Patriot

CHAPTER 36

Sunlight flooded the expansive living room of Ambrose Congreve’s two-bedroom suite. Giant crystal vases of exploding pink and white roses bloomed on every table. He assumed the suite’s second bedroom was in case of flower overflow. He had been booked into the ridiculously expensive Hôtel de Paris by the KGB Travel Department at the Kremlin, under specific orders from the big man himself. This famous old white hotel, this giant wedding cake of a building, overlooked the bustling harbor and the storybook palace at Monte Carlo.

He heard a faint bell tinkling from somewhere down a long hall.

“Hullo?” he’d called out. “Who’s there?”

Room Service appeared like magic before him, two elegant uniformed staffers rolling in with an immaculate white table overflowing with so much china and so many silver platters, and even more flowers, that it was hard to believe this movable feast was indeed what one received when one ordered: “Breakfast for one, please.”

“I’m sorry,” the famous sleuth said, baffled, “I fear there’s been some kind of mistake. I only ordered breakfast for one. There’s only just me, you see. Not another half dozen waiting in the wings, as it were.”

“Ah, mais oui,” the mustachioed captain said, taking in the table with a magisterial sweep of his arm, “C’est ça! This is the Hôtel de Paris, monsieur! Voilà! Le breakfast for one!”

“Really?” Ambrose asked, lifting one of the silver domes to appraise the contents of one of the chafing dishes. “Might I find a strip of bacon or a soft-boiled egg in here somewhere?”

“Where would you like the table placed, monsieur?” the waiter asked, all smiles.

Everyone in this damn hotel had been all smiles ever since he’d checked in the afternoon prior. Congreve wasn’t stupid. He knew these blinding displays of perfect-capped white teeth did not reflect his star status as an English policeman. No, no. They were a reflection of the extraordinarily deep pockets and long-reaching power of his host, President Vladimir Putin, the new tsar of all Russia.

“You like it here by the windows, perhaps? Or over there, monsieur?”

Congreve sat down for a moment and contemplated the possible location of his breakfast table. Did he want the harbor view? A view chock-full of whirling white seagulls above a sparkling turquoise sea filled with gleaming megayachts?

Or, perhaps, the lovely view landward to the gentle foothills of the Maritime Alps with Prince Rainier and Princess Grace’s fairy-tale palace in the foreground? It was a pleasant quandary, and Congreve took his time deciding, puffing away on his morning pipe.

“I think just over there by those two open French doors will do nicely, overlooking the harbor please. That fresh air coming in off the sea from all these windows is most salubrious,” the chief inspector said, all perfectly accented in the language of the locals.

Congreve, a former language scholar at Cambridge before becoming a copper, spoke any number of them perfectly, but his idiomatic French was impeccable, really, and he rolled it out now, just to show these snooty Frenchmen that not all Brits were bumpkins from the boonies. The smiling captain, bowing yet again, was duly impressed, he was pleased to see. He adjusted the position of the table, making a few minute silverware adjustments until it was, as they say, parfait!

“Mais oui, monsieur, c’est parfait, n’est-ce pas?”

“C’est genial, c’est très genial,” Congreve replied as the waiter pulled out the chair for him. “Le petit déjeuner, c’est parfait!”

“L’addition, monsieur,” the captain said, bowing as he presented the bill with such pomp it might have been an historic treaty between their two nations at the close of the Napoleonic Wars.

Congreve signed the bill without a glance at the total, knowing that, even though it shouldn’t, the vast sum would make him feel slightly guilty. His host may be worth forty billion rubles, but Ambrose was still making a modest stipend from Scotland Yard.

The two waiters bowed and scraped a few more times before finally leaving him in peace.

Congreve sat, inhaled the life-giving air from the sea, and spread his huge white linen napkin across his lap. What first? He lifted a cover and saw a rasher of perfectly cooked bacon. And here, eggs Sardou, and over here? Best not to know. He chose a simple croissant, knowing it would be flaky heaven, and anointed it with creamy butter you’d never find at Tesco. He smiled, lifting the delicacy at first to his nostrils so that he might inhale that sublime—

At that precise moment, the phone rang.

