turned and saw that the man who’d been with her in the room earlier had run up behind her and was holding out a plastic bag to her. It didn’t look familiar, but she took it anyway.
When Lia turned back around she saw that a door had been opened at the side of the plane. A small set of stairs folded out from the bottom half of the door to the tarmac; a man in a blue uniform stood at the base of the steps. Lia walked toward him, feeling herself tilting sideways, pushed down by the pain in her head and the rest of her body as she walked toward it.
The man said nothing as she climbed inside. Another man stood near the aisle. There were a dozen seats in the plane, but no other passengers. Lia went to the second row and sat down.
It was in her hand. She opened it and saw that her clothes were in it. She stared at them for a while; when she finally looked up, one of the men was standing over her with a cup of tea.
As she thought that, she noticed the symbol on the tag of tea, which had been left draped over the side of the cup.
On the tag was the Chinese character
A message?
Lia fingered the tag, then took a sip of the tea, contemplating the bitter taste.
10
Karr frowned at Stephens when he failed to leave the room with the encrypted phone. “Come on now. Play by the rules,” he told the CIA officer.
“OK,” said Stephens. “But maybe I’ve bugged the phone.”
“I wouldn’t put it past you.” He waited until Stephens had left the room, then got up from the chair. “Come on, Charlie.”
Dean had just sat down in one of the swivel chairs in front of a row of computer terminals on the other side of the room. He seemed reluctant to get up.
“Jet lag get to you?” Karr asked the older man. “Come on, we’ll walk it off.”
“Where are we going?”
“Avoiding a half hour of trading put-downs with Stephens,” said Karr.
“Is he supposed to debrief us?”
“He’s probably supposed to try,” said Karr. “Don’t worry. He won’t get in trouble if we walk. He was parked here after some problems in Georgia. Basically he was shell-shocked and they go easy on him.”
Karr led Dean down the hallway to a back set of stairs and then out through a side entrance. When they reached the driveway, Karr threw the guards a salute and strolled out onto the sidewalk. It was past 6:00 p.m. and starting to get dark. He took a moment to get his bearings, then started toward what he thought was the nearest tube, or subway, stop, Bond Street. He’d only taken a few steps when, turning to see if Dean was keeping up, he spotted an empty taxi.
“Yo, cab!” he yelled, more like a New Yorker than a Londoner. He paused at the window, telling the driver that he wanted to find the best steak and kidney pie in the city. When the driver asked if he was a crazy Yank, Karr replied cheerfully that he was.
“And a hungry one. I was going to have fish and chips, but I think I need something thick against these ribs. I’m in your hands.”
Inside the cab, Karr reached to his belt and clicked on the communications system. A woman’s voice, raspy with a cold, reverberated against the bones of his skull.
“Where have you been?” demanded Sandy Chafetz, their runner back in the Deep Black Art Room. “Why did you turn the com system off?”
Karr did what he always did when a runner asked a stupid question — he ignored it.
“Hey, Charlie, you got that room key?” he asked, digging into his pocket for his handheld computer and a small attachment that allowed him to send video directly from the unit. Snapping them together, he took the key from Dean and panned it for the camera.
“Got it?” he asked Chafetz. Karr liked Chafetz — she was a lot easier on the eyes than Rockman — but she wasn’t quite as sharp as the other runner, nor was she as good at marshaling resources. Karr thought this might be because she was a little too chummy with the “backbenchers”—the analysts and mission specialists assigned to various duties who worked behind her in the Art Room. You had to whip some of those guys to get them to give you information that didn’t need to be translated from geekese.
“I have it,” she told him. “We’re analyzing it now. What hotel is it?”
Karr laughed. “Jeez Louise, if I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.” He handed the key back to Dean and then leaned forward. “So, driver, where’s this restaurant you’re taking us to again?”
“Over in Covent Garden,” said the cabbie.
“It’s not a tourist trap, right?”
The driver began to protest. Karr laughed at him, then glanced at Charlie Dean. “You going to fall asleep? Your eyelids are just about glued together.”
“Long day.”
“The good ones always are,” said Karr.
“A hotel called the Renaissance,” reported Chafetz. “On Holburn.”
“Holburn.” Karr leaned forward. “You know what, driver? We’re going to have to make a detour. Do you know a place called the Renaissance Hotel? It’s on Holburn? That’s near Covent Garden more or less, right?”
“More or less.”
“You can just drop us off there. But give me the address for that steak and kidney pie before you drop us off.”
Dean waited for Karr to tip the driver, then followed him past the three doormen and into the hotel. The Renaissance had once been an insurance company’s headquarters but now was a well-appointed hotel perched between the business, legal, and theater districts, catering to visitors of all three. The floors were rich marble, the wall panels thick wood. They took a right at the door; the desk was straight across, but Karr just gave one of his waves toward the receptionist and went directly to the elevator. Apparently he was following directions from the Art Room, which could communicate with each field op separately or together on a conferenced channel. When the elevator arrived, the two men stepped in; they were alone in the car.
“Put that door key in the slot on the right,” Karr told him. “See that? The Renaissance floor?”
Dean pushed it in. A light blinked next to the slot and the elevator began moving upward.
“Pretty fancy place,” said Karr.
“Maybe we should get a room,” said Dean.
“Never sneak the bill past Rubens. We’re lucky we don’t have to stay at Motel 6.”
The elevator stopped on a private floor, where guests who had reserved the premier-tier rooms had their own lounge and other facilities, including a spa and a concierge on twenty-four-hour duty. The latter stepped forward now, apologizing that the lounge had closed for the evening.
“Thanks,” said Karr. “Just wanted to impress my friend. Definitely worth the extra freight.”
The concierge grimaced momentarily but then turned to Dean and assured him that the guest services were top-notch. Karr played up the stereotypical noisy Yank routine, stepping over to the room on the right and looking around. The concierge offered to give Dean a tour; Karr answered that it wasn’t necessary and led Dean back to the elevator.
“What was that all about?” asked Dean as they headed to the tenth floor.
“We needed to insert the card into a reader so the Art Room could scan it,” he explained. “I was just killing
