The Baker Street Translation (20 page)

“No, not necessary. And Hendricks?”

“Sir?”

“It's almost seven
A.M.
What I said earlier about challenging folks arriving after hours?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You can stop doing that now. But do let me know if Rafferty returns, will you?”

“As you wish, sir.”

Nigel hung up the phone.

“I'll just sneak upstairs and get the letters while Rafferty is out,” he said to Laura, “and then I'll be right back.”

“I'll sneak with you,” said Laura, starting to get up, though just a bit wearily.

“No, sneaking is properly a one-person operation,” said Nigel. “But if I'm not back in ten minutes with a boxful of letters, you can lead the search party.”

“Fair enough,” said Laura. “Anyway, I'm famished. Do you suppose you left any of those chocolate Smarties in the top drawer?”

“I might have done,” said Nigel “They'd be several months old by now.”

“Perfectly fine,” said Laura.

She opened the top drawer and saw a letter opener, a blank scrap of notepaper, a pencil nub—and one last package of chocolate Smarties.

“Ah,” she said. “All the essentials.”

Nigel left Laura in the little office and took the lift to the top level.

The floor was dead quiet when Nigel got out, as he had hoped.

There were no overhead lights on. Daylight had begun to seep in through blinds on the street windows, and that was enough to show that the broad expanse of polished wood floor was still empty; there was no one to see Nigel about to break and enter, if indeed he would need to do that.

Nigel looked to his left to verify that Rafferty's little office was still closed and dark.

It was.

Nigel turned to his right and walked quickly to the storage room at the far end.

Locked. As expected.

He'd brought a couple of large paper clips along just in case, but he was hoping not to need them. He tried his first hunch—he took out the same key he had been given for the filing cabinet in his office. He tried it in the door.

It turned.

Nigel opened the door, stepped just inside, and instinctively started to reach for a light switch—and then he changed his mind. This was a very minor transgression he was committing, just barely breaking a rule—or what Rafferty had said was a rule—and it was an unreasonable rule at that. Still, the deep shadows felt better at the moment than a bright light.

He went to the back of the narrow storage room, to the cabinet that should have all the more recent letters.

He opened the top drawer and saw one olive green hanging folder, enclosing perhaps a score of letters and their original envelopes. He checked the folder label—yes, these were the right dates.

He tried to peek inside at one of the letters immediately, but the room was too dark. Now he wished he had turned on the lamp.

No matter. He removed the entire folder and its contents; then he bent down to check the lower drawers in the same cabinet to make sure he wasn't missing something. He wasn't. They were all empty. He had in his hands a folder of the only set of letters for the past month. He declared a minor victory for himself, and stood.

Or almost did.

Something solid struck him on his right temple.

He slumped involuntarily to his knees.

Now, in the narrow room, there was someone trying to force his way between Nigel and the file cabinet; Nigel instinctively tightened his grip on the folder of letters and got enough strength in his legs to push himself up and back, so that now he was standing again, flat against the wall opposite the cabinets.

His assailant—a couple of inches taller and at least sixty pounds heavier than Nigel—shoved with thick arms, pinning Nigel by his collar against that wall.

“I want the letter,” said the man.

The voice was obviously American, so cliché American that it almost sounded fake. Nigel had heard an accent very much like this a couple of years ago when he attended an unfortunate West End production of
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

“Can you be more specific?” gasped Nigel.

Apparently not. The man just muttered—or growled—something in a low tone in response, and he let loose with one arm to grab for the folder in Nigel's hand.

Nigel knew just one self-defense move, from an extension class during a boring summer years ago; it was only applicable when an overconfident assailant made the mistake of grabbing you by the collar—exactly as the American had just done—and with just one arm.

Nigel rotated his own left arm sharply from the elbow, breaking the grip of the assailant's right hand; at the same instant, he let go of the letter folder and thrust his right hand, fingers extended, into the man's throat.

To Nigel's amazement, it worked. At least for a moment. The man gasped and staggered back. Nigel reached down to the floor, grabbed the folder of letters again, and ran.

Out of the storage room and onto the shining, just slightly slick floor. Nigel ran for the far end, hoping there would be emergency stairs. Surely the place was up to code, but they weren't at this end, so they had to be at the other.

As he passed the lift, Nigel saw from the lights that it was in motion. Someone was on the way up. But Nigel knew from the loud footsteps behind him that he couldn't wait. He ran on to the far end, and there in the corner, just past Rafferty's office—which was open now, Nigel realized; what an idiot he had been not to check more closely—was the door to the stairs, thank God.

Nigel opened that door. He managed to take one step in before getting yanked rudely back and thrown on his arse onto the floor, with such force that he slid up against the wall of Rafferty's office.

The American stomped one heavy foot onto Nigel's right arm, pinning it to the floor, and then he began to reach down for the folder.

That was a mistake. The man had not paid attention at all to what was happening at the lift.

Suddenly, he cursed in pain, and his hand dropped the folder and went to the back of his neck instead. He twisted around, and then received another jolt.

Hendricks, standing just a bit unsteadily at the other side of Nigel's assailant, pressed forward with his Taser, his thin white hair in disarray and his face showing absolutely no fear and only a slight uncertainty in what he was doing.

Nigel, still on the floor, kicked the American's legs out from underneath him, and the man fell.

Nigel scrambled to his feet. He reached to take the Taser from Hendricks, who was having some difficulty bending his knees enough to get down and keep the weapon on the American.

“I can do it, sir!” said Hendricks, not giving up his weapon. With Nigel's assistance, he pressed forward again.

“Enough!” cried the man on the floor. “God Almighty, stop!

29

Laura was making quick work of the stairs, despite her lack of sleep; one always had to stay in shape for the occasional half-naked tabloid photo ambush, and these stairs were nothing compared to her frequent sprints up the Covent Garden tube station.

