Hot Pursuit

45

Quentin Phillips got into the office an hour before hardly anybody else did, and he found Lev Epstein at his desk.

“Good morning,” Quentin said.

Lev looked up. “What the hell are you doing here at this hour, sucking up?”

“I suck up only when absolutely necessary. I’ve heard from Millie Martindale in London: Moe has been made and located.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I shit you not. Our lab couldn’t match the snapshot to anybody in our database, but they did two drawings of how he might look now. Holly Barker made one of them as somebody she saw at an inaugural party. His name turns out to be Ali Mahmoud, and he’s the chargé d’affaires at the embassy of Dahai.”

“I know that son of a bitch! I’ve had dinner with him at a big party! He is Moe?”

“He is also Jacob Riis and Harold Charles St. John Malvern.”

“Let this be a lesson to you on the importance of even tiny pieces of evidence. If that snapshot hadn’t been taken fifteen years ago, we might never have found the bastard.”

“The White House has requested maximum surveillance on Mahmoud around the clock. Shall I move on that?”

“What’s your idea of maximum surveillance?”

“Eight four-man teams working around the clock, a dozen different vehicles and disguises for them, full electronic surveillance on office and home, fixed and mobile.”

“And how much is that going to cost?”

“Half a million dollars for the first week, maybe three hundred thousand a week after that. Can you authorize it?”

“I can get it authorized.”

“Today?”

“This morning!” He opened his laptop and started typing. “I’m calling an agency-wide emergency conference, everybody from assistant director up.”

“Hang on a minute, Lev.”

Lev stopped typing. “Don’t slow me down.”

“We promised the White House absolute secrecy, closely held. You’re talking about at least three dozen people when you include deputies and secretaries.”

“My boss is in South America,” Lev said. “There’s nobody between me and the director.” He picked up his phone and dialed a number from memory. “Good morning, sir, it’s Lev Epstein. I’m sorry to have to trouble you at home.” He didn’t apologize for the hour. “I need an immediate appointment with you. It’s an emergency. Let me brief you when you come in. How long? Thank you, sir.” He hung up. “You and I are seeing the director at eight-thirty. We’ve got less than an hour to put our briefing together.”

“Right.”

“You put together a list of agents and equipment you need, and a list of tech people, as well. We’ll meet in my conference room at ten AM. Oh, request a fully teched-out conference room in the basement, in my name. You ever done a stakeout, Quentin?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s going to bore the ass off you.”

Millie was stretched out on the bed in her suite, trying to make sense of a cricket match, when her cell went off. She muted the TV. “Hello?”

“It’s Quentin. Listen fast, I’m on the run.”

“Go.”

“Lev and I just met with the director, and it’s a go. We’re starting a meeting of the team in five minutes. They’ll be on the job by noon. It’s a maximum effort.”

“Go, then!”

“Bye.” He hung up.

Millie punched the air. “Yes!” she screamed. She called Holly.

“Yes?”

“Big news — the Bureau will be all over Moe by lunchtime in D.C. Maximum effort.”

“That’s great news, Millie. Congratulations on moving it so fast. Right now, I’m half dressed for a state dinner that started ten minutes ago. Gotta go.” She hung up.

Millie called Ian Rattle.

“Hahlew,” he drawled.

“The FBI has just uncorked a maximum-surveillance effort on Moe. I thought you and Dame Felicity would like to know.”

“She will be very pleased to hear it,” he said, “as am I. Will we get to watch any of this in progress?”

“Ian, it’s surveillance, not a raid. What’s to watch?”

“Oh, all right. When you do make a move, please remember that Dame Felicity becomes orgasmic when watching an operation in real time. It makes her feel omniscient, I think.”

“Whatever turns her on,” Millie said, then hung up.

After Dino had cased the neighborhood to his satisfaction, checking out the rowers, the fishermen, and the swans on the Thames, they got into Pat’s borrowed Jaguar and left the restaurant. Stone drove quickly, turning down country lanes, seemingly at random.

“You going anywhere in particular?” Dino asked from a comfortable rear seat.

“Looking for a tail,” Stone said. “It bothers me that Reeves says I’m already taken care of — makes it sound like I missed it.”

“I’m going to take a nap,” Dino said. “I’m unaccustomed to port at lunch.” He thought about that. “I could get used to it, though.” He lay back on the cushioned headrest and closed his eyes.

Stone loved these country roads: they were beautifully engineered, perfectly drained, and always in good repair. He kept an eye on the GPS navigation display to be sure he was always headed in the general direction of Cliveden.

“You drive beautifully,” Pat said. “Especially right now — and with the steering wheel on the wrong side!”

“Thank you,” Stone said. “I hope we don’t meet too many vehicles coming the other way. My instinct would be to go left.”

“And the instinct of the oncoming driver would be to go right,” she replied. “And that would not be a good thing.”

Stone narrowly missed a baker’s van going the other way.

“Stone,” Pat said, “what do you think Paul Reeves meant when he said you had already been taken care of?”

“I don’t know,” Stone said. “And I don’t want to know. But I have a feeling I’m going to find out.”

He drove on.

Back at Cliveden Stone was given a hand-delivered note on very heavy paper. He read it and turned to the others. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t be with you for dinner, and I’ve been asked not to tell you why. I hope you will forgive me.”