“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed, returning the croissant to his plate.

He looked across vast carpeted plains of the palatial room to where the offending instrument sat atop an antique walnut writing desk. Should he bother? He knew who it was, of course. Alex Hawke, checking up on him. Damn the luck. He poured a cup of steaming black coffee and went to answer the bloody phone.

“Yes?” he said coldly, putting the receiver to his ear.

“Am I disturbing you?” Hawke said, very chipper for this hour of the morning.

“You are.”

“Working?”

“Dining. It is the breakfast hour, you know. One has to eat, after all.”

“Sorry. I’ll ring you back.”

“No, no, don’t be silly, Alex. It can wait. I’ve got my coffee. I’m just going to plop down on this delicious silken sofa where I can be comfortable.”

“How’s your room, by the way? Up to snuff?”

“Light-years beyond snuff, I should say. Almost embarrassing. Marie Antoinette might even find it a bit over the top. De trop, as we say en France!”

“That’s our boy Volodya. When he goes, he goes big. By the way, did you make it to the morgue last night?”

“I did indeed. Saw the victim. The autopsy, forensics, the toxicology reports, and all the rest. I’ll have copies for you when I return.”

“How did he look, our late general? A rather large corpse, I assume. He was a bit of a jack-the-lad with some rather expansive habits, so I understand from Volodya.”

“Hmm,” Ambrose considered. “Let’s just be kind and say one hopes the gentleman looked a good deal better alive than he does dead. I did a cursory examination to verify what I was presented with. No ligature wounds, no obvious trauma, no signs of poison either ingested or injected. I left the morgue at ten. I spent the balance of the evening inhaling secondhand smoke and drinking tepid coffee in the chief of detectives’ offices at the Compagnie des Carabiniers. The vaguely charming man covering the case from Interpol in Brussels was there as well. Very interesting stuff.”

“Progress, one only hopes?”

“Considerable. After viewing what seemed like countless hours of the casino’s CCTV security tapes, we finally saw a match for the photo we had of the Russian general among the living. He was at the chemin de fer table playing baccarat with the able assistance of a comely blonde who did not seem able to keep her own considerable mammary assets within the confines of her evening dress.”

“I know the type.”

“I bet you do. Nevertheless, the happy couple were drinking masses of champagne and looking very chummy. The relevant footage was time coded just after midnight. After they left the casino, we picked them up again on the exterior security cameras, weaving arm in arm through the car park, arriving finally at a white Roller convertible, Russian plates, probably belonging to your pal. The local constabulary provided further footage of them arriving at the Yacht Club de Monaco and going inside for a nightcap. We got them on camera at the bar, too, thank heavens. Good close-up shots of the woman, which we posted on Interpol’s worldwide alert site.”

“Good news?”

“Yes and no, Alex. While we were studying the morgue photos at the bureau, I received a bit of a shock. Bernard Ledoux, the Interpol chap I mentioned, got a call from his counterpart in Washington. He was informed that there had been an attempted murder last night. It took place in the suburb of McLean, Virginia, and—”

“McLean?”

“Afraid so.”

“Brick? Don’t tell me someone tried to assassinate Brick Kelly!”

“I’m afraid so, Alex. The good news is the female assassin did not succeed. In fact, she herself was fatally wounded during the ensuing struggle with Brick over a gun.”

“And Brick himself?”

“Unharmed.”

“Thank God.”

“But, as a ruse to gain entry to the Kelly homestead, the woman had deliberately run down Brick’s dog in the road. She killed him.”

“The bitch killed Captain?”

“Yes. Poor Brick is devastated of course. But he’s alive. And she is not.”

“How about Jane and the children?”

“A bit of good timing there. All were visiting the grandmother in North Carolina at the time of the incident. But, sadly, Brick’s housekeeper of many years was completely taken in by the woman. For her troubles, she was murdered sometime prior to Brick’s arrival back at the house.”

