Warriors

CHAPTER 28

Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve of Scotland Yard had a recurring dream. Had had the reverie since early childhood; since St. Albans, as a matter of fact, when he was but a timid, mildly overweight day boy who never seemed to fit in with the lads. Of course, this was in those dark playground days when he’d not yet learned to use his size to his advantage.

When he did that, he was a holy terror.

Ambrose never did quite grasp the significance of this recurring dream of his, but since it was such an obvious founding pillar of his psyche, he never relegated it to the mere piffle drifting about in some of the more remote and convoluted corners in the formidable chambers of his brain…

In the dream, he would fall sound asleep. Dead to the world, the bedside windows of his mind opened onto some frosty midwinter’s night. And then… whammo! Abruptly… white gave way to green… and it became full summer! The last wintry gale had finally blown itself inside out!

It was if someone (was it him?) had come creeping along his winding lane that night, inflated all the trees and bushes like so many green balloons, scattered bulbs, blossoms, and shrubs about like confetti, opened up a cage full of plump red-breasted robins, and, then, after a quick look round, signaled up the curtain upon a brand-new backdrop of liquid blue summer sky.

That, at any rate, was his dream, his favorite dream. Some kind of awakening, he imagined.

And such were his thoughts as he fired up his stalwart motorcar. Because at the moment he was, to put it delicately, freezing his bloody arse off. It was chilly. It was a crisp cold morning with spiny frost shooting along the grasses in every which way.

Snow?

In May? Ah, right. Global warming, Ambrose thought, wrapping his muffler more tightly round his neck. That was the answer. The more the globe warmed, the more the center of England cooled. Q.E.D., and all that stuff. To hell with it. The Morgan’s long yellow louvered bonnet stretched out ahead of the windscreen and, save for the inclement icy climes of England in springtime, all was right with his world.

He depressed the starter button… wait for it…

Glorious.

He took a deep breath of the bracing air, engaged first, then shifted up to second for the upcoming right-hander, and steered the old girl through the turn with what he felt was a good deal of finesse considering the ice and snow on the roadways.

How he did love motoring about the countryside, even in this iffish weather. Besides, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t bothered to dress for the occasion, was it? No. He was wearing, beneath his heavy grey woolen overcoat and purple cashmere scarf, a three-piece suit from Gieves & Hawkes, bespoke tailors in Savile Row. The suit had been done up for him in a rather sprightly young check rendered in shades of green, brown, and tan.

His feet were shod in cable-stitched purple socks inside an old and much-loved pair of spit-polished leather wing-tipped loafers courtesy of Lobb & Co., St. James. He had three identical pairs in his closet. His friend Hawke had teased him about it. Why on earth would a man want four pairs of the same shoe?

“Because,” he replied in a huff, “to do otherwise simply isn’t fair to the shoe.”

Bidding adieu to her fiancé in the forecourt that morning, Lady Diana Mars had observed that he “looked like some character from a bygone, vanished era.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“More’s the pity,” he sniffed, and roared off. His views on fashion were as immutable as the phases of the moon, the very tides, the… whatever.

The Taplow Common Road was empty, and he gave the old girl the juice. He wished he’d remembered his bloody gloves, he thought, barely holding the flat cap down on his head with one frozen hand, the other on the frozen wheel.

As usual, he was driving “alfresco,” and the frigid air was biting and snapping at him like some arctic hurricane. He glanced at the speedo. He was going like sixty, as the old expression had it. A bit quick for the icy country roads, but then he was running a bit late after that postbreakfast spat with his fiancée. Something or other about his memory, he thought, but wasn’t quite sure. Couldn’t remember, really. Maybe it was that he “didn’t listen.” That was it.

His ancient Morgan roadster had been dubbed the “Yellow Peril” by his oldest and closest friend, Alex Hawke. This moniker didn’t sit at all well with the former chief inspector of Scotland Yard. No, not at all. True, the splendid conveyance was a lovely, buttery shade of yellow. But it was not, by any stretch, even remotely perilous.

He was new to this magical world of automobiles, having only bought and learned to drive his beloved forty-year-old wheezer a scant five years earlier. But he’d been smitten from the start. He now drove it anywhere and everywhere, rain or shine, snow or — bloody hell!

He swung the wheel hard to port, then swerved wildly to the right to avoid the looming and unseen snowbank that had loomed up on the far side of a sweeping curve and now barreled straight at him.

The Morgan’s rear end suddenly swapped places with the nose, more than a few times, and he found himself spinning and skidding with a carnival-like air, a gay and colorful carousel whirling about along the icy lane. He was progressing thus down a gently curving slope until at long last he plowed into another snowbank some hundred meters or so on, finally bringing the entire matter to a gentle, if ignominious conclusion.

Dizzy, he peered through his snow-spattered windscreen. The long-louvered bonnet he so dearly loved was partially hidden in the fluffy white stuff. He extricated himself from the chariot and walked round the vehicle, inspecting the working bits, tyres, et cetera, for damage. None. None that he could see, at any rate. The innermost workings of the thing were a secret he’d rather not learn.

Still, it irked.

What the devil were these motorway crews doing if not keeping the roads safe for sporting motorists such as himself?

He jumped back into the old girl, grabbed reverse, and gave her just enough throttle to back out of the embankment without spinning her wheels. Pointing her at last in the right direction, taking control of the curves with gentle downshifts and cautious braking, he resumed his onward journey.

