AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That evening in Washington, a very tense Sam Somerville was summoned from her apartment in Alexandria to the Hoover Building. She was shown to the office of Philip Kelly, her ultimate departmental boss, to hear the White House decision.
“All right, Agent Somerville, you’ve got it. The powers-that-be say you get to return to England and release Mr. Quinn. But this time, you stay with him, right with him, all the time. And you let Mr. Brown know what he’s doing and where he’s going.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
She was just in time to catch the overnight red-eye for Heathrow. There was a slight delay in the departure of her scheduled plane out of Dulles International. A few miles away, at Andrews, Air Force One was landing with the casket of Simon Cormack. At that hour, right across America, all airports ceased traffic for two minutes’ silence.
She landed at Heathrow at dawn. It was the dawn of the fourth day since the murder.
Irving Moss was awakened early that morning by the sound of the ringing phone. It could only be one source—the only one that had his number here. He checked his watch: 4:00 A.M., 10:00 the previous evening in Houston. He took down the lengthy list of produce prices, all in U.S. dollars and cents, eradicated the zeros or “nulls”—which indicated a space in the message—and according to the day of the month set the lines of figures against prepared lines of letters. When he had finished decoding, he sucked in his cheeks. Something extra, something not foreseen, something else he would have to take care of. Without delay.
Aloysius Fairweather, Jr., United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, had received the message conveyed by the British Foreign Office the previous evening on his return from the Upper Hey ford U.S. Air Force Base. It had been a bad, sad day: receiving permission from Oxford’s coroner to take charge of the body of his President’s son, collecting the casket from the local morticians, who had done their best with little chance of success, and dispatching the tragic cargo back to Washington on Air Force One.
He had been in this post almost three years, the appointee of the new administration, and he knew he had done well, even though he had to succeed the incomparable Charles Price of the Reagan years. But these past four weeks had been a nightmare no ambassador should have to live through.
The Foreign Office request puzzled him, for it was not to see the Foreign Secretary, with whom he normally dealt, but the Home Secretary, Sir Harry Marriott. He knew Sir Harry, as he knew most of the British Ministers, well enough to drop titles in private and revert to first names. But to be called to the Home Office itself, and at the breakfast hour, was unusual, and the Foreign Office message had lacked explanation. His long black Cadillac swept into Victoria Street at five to nine.
“My dear Al.” Marriott was all charm, albeit backed by the gravity the circumstances demanded. “I hope I don’t need to tell you the level of shock that the last few days have brought to this entire country.”
Fairweather nodded. He had no doubt the reaction of the British government and people was totally genuine. For days the queue to sign the condolence book in the embassy lobby had stretched twice around Grosvenor Square. Near the top of the first page was the simple inscription “Elizabeth R,” followed by the entire Cabinet, the two archbishops, the leaders of all the other churches, and thousands of names of the high and the obscure. Sir Harry pushed two manila-bound reports across the desk at him.
“I wanted you to see these first, in private, and I suggest now. There may be matters we should discuss before you leave.”
Dr. Macdonald’s report was the shorter; Fairweather took it first. Simon Cormack had died of massive explosive damage to spine and abdomen, caused by a detonation of small but concentrated effect near the base of his back. At the time he died he was carrying the bomb on his person. There was more, but it was technical jargon about his physique, state of health, last known meal, and so on.
Dr. Barnard had more to say. The bomb Simon Cormack had been carrying on his person was concealed in the broad leather belt he wore around his waist and which had been given him by his abductors to hold up the denim jeans they had also provided him.
The belt had been three inches wide and made of two strips of cowhide sewn together along their edges. At the front it was secured by a heavy and ornate brass buckle, four inches long and slightly wider than the belt itself, decorated at its front by the embossed image of a longhorn steer’s head. It was the sort of belt sold widely in shops specializing in Western or camping equipment. Although appearing solid, the buckle had in fact been hollow.
The explosive had been a two-ounce wafer of Semtex, composed of 45 percent penta tetro ether nitrate (or PETN), 45 percent RDX, and 10 percent plasticizer. The wafer had been three inches long and one-and-a-half inches wide, and had been inserted between the two strands of leather precisely against the young man’s backbone.
Buried within the plastic explosive had been a miniature detonator, or mini-del, later extracted from within a fragment of vertebra that had itself been buried in the spleen. It was distorted but still recognizable—and identifiable.
From the explosive and detonator, a wire ran around the belt to the side, where it connected with a lithium battery similar to and no larger than the sort used to power digital watches. This had been inside a hollow, sculpted within the thickness of the double leather. The same wire then ran on to the pulse-receiver hidden inside the buckle. From the receiver a further wire, the aerial, ran right around the belt, between the layers of leather.
The pulse receiver would have been no larger than a small matchbox, probably receiving, on something like 72.15 megahertz, a signal sent from a small transmitter. This was not, of course, found at the scene, but it was probably a flat plastic box pack, smaller than a crush-proof cigarette pack, with a single flush button depress
ed by the ball of the thumb to effect detonation. Range: something over three hundred yards.
Al Fairweather was visibly shaken. “God, Harry, this is ... satanic.”
“And complex technology,” agreed the Home Secretary. “The sting is in the tail. Read the summary.”
“But why?” asked the ambassador when he looked up at last. “In God’s name, why, Harry? And how did they do it?”
“As to how, there’s only one explanation. Those animals pretended to let Simon Cormack go free. They must have driven on awhile, circled back, and approached the stretch of road from the direction of the fields on foot. Probably hidden in one of those clumps of trees standing two hundred yards away from the road across the fields. That would be within range. We have men scouring the woods now for possible footprints.
“As to why, I don’t know, Al. We none of us know. But the scientists are adamant. They have not got it wrong. For the moment I would suggest that report remain extremely confidential. Until we know more. We are trying to find out. I’m sure your own people will want to try also, before anything goes public.”
Fairweather rose, taking his copies of the reports.
“I’m not sending these by courier,” he said. “I’m flying home with them this afternoon.”
The Home Secretary escorted him down to the ground level.
“You do realize what this could do if it gets out?” he asked.
“No need to underline it,” said Fairweather. “There’d be riots. I have to take this to Jim Donaldson and maybe Michael Odell. They’ll have to tell the President. God, what a thing.”