“Hildy.”

“I’m sorry, Alex. I know you’re very close to the whole family. But… had the children been home? Well, it could have been a whole lot worse. This was a ruthless assassin and anything was possible.”

“Does anyone have any idea who the hell this goddamn woman was?”

“No positive identification as yet. CIA and Interpol are all over it as you can imagine. But, thank God, there is some good news coming out of all this tragedy.”

“What, pray tell?” Hawke said.

“On a whim, I requested that Interpol in Washington e-mail us autopsy photos of Brick Kelly’s attacker, which we compared to the casino footage.”

“And?”

“We can now tell Putin we know with absolute certainty who killed his KGB general aboard the yacht Tsar that night at the Yacht Club de Monte Carlo harbor. Our work here, frankly, is done.”

“We can leave? Who the hell was it?”

“We don’t have the name yet, but we know now that the woman who tried to assassinate the CIA director and the woman who murdered the Russian general were one and the same. We’ll find out soon enough who she was.”

“Good work, Constable.”

“I’ve been cogitating. Don’t you find it extremely odd that a female American assassin murders a KGB general in Monte Carlo without leaving a clue and then flies all the way to Virginia to gun down the director of the CIA in cold blood?”

Hawke nodded. “Beyond odd. She’s not hanging out there all on her own. She’s working for someone. These were complicated operations logistically. She must have substantial infrastructure behind her. But where’s the motive? And, from a political perspective, who the hell out there wants both Russian and American intelligence officers dead?”

“China?” Congreve said, giving the only logical reply. “Russia?”

“I know you’re joking, Constable, but it’s not that far-fetched, I can assure you.”

“Possibly, it is the same group who killed your CIA friend Cam Hooker in Maine. And the CIA chief of station in Paris, Harding Torrance. And, finally, almost you yourself in Bermuda. She was also a blonde, as I recall? The one you invited aboard for dinner? Pelham told me he believed you dodged a bullet that night.”

“Crystal? She had something far less unpleasant on her mind. It was Spider who wanted me dead in Bermuda, remember.”

“Right. But I think this vixen and Spider were batting for the same team. We find out who Spider and Crystal were working for, we find out who’s responsible for the attack on Brick and the Russian general.”

“Ambrose, Spider was working solo. He had gone rogue. He was royally pissed off at the Americans. But, to my knowledge, he had no beef with the Russians. Moscow was never part of his caseload, at least to my knowledge.”

“Exactly my point. None that you know of.”

“Point taken, Constable.”

“So, all we need here, again, is motive. Figure out who had a reason to be royally pissed off at both the Americans and the Russians, right?”

Hawke said, “Now, you’re getting somewhere. I knew that brain of yours had to kick in sooner or later. Volodya and I had a very frank conversation at our farewell breakfast up on deck this morning. I can’t wait to tell you about it.”

“Tell me something. You said, ‘farewell breakfast.’ Does this mean we can go home now?”

“Home? You’d leave your prepaid palatial suite and all that free caviar and Cristal champagne behind? All the topless Bardot wannabes and sunburned German hausfraus strolling the beaches below your terrace?”

“Alex, you of all people know how I feel about the French.”

“So, it’s only the hausfraus you’ll miss?”

“I’d much prefer to go sit by my glorious window and eat my cold eggs Sardou. If you’ll forgive me, I’ll ring off now.”

“D’accord. Je m’excuse.”

“Alex, you swore you’d never attempt the French language again in my presence.”

“Ah, so I did, so I did. So sorry. Je m’excuse, mon ami!” Hawke said.

“What’s next?”

“I suppose our work here is done, isn’t it? I’ve taken the liberty of having my London office book first-class passage for you home to Bermuda through London. Is that all right?”

“Is that all right, did you say? Alex, you know I simply cannot abide the French for one more hour. I’m not too crazy about the Russians, either.”