Collateral Damage (Stone Barrington 25)

Dino did, and they both ate hungrily.

—

When Viv showed up, they hadn’t even cleared the table; they were just sitting there, drinking and talking.

“Just like Elaine’s,” Viv said. “Without Elaine.”

Jasmine Shazaz sat in a car parked in Mount Street, London, with a cell phone in her hand. She watched as, fifty yards away, a government Jaguar pulled up in front of the Connaught Hotel and stopped. A man in a dark suit waved the uniformed doorman out of the way as he reached for the car’s rear door, then opened it himself. Another man Jasmine recognized from newspapers and television as a high government official left the hotel and walked toward the open car door, got in and hipped his way across the seat to the left side.

The Special Branch detective, who had been holding the door open, got in behind him and closed the door. The car moved a few feet to Mount Street, the driver looked both ways, then turned left.

Jasmine pressed the phone button on her smartphone, chose a number, and looked out her windscreen. It would take three seconds to connect the call. She pressed the button. “Three, two, one,” she counted, and as she spoke the word “zero,” the glass front of the Porsche dealer’s building at the bottom of Mount Street blew outward, followed by a large ball of flame.

The explosion rocked her car and enveloped the government Jaguar, which was directly in front of the Porsche dealer. The car took the full force of the explosion and was lifted off the pavement, rolling over. The gas tank