Honor Among Thieves Read online

  T. Hamilton McKenzie spent most of the night trying to work out what the man with the quiet voice could possibly want. He had checked his bank statements. He only had about $230,000 in cash and securities, and the house was probably worth another quarter of a million once the mortgage had been paid off—and this certainly wasn’t a sellers’ market, so that might take months to realize. All together, he could just about scrape up half a million. He doubted if the bank would advance him another cent beyond that.

  Why had they selected him? There were countless fathers at Columbus School who were worth ten or twenty times what he was—Joe Ruggiero, who never stopped reminding everybody that he owned the biggest liquor chain in Columbus, must have been a millionaire several times over. For a moment, McKenzie wondered if he was dealing with a gang that had simply picked the wrong man, amateurs even. But he dismissed that idea when he considered the way they’d carried out the kidnap and the follow-up. No, he had to accept that he was dealing with professionals who knew exactly what they wanted.

  He slipped out of bed at a few minutes past six and, staring out of the window, discovered there was no sign of the morning sun. He tried to be as quiet as he could, although he knew that his motionless wife must surely be awake—she probably hadn’t slept a wink all night. He took a warm shower, shaved, and for reasons he couldn’t explain to himself, put on a brand-new shirt, the suit he only wore when he went to church and a flowered Liberty of London tie Sally had given him two Christmases before and that he had never had the courage to wear.

  He then went down to the kitchen and made coffee for his wife for the first time in fifteen years. He took the tray back to the bedroom where he found Joni sitting upright in her pink nightgown, rubbing her tired eyes.

  McKenzie sat on the end of the bed and they drank black coffee together in silence. During the previous eleven hours they had exhausted everything there was to say.

  He cleared the tray away and returned downstairs, taking as long as he could to wash and tidy up in the kitchen. The next sound he heard was the thud of the paper landing on the porch outside the front door.

  He dropped the dishcloth, rushed out to get his copy of the Dispatch and quickly checked the front page, wondering if the press could have somehow got hold of the story. Clinton dominated the headlines, with trouble in Iraq flaring up again. The President was promising to send in more troops to guard the Kuwaiti border if it proved necessary.

  “They should have finished off the job in the first place,” McKenzie muttered as he closed the front door. “Saddam is not a man who works by the book.”

  He tried to take in the details of the story but couldn’t concentrate on the words. He gathered from the editorial that the Dispatch thought Clinton was facing his first real crisis. The President doesn’t begin to know what a crisis is, thought T. Hamilton McKenzie. After all, his daughter had slept safely in the White House the previous night.

  He almost cheered when the clock in the hall eventually struck eight. Joni appeared at the bottom of the stairs, fully dressed. She checked his collar and brushed some dandruff off his shoulder, as if he were about to leave for a normal day’s work at the university. She didn’t comment on his choice of tie.

  “Come straight home,” she added, as she always did.

  “Of course I will,” he said, kissing his wife on the cheek and leaving without another word.

  As soon as the garage door swung up, he saw the flickering headlights and swore out loud. He must have forgotten to turn them off the previous night when he had been so cross with his daughter. This time he directed his anger at himself, and swore again.

  He climbed in behind the wheel, put the key in the ignition and prayed. He switched the lights off and, after a short pause, turned the key. First quickly, then slowly, he tried to coax the engine into action, but it barely clicked as he pumped the accelerator pedal up and down.

  “Not today!” he screamed, banging the steering wheel with the palms of his hands. He tried a couple more times and then jumped out and ran into the house. He didn’t take his thumb off the doorbell until Joni opened it with a questioning look on her face.

  “My battery’s dead, I need your car, quickly, quickly!”

  “It’s being serviced. You’ve been telling me for weeks to have it attended to.” T. Hamilton McKenzie didn’t wait to offer an opinion. He turned his back on his wife, ran down the drive into the road and began searching the tree-lined avenue for the familiar yellow color with a sign reading 444-4444 attached to the roof. But he realized there was a hundred-to-one chance of finding a cab driving around looking for a fare that early in the morning. All he could see was a bus heading towards him. He knew the stop was a hundred yards away, so he began running in the same direction as the bus. Although he was still a good twenty or thirty yards short of the stop when it passed him, the bus pulled in and waited.

  McKenzie climbed up the steps, panting. “Thank you,” he said. “Does this bus go to Olentangy River Road?”

  “Gets real close, man.”

  “Then let’s get going,” said T. Hamilton McKenzie. He checked his watch. It was 8:17. With a bit of luck he might still make the meeting on time. He began to look for a seat.

  “That’ll be a dollar,” said the driver, staring at his retreating back.

  T. Hamilton McKenzie rummaged in his Sunday suit.

  “Oh, my God,” he said. “I’ve left—”

  “Don’t try that one, man,” said the driver. “No cash, no dash.” McKenzie turned to face him once again.

  “You don’t understand, I have an important appointment. A matter of life and death.”

  “So is keeping my job, man. I gotta stick by the book. If you can’t pay, you’ve gotta debus ’cause that’s what the regulations say.”

  “But—” spluttered McKenzie.

  “I’ll give you a dollar for that watch,” said a young man seated in the second row who’d been enjoying the confrontation.

