The Prince of Risk

65

It was raining in London.

Alex stepped out of the cab at the corner of Oxford Street and Regent Street. She struggled to open her umbrella. A moment was enough for the downpour to douse her hair and soak her jacket. The fare from Gatwick was £90, nearly $140. She counted out the notes, consoling herself that at least she hadn’t had to purchase an airline ticket.

The cab pulled away and Alex looked to her left and right, orienting herself. She knew the city. Shortly after separating from Bobby, she’d spent a month at Scotland Yard as part of an interagency task force on cybercrime. On weekends she’d jogged along the Embankment east to west, a distance of 9 miles, then walked back, taking hours to explore the city’s neighborhoods.

Alex continued south two blocks, then turned the corner at Brook Street. Mayfair counted as the city’s poshest borough, and New Bond Street was its epicenter. Art galleries, boutiques, and local outposts of the world’s most elegant fashion labels lined either side of the street. In the midst of them, she found 200 New Bond Street. Instead of a show window, there was a two-story wall of milky green glass. Five stainless steel letters placed at eye level on the right-hand side of the building announced the inhabitants. GRAIL. Entry was through a brushed steel door at the end of a recessed doorway. She pressed the buzzer and lifted her head so the security camera could get a good look at her. There was no speaker visible, and no disembodied voice asked her name. The softest of clicks sounded as the lock disengaged. She pushed open the door and entered a dimly lit foyer.

Carpeted stairs led to a first-floor reception area. There was a desk with no one behind it. Smoked glass walls blocked her view of the rest of the office. She could see shadows moving behind them. A glass panel swung open and a trim blond woman dressed in a pale gray two-piece suit approached, hand outstretched. “Chris Rees-Jones,” she said crisply. “Nice to meet you.”

“Alex Forza. You’re kind to see me.”

“One likes to keep one’s friends at Five happy.”

“Future employees?”

“Something like that,” said Rees-Jones, with a Cheshire Cat’s grin. “This way.”

Rees-Jones led Alex through an open warren of desks and workspaces. Occasionally a man occupied a desk. All wore fancy striped dress shirts, open at the collar, sleeves rolled up. A few read the morning paper. One was on the phone, but when he spoke his voice was so soft, it sounded like rustling velvet.

“Quiet day?”

“Not so much.”

Alex could expect that half the employees were former intelligence agents of one sort or another, with time at MI5, known colloquially as Box, or at MI6, the security service. The rest would come from Scotland Yard and various branches of the British military, primary among them the SAS, or Special Air Service.

Rees-Jones passed through a doorway into an airy, spartan office. The desk was frosted glass with polished steel legs. There was a phone, a blotter, framed black-and-white photographs of stark landscapes, and not much else. “Please sit. Tea?”

“I’m fine,” said Alex, setting her shoulder bag on the floor as she took her place.

Rees-Jones dropped into a low-backed chair. “Good flight over? Private travel makes things so much easier.”

Alex had said nothing to her contact at Five about using Bobby’s jet, which meant that Chris Rees-Jones had contacts of her own. “I was expecting Major Salt.”

“Major Salt no longer works here.”

“I wasn’t aware of that. A recent change?”

“Three months now. Clients are always surprised to learn that a woman took his place. I see you are, too.”

“A little,” said Alex. It was a lie. She was very surprised. Women might be prominent in law enforcement in the States, and increasingly in Western Europe, but she hadn’t known them to have entered the preserve of private combat arms.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Rees-Jones gazed at her boldly. Her eyes were blue, her skin as smooth as alabaster, and her hair the platinum blond that only the most expensive colorist can guarantee. Alex put her at fifty, give or take. She also had her down as a spy put out to pasture. She was too smooth, too polished to be a police officer.

“You’re wrong,” said the Englishwoman, as if reading her mind. “Not a spook. That’s what they all think. Not Scotland Yard either. I did my training at the LSE, the London School of Economics. I’m a banker. Or I was. Private equity. My firm bought the place three months back. Military privatization’s a growing market.”

“And Major Salt?”

“He was never much of a numbers man. Still likes to get some mud on his boots, if you get my drift.”

“Mud or blood?” asked Alex.

“Probably both.” Rees-Jones smiled politely. “Major Salt sits on our board. He consults.”

Alex nodded, her hopes for getting any information about Lambert fading by the second.

“This is all rather unorthodox,” said Rees-Jones. “Of course, we’re used to visits from our colleagues on the other side.”

“I thought we were on the same side.”

“I meant the public sector.”

“Excuse me,” said Alex. “I thought we were talking law enforcement.”

