CHAPTER TWO
The Mercedes’s GPS directed him to the emergency room at the John Radcliffe Hospital on the east side of Oxford. Storm bolted inside.
“I have a gunshot victim in the car!” he announced. “She’s bleeding. In shock. But conscious!”
An intake clerk grabbed a phone, and within seconds an emergency assessment unit came rushing from behind double metal doors. An attendant pushing a “trolley bed” ran behind a triage trauma nurse and a physician’s assistant. The three of them followed Storm to the still-running Mercedes, where he helped the attendant lift Showers onto the cart while the nurse and the medic worked on her.
“She allergic to any medicines?” the nurse asked.
“Don’t know,” he replied.
“How’d this happen?” she asked.
“She was shot at a protest rally at Oxford this morning.”
“We’ve already had three others come through here who were in the crowd. Why are you so late?”
“Got lost.”
The nurse noticed the blood on the interior of the car windows and also on him. “We’ll take it from here,” she said. “You need to sign in.”
As they hurried by the intake desk, Storm overheard the nurse say, “Call Security.” Before the receptionist could lift her phone, Storm handed her Showers’s FBI business card.
“Left my car running,” he said. “Be right back.”
“Wait,” she called after him. “There are forms-”
But he was already speeding away from the hospital.
From behind the wheel, Storm called Jedidiah Jones, the director of the National Clandestine Service at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. “Showers has been shot,” he said. “Just dropped her at the John Radcliffe emergency room in Oxford, England. You need to call.”
“I’ll put the FBI in touch with the hospital. They have her medical information from her personnel file,” Jones replied. “I’ll let our London embassy know. They’ll get people out there. What about you?”
“Only bruises.”
Storm recapped the morning’s events at the Oxford rally and later under the English oaks.
Jones listened without interrupting and then said, “Obviously, Georgi Lebedev was a traitor in Petrov’s camp. He was keeping Russian President Oleg Barkovsky informed about what Petrov was doing.”
Once former pals, Barkovsky and Petrov had turned against each other after the oligarch had criticized the Kremlin leader in public. A furious Barkovsky had forced Petrov to flee Russia and had later sent assassins to kill him in England.
Jones said,” It all makes sense now. President Barkovsky must have bribed Lebedev. Because Petrov trusted Lebedev like a brother, he wouldn’t have suspected that he would turn on him.”
Storm said, “There’s more. Showers found out where the gold is hidden.”
“She did? Only Petrov knew its location, and he’d refused to tell anyone. How’d she pull that off?”
“Judging from the bullet hole in Petrov’s foot, I’m guessing Lebedev forced the issue. Lebedev must have threatened him in the parked car. He probably said he wouldn’t drive him to a hospital for his chest wound unless he spilled his guts-pun intended-about the gold. When Petrov refused, Lebedev showed him how serious he was. Showers was in the front seat during all of this and overheard their entire exchange. I’ll send you the longitude and latitude coordinates for the gold from Lebedev’s cell phone after I ditch this car.”
“Delete them after you send them to me,” Jones said, adding, “Do you need a cleaner?”
“Too late,” Storm said. “I’m sure the car explosion has attracted a crowd by now.”
“I’ll call MI-6 and have the FBI pull strings with Scotland Yard. Both owe us. But it would be best if you disappeared. Hold on for a moment.”
Jones was off-line for less than a minute. When he returned, he said, “About forty miles south of Oxford is a town called Newbury. There’s a U.S. Air Force operation there under the command of the 420 Munitions Squadron. I’m arranging a military flight to get you out of England into Germany and then home. Best to avoid commercial flights and passport controls. How soon can you get to Newbury?”
“An hour or less unless I get stopped.”
“Don’t. At least not before you send me those coordinates.”
Jones had his priorities. Gold. Then Storm.
“Call me later,” Storm said, “about April.”
“April? She your girlfriend now?”
“Agent Showers,” he said, correcting himself. “And she’s not my girlfriend. She’s my partner.”
“Right,” Jones said skeptically.
“Just make sure someone gets to that hospital.”
Hanging up, Storm used the Mercedes’s GPS to direct him to the closest shopping mall: Templars Square, less than four miles away. He parked in the garage across the street, leaving his blood-covered jacket in the car. Storm wasn’t worried about trace evidence. He’d been dead, at least officially, for four years. The CIA had helped him “die” and vanish from the grid. He’d been happily living in Montana when Jones summoned him back for what was supposed to be a simple kidnapping investigation. If Scotland Yard or Interpol found traceable evidence in the bloody Mercedes, their investigators would compare the findings to records of living suspects. No one searched a cemetery for a killer.
In the parking garage’s second-floor stairwell, Storm paused to examine Lebedev’s cell phone. He found the directional app and forwarded the coordinates on it to Jones. As a backup, Storm also sent them to his own private cell phone. Satisfied, he deleted the app but kept Lebedev’s phone for delivery to the tech experts at Langley. Who could tell what else it might contain?
Exiting the garage, Storm entered the shopping mall and went immediately into a public toilet to wash blood from his hands. He had it on his slacks, too, but they were black, so the stains were not so noticeable. He left the toilet and bought a pair of slacks and a shirt in a nearby clothing shop, then returned to the men’s room to change.
Outside the mall, he flagged a taxi at the corner of Crowell and Hackmore Streets.
“Where to?” the hack driver asked.
“Air base at Newbury.”
“That’s a long ride, mate,” he said, giving Storm a curious look.
“Got into a fight with my girl inside the mall,” Storm improvised. “She won’t drive me back to the base. She’s Irish, and if I’m late, it’ll be my head.”
“Birds-or in the States I guess you call ’em broads,” the driver said. “The nationality don’t matter. They’re all a bit loony. We’re off to Newbury.”
They’d gone about a mile when the cabbie started talking.
Storm leaned back his head and closed his eyes. He didn’t want conversation.
“You heard about the shootings at Oxford this morning, didn’t you?” the driver asked. “All over the radio. Three men started shooting at some Russian speaking at a rally. People got hurt.”
“I’ve got a twelve-hour shift waiting for me and a girl kicking my balls,” Storm replied. “I don’t need to hear about someone else’s problems.”
The cabbie chuckled. “Then you take a little nap and leave the driving to me.”
About forty minutes later, the cab arrived at the air base gate. Storm paid the sixty-dollar fare and then handed the driver another twenty. “My Irish girlfriend happens to be married,” he explained. “I’d like to have a face that is easy to forget.”
The driver pocketed the bills. “You Yanks all look alike to me, mate.”
Storm was about to board a flight an hour later when his cell phone rang.
“She’s out of surgery,” Jones said. “The prognosis is good. A car will be waiting when you land.”
