Woods, Stuart - Stone Barrington 33 - Hot Pursuit by Woods Stuart

Author:Woods, Stuart [Woods, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780698154162
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-02-27T05:00:00+00:00

32

MILLIE WAITED with Holly in a closed road behind the American embassy for the president to come down.

Holly looked around her. “The last time I was here someone had driven a delivery truck into this alley and unloaded a large crate outside that door down there.” She pointed. “When the bomb it contained went off, it blew a chunk out of the building and injured people in every direction. There were a couple of dozen dead, too.”

Millie didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t respond.

Her phone rang, and she answered it. “Yes?”

“It’s Quentin,” he said.

“Pretty early in the morning in California, isn’t it?”

“I’m back in D.C. I took the red-eye, and I haven’t been to bed yet.”

“Anything new?”

“We met with the head of the business school at UCLA yesterday afternoon.”

“Did you get anywhere?”

“We didn’t have a name or a photograph, but when I described Riis and his taste in fashion and cars, the president’s executive assistant, who had been a student at the time, remembered him, and they even had a record of him. He was registered under the name of Harold Charles St. John Malvern, and his record showed him as having studied at Eton and Oxford. He was at UCLA for a little more than a semester, right before he turned up at Berkeley as Jacob Riis. He was British and something of a ladies’ man, it seems. Our office out there is trying to run down some of his female acquaintances, and, overnight, his record at UCLA was scrutinized. He was highly recommended by the head of his college at Oxford, the headmaster at Eton, and two members of the House of Lords—all forged, of course, but beautiful forgeries that impressed our lab. The letterheads were real, and the signatures appeared to be genuine, until the gentlemen denied any knowledge of Harry, as he was called.”

“Good work!”

“It’s ongoing. I’m going to get some sleep now, and I’ll call you when I have more. Bye.”

A gate at the other end of the alley opened and, led by two Metropolitan Police vehicles and followed by as many black SUVs, the president’s limousine pulled up by the door where the bomb had been placed. Holly and Millie waited by the car until the president emerged a minute later, talking on her cell phone, and they followed her into the car.

Millie sat back in her jump seat and was impressed by the foot-thick car doors and the two-inch-thick glass in the windows. She had never felt safer. The president continued her phone conversation until they had driven through an alley behind the anonymous building that housed MI6 and had been greeted at the door by Dame Felicity Devonshire. Only then did she hang up her phone and introduce Holly.

“Holly and I have met, of course,” Dame Felicity said. “How are you, my dear?”

“Very well, Dame Felicity,” Holly said. “May I introduce my colleague Millicent Martindale?”

Millie was greeted warmly and followed the group into an elevator that opened into an elegant

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