  T. Hamilton McKenzie looked at the gold Rolex that had been presented to him for twenty-five years’ service to the Ohio State University Hospital. He whipped it off his wrist and handed it over to the young man.

  “It must be a matter of life and death,” said the young man as he exchanged the prize for a dollar. He slipped the watch onto his wrist. T. Hamilton McKenzie handed the dollar on to the driver.

  “You didn’t strike a good bargain there, man,” he said, shaking his head. “You could have had a week in a stretch limo for a Rolex.”

  “Come on, let’s get going!” shouted McKenzie.

  “It’s not me who’s been holding us up, man,” said the driver as he moved slowly away from the curb.

  T. Hamilton McKenzie sat in the front seat wishing it were he who was driving. He looked at his watch. It wasn’t there. He turned around and asked the youth, “What’s the time?” The young man looked proudly at his new acquisition, which he hadn’t taken his eyes off for one moment.

  “Twenty-six minutes after eight and twenty seconds.”

  McKenzie stared out of the window, willing the bus to go faster. It stopped seven times to drop off and pick up passengers before they finally reached the corner of Independence, by which time the driver feared the watch-less man was about to have a heart attack. As T. Hamilton McKenzie jumped off the steps of the bus, he heard the clock on the Town Hall strike 8:45.

  “Oh, God, let them still be there,” he said as he ran towards the Olentangy Inn, hoping no one would recognize him. He stopped running only when he had reached the path that led up to reception. He tried to compose himself, aware that he was badly out of breath and sweating from head to toe.

  He pushed through the swing door of the coffee shop and peered around the room, having no idea who or what he was looking for. He imagined that everyone was staring back at him.

  The coffee shop had about sixty café tables in twos and fours, and he guessed it was about half-full. Two of the corner tables were already taken, so McKenzie headed to the
one that gave him the best view of the door.

  He sat and waited, praying that they hadn’t given up on him.

  It was when Hannah arrived back at the crossing on the corner of Thurloe Place that she first had the feeling someone was following her. By the time she had reached the sidewalk on the South Kensington side, she was convinced of it.

  A tall man, young, evidently not very experienced at shadowing, bobbed rather obviously in and out of doorways. Perhaps he thought she wasn’t the type who would ever be suspicious. Hannah had about a quarter of a mile in which to plan her next move. By the time the Norfolk came in sight, she knew exactly what needed to be done. If she could get into the building well ahead of him, she estimated she only needed about thirty, perhaps forty-five, seconds at most, unless the porters were both fully occupied. She paused at the front window of a cosmetics shop and stared at the array of beauty products that filled the shelves. She turned to look towards the lipsticks in the corner and saw his reflection in the brightly polished window. He was standing by a newspaper stand at the entrance to the South Kensington tube station. He picked up a copy of the Daily Mail—amateur, she thought—which gave her the chance to cross the road before he could collect his change. She had reached the front door of the hotel by the time he had passed the cosmetics shop. Hannah didn’t run up the steps as it would have acknowledged his existence, but mistakenly pushed the revolving door so sharply that she sent an unsuspecting old lady tumbling onto the sidewalk much sooner than she’d intended.

  The two porters were chatting as she shot across the lobby. The red ticket and another pound were already in her hand before she reached the porters’ desk. Hannah slammed the coin down on the counter, which immediately attracted the older man’s attention. When he spotted the pound, he quickly took the ticket, retrieved Hannah’s little case and returned it to her just as her pursuer was coming through the revolving doors. She headed in the direction of the staircase at the end of the corridor, clutching the little case close to her stomach so the man following her would be unaware that she was carrying anything. When she reached the second step of the staircase she did run, as there was no one else in sight. Once down the staircase she bolted across the corridor and into the comparative safety of the ladies’ room.

  This time she was not alone. A middle-aged woman was leaning over a washbasin to check her lipstick. She didn’t give Hannah so much as a glance when she disappeared into one of the cubicles. Hannah sat on the top of the toilet, her knees tucked under her chin as she waited for the woman to finish her handiwork. It was two or three minutes before she finally left. Once Hannah heard the door close, she lowered her feet onto the cold marble floor, opened the battered suitcase to check everything was there and, satisfied that it was, changed back into her T-shirt, baggy sweater and jeans as quickly as she could.

  She’d just managed to get her sneakers on when the door opened again, and she watched the lower part of two stockinged legs cross the floor and enter the cubicle next to hers. Hannah shot out and buttoned up her jeans before checking herself quickly in the mirror. She ruffled her hair a little and then began checking around the room. There was a large receptacle in the corner for depositing dirty towels. Hannah removed the plastic lid, took out all the towels that were there and forced her little case to the bottom, then quickly covered it with the towels and put the lid back in place. She tried to forget she had carried the bag from Leningrad to Tel Aviv to London—halfway across the world. She cursed in her native tongue before checking her hair in the mirror again. Then she strolled out of the ladies’ room, attempting to appear calm, even casual.

  The first thing Hannah saw when she stepped into the corridor was the young man sitting at the far end reading the Daily Mail. With luck, he wouldn’t even give her a second thought. She had reached the bottom of the stairs when he glanced up. Rather good-looking, she thought, staring back at him for a second too long. She turned and began to climb the staircase. She was away, she’d made it.

  “Excuse me, miss,” said a voice from behind her. Don’t panic, don’t run, act normally she thought. She turned and smiled. He smiled back, almost flirting with her, and then blushed.

  “Did you by any chance see an Arab lady when you were in the rest room?”

  “Yes, I did,” replied Hannah. “But why do you ask?” she demanded. Always put the enemy on the defensive whenever possible was the standard rule.

  “Oh, it’s not important. Sorry to have bothered you,” he said, and disappeared back around the corner.

  Hannah climbed the stairs, returned to the lobby and headed straight for the revolving doors.

  Pity, she thought once she was back on the sidewalk. He looked rather sexy. She wondered how long he would sit there, who he was working for and to whom he would eventually be reporting.

  Hannah began to retrace her steps home, regretting that she couldn’t drop into Dino’s for a quick spaghetti bolognese and then take in Frank Marshall’s latest film, which was showing at the Cannon. There were still times when she yearned to be just a young woman in London. And then she thought of her mother, her brother, her sister, and once again told herself all of that would have to wait.

  She sat alone for the first part of the train journey, and was beginning to believe that if they sent her to Baghdad—as long as no one wanted to go to bed with her—she could surely pass herself off as an Iraqi.

  When the train pulled into Green Park two youths hopped on. Hannah ignored them. But as the doors clamped shut she became aware that there was no one else in the car.

  After a few moments one of them sauntered over towards her and grinned vacantly. He was dressed in a black bomber jacket with the collar covered in studs, and his jeans were so tight they made him look like a ballet dancer. His spiky black hair stood up so straight that it looked as if he had just received electric shock therapy. Hannah thought he was probably in his early twenties. She glanced down at his feet to see that he was wearing heavy-duty army boots. Although he was a little overweight, she suspected from his movements that he was quite fit. His friend stood a few paces away, leaning against the railing by the door.

  “So what do you say to my mate’s suggestion of a quick strip?” he asked, removing a flick-knife from his pocket.

  “Get lost,” Hannah replied evenly.

  “Oh, a member of the upper classes, eh?” he said, offering the same vacant grin. “Fancy a gang bang, do we?”

  “Fancy a thick lip, do you?” she countered.

  “Don’t get clever with me, lady,” he said as the train pulled into Piccadilly Circus.

  His friend stood in the doorway so that anyone who might have considered entering the end car thought better of it.

  Never seek attention, never cause a scene: the accepted rule if you work for any branch of the secret service, especially when you’re stationed abroad. Only break the rules in extreme circumstances.

  “My friend Marv fancies you. Did you know that?”

  Hannah smiled at him as she began planning the route she would have to take out of the car once the train pulled into the next station.

  “Quite like you myself,” he said. “But I prefer black birds. It’s their big bums, you know. They turn me on.”

  “Then you’ll like your friend,” said Hannah, regretting her words the moment she had said them. Never provoke.

  She heard the click as a long thin blade shot out and flashed in the brightly lit carriage.

  “Now there are two ways we can go about this—quietly or noisily. It’s your choice. But if you don’t feel like cooperating, I might have to make a few etchings in that pretty face of yours.” The youth by the door began laughing. Hannah rose and faced her tormentor. She paused before slowly undoing the top button of her jeans.

  “She’s all yours, Marv,” said the young man as he turned to face his friend. He never saw the foot fly through the air as Hannah swiveled 180 degrees. The knife went flying out of his hand and shot across the floor to the far end of the
car. A flat arm came down across his neck and he slumped to the ground in a heap, looking like a sack of potatoes. She stepped over his body and headed towards Marv.

  “No, no, miss. Not me. Owen’s always been the troublemaker. I wouldn’t have done nothin’, not me, nothin’.”

  “Take off your jeans, Marvin.”

  “What?”

  She straightened the fingers of her right hand.

  “Anything you say, miss.” Marvin quickly undid his zipper and pulled off his jeans to reveal a grubby pair of navy jockey shorts and a tattoo on his thigh that read “Mum.”

  “I do hope your mother doesn’t have to see you like that too often, Marvin,” Hannah said as she picked up his jeans. “Now the pants.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, Marvin.”

  Marvin slowly pulled off his underwear.

  “How disappointing,” said Hannah as the train pulled into Leicester Square.

  As the doors squelched closed behind her Hannah thought she heard, “You filthy bitch, I’ll…”

  As she walked down the passage to the Northern line, Hannah couldn’t find a trash can in which to dispose of Marvin’s grubby clothing. They had all been removed some time before after a sudden outbreak of IRA bombs in the London Underground. She had to carry the jeans and pants all the way to Chalk Farm, where she finally deposited them in a dumpster on the corner of Adelaide Road, then strolled quietly back home.

  As she opened the front door, a cheery voice called from the kitchen, “Lunch is on the table, my dear.” Mrs. Rubin walked through carrying a bowl of potatoes and declared, “I’ve had the most fascinating morning. You wouldn’t believe what happened to me at Sainsbury’s.”