The Furies

LONDON EYE

There is a short corridor with bedrooms leading off. After a couple of hours of juggling letters, Sharp looks in on Downey. The GCHQ man's bed is empty, hasn't been slept in. Sharp goes back to the crazy letter and tries again to make sense out of it, unsure whether the whole thing is a colossal waste of time. He is beginning to develop a headache himself. When the phone rings, he is surprised to see that two more hours have passed. Downey.

"Lewis, I'm being followed."

"Where are you?"

"The Millennium Wheel, the Big Eye Thing, whatever the Christ they call it. There are three of them. A man and woman together, and a man on his own, skinhead type about thirty, leather bomber jacket, dark glasses."

"How do you know they're following you?"

"I saw the couple when I was passing St. Paul's Cathedral. The man came on at Newgate, coming from the Old Bailey. I spotted them again at the Covent Garden when I was looking for the music score. Lewis, I need someone to pull me in."

"Craig, are you in a crowd now?"

"Yes, I'm in a queue for the Big Eye. The couple have joined the queue. I don't see the skinhead. Pull me in, Lewis, please."

"Look, calm down. Are you sure they're following you?"

"A hundred percent. How come I see them in the street, then at Covent Garden, then at the Big Wheel?"

"These are all tourist spots. It's not such a big coincidence. Craig, you're imagining things."

"The safe house isn't safe, Lewis. They must know about it, it's the only way they could have picked up on me."

"That's impossible."

"I need help."

"I'll phone Jocelyn now, she'll get a car around. There'll be somebody there in minutes. Just hang on, stick with crowds."

"Something I don't get. I heard them talking — they're Americans."

"There you go, then, just innocent tourists."

"For God's sake, get that car here. Pull me in."

"There was no sign of him. Our officers scoured the embankment on both sides. They went all through the Tate Modern, looked at the ferries and saw everyone who came off the London Eye. He obviously panicked and ran off somewhere."

"The safe house isn't safe."

"That's ridiculous." Jocelyn shakes her head emphatically.

"I don't want a visit from bad guys." Jocelyn raises her eyeballs scornfully, but Sharp persists. "Why take a chance? We could clear off. Find someplace else."

"Look, Lewis, Craig's a cryptographer. All he does is work at a desk all day. He has this overactive imagination, coupled with no field experience and the nerves of a frightened kitten."

"He must have a powerful imagination," Sharp says. "The man was terrified."

She glances across the river at the Tate. "Maybe the stress has gotten to him. Maybe he's gone off his trolley."

"Jocelyn, you can never be absolutely sure about anything. But the Americans he saw in Covent Garden turned up at the London Eye."

Jocelyn manages to look and sound like a scolding school mistress. "Pure coincidence. Both of them are bog standard tourist spots. There's a problem with all this pursuit nonsense. This is a highly secure operation. No way could it have been compromised. The safe house really is just that. Safe."

"Is it, Jocelyn?"

Jocelyn puts a hand to her head in a show of exasperation. "This is plain stupid. Special Branch can't just come up with safe houses at the drop of a hat. And we've gone to a lot of trouble to set up secure communications here with the FBI and Six."

"What about a couple of armed policemen?" Sharp suggests.

She groans. "It's not practical, Lewis. You and Craig have to do your work here in total secrecy. You can't do that in a plod-infested flat."

"I'm a soldier, I can handle a pistol. Give me one," Sharp says. "Purely as a precaution."

"I'll speak to the commissioner. He'll say no."

"Jocelyn, look what's at stake. We can't take risks."

"The biggest risk we're running, Lewis, is that we don't get to the bottom of this before Saturday. No more distractions, please. Get on with your analysis and give me something I can present to the chief tomorrow morning. Something more substantial than the fantasies of our excitable young man from GCHQ."

"If that's what they are. Fantasies."

"It would be nice if Craig turned up." She glances at the kitchen clock.

VLAD THE IMPALER

"Vlad the Impaler."

Sharp, in green boxer shorts and gripping an early-morning mug of coffee, sits down heavily on a chair and peers intently at the terminal screen. Ambra's garden center movie is showing, faces flitting across the terminal, disembodied arms holding glasses or plates, clusters of people, obelisks and spheres and dragons and Geisha girls and thugs. Quite a few males are looking straight at the camera, which is not surprising considering its location at the apex of Ambra's cleavage. Sharp has triggered the Web cam and is conversing with Caddon in Los Angeles on a second screen.

"Say again?"

"The disfigured guy. I've seen him." Sharp taps his forehead. "It's not a face you forget."

