The Sinai Secret

FORTY-FOUR

New Scotland Yard

Broadway

London

The Next Afternoon

Inspector Dylan Fitzwilliam scowled at the grainy photograph on his desk, the product of an airport security camera. The man tendering his passport might have been traveling under the name of Joel Couch of Macon, Georgia, but face-recognition technology revealed him to be Langford Reilly.

IRA terrorism of the seventies and eighties had spawned the know-how of storing facial features in data banks. With cameras all over Great Britain, the average Englishman had his picture taken almost daily, a Londoner three times a day. The Irish killers had long since swapped bombs and guns for pin-striped suits and negotiating sessions, but the cameras remained. Like any other government intrusion, once begun, the program was unlikely to end nor the technology to be scrapped.

Mr. Reilly had appeared on one of the cameras at Gatwick a week or so ago, and again the same day on another that scanned London's streets. Although Fitzwilliam had been alerted, there was nothing to be done. In spite of the suspected murder in the West End, the shooting of two unknown thugs on the streets of South Dock, and the surprising discovery in Portugal a few years ago, the American had been cleared of any wrongdoing. There had been no reason to detain him.

Innocence, of course, had no place in data banks.

That had been before the Yard had received notice from Interpol that Reilly was wanted for questioning in connection with a murder in Vienna.

Fitzwilliam exhaled wearily as he turned to the computer terminal on his desk. Some people simply could not shake off the violence that followed them any more than Patel, the inspector's immediate subordinate, could rid himself of the smell of curry.

A few taps on the keyboard and a list of names appeared. The inspector squinted over half-moon glasses at the screen. It seemed each year the font became harder to read, no doubt some space-saving economy by the Yard's accounting boffins. He refused to accept that age had anything to do with the matter.

There it was: Annueliwitz, Jacob, wife Rachel. A flat on Lambeth Road on South Dock. A barrister, unsurprisingly with offices at the Middle Temple Inn.

He printed out the addresses before summoning Patel.

The man appeared silently with the smile that perpetually lit his dark face. Even dressed in a suit and without a canteen, Patel reminded Fitzwilliam of a modern-day Gunga Din. The inspector mentally chastised himself. Let a word of that slip and it would be sensitivity training instead of police work for a fortnight at least.

The policeman handed both addresses and the picture across the desk. "Send a couple of lads to watch both these places. If this Reilly chap shows up, I want him brought in. There's an international warrant on him."

Patel, grin still intact, reached for the papers.

"No, on second thought, send four men to each." He caught himself in another politically incorrect gaffe.

"Officers. Men or women. And make sure they're armed. The bloke has been implicated in some pretty rough activity."

Patel nodded his understanding. "Like the killings a few years back? Should I have vests and rifles issued?"

Fitzwilliam regarded his subaltern for a moment before deciding the man was serious. "Hardly a way to avoid attracting attention, wouldn't you say?"

Grin undiminished and gentle reprimand ignored, Patel turned and left the inspector staring at his office's walls. Sodding rotten luck, having Reilly show up, unbidden as Banquo's ghost, on the night Shandon, his wife, had booked theater tickets.