Moments earlier, Mr. Hendricks had rung her on Nigel's phone. “Nigel asked me to shout out if Mr. Rafferty returns,” he'd said, “but not for anyone else.”

“Yes. And has Mr. Rafferty returned?”

“No, not that I'm aware.”

“Oh.”

“But there is an American on his way up. It's just my opinion, of course, but I regard him as much scarier than Mr. Rafferty. Rather large fellow.”

“With a Texas accent?”

“I'm not sure I would know, miss.”

“Do you remember the American show
Dallas
? On the telly?”

“Ah. Quite well. That's exactly how he sounded to me.”

There were other possibilities, of course. But this sounded to Laura like the nasty cousin Stillman had warned them about.

“Hendricks, I'm sorry to ask this, but—are you armed?”

“Certainly. Fifty thousand volts, and I completed a full two-hour training course. Shall I bring it with me?”

“Bring what you can.”

Laura hadn't bothered with the lift; she knew Hendricks would need it. Instead, she'd borrowed a letter opener from Lois's desk and headed for the stairs.

Now she had four flights done and just one to go. She heard the stairwell door open from the floor above; someone's voice in a quick curse—quite possibly Nigel's—and then the thumps and groans of a bruising struggle.

Now her adrenaline was up. She powered up the final flight three steps at a time.

She yanked the door open and burst onto the floor, with the letter opener in thrusting position.

“No more!” screamed the American. “No more!”

The man was on the floor, his back against the wall, shouting his desperate pleas.

Nigel was standing over him, but most significantly, Hendricks was standing alongside, his well-trained Taser extended, about to administer the treatment again.

Laura stepped forward, so that now she was standing on one side of the American with her letter opener, and Hendricks was standing on the other side with his Taser. Nigel was in the center.

“Enough,” said Nigel to Hendricks. “For the moment.”

The green file folder containing the letters was on the floor, just by Nigel's feet. Laura reached down and, saying nothing to anyone, picked it up.

She kept it out of sight behind her back as she turned toward Nigel.

“Here,” she said, giving him the letter opener. “Stick him if you need to.”

Nigel nodded. Then he looked down at the American's feet, and coat pocket, and he saw that the folder was not there.

He looked down at his own feet, and then behind them. The folder was not there.

He looked to his side. The folder wasn't there, either.

And neither was Laura.

Now Nigel heard the lift doors ping, and he turned and shouted in that direction, “Wait!”

But too late. He saw a fleeting glimpse of the green folder in Laura's freckled hand as the lift doors closed, and then the lift was on its way down.

For a moment, Nigel considered chasing after. But he looked down at Hendricks, bravely but unsteadily holding the Taser in the direction of the brawny American, and he knew he couldn't leave.

Besides, Laura would reach the street well before he could, and from there she would be too fast to catch if she didn't want to be caught.

And clearly she didn't.

Nigel could do nothing but mutter under his breath.

“Bloody hell. Reggie won't like this.”

30

Laura exited Dorset House and walked quickly down Baker Street until she found a cab.

As she got in, her mobile rang.

“It's a quarter till,” said the voice, still muffled, as before.

The voice did not sound American. But neither had the one on the lake. And given what had just happened, she was no longer ruling the Texas heirs out. The muffling could be an attempt to disguise an accent. And it also occurred to her that one of the two American cousins might have engaged an English accomplice to help negotiate with the locals.

“I know what bloody time it is,” said Laura. Immediately after she said that, she worried that perhaps she was supposed to be polite with kidnappers, and not let her annoyance show.

And then she rejected that notion. The kidnappers had an agenda and they would pursue that agenda, regardless of whether she was rude to them.

“Do you have the letters?”

“Yes,” said Laura. “As a matter of fact, I do still have the letters. Despite your efforts to the contrary.”

There was a long pause.

“Explain what you mean,” said the voice.

“Your American accomplice just tried to steal them, did he not?” It was still just a guess. She wasn't at all certain.

Dead silence at the other end for a long moment; then the voice said again, “Do you have the letters?”

“I have them. When do I see Robert?”

“Take a cab to Piccadilly Circus. You have twenty minutes.”

“Will he be there? When do I see Lord Buxton?”

“If you do as you're told, you will see him alive at noon. If you do not, you will hear of his death. Catch your cab.”

Now the line went dead.

Laura caught a cab.

She reached Piccadilly Circus in eighteen minutes, by her watch.

The voice had not been sufficiently specific beyond that, so she waited by the statue of winged Eros in the center plaza.

It was cold, with the wind channeling down from the four intersecting boulevards. But it was also morning rush hour, and the milling crowd of tourists and commuters was as thick as always.

Laura's mobile rang; she picked up.

“Now what?” she said.

“Go to the British Emporium.”

“The British—”

“The bloody big souvenir store at the corner. Go to the first cashier and buy something.”

“Buy what?”

“Any bloody thing, but large enough for a shopping bag. Do it now. Be out in seven minutes.”

Laura walked quickly across the street to the British Emporium. She guessed she might possibly be out of sight of the kidnappers for a moment, but she couldn't think of how to take advantage of that; there was too little time.

She went directly to the cashier station, and she bought the first thing she could find—a large gray plush toy, some sort of British bear, from a bin right in front of the cashier.

She carried it out of the store in a shopping bag.

Her phone rang.

“Show us the letters.”

“What?”

“Hold the letters up high.”

Laura stretched her arm out and held the folder of letters up high, so that anyone presumably watching from a nearby building could see it.”

“Put them in the shopping bag,” said the voice.

Laura did so.

“Now you're done with cabs,” said the voice. “You're taking the tube next. Too bad if you regard it as beneath your status.”