"A name, Lewis. We need a name. This guy doesn't appear on the guest list, and I'd like to know why not. Who is he?"

Sharp stares at the lidless eye and the scarred cheek. There's a draft of cold air, and the door clicks behind him. Jocelyn. She sits next to Sharp. He tells Caddon, "If you keep bugging me, I won't remember."

"Try association of ideas. What do you know about him?"

"He's rich and Russian." Then: "Gotcha. A NATO conference in Sweden three years ago. He's a microbiologist. Some jokers were calling him Vlad the Inhaler because of his noisy breath."

There is a long silence. Then Caddon is saying, thoughtfully, "What in the name of Jesus is a microbiologist doing at a Hollywood movie premiere?"

"He's a rich microbiologist. As I recall he owns Baryon Biosystems."

"Hey, that's the outfit that owns the Bell helicopter."

"Got it. Vladimir Petrov."

There is a click-click of rapid typing over the connection. Jocelyn does the same but Caddon gets there first. "Yeah. We've been stretching our resources checking on everyone with an anthrax connection and he's on our interview list. Baryon Biosystems bought an uninhabited Caribbean island north of Cuba some years ago and put a pharmaceutical factory on it. For security, it says here."

Jocelyn is still tapping at her keyboard. "Breakthrough, Neal, breakthrough. The militia connection is suddenly hot."

"Red hot." Caddon can't keep the excitement out of his voice. "Like you said, Lewis, that was the trouble with the militia theory. Our six-fingered banjo players could only produce test-tube quantities of anthrax. To get the ton of anthrax in the Arizona UFO, you would need giant fermentation vats. No way could they build and hide that in backpacker country. But Baryon Biosystems could do it, on this Cuban island. We have no jurisdiction there. Anything could be going on. It's the missing link."

Jocelyn says, "I have a Time magazine interview with him. It seems he flies scientists and technicians out from Florida for six-month tours of duty on the island. The work's classified. The story is the workers are fabulously well paid."

"What's his history?" Caddon asks.

"He acquired a big slice of Gulf in the seventies. It was a hostile takeover and as soon as he got it, the oil crisis hit and prices went crazy. That's when some journalist called him Vlad the Impaler. It seemed to stick, pardon the pun. He sold his oil in the nineties but kept the chemical holdings. Along came 9/11 and the military were interested in biochemistry in a big way. Twenty billion dollars big, and he got a decent slice. His timing is supernatural."

"Tell us about the scars."

Jocelyn reads some more. "A toxic blaze in one of his labs. He dragged a technician out but got burned himself. It nearly cost him his life, and the technician died anyway. He lost his voice box and half his lungs. He presses his throat to speak."

Ambra Volpe appears on a third terminal. She is still wearing her movie premiere dress and the expensive earrings and necklace, but she has let down her hair. "I can confirm that. Petrov and I spoke briefly."

"Greetings again, Miss Volpe."

"Felicitations once more, Mr. Sharp. I think Petrov, Demos, and two others used the party opportunistically as a safe haven from FBI surveillance. From what I could hear, it was a panic meeting triggered by the Fossil Creek explosion."

"And the other two? What about them?" Jocelyn asks. Her voice is harsh but Sharp thinks that might be a raw throat from the cold London drizzle.

Ambra says, "I don't know. They spotted me and I was lucky to get thrown out as a gatecrashing reporter. One German woman, maybe late twenties, and one Japanese guy about the same age. I couldn't make out their faces and the light levels were too low for the camera. Metal Voice, German, and Jap left the party in a helicopter."

"And they weren't on the guest list," Caddon says. "The studio said they came in as guests of Demos, doesn't know who they were."

"So where did they go?"

"No idea. The helicopter touched down in Griffith Park before it carried on to a Baryon Biosystems pharmaceutical works. This Vladimir Petrov is all we have."

Jocelyn says, "I have something here about him."

"We're all ears," Caddon says.

"He's a great military hero. Joined the partisans at age fourteen during the war, acquired the Bravery Medal in 1941, the Medal for the Defense of Stalingrad in 1944, the Medal for the Capture of Berlin … "

Caddon says, "… I get the picture …"

"… thrown into a gulag, escaped in the fifties, and … "

"… What? Escaped from a gulag?"

"… arrived in the States in 1955, made this big killing in oil. Single, now eighty. If you believe this dossier he has a seething hatred of everything communist. It goes back to the death of his young wife in the gulag."

