Patriot

CHAPTER 13

It didn’t take Congreve all that long to get his evidential ducks in a row.

“Sorry to disturb you, sir,” Pelham said, a day and a half later.

“Not at all, Pelham.”

“It’s Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve here to see you, sir,” Pelham said, edging farther out into the sunshine. “A matter of some urgency, apparently.”

It was a brilliant blue Bermuda day, but towering embankments of purple cloud were stacking up out over the Atlantic. Storm front moving due east. Hawke put down the book he was reading, a wonderful novel called The Sea, by John Banville. It made him want to read every single word the man had ever written.

“Thank you, Pelham. Won’t you show him out?”

“Indeed, I shall, m’lord.”

“Offer him a bit of refreshment, will you, please?”

“But of course, my lord.”

Pelham withdrew soundlessly back into the shadows of the house. Pelham never “moved” anywhere. The old soul seemed always to shimmer from here to somewhere.

Hawke smiled as he watched the old fellow disappear.

These stilted conversational formalities had not been necessary for years. But it was something Hawke and his octogenarian valet and friend Pelham Grenville found so amusing they continued the charade, much in the spirit of that show on the telly, Downton Abbey. Both men found an odd comfort in their hoary Victorian manners and exchanges. It was a secret code they shared; and the fact that an outside observer would find them old-fashioned and ridiculous made their small secret all the more enjoyable.

Moments later, Ambrose Congreve walked out onto the terrace at Teakettle Cottage with a wide smile on his face. He was wearing a three-piece white linen suit with a navy blue bow tie knotted at his neck and a floppy straw planter’s hat on his head, a vision only Tennessee Williams might have conjured up. He was even dabbing at his forehead with a white linen handkerchief as Big Daddy might have done in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Congreve had been busy. He had spent the last two days in his home office at Shadowlands, sifting through mobile intercepts, e-mails, old dossiers, photographs, all the reams of material Brick Kelly had forwarded from Langley. And, judging by appearances this morning, the famous criminalist had come up with the goods.

“Oh, hullo, Ambrose,” Hawke said, raising his sunglasses onto his forehead. “Pray, why are you in such a diabolically good humor this morning?”

“Does it show?”

“Not much. Just the feathers on your chin. You look like you’ve been sitting off somewhere in a dark corner eating canaries all morning.”

Congreve waved the ridiculous comment away and sat down on the nearest rattan chair. He carried a lot of weight around the waterline and was always glad of a sit.

“Alex, pay attention. This is serious. You don’t by any chance remember someone, a former CIA officer by the name of Artemis Payne, do you?”

Hawke looked up.

“Who did you say?”

“Payne. Artemis Payne.”

“You’re joking.”

“I assure you that I am not, Alex, joking.”

Hawke scratched his chin, realizing he’d forgotten to shave. Bermuda did that to you. Turned a man brown and hairy and hungover.

“We called him Spider Man,” Hawke said. “Or, to his face, Spider. No idea where it came from. But it fit.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Spider Payne. I knew him all right. I worked with him a couple of times in the past. Africa, mostly. A deeply troubled man. Why?”

“He might be your chap, Alex. You can draw straight lines through the late Steven Daedalus, CIA head in Dublin, to Harding Torrance in Paris, to Cam Hooker at Langley, and they all intersect in the same place. The doorstep of one Artemis Payne. He’s your man, all right. I’d bet the farm on it if I had one.”

“Apart from the CIA intersections, is there any other evidence that makes you think he’s our guy?”

Ambrose got to his feet, laced his fingers behind his back, and began pacing back and forth. A little affectation he’d picked up from his idol Sherlock Holmes, Hawke had always assumed. “Are you quite ready?” Ambrose said.

“Quite.”

“Artemis Payne, known in the press at the time of his trial as the ‘Spider Man.’ Currently wanted for kidnapping and murder by the French government. Interpol has a standing warrant for his arrest for murder. He received a thirty-year sentence in French courts and skipped. A CIA rendition op gone bad, apparently. Shortly after 9/11, a French citizen, believed to be an al-Qaeda commander, was kidnapped off a Paris street and never seen again by his wife and family. The French police went after Payne for it. Arrested and convicted. The White House disavowed his existence. So did CIA. Payne was politically inconvenient. Hung out to dry. There’s your motive, obviously. Lost everything, house, family, money, and went underground. Nobody’s seen him since.”

“Hmm.”

“Is that really all you have to say? Hmm? After the mountains of bloody intel I’ve been sifting through the past two days?”

“Oh, do sit down and relax. I know you’re wound up about all this but it’s bad for your nerves to be so excitable. And a bit donnish and sniffy, to be honest.”

“Alex, if I somehow have conveyed the illusion that I drove all the way out here to be subjected to your sarcasm and—”

Hawke looked up, his blue eyes suddenly gone dead serious as Ambrose’s grave news began to sink in. He said, “Spider is extraordinarily dangerous. In a bad way, I mean.”

“There’s a good way?”

“Yeah. People like me. Stokely. And even you. Good dangerous.”

Ambrose sat back on the planter’s chair and accepted another frosty iced tea delivered by Pelham on a silver tray.

“Will that be all, m’lord?” Pelham asked Hawke.

“Thank you, Pelham, yes. Most kind.”

“I endeavor to be of service, your lordship,” he said, and shimmered into the ether.

“Splendid chap, is he not?”

