'Damn, that's one bad-ass automobile,' Brian observed. And indeed it looked as though it were doing a hundred miles per hour just sitting in front of the house.
'The real champ is the McLaren F1. Million bucks, but it only seats one up front, I think. Fast as a fighter plane. The one you're looking at is quarter-mil' worth of car, bro.'
'Fuck…' Brian reacted. 'That much?'
'They're handmade, Aldo, by guys who work on the Sistine Chapel in their off-hours. Yeah, it's a lot of wheels. Wish I could afford it. You could probably put the engine in a Spitfire and shoot down some Germans, y'know?'
'Probably gets lousy mileage,' Brian observed.
'Oh, well…Everything has its little price — shit. There's our boy.'
And just then the door to the house opened, and a young man walked out. The suit he wore was three-piece, and Johnny Reb gray in color. He stood in the middle of the four stone steps and looked at his watch. As though on cue, a black London cab came down the hill and he walked down the steps to hop in.
'Younger than us,' Brian observed, as they continued to walk. Then, on Dominic's initiative, they crossed over the park and headed back the other way, slowing for a covetous look at the Aston Martin before heading on their way. The hotel had a coffee shop, where they got some coffee and a light breakfast of croissants and marmalade.
'I don't like the idea of having coverage on our bird,' Brian said.
'Can't be helped. The Brits must think he's a little hinky, too. But he's just going to have a heart attack, remember. It's not like we're going to pop him, even with a suppressed weapon. No marks, no noise.'
'Okay, fine, we check him out downtown, but if it doesn't look good we blow it off and step back to think it over, okay?'
'Agreed.' Dominic nodded. They'd have to be clever about it. He'd probably take the lead, because it would be his job to spot the guy's police tail. But there was no sense in waiting too long, either. They'd looked at Berkeley Square just to get a feel for it, and hoping to eyeball the target. It would not be a good place to make a hit, not with a surveillance team camped out thirty yards away. 'The good news is that his tail is supposed to be a rookie. If I can ID the guy, then, when I get ready, you just bump into him and — hell, I'll ask directions to something or other. You'll only need a second to make the pop. Then we both keep on going like nothing happened. Even if people yell for an ambulance, nothing more than a casual turn, and you keep on going.'
Brian thought his way through that. 'We have to check out the neighborhood first.'
'Agreed.' They finished breakfast without another word.
Sam Granger was already in his office. It was 3:15 A.M. when he got in and lit up his own computer. The twins had gotten to London at about 1:00 A.M. his time, and something in the back of his head told him that they would not dally on their mission. This first mission would validate — or not — The Campus's idea of a virtual office. If things went according to plan, he'd get notification of the operation's progress even faster than Rick Bell's news over the intelligence network's wire service. Now came the part he always knew he'd hate: waiting for others to effect the mission he'd drawn up in his own mind, here at his own desk. Coffee helped. A cigar would have helped even better, but he didn't have a cigar. That's when his door opened.
It was Gerry Hendley.
'You, too?' Sam asked, with both surprise and amusement.
Hendley smiled. 'Well, first time, right? I couldn't sleep at home.'
'I hear you. Got a deck of cards?' he wondered aloud.
'I wish.' Hendley was actually pretty good with a deck of cards. 'Any word from the twins?'
'Not a peep. They got in on time, probably at the hotel by now. I imagine they got in, freshened up, and went out for a look-see. The hotel is only a block or so from Uda's house. Hell, for all I know they might have popped him in the ass already. The timing's about right. He'd be going to work about now, if the locals have his routine figured out, and I think we can depend on that.'
'Yeah, unless he got an unexpected call, or he saw something in the morning paper that caught his interest, or his favorite shirt wasn't properly pressed. Reality is analog, Sam, not digital, remember?'
'Don't we know it,' Granger agreed.
The financial district looked exactly like what it was, though somewhat homier than New York's tower-targets of steel and glass. There were some of those, too, of course, but they weren't as oppressive. Half a block from where they got out of the cab was a portion of the original Roman wall that had surrounded the legion town of Londinium, as the British capital had originally been known, a place selected for its good wells and large river. The people here were mostly well dressed, they noticed, and the shops all upscale in a city where few things were low scale. The bustle factor was high, with crowds of people moving about with speed and purpose. There was also a good supply of pubs, most of which had chalkboards near the doors to advertise their food. The twins picked one in easy sight of the Lloyd's building; agreeably, it had outside tables, as though it were a Roman restaurant near the Spanish Steps. The clear sky belied London's wet reputation. Both twins were sufficiently well dressed not to appear too obviously to be American tourists. Brian spotted an ATM machine and got some cash, which he split with his brother, and then they ordered coffee — they were too American to get tea — and waited.
In his office, Sali was working on his computer. He had a chance to buy a town house in Belgravia — a neighborhood even more upscale than his own — for eight and a half million pounds, which wasn't quite a bargain, but neither was it excessive. Certainly he could rent it out for a good sum, and it was a freehold, meaning that in buying the house he'd also own the land, instead of paying ground rent to the Duke of Westminster. It wasn't excessive, either, but it did add up. He made a note to go look at it this week. Otherwise, the currency valuations were fairly stable. He'd played with currency arbitrage on and off for a few months, but he didn't really think he had the education to delve deeply into it. At least not yet. Maybe he would talk to a few people skilled in that game. Anything that could be done could also be learned, and with access to more than two hundred million pounds, he was able to play without doing his father's money too much damage. In fact, he was up this year by nine million pounds, which wasn't too bad. For the next hour, he sat at his computer and looked for trends — the trend is your friend — trying to make sense out of it. The real trick, he knew, was spotting them early — early enough to get in low before bailing out high — but, though he was closing in on it, he hadn't learned that particular skill yet. Had he done so, his trading account would have been up by thirty-one million pounds, instead of a mere nine. Patience, he thought, was a damnably hard virtue to acquire. How much better to be young and brilliant.
His office had a TV, too, of course, and he switched it to an American financial channel that spoke of a coming weakness in the pound against the dollar, though the reasons for it were not entirely convincing, and he thought better of buying thirty million dollars on speculation. His father had warned him about speculating before, and since it was his father's money he had listened attentively and granted the old bastard his wishes. Over the previous nineteen months, he was only down three million pounds, and most of those mistakes were a year behind him. The real-estate portfolio was doing very nicely. He was mostly buying property from older Englishmen and selling a few months later to his own countrymen, who usually paid cash or its electronic equivalent. All in all, he considered himself a real-estate speculator of great and growing talents. And, of course, a superb lover. It was approaching noon, and already his loins were aching for Rosalie. Might she be available this evening? For a thousand pounds, she ought to be, Uda thought. So, just before noon, he lifted his phone and hit the number 9 speed-dial button.
'My beloved Rosalie, this is Uda. If you can come over tonight, about seven-thirty, I will have something nice for you. You know my number, darling.' And he set the phone down. He'd wait until four or so, and if she did not call him back, he'd call Mandy. It was a rare day indeed when both of them were unavailable. He preferred to believe they spent such time shopping or having dinner with friends. After all, who paid them better than he did? And he wanted to see Rosalie's face when she got the new shoes. English women really liked this Jimmy Choo fellow. To his eye, the designs looked grotesquely uncomfortable, but women were women, not men. For his fantasies, he drove his Aston Martin. Women preferred sore feet. There was no understanding them.
Brian got bored too easily to just sit and stare at the Lloyd's building. Besides, it hurt his eyes. It was more
