Hot Pursuit

20

Holly arrived at her White House office to find Millie Martindale already at her desk, and she was wearing the dress she had worn yesterday. “Good morning, Millie,” she said.

“Morning, ma’am,” Millie said.

“Tell me, did you get lucky last night, or did you spend the night at your desk?”

“Both,” Millie replied. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll bring you some stuff.”

Holly went to the adjacent utility room and made coffee. She came back with two mugs and found Millie sitting across from her desk, shuffling papers in her lap. Holly handed her a mug.

“Any cream and sugar?” Millie asked.

“If you drink it black for twenty-one days, you’ll never have it any other way again, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time, too.”

Millie tasted the coffee and made a face.

“Tough it out,” Holly said. “What have you got?”

“Identities for two of our fuzzy photographs.”

“Shoot.”

“I sort of took a shortcut,” Millie said. “I spent my junior year at Oxford, and I have a friend from those days who’s now teaching there. He’s a couple of years older than me, and I knew he went to Eton, so I had a talk with him. His first year there he knew two boys, identical twins, who had unusual accents. Their names were John and James Whittleworth, and he made them as Arabs, though they didn’t look it.”

“And Whittleworth isn’t a very Arabic name,” Holly pointed out.

“They were a little darker of skin but had blond hair.”

“Go on.”

“I got the registrar’s office at Eton at four o’clock this morning — it’s five hours later there — and they dug up the boys’ records. Their father’s name was Martindale, like my last name, and their mother’s Fatima, which might explain their appearance and accents.”

“Makes sense.”

“Not for long. I researched the father, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t exist. Not the mother, either. There was a record of only one visit to the school by the parents, early in the boys’ three-year stay at the school. They never went home for the holidays, even at Christmas, and their school fees were paid by an official of a private bank in London, Devin’s, which turns out to have Middle Eastern owners.”

“How about graduation? Did the parents turn up for that?”

“Neither of them. A chauffeured car picked them up after the ceremony, which was twelve years ago, and they were never heard from again. Mail to them — invitations to alumni events, pleas for money, et cetera — was sent to the bank and never replied to.”

“Did they go to university after Eton? Most of their graduates do.”

“There is no record of the boys applying for any university.”

“Are there any photographs of them — maybe in yearbooks?”

“None. They didn’t play any sports or participate in other extracurricular activities, except shooting classes and chess. Otherwise they kept to themselves. One other thing, they were tutored in elocution by a young instructor there, and by the time they left school, their accents were indistinguishable from the upper-class English spoken by all the boys, except the Scots, the Irish, and some foreigners.”

“Is there any indication of where they might be now?”

“None whatever — they simply evanesced. No British passport has been issued for either of them, so if they left the country, they had other papers.”

“Well, wherever they are, they have been very carefully groomed,” Holly observed. “What about the third man in the photos?”

“So far, a total blank. Can you ask your friends at the Agency why they believe he spent time at Berkeley? If we can find out when he was there, maybe we have a chance of running him down.”

“I’ll make a call,” Holly said. “Good work on the twins.”

Millie actually blushed. “Thank you.”

“Go home, take a nap, and get a change of clothes.”

“Thank you,” Millie said gratefully, then evanesced.

Holly called Lance Cabot and was immediately put through.

“Good morning, Holly.”

“Good morning, Lance. I have some information for you, and then I’d like you to get some for me.”

“Do you mind if I record our conversation? It’s easier than taking notes.”

“Go ahead. Ready?”

“Ready.”

Holly related what Millie had turned up on the twins.

“That’s extremely good work,” Lance said.

“I thought so. I have hopes for her.”

“Just shows how one personal relationship can cut through the fog and turn up useful information.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s useful in this case,” Holly said.

“Au contraire,” Lance said, in his best accent. “We now know the two are identical twins — that could be most helpful. We know Devin’s Bank — we might even have an asset there.”

“That would be very helpful indeed,” Holly said.

“Now, what do you need from me?”

“Millie drew a blank on the third photograph, the one who was said to have spent some time at Berkeley. I’d like to know where that information came from and if there’s any more of it.”

“I don’t believe it came from our people. I’ll have some calls made and see if it can be tracked down. Talk to you later.”

Lance hung up.

So did Holly.

Lance made a call to the Agency officer who had helped prepare the file for the president’s intelligence briefing. Her name was Charlotte Weir, and she was a fairly new officer, having joined three years before.

“Good morning, Charlotte.”

“Good morning, Director.”

“You are part of the collaborative effort, are you not, to prepare the president’s daily intelligence briefings?”

“I am, sir.”

“Do you recall that, in the discussion of our three persons of interest — those of the poor photographs — there was made mention that one of them might have spent some time at the University of California at Berkeley?”

“I recall that was said of one of the men.”

“It was said of two that they were at a British private school. They have since been accounted for.” He brought her up to date on the twins. “I now wish you to speak to whoever contributed the Berkeley information, to place a time frame on when he might have attended, and to thoroughly rake all of Berkeley’s records that might tell us more about him.”

“I’ll get right on it, Director.”

“That would please me greatly. Work as quickly as you can.” Lance hung up.