Sara was in excellent spirits.
“This is nice,” she said and ran to the window. Caspar looked hunted and his wife unhappy. “Is lunch ready?” Caspar asked.
“There’s something we have to get clear first,” Levin said, “And this comes directly from General Ferguson. The house phones are only for use internally. You can’t call London. If we communicate with the outside world, it must be through Captain Bosey and his coded mobile system in the communications room. The staff are not allowed personal mobiles on the premises.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Molly asked.
Her husband said warily, “A call from a mobile phone can be very easily traced.”
“What nonsense, it’s preposterous,” Molly told him.
“At the moment, no one knows where you are,” Greta said patiently. “We’d prefer to leave it that way.”
“So I am not allowed to phone a hospital to check on my patients?”
“For God’s sake.” Caspar took a mobile phone from his pocket and slammed it down on the table. “It’s only for a week.”
Molly took a deep breath and seemed about to explode and then the breath went out of her. She opened her handbag and took out not one but two phones. “If you must, and Sara’s, of course.”
Sara said, “Cheer up, Mummy, we’re going to have a lovely time. Now let’s eat.”
IT WAS AFTER LUNCH that Molly Rashid went up to the bedroom and checked the luggage, which included her doctor’s bag. She opened it, pulled her stethoscope out of the way and revealed the spare mobile and its charger she always kept in there in case of a hospital emergency. At least she could still check on the progress of the Bedford child, but it could wait.
Chapter 14
HAL STONE HAD A MEWS COTTAGE IN CHAPEL LANE, Cambridge, even though his position at Corpus Christi entitled him to rooms at the college. The cottage was somewhere to hide from the incessant demands of students when he was writing a book.
It was a Victorian cottage consisting of three bedrooms, a study, a kitchen and a lovely sitting room, its old- fashioned French windows opening to a garden that was a great pride to him, the garden surrounded by flint walls with a door that led to a back lane.
He was in the kitchen making tea when his phone rang. He answered it, declaring, “Hal Stone has gone away.”
“No, he hasn’t, you daft bastard,” Roper said. “You’ve just got back.”
“Ah, Roper, is that you? You’re not wanting me for anything active again? After Hazar, I need a rest. Indiana Jones I’m not.”
“Don’t worry, old boy, I’m just bringing you up to speed on what’s happened. Just listen.” He went through everything, Hussein’s departure from Hazar with Khazid, what had taken place in Algeria, the stolen floatplane to Majorca, the security film at Palma, the plane to Rennes.
“Well, I see where you’re coming from. It looks like a stage-by-stage progress to England.”
“Where else could it be? No point in bringing the French in because of that plane at Rennes. He would have been out of France to wherever long ago.”
“I still can’t see it, him coming to England, it would be suicide. I mean, his face has been all over the place. Somebody somewhere would be bound to recognize him. He’s hardly had time for plastic surgery.”
“God knows, it’s beyond me, but at night alone in front of the computers and fighting my own personal pain with more whiskey, I look at him on the screen and think he’s on his way.”
“So what are you doing about it?”
“We’ve persuaded the Rashids to vacate the Hampstead house and fly down to the depths of West Sussex for a week in a safe house. Zion House.”
“Now, that does sound interesting. Tell me more.”
Roper did, everything, including the report he’d just had in from Levin. “Molly Rashid’s a tough one. Likes her own way too much. The business about her mobile, all that fuss. Too damn much.”
“She’s a truly fine surgeon, and people like that are obsessive. They think that what they do is more important than anything else. Unfortunately, it often is.”
“Anyway, now you know the present score,” Roper said. “To a great extent, we’re in Hussein’s hands.”
“And I think he won’t come at all.” Hal Stone laughed, “After all, he’s a Harvard man. He’d have more sense.”
“Try telling them that at Yale,” Roper told him.
“I wish you luck, my friend. Take care.”
“So long.”
Hal Stone shook his head. Crazy, the whole business. He returned to making his tea.
AT THAT MOMENT, Hussein and Khazid, having arrived without incident on the Cambridge train, were in a shop specializing in academic gowns, college scarves and the like. Khazid, under Hussein’s orders, purchased a short gown of the type favored by undergraduates, but not a Corpus Christi scarf.
“I expect the porters pride themselves on knowing their own students.”
Khazid went down the list and chose a New Hall scarf and a dark beret and they left. Entrance to the college was no problem, students passing in and out through the gates, students everywhere, or so it seemed. They moved up a floor and Khazid, in his Henri Duval persona, stopped a passing female undergraduate and inquired for Professor Stone in English heavily laced with French, his beret helping establish his nationality.
She was obviously amused, but waved toward the other end of the corridor. “Down there, but he’s never in.”
“Then where would he be, mademoiselle?”
“Don’t ask me, try the phone book.”
She hurried away, Khazid shrugged and then they reached the end and found a wooden sign hanging on the door saying simply,
Khazid tried the door, but it was locked. “Now what do we do?”
“The obvious,” Hussein told him. “We do what the girl suggested and look in a phone book.”
“And what if he’s not in?”
“You’re a pessimist, my friend. He’s a famous man at one of the great colleges, a professor of the University of Cambridge -of course he’ll be in the phone book. Now let’s find one.”
AT ZION PLACE, Caspar was exploring the garden with his daughter and found some of his cares slipping away. The three Russians sat on the terrace and watched.
“That girl is really quite amazing,” Greta said. “She can be a child and adore childish things at one minute, and the next, she’s like a mature woman.”
“But then if you consider what she’s been through,” Levin said, “the death, the destruction at such a young age.”
Chomsky said, “In Chechnya, one could see the same look a hundred times on the faces of children that on occasion I have seen on hers. The face goes blank to conceal what lies inside.”
“God help her survive it all in herself. I know I’ll do everything to help that I can,” Greta said.