"Amen for a breakthrough," Caddon declares. "Petrov's a rich biochemist. He's into bioweapons with a factory on a Caribbean island we know nothing about. Ambra sees him in in intense conversation with Demos, and Demos was in contact with two guys who hauled the anthrax device up from an old mine shaft. And we know these guys were right-wing Arizona militia."

"What about the Nazi connection, Neal?" Sharp says.

"Swastika-engraving Minutemen, what else? Petrov's useful idiots, a layer between him and whatever he's up to. We can forget the Third Reich, Lewis."

Sharp says, "Why would a man like Petrov threaten London? It makes no sense."

"Come on, Lewis, keep a sense of realism. The Third Reich connection's dead."

"I disagree. Look, there are probably people in Germany still alive who were involved in creating that device. We should be looking for them, surviving German biochemists, finding out what they did in the war."

"It's a question of allocating resources. I'm sorry, Lewis, but it has to come well down the list. The way I see it, three terrorist groups — German, Japanese, and American — have come together and cooked up something massive for this Saturday. And there's a North Korean involvement of some sort. This scares me. It's bigger than anything we've seen and so far we haven't a clue. We just can't afford eccentric diversions."

Sharp says, "Neal, we can't afford a mistake. Would you at least look into German biochemists who came over to the States postwar?"

"One of my bright young things is drawing up a list of interesting biochemists anyway. If she happens to see anything … " Caddon's tone says that it's a sop.

"You're off target. You still haven't met my point about Petrov. It makes no sense for someone like that to target London."

Caddon says, "The crazy letter is a decoy, designed to confuse. London may not be part of the equation. Petrov has a house in London, in Holland Park." He adds slyly, "Maybe Holland Park has answers."

Jocelyn says, "What are you suggesting, Neal? A search warrant … "

"No search warrants. We can't afford to frighten this guy off."

"Mr. Caddon! I hope you're not suggesting illegal entry."

Silence.

"British intelligence doesn't do burglary." Jocelyn's tone is so scandalized that for a moment Sharp almost believes her. And in the excitement of the chase, he almost forgets that Downey has been missing for twelve hours.

BURGLARY: HOLLAND PARK

The great military hero, Sharp thinks. Stop shivering

The man next to him in the huge porch senses Sharp's fear. He whispers, "It gets worse every time. Remember to keep the gloves on. DNA and stuff."

Across the road, a glimmer of gray dawn is beginning to break over Holland Park.

Mr. Nuts appears at the front door. He speaks quietly, in a Cockney accent. "Okay. I've taped over the sensors. In and out fast, right?"

There is enough street light flooding through the porch to make out the interior. The burglar leads the way along a broad, deep-carpeted corridor and turns left. The study is huge, and lined with contemporary paintings by Jon Braley, Lucy Orchard, Nick Schlee. A massive teak desk takes up the center, and a spiral stair leads up to a gallery. Mr. Nuts has slid a bookcase sideways, revealing a cream-colored safe lodged in the wall.

Sharp says, "He mustn't know the safe's been cracked."

Mr. Nuts is closing shutters and pulling heavy velvet curtains. Then he switches on a desk lamp. "Come on, come on, move it."

Mr. Bolts looks at the safe thoughtfully. Sharp momentarily wonders who dreamed up aliases of such mind-numbing stupidity, but then the burglar is saying: "TL-30, Brown — American make — E-rated. This guy's serious."

"I'm impressed," says Sharp, "whatever it means." Mr. Nuts is looking agitated, and Sharp feels his own brow dampen.

"You should be," says Mr. Bolts. "It has a cobalt plate, which means you'd burn out six drill motors and take all week trying to get through it. It has a laminated steel door eight centimeters thick. By the time you're through that with a thermal lance, the neighbors have called the fire brigade, not that it matters because you've died of smoke inhalation. Anyway there's a thermal relocker, which triggers a whole load of locks, shuts us out forever. And a jam shot on this baby would take out half the study."

"Terrific," Sharp whispers. He's had sweaty palms a couple of times in his army career, and he has them now.

Mr. Bolts manages a clammy grin. "Torches and drills are for dorks. I'm a locksmith. Judge your man: Any chance he'd leave the combination lying around?"

Sharp doesn't bother to reply.

"That's what I think. We won't waste time looking."

"And don't waste time yakking," Mr. Nuts hisses. "Get on with it."

Mr. Bolts pulls over a coffee table and takes a small jar of what looks like talcum powder from his briefcase. He dusts the electronic lock using a pastry brush and shines a small, deep-violet torch onto it at an angle. "Shit. Six numbers."

"What does that mean?"

