The three shook their heads.
“Hans, have you brought a hotel vehicle?”
“Yes, it is outside.”
“Get my two cases into it, and we’ll go. You others, help him get the car around to the hangar and loaded.”
The three went outside with the luggage. Hamish went to one of the devices, opened the case, located a small panel, and with a fingernail, flipped down the first dip switch. With the altered dip switch, he handed Rick the case. “This one’s yours.” The three came back and collected their small cases.
Hamish locked the hangar and gave Hans the key, then they got into the car. “Don’t speed, don’t attract attention. You have simply picked up a hotel guest at the Santa Monica Airport, should anyone ask.”
Hans nodded and drove out of the airport, headed for Bel-Air and The Arrington.
33
Everyone’s luggage was loaded into Stone’s and Dino’s cars, and they departed for Teterboro. The big Gulfstream 550 was parked outside the Jet Aviation terminal, and the crew supervised the loading of the luggage. Shortly, everyone was seated, and the big cabin gave everyone room for comfort.
The stewardess checked their seat belts and gave them the lecture about the oxygen masks and the life jackets, then the engines were started and shortly, the airplane began to roll. Runway One was active and their taxi was short. Stone watched as the pilot shoved the throttles forward, and they roared down the runway. For a while they were vectored at low altitude by ATC, until they were clear of the approaches to Newark Airport, then the aircraft climbed to its cruising altitude, and the stewardess brought everyone mimosas, straight orange juice for the kids.
Stone went forward to the cockpit. “Mind if I ride jump seat for a while?” he asked the pilot.
“Sure, make yourself at home. Do you fly?”
Stone sat down and buckled his seat belt. “Yes, I fly a Citation Mustang. I just wanted to see what you have in the way of avionics that I don’t have.”
The pilot gave him a tour of the G-550’s avionics suite. “What do we have that you don’t have?”
“Not much, I’m glad to say.”
Stone went back to the cabin and sat next to Felicity, who was very quiet. “Are you troubled about something?” he asked.
She shook her head but said nothing.
“Come on, Felicity, you’re not yourself. What’s bothering you?”
She sighed. “All right, it’s Algernon.”
“What have you learned?”
“I wanted to wait until we got to the hotel and speak directly with the Secret Service, but I don’t suppose it matters if I tell you.”
“Then tell me.”
“The name Algernon appeared in signals intercepted by our GCHQ facility, which is analogous to your NSA.”
“When?”
“A while back,” she said, “in July 2005, shortly before the suicide bomber attacks on the London underground.”
“Oh, shit,” Stone said.
“Well, yes.”
“Any more details?”
“The messages were similar to those more recently intercepted,” she said.
Stone waved at the stewardess and made telephone motions. She brought him a cordless satphone handset, and Stone dialed the number.
“Mike Freeman.”
“Mike, it’s Stone.”
“Good morning, Stone.”
“I have some news you need to get to the Secret Service detail.”
“Shoot.”
“The Brits at GCHQ intercepted previous messages with the code name ‘Algernon.’”
“Yes?”
“They were right before the suicide bombing attacks on the London underground. As I recall, fifty died and hundreds were injured. The messages were much like the ones the NSA intercepted more recently.”
“I’ll call Agent Rifkin immediately,” Mike said.
“I wonder if the president’s visit should be canceled?” Stone said.
“Air Force One arrived at LAX at eight this morning after an overnight flight from Rio to Washington, thence here. The president and his party are probably all asleep by now. The president of Mexico is due in momentarily.”
“I see.”
“I’ll call Rifkin now, and I’ll see you later today.” Mike hung up.
“Did I hear you say the president’s visit should be canceled?” Felicity asked.
“That’s what I would do, if I were the Secret Service detail commander, but of course, I’m not. The president arrived early this morning and is in bed asleep. The president of Mexico is due shortly.”
“What sort of quarters does the president have?”
“Both presidents are in large cottages that have bulletproof windows and walls, and each has a basement bomb shelter. I’m told there’s no place in Los Angeles that is more secure.”
Mike Freeman watched as Agent Rifkin talked on a telephone at the other end of the living room. There was a conversation of ten minutes, then Rifkin came back and sat down beside Mike.
“We appreciate the information, Mike, but our director, after consulting the White House, believes we don’t have sufficient information to scrub the visit. A huge amount of staff work has gone into the preparations for the talks between President Lee and President Vargas, and the powers that be are unwilling to disrupt their conferences. A major treaty is to be signed at the conclusion of their talks, and there would be a huge flap in the media if we scrubbed it, and that wouldn’t be to the benefit of your hotel.”
“I understand,” Mike said. “Did you rerun the background checks on the list of hotel employees I gave you?”
“Every one of them, and we didn’t turn up a single piece of information on anybody that we didn’t learn in the first investigation.”
“I guess I’m glad to hear that,” Mike said. “My people had the same result in their rerun.”
“My director has told me that he’s putting another fifty agents outside the hotel grounds, patrolling the surrounding neighborhood, so if there’s somebody out there with a rocket-launched grenade or two, we’ll have a shot at finding him.”
“I think that’s a smart move,” Mike said.
The Gulfstream landed at Burbank, and was met by three Bentleys from the hotel, along with a Porsche Cayenne for the overflow luggage. Half an hour later they drove through the main gate of The Arrington and were immediately shunted into a parking area where they were asked by Secret Service agents to get out of the vehicles.
Stone looked around and saw landscapers unrolling swaths of sod and trimming shrubs. The grounds were very beautiful.
Peter came over. “Vance planted hundreds of specimen trees here,” he said, “and they seem to have saved them all.”