Congreve watched this formal, Downtonesque exchange with a wry smile of bemused indulgence and said, “We’ve now got about one week. We’re going to need a lot of help to find this shadowy character, Alex. No trail at all. He went from Europe to Miami to Anguilla. Then it goes cold. We’re going to need formidable manpower and sufficient time to organize logistics and then—”

“Not necessarily.”

“No? Why not? What are you thinking?”

“Did you check NSA?”

“I did not, no. Should I have?”

“No. You wouldn’t know. NSA tracks all these guys who go rogue. To the four corners of the earth. E-mails, mobile calls, obviously. Constantly updating. All I need is a number for him. Everyone has a number, no matter where they’re hiding.”

“Then what?”

“I call him up. Out of the blue. Long time, no see, Spider. What are you up to these days, little buddy? Doing well? That old demon gout still acting up now and then?”

“Alex, please. Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t think that will arouse suspicion? Payne knows you have close ties to CIA at the highest levels. He’ll be lying in wait for you.”

“I want the bastard to be suspicious. Listen. He compromised my position once. Morocco. Long time ago. I was working out of a small suite at La Mamounia, running a former al-Qaeda warlord for months, had him buying Stinger missiles at the underground arms bazaar for me. Spider, who always owed the wrong people a lot of money, got offered a tidy sum for my name and hotel address and he bloody well gave me up. Almost got me killed, that bastard. I went looking. Found him hiding in some hellish rathole or other in Tangiers. Locked myself inside with him for two days. Came close to turning out his lights. Told him if I ever saw his face again, I bloody well would kill him.”

“He’s afraid of you.”

Hawke laughed.

“Oh, I’d say so. Yes. I would say Spider is most definitely afraid of me.”

“Then follow the logic, Alex. As soon as he knows you’ve got his scent and now you’re looking for him, he’ll run. As long and fast as he can. He’ll dive deep. Or, worse, he’ll lay a trap for you out in the future.”

“I don’t think so. You don’t know him like I do. I think as soon as he believes I’m looking for him, he’ll come looking for me. That’s what any smart guy like Spider would do. You don’t sit around and wait, you don’t spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. No. You go on offense. Eliminate the threat. It’s the smart play. That’s what I’d do, too.”

“You want him to come here? To Bermuda?”

“I do. And, believe me, he will.”

“Then what?”

“I have no earthly idea.”

“What?”

“I have to make these things up as I go, Ambrose. I’m not a genius like you.”

“There is that, I suppose.”

“Right. And you have to help me because this guy is very, very good. And he’s not only smart, he’s a vicious killer, and he’s utterly ruthless. And, to make matters worse, at this point, what’s he got left to lose? Seriously, Ambrose, think it through.”

“Have you been experiencing any suicidal thoughts lately, Alex?”

“Please, Constable, don’t be ridiculous. Many people have tried to kill me over the course of my career and, more often than not, I’ve managed to show them the folly of that ambition.”

Congreve expelled one of his trademark heaving sighs of exasperation.

“All right, then. What do you need, Alex? I mean, right now?”

“You have a picture of this character?”

“Of course I do.”

“Good. Your brain’s kicking in. I’ll need people watching the airport round the clock, people who know what Spider looks like. Also, same setup over at the steamship docks in Hamilton and out at the Royal Naval Dockyard where the cruise ships land. I want to know the second the Spider Man sets foot on this enchanted isle.”

“Done. What else?”

“Your massive brain, if you’re not using all of it at the moment. We need to figure out where and how this little reunion should occur.”

Congreve said, “Do it here.”

“What?”

“Right here at Teakettle Cottage. Gives you the advantage.”

“Why?”

“Your own turf, that’s why. You cannot arrange something like this, Alex. You’ve got to sit tight and let the spider come to the fly, as it were.”

Hawke laughed at that.

“Stop being childish and pay attention. Your bloody life is at stake here. This cottage is where he will come looking for you. And this is where the damn fly should await the spider.”

“I agree, I suppose. But I don’t want dear Pelham in the house or anywhere near me until this blows over. Can he come stay with you and Diana for a few days?”

“Of course. I’ve a lovely guest room for him at Shadowlands, right on the sea. The Blue Room.”

“Perfect. Spoil him rotten, will you? The old soul deserves it, God knows.”

“We’d like nothing better. Now, what else?”

“I’d like the airport and cruise ship spotters to report to you, not me. As soon as he lands somewhere, they alert you. Then you keep track of his movements until he is about to arrive at my doorstep. Just call my house phone, let it ring three times and hang up. Spider’s not the type to lob a bomb down the chimney and hope it explodes. He’ll want a confrontation. He’ll want to talk. He’ll want all the drama. Show me how fearless and brilliant he is before he pulls a knife or a gun. That’s his style. One of those fellows who always thinks he’s the smartest, most dangerous man in the room. Dangerous, yes. Smartest, no.”

“You do realize, Alex, that if you’ve even slightly miscalculated, and this man does manage to kill you, that it is my rather prominent posterior that will be in a wringer with Sir David and not yours?”

“Mine will be taking a well-deserved dirt nap. Sir David will be bereft over me and extraordinarily pissed off with you. It won’t be pleasant. Please accept my abject apologies in advance for the firestorm you will incur.”

“You’ll need a gun, I daresay.”

Hawke smiled.

“You know what Stokely Jones always says whenever someone tells him he’ll need a gun?”

“What does he say?”

“I am a gun.”