was praying.
Stoke looked past Preacher and smiled at the mob guy. “Now, you listnin’ to reason, see? I knew you come around eventually.”
“Fuck you,” the guy said.
“Your place or mine?” Stoke said.
He was showing him a lot of pearly whites as Trevor accelerated the big Lincoln away and up the curving drive. Stokely swung his massive arm over the back of the seat and looked at Ross, seeing a big smile on his face.
“What you smiling at?”
“You, mate,” Ross said. “Just you, Stoke.”
“Shit,” Stoke said. “A guy like that? Kind of guy can’t make it as a real person, so he trying to make it as a character.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nantucket Island
AMBROSE CONGREVE WAS SITTING WITH SLIPPERED FEET upon the table. Still in his pajamas, the man was also wearing, for some reason, a quilted black velvet smoking jacket with a scarlet spotted handkerchief in the breast pocket. He was smoking his pipe and looking up at a large television monitor hung from the ceiling. A graphic on the screen read:
FOX BREAKING NEWS!
“Top of the morning, Ambrose,” Hawke said cheerfully. “You’re up awfully early. Something good on the telly?”
Congreve turned and smiled at the newcomers through a haze of blue smoke. “I don’t normally watch the television at this hour, as you know, Alex. I don’t normally watch anything at this bloody hour except the angels of my dreams. But your dear friend Conch called from Washington at the hellish hour of six and got me out of my very warm bed. Apparently, something alarming is afoot with your ambassador in Paris, Mr. Patterson.”
“Grab a seat, Tex,” Hawke said, “And pay him no mind. He’s always grouchy until his midday eye-opener.” Congreve shot Hawke a narrow look out of the corner of his eye and then returned his attention to the monitor.
“This could be mighty damn interesting, Alex,” Patterson said, as everyone took a chair.
“What does he—”
“Here it is,” Patterson said.
Fox TV cut from a tight shot of their reporter to a wide shot of the ambassador and his two children out in the embassy gardens. He was bent over, whispering something to the two blond boys, putting his mouth to each of their ears. Then he stood upright, smiled broadly and approached the podium.
“Bonjour et bienvenue,” he began.
The camera zoomed in slowly on the ambassador’s face as he spoke, catching the blazing patriotism and the power of his conviction in his clear blue eyes.
“Freedom and fear are at war,” he began. Ten minutes later, having finished his speech, the ambassador began fielding questions from the press.
“Christ almighty, Duke, what the hell are you thinking?” Patterson said to the screen, slamming his open hand down on the table when the speech ended.
“I admire his stand, actually,” Hawke said, gazing thoughtfully at the ambassador’s face. “He’s right, you know.”
“Hell with right,” Patterson said angrily. “This ain’t the time for who’s right or who’s wrong. My team is charged with protecting the lives of these people! Now, you got this guy telling his colleagues around the world that—holy hell—now what?”
Everyone in the War Room stared up in horror at the images now unfolding on the monitor. The American ambassador writhing on the ground, white smoke pouring from his shoes. The shocked, disbelieving faces of his two young boys, desperately trying to rush to their father’s aid, but held back by the security agents trying to shield them from the sight of horrendous flames igniting at his feet.
“White phosphorus,” Tex Patterson said, “Christ! Somebody got to his shoes and—”
Ambrose saw the anguished look on Alex’s face, riveted by the vision of two little boys watching their father die before their eyes. “Turn it off!” Ambrose said, getting to his feet. “Turn the bloody thing off!”
Someone hit the remote and the screen went dark.
The men gathered around the table were silent. Everyone knew Hawke had witnessed the torture-slaying of his father and mother on a cruise to the Bahamas.
“Tex,” Alex said, lifting his head and turning his burning gaze towards the DSS man. “You got a real fight on your hands. A carefully orchestrated jihad. And, it’s personal. The Dog is killing your guys one at a time. And he likes to fight dirty.”
“You know what the worst part is, Hawkeye? We don’t know how to fight dirty anymore.”
“Oh, there still may be a few of us left around,” Alex said.
“Suggestion?” said Congreve. “Unless anyone has more pressing engagements, no one should leave this ship until we reach a very clear understanding of two things. How to run down this wretched Dog. And how to take him out. Mr. Patterson?”
Tex leaned back in his chair, an unlit cigarette dangling from his sun-chapped lips.
“Yeah. Let me start at the beginning of this thing. We had a case. DSS had a case, I mean. A serial killer in London in the mid-nineties. Most of his victims were young, attractive women. Shop girls. Prostitutes. My team only got involved when he murdered a State Department employee. Girl he’d picked up in a pub in Soho.”
“What was her name?” Congreve asked.
“Alice Kearns. Low-level staffer. African Affairs section at our embassy in Grosvenor Square.”
“She was his last victim?”
“Correct. Late Spring, 1998. May.”
“American, I assume.”
“As a matter of fact, yes. The only American victim. Why would you assume that?”
Congreve stroked his mustache, ignoring the question. “So the man you suspected of orchestrating the murders in Maine, fingered by the young deputy before he died, he was the suspect in these London serial murders as well?”
“Yes.”
“I see. And how did this ‘Dog,’ as you call him, come by his unfortunate moniker?”
“His laugh,” Patterson said.
“I don’t follow.”
“Videotapes were found in his penthouse on Park Lane after he disappeared. In each tape, the murderer is seen wearing a black hooded kaftan. Very careful never to show his face. But, by God, you can hear his laugh. Cackling. Howling. Shrieking. Just like a wild dog.”
“The Dog wore a kaftan,” Alex said. “Arabic.”
“Definitely,” Patterson replied. “We were getting very close. He was a well-known business figure in London, but somehow we managed to keep our suspicions out of the press, the whole story. He had no idea we were onto him. No one did.”
“Name?” Hawke asked.
“Snay bin Wazir,” Patterson said. “Had an Emirate passport, but he’d been around. Africa. Indonesia—”
“The Pasha! The Pasha of Knightsbridge. Brick Kelly and I had a lovely evening with him one night at the Connaught. Very well dressed chap. Polished. He wanted to join Nell’s.”
“Yes. That was late December, just a few days before we decided to move. On New Year’s Eve, 1999, a
