Teeth of the Tiger

* * *

'You know, we need to get the twins out of Dodge quicker,' Tom Davis remarked.

'If they're covert, it's not necessary,' Hendley said.

'If somebody spots them somehow or other, better that they should not be around. You can't interview a ghost,' Davis pointed out. 'If the police have nothing to track, then they have less to think about. They can query the passenger list on a flight, but if the names they look for — assuming they have names — just go about normal business, then they have a blank wall with no evidence hanging on it. Better yet, if whatever face might or might not have been spotted just evaporates, then they have gornischt, and they're most likely to write it off as an eyewitness who couldn't be trusted anyway.' It is not widely appreciated that police agencies trust eyewitnesses the least of all forms of criminal evidence. Their reports are too volatile, and too unreliable to be of much use in a court of law.

* * *

'And?' sir Percival asked.

'CPK-MB, and troponin are greatly elevated, and the lab says his cholesterol was two hundred thirteen,' Dr. Gregory said. 'High for one his age. No evidence whatever of drugs of any sort, not even aspirin. So, we have enzyme evidence of a coronary incident, and that's all at the moment.'

'Well, we'll have to crack his chest,' Dr. Nutter observed, 'but that was in the cards anyway. Even with elevated cholesterol, he's young for a major cardiovascular obstruction, don't you think?'

'Were I to wager, sir, I think prolonged QT interval, or arrhythmia.' Both of which left little postmortem evidence except in a negative sense, unfortunately, but both of which were uniformly fatal.

'Correct.' Gregory seemed a bright young medical school graduate, and like most of them, exceedingly earnest. 'In we go,' Nutter said, reaching for the big skin knife. Then they'd use the rib cutters. But he was pretty sure what they'd find. The poor bastard had died of heart failure, probably caused by a sudden — and unexplained — onset of cardiac arrhythmia. But whatever caused it, it had been as lethal as a bullet in the brain. 'Nothing else on the toxicology scan?'

'No, sir, nothing whatever.' Gregory held up the computer printout. Except for reference marks on the paper, it was almost entirely blank. And that pretty much settled that.

* * *

It was like listening to a World Series game on the radio, but without the color-commentary filler. Somebody at the Security Service was eager to let CIA know what was going on with the subject about which Langley clearly had some interest, and so whatever dribs and drabs of information came in were immediately dispatched to CIA, and thence to Fort Meade, which was scanning the ether waves for any resulting interest from the terrorist community around the world. The latter's news service, it appeared, was not as efficient as its enemies had hoped.

* * *

'Hello, detective Willow,' Rosalie Parker said with her customary want-to-fuck-me smile. She made love for a living, but that didn't mean that she disliked it. She breezed in wearing her visitor's badge and took her seat opposite his desk. 'So, what can I do for you this fine day?'

'Bad news, Miss Parker.' Bert Willow was formal and polite, even with whores. 'Your friend Uda bin Sali is dead.'

'What?' Her eyes went wide with shock. 'What happened?'

'We're not sure. He just dropped down on the street, just across the street from his office. It appears that he had a heart attack.'

'Really?' Rosalie was surprised. 'But he seemed so healthy. There was never a hint that anything was wrong with him. I mean, just last night…'

'Yes, I saw that in the file,' Willow responded. 'Do you know if he ever used drugs of any sort?'

'No, never. He occasionally drank, but even that not much.'

To Willow's eyes, she was shocked and greatly surprised, but there wasn't a hint of tears in her eyes. No, for her, Uda had been a business client, a source of income, and little more. The poor bastard had probably thought otherwise. Doubly bad luck for him, then. But that wasn't really Willow's concern, was it?

'Anything unusual in your most recent meeting?' the cop asked.

'No, not really. He was quite randy, but, you know, some years ago I had a john die on me — I mean, he came and went, as they say. It was bloody awful, not the sort of thing you forget, and so I keep an eye on my clients for that. I mean, I'd never leave one to die. I'm not a barbarian, you know. I really do have a heart,' she assured the cop.

Well, your friend Sali doesn't anymore, Willow thought, without saying it. 'I see. So last night he was completely normal?'

'Entirely. Not a single sign that anything was amiss.' She paused to work on her composure. Better to appear more regretful, lest he think her to be an uncaring robot. 'This is terrible news. He was so generous, and always polite. How very sad for him.'

'And for you,' Willow said in sympathy. After all, she'd just lost a major source of income.

'Oh. Yes, oh yes, for me too, love,' she said, catching up with the news finally. But she didn't even try to fool the detective with tears. Waste of time. He'd see right through it. Pity about Sali. She'd miss the presents. Well, surely she'd get some more referral business. Her world hadn't ended. Just his. And that was his bad luck — with some thrown in for her, but nothing she couldn't recover from.

'Miss Parker, did he ever give you any hints on his business activities?'

'Mostly, he talked about real estate, you know, buying and selling those posh houses. Once, he took me to a house he was buying in the West End, said he wanted my opinion on painting it, but I think he was just trying to show me how important he was.'

'Ever meet any of his friends?'

'Not too many — three, maybe four, I think. All were Arabs, most about his age, perhaps five years older, but not more than that. They all looked me over closely, but no business resulted from it. That surprised me. Arabs can be horny buggers, but they are good at paying a girl. You think he might have been involved in illegal activity?' she asked delicately.

'It's a possibility,' Willow allowed.

'Never saw a hint of it, love. If he played with bad boys, it was out of my sight entirely. Love to help you, but there's nothing to say.' She seemed sincere to the detective, but he reminded himself that when it came to dissimulation, a whore of this class could probably have shamed Dame Judith Anderson.

'Well, thank you for coming in. If anything — anything at all — comes to mind, do give me a call.'

'That I will, love.' She stood and smiled her way out the door. He was a nice chap, this Detective Willow. Pity he couldn't afford her.

Bert Willow was already back on his computer, typing up his contact report. Miss Parker actually seemed a nice girl, literate and very charming. Part of that had been learned for her business persona, but maybe part of it was genuine. If so, he hoped she'd find a new line of work before her character was completely destroyed. He was a romantic, Willow was, and someday it might be his downfall. And he knew it, but he had no desire to change himself for his job as she had probably done. Fifteen minutes later, he e-mailed the report to Thames House, and then printed it up for the Sali file, which would in due course go to the closed files in Central Records, probably never to be heard from again.

* * *

'Told you,' Jack said to his roomie.

'Well, then you can pat yourself on the back,' Wills responded. 'So, what's the story, or do I have to call up the documents?'

'Uda bin Sali dropped dead of an apparent heart attack. His Security Service tail didn't see anything unusual, just the guy collapsing on the street. Zap, no more Uda to swap funds for the bad guys.'

'How do you feel about it?' Wills asked.

'It's fine with me, Tony. He played with the wrong kids, on the wrong playground. End of story,' Ryan the younger said coldly. I wonder how they did it? he wondered more quietly. 'Was it our guys helping him along, you think?'