"It means nearly forty-seven thousand combinations. At ten seconds a combination it comes to three hundred and twenty hours of trial and error, mate. If he'd settled for a four-digit number, we'd have been through it in forty-five minutes."

"So what now?"

"We do it the slo-o-w way." Mr Bolts sets up a laptop computer. Into its back, he plugs a box the size of a small book. He tapes a thin black wire from the box onto the combination lock. "Mas-Hamilton software, straight out of a Bond movie. Interfaces with the lock at its programming port. Costs more than the contents of most safes and not really worth it unless you're into big stuff."

"How long is this going to take?"

Mr. Bolts doesn't bother to reply. Numbers begin to tumble swiftly down the laptop screen. He pulls out a Commando comic from an inside pocket and starts to read. Sharp, shivering in the unheated house, sits in Petrov's study chair.

Mr. Nuts disappears, glides back silently in five minutes. "Who is this guy, Nero? An indoor swimming pool, tellies in the bedroom ceilings, en suites bigger than my living room. And the kitchen — "

"This is just his London pad," Sharp says. "He has homes in Monaco and LA."

"Look, I said in and out quick. With my record I go down for fifteen."

Mr. Bolts says, "Patience."

In forty minutes Sharp glances through the curtains, to a disapproving hiss from Mr. Nuts. The streetlights are off, and the traffic is building up. Maybe there are cleaning ladies, probably are in a place like this.

Fifteen minutes on. Mr. Nuts is pacing up and down, breathing heavily. He says, "Time's up, guys. Let's get the hell out of here." Sharp says nothing, tries to stay calm. Maybe an early-morning postman will see closed curtains today where they were open yesterday. Maybe a neighbor.

Ten more minutes pass. Mr. Nuts's agitation is infectious. He's pacing out a rectangle. It happens to be two meters by one and a half. Sharp wonders if he should make a joke about rehearsing for the next fifteen years, but decides that might just push the nervous burglar over the edge. Mr. Bolts has given up on his supply of Commando comics and is staring at the numbers. He says, "Bingo."

The numbers have stopped tumbling. The screen is showing a six-digit numeral. He taps at the keypad, says "Yes!" pulls the safe handle down, and the heavy door swings open. It's a wonderful moment!

And an alarm screams. Pushing 150 decibels, designed to hurt the ears, vibrate the body, and sear into the skull. Mr. Nuts wails and rushes to the door. Mr. Bolts frantically stuffs his expensive Mas-Hamilton apparatus into his briefcase and bolts out after Mr. Nuts, thrusting Sharp roughly aside. A red light from outside is strobing, penetrating the heavy curtains.

Sharp rushes to the open safe. He can't think for the screaming alarm. The bottom shelf is stuffed with banknotes, euros, dollars and sterling, share certificates, bonds, deeds to a dozen or more properties. There is an armful of A4 paper and folders. He goes frantically through the folders, tossing them onto the floor. He can hardly handle the papers for shaking. His ears are in pain.

Nothing. Statements from a dozen offshore and Swiss banks, plastic cards, subscription to America Right, a heap of anti-communist hate material. Bills, yachting receipts, deeds to houses in Monaco and California and Morocco and …

Something.

Sharp stares.

Holland Park has answers.

The noise is beginning to make Sharp feel punch-drunk. His vision is blurring. He stuffs a sheet of paper into his coat pocket and sprints out of the house. A cluster of people at the front gate. A young boy with tousled hair, father's protective arms on his shoulders, wearing an over-large tartan dressing gown, staring at Sharp with something like awe. An old man in slippers and dressing gown, walking stick raised to strike: war veteran, saw D-Day, killed ten Huns with his bare hands. Sharp yells, "I've got a shooter!" The man hesitates, falls back.

Sharp sprints the two blocks toward the spot where Mr. Nuts parked the car.

Gone.

Holland Park. Lose myself in the park. It means retracing steps. Sharp looks back. Damn. The war veteran is following him, full of righteous anger, wheezing and gasping. Don't collapse, old man. Sharp keeps running.

He stops running a block later, gasping himself, when the patrol car, its blue light scanning the well-heeled residences like a laser in a disco, screams to a halt ahead of him. Two policemen leap out and rush at him, angry men going into a fight. Sharp hurdles a railing, rushes through a small playground. Temporarily deaf, he can't use the vital aids to survival — the sounds of pounding feet and rasping breath behind him — to judge whether they're gaining on him. Ahead of him he sees a wood, and beyond it a tall wall and another big house. If he can make it to the wood and then try for the wall …