“We help when possible, but we do like some warning. Don’t you have legates and that sort to arrange these things?”

“There wasn’t time to go through the usual channels.”

Rees-Jones took this in. “So,” she said finally. “What’s up?”

“We’re interested in a man with ties to your company. Luc Lambert.”

“Go on.”

“Lambert’s ex-Foreign Legion. He signed on with Trevor Manning a few years back on the Comoros deal. Major Salt was a part of that, if I’m not mistaken. It’s open knowledge that your office helped recruit the soldiers.”

“That was the old company. Before my time. And if it were not, I still couldn’t comment. It’s policy not to discuss our clients. Ironclad, I’m afraid.” Now that that was settled, Rees-Jones placed her hands on the table and smiled. “What’s this Lambert done, anyway?”

“He’s dead. I thought that given the circumstances, you might wish to make an exception.”

“And the circumstances are?”

“We believe that Lambert figured as part of a larger group planning an imminent attack on U.S. soil.”

Rees-Jones leaned forward, the blue eyes colder. “How imminent?”

“Today, tomorrow, Friday-a week at most.”

“That’s quite a statement.”

Alex explained the events of the past forty-eight hours, beginning with the stakeout in Queens, the shootout with Lambert, and the deaths of the three Bureau men and culminating with the discovery of the weapons cache. “Luc Lambert wasn’t in New York on vacation. He was there to do a job. If we’re right, twenty-three others are either already there or arriving soon to join him.”

“Sounds rather frightening. Why aren’t you putting out the alarm?”

“Not enough to go on yet. We can’t go around causing panic. For the moment, it’s all still strictly internal. We also have rules about sharing information, but in this case we have to make an exception.”

“Special Agent Forza, discretion is the currency of our trade. If word spread that we’d revealed our client list or in any way discussed our business with the authorities, we’d be shuttering the premises within the day. Besides, as I said, that was years ago. Technically a different company altogether.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

“Yet you came all this way.”

“I hoped I might be able to convince Major Salt. He’s a soldier. I can’t imagine he’d want one of his own going to the dark side.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“I know that GRAIL would never have anything to do with this kind of operation. If word got out that your company recruited mercenaries to mount a Mumbai-style terrorist attack in New York City, the authorities would close it down in a heartbeat. The directors would be lucky if they got off with a long spell in jail. If they lived that long. Israelis aren’t the only ones pursuing a policy of targeted assassinations these days.”

“Are you threatening me?” asked Rees-Jones angrily.

Alex kept her voice as flat as water. “Do you feel threatened?”

Rees-Jones considered this before conjuring a laugh and a winning smile. “Look, we’re not as bad as all that. I’m sorry if I came off as brusque, but we deal with some pretty rough types. Nature of the beast, I suppose. We do have firm principles, and they are absolutely necessary if we wish to maintain our position in a competitive global market.” Rees-Jones sighed, placed both hands on her glass tabletop, and stood. “Wait here. Let me check our database. If Lambert was a part of Colonel Mann’s expedition, we may still have record of it. Don’t sic the Israelis on me just yet.”

Rees-Jones left the office. Alex opened the black mesh bag and took out a compact and lipstick to reapply her makeup. She traded lipstick for mascara, and sighed when she dropped the mascara on the floor. Her fingers scooped up the mascara but made a detour on the way back, slipping beneath the arm of the chair to attach a listening device.

Rees-Jones returned as Alex finished putting away the mesh bag.

“Not much, but something,” said the Englishwoman as she sat. “This is in no way an admission that we’ve ever had contact with Mr. Lambert. I do, however, have an address for a man by that name who lived in Paris. The address is seven years old, but the French postal authority should be able to help.”

“No French social insurance number? Phones? Next of kin? Anyone we can reach out to.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And there’s been no contact since?”

“None. We rather got out of that line of work after the Comoros fiasco.”

“Probably smart,” said Alex, smiling for the first time.

“Indeed.”

Alex looked at the paper. “It’s a start. I’ll get on to the French at once.” She stood. “Thank you for your time. And it was I who was brusque. I lost a close friend the other day. I apologize.”

“No need. If there’s nothing further…” Rees-Jones placed her palms on the table, stood, and led Alex to the entry, where she wished her goodbye.

Back on the street, Alex opened her umbrella and set off up the block. The rain was coming down hard as ever and a corner of her umbrella immediately sagged, ladling water onto her shoulder. She barely noticed. In her mind, she had an image of Chris Rees-Jones’s glass desk and the two damp palm prints visible on its otherwise immaculate surface. A few minutes earlier, the woman’s hands had been as dry as chalk. Something had made her nervous.

Very nervous indeed.