Ambrose was en route to Hawkesmoor, the family seat of Lord Alexander Hawke and his ancestors since the early seventeenth century.

Alex had rung up first thing and summoned him. Said it was rather important. Something or other to do with Cambridge, apparently. There was a steely urgency in Hawke’s voice Congreve had heard many times over the years. It could mean only one thing. It meant, as his hero the incandescent Sherlock Holmes was wont to say, “The game is afoot.”

Afoot it certainly was. Arriving red-cheeked with an inch or so of permafrost coating his entire body, his face flushed with cold, Congreve stood on the wide doorstep at the south portico of Hawkesmoor. He was soon greeted by Pelham Grenville, Hawke’s octogenarian gentleman’s gentleman and general factotum. He of the snowy white hair, pale blue eyes lit by an inner twinkle, and the utterly unflappable demeanor.

Pelham had, as he liked to say, been through it all: the thick, the thin, and the unthinkable with their young charge, Lord Alexander Hawke.

After the horror, when Hawke’s parents had been brutally murdered by drug pirates aboard their yacht in the Caribbean, Pelham and Congreve had assumed responsibility for raising the devastated seven-year-old boy. The child had been strong-willed from the outset. A boy, as his father had remarked, born with a heart for any fate.

At the age of nine, for example, young Alex had insisted on moving from his great rooms high in Hawkesmoor’s west wing to take up permanent residence in the stables down the hill. Moved all his books, toy soldiers, stamps, coins, whatever he could carry. There, in a tiny room above the stalls among the rowdy stableboys, he’d installed himself. And there he’d remained until he’d been sent off to his boarding school, Fettes, in Edinburgh.

To his credit, he’d lived the life of the boys. He’d mucked out the boxes with the best of them, cared for a sick foal long after the other boys had given in to sleep, and earned the respect and love of all and sundry. He was an odd boy, full of an ingrained fighting spirit; but he was the soul of kindness when it came to the less fortunate, the weak, the downhearted or downtrodden.

For the two doting caretakers, Congreve and Pelham, intent on raising a young gentleman, it was all uphill from there.

It had been a challenge, certainly, but, safe to say, the pair of them had been more than up to it. From Pelham, Hawke had learned civility, gracious manners, and the nobility of service to others, the kindliness bestowed on the less fortunate, the organizational skills required to run a complex enterprise, and the power of humility over arrogance. From Congreve came a love of military history, literature, and language as well as the nature of deductive reasoning and the ability to see clearly limned trees where others saw only forests. He had learned to shoot, mastered weaponry of every description, and learned how to use his bare hands to defend himself against any who would do him harm.

It wasn’t until later in his life that he made a profound discovery: the murder of his parents had not killed him; no, it had made him strong.

Lord Alexander Hawke, the man, had emerged as a surprisingly formidable bulwark against the forces of anarchy and evil around the world. And two men, Ambrose and Pelham, had formed an unbreakable bond with each other as a result of their shared experiences during little Alex’s upbringing.

Congreve reached out to press the bell and heard the familiar toll of the deep gong echo from within.

“Morning, Chief Inspector,” Pelham said moments later.

He eyed the new arrival’s high-volume motoring attire without comment. Pelham well knew his comrade in arms was somewhat of a dandy, but it was a lifelong trait he found endearing rather than annoying. Taking the visitor’s ice-stiff woolen tartan cap and equally stiff overcoat (a subtle grey check), he said, “Please come in and defrost. They’re chatting in the library. I assume you’ll want your tea rather than the coffee?”

“I would, please. I’m sorry. Did you say ‘they’ are in the library?”

“I did use that word, sir. Another gentleman, you see. Arrived last evening barely in time for supper. Down from Cambridge, his lordship says. Delivering an update into the drone attack on President McCloskey’s funeral. I fear the news is not good, judging by the mood in the room.”

“Ah. And does this mysterious stranger have a name, by chance?”

“Indeed.”

“Anyone I know?”

“That I couldn’t really say, sir.”

“Oh, please, Pelham, you irascible old party. Do not even begin to attempt this soul-of-discretion charade with me. It’s not in the least becoming, if you must know.”

“His lordship gave strict instructions, sir. The visiting gentleman’s name is to be kept under a strict cone of silence. Those were his exact words. ‘Cone of silence.’”

“You refuse to divulge his identity? To me? Don’t be absurd. For heaven’s sake, man, I’m going in there now!”

“That would be most injudicious of you.”

“To go in there?”

“I don’t advise it.”

“Pelham, get out of my way.”

“As you say, sir.”

“I’m going in.”

“Then all will be revealed. Right this way, sir,” the tall but stooped old soul said and led the way from the entrance hall down a long corridor to an ornate set of tall doors on the left.

He rapped twice, opened one door a wide crack, and announced, “Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve to see you, m’lord.”

“Ambrose!” he heard Hawke bellow from deep within. “Where the bloody hell have you been?”

Pelham turned to Congreve and smiled as he swung the door inward for admittance.

“He would seem to be expecting you, sir.”

“He doesn’t seem to be expecting me, you old relic, he is expecting me,” Congreve sniffed, and, buttoning his tweed jacket, pushed inside.

“Oh, bugger off,” Ambrose thought he heard his old friend mutter as he pottered off toward his pantry.