The stewardess appeared again. “Would you like dinner?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” Holly said.
“Breakfast will be served an hour before we land. What would you like? We have cereals, pastries, or scrambled eggs with bacon.”
“I’ll have the eggs,” Holly said. She settled in to read the Agency’s handbooks for her two phones and discovered that both could send and receive encrypted messages. Forward of where she sat Graves and Barton were in earnest conversation. Holly chose the aftermost bunk, set her watch forward five hours, and was soon sound asleep.
The stewardess woke her at nine o’clock, and she went to the toilet and freshened up. When she returned she raised the shade of her window and got an eyeful of bright sunshine. There was an undercast far below. She switched on the screen at her seat and found the moving map. They would make their landfall south of Land’s End soon, and their arrival time had not changed. The breakfast was much better than she had expected.
They touched down at Biggin Hill three minutes early, and her luggage was taken into an FBO, where a customs and immigration official awaited them. She was unimpressed by Holly’s brand-new diplomatic passport and gave it its first stamp.
“There’s a van waiting for us,” Stewart Graves said. He had eight or nine pieces of luggage; this was a move across the Atlantic for him.
Greg Barton shook her hand. “Good luck in the new post,” she said to him.
“Thanks. You, too.” Those were the only words he had spoken to her since they had boarded the airplane. Holly thought he might have given her a few pointers on her new job, since she was replacing him, but apparently he was not anxious for her to succeed. Stewart Graves was similarly tight-lipped. After a hideously long drive through the south London suburbs, the van stopped at the Connaught, and the doorman unloaded her bags.
“Good luck,” she said to Graves, and he nodded. “You, too.” Then he was gone.
Holly checked in and was walked upstairs by a young woman. She was delighted to find that a suite had been booked for her, a first since she had joined the Agency. She showered, then dried her hair and had a light lunch. She was dozing on her sitting room sofa when her iPhone rang.
“Yes?”
“This is Hamish. Seven P.M. at a pub called the Grenadier, in Wilton Row. Any cabdriver will know it.” He hung up.
“Okay,” she said into the dead line. She watched a cricket match for an hour, trying to figure it out, then gave up and watched an old movie.
17
The cab dropped Holly at the doorstep of the Grenadier, which was located in a pretty mews behind Wilton Crescent, in upper-upper-class Belgravia.
She walked up the front stairs and into a cozy barroom. A fire crackled in a hearth to her left, and the room was crowded with expensively dressed young people. Holly ordered a scotch over ice and found a spot to sit near the fire. She had begun sizing up the young men in the room, when somebody stepped in front of her. She looked up to see a trim figure in clothes that were clearly bespoke. He had a bald head with a fringe of dark hair and he had, of all unexpected things in London, a suntan.
“Holly Barker?” he asked.
Holly stood up and found that the top of his head came to about the tip of her nose. “Hamish?”
They shook hands, and Hamish guided her into an adjoining dining room, where a single table had been set for two. “Please,” he said, pulling out the table so that she could get behind it and sit on the banquette. He set his own drink on the table and waved at a waitress. “May I have a large Lagavulin with a single ice cube, please?” He had dark, almost black eyes and perfect teeth.
“Lagavulin?” Holly asked.
“It’s a single-malt scotch from the island of Islay,” he replied.
“It’s hard to keep up with single malts.”
“Don’t even try,” he said, smiling. “Kate didn’t make it clear that you were beautiful, as well as smart. I particularly like the red hair. Tell me, is it from a bottle?” His English was entirely upper class, reflecting his Eton and Oxford education.
“It’s from a salon,” Holly replied. What would he want to know next, her bra size?
He moved a hand up and down. “It’s all a very pleasing combination. You chose exactly the right things to wear to a fashionable pub.”
Holly had chosen tweed slacks and a jacket and a cashmere sweater, all covered by a trench coat, which she now struggled out of. “Thank you, Hamish.”
A young woman brought them menus and a wine list. “The food here is very good, for a pub, and they have some decent wines. What did Kate do with Greg Barton?” he asked, as his eyes roamed the wine list. “Take him out and shoot him?”
“On the contrary,” Holly said, “Greg was rewarded with a very nice job in Rome. He’s already there.”
“I heard Stewart Graves will be coming to London.”
“We were all on the same aircraft coming over.”
“Did Greg fill your ears with descriptions of my exploits?”
“Neither of them had anything to say, so I got some sleep.”
“Ah, yes, the woman thing. I don’t think either of them liked working for Kate, then to have yet another woman inserted between them and Kate must have been a blow.”
“As I said, they didn’t share. What I know of you came from Kate.”
Hamish nodded. “I’m sure she was objective and fair.”
“Always, in my experience.”
“What job were you in before?”
“Assistant DDO.”
“And now you are assistant director! A great leap. I’m sure Kate was very deliberate in leaving out the ‘to’ between ‘assistant’ and ‘director.’”
Holly smiled. “She’s always deliberate.”
“Yes! Not a hothead, our Kate.”
“Not in my experience.”
“I expect her cool confidence comes from the proximity of the man who appointed her.”
“I think it comes from her core, and I think being married to Will Lee has as many pitfalls as advantages.”
“I can’t keep up with American politics.”
“Don’t even try.”
He laughed. “And soon she will be gone, with her husband. What then for the ambitious at Langley?”
“Anxiety, I should think.”
“And it’s already begun, hasn’t it? The removal of Stewart and Greg must have got their attention!”
“I left the country only hours after I was appointed, so I wasn’t around to hear the chatter. I hear you roam far and wide, Hamish. What brings you to London?”
“Why, the pleasure of meeting you, Holly,” he replied smoothly, “and also my curiosity about what message Kate has sent me. She has sent me a message, hasn’t she?”
“She has.”
“Well, let’s order first to get the waitress out of our hair-pardon me, your hair,” he said, stroking his bald pate.
“I’ll have the steak-and-kidney pie,” Holly said, “and whatever wine you’re ordering.”
Hamish crooked a finger at the waitress, who came over. “Each of us will have the steak-and-kidney pie, with
