baby stroller, all stopped to stare.

On Laura's last step from the muck, the chief of staff gallantly extended his hand to pull her out.

“Thank you,” said Laura, grabbing onto his arm. “Did you catch them? Is Robert safe?”

Laura knew from the apprehensive look on his face that she wasn't going to like the answer.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “We never saw them.”

Laura pulled so hard that the man lost his balance and had to plant his Gucci loafers in the mud to steady himself.

Then she marched on toward Park Road and went right past the Range Rover.

Alex shouted after her: “Where are you going?”

“Home,” she shouted back, in a lie. “And you needn't drive me. I'll take a cab. They're more reliable.”

19

Reggie had not slept well, and now he was awake at a ridiculously early hour in the morning.

He had been having one of those dreams—or sets of dreams, actually, because it was never just one; it was always themes that merged and morphed—where he literally tried to accomplish in his sleep what he had been unable to complete that day while awake.

When he had been much younger, painting houses to supplement his scholarship at university, there had been times he would wake up at night with his arms waving, trying to trim out the eaves on the building he'd been unable to finish during the day, and at the same time slogging desperately through the set of essay questions he'd been assigned for seventeenth-century European history. And the two would combine—in his dream state, it would be necessary for him to finish layering the blue outdoor enamel on the fascia board in order for Huguenots to escape France after the Edict of Fontainebleau.

Last night had been one of those nights. He had kept trying to put the engagement ring in front of Laura, but the old man from Taiwan, his head dripping blood, had been right there in chambers with them, continually trying to force the letters, or translations, or something written on paper—you could never be sure in a dream—into Reggie's line of sight. And Laura's damned orange cat kept jumping in between.

Reggie didn't like these dreams. They never accomplished anything. Except to focus his mind when he woke up. And it was focused now.

He intended to get to chambers early, look again at the letter Mr. Liu had sent to Sherlock Holmes, satisfy himself that there was nothing of importance there, and then phone Laura, or drive to her house if necessary, and put that ring on her finger. No preliminaries, no more elaborate presentation ritual—just get it done.

He reached Baker Street just before 6:00
A.M.
Except for the ever-present vehicular traffic heading toward the interior of the city, the block was actually quiet. No tourists yet in front of the Sherlock Holmes museum, a few doors down. At the corner, the Volunteer Pub would not open for several hours. And even Pret A Manger and the little news agent shop were not quite ready yet. It was that early. Reggie had to skip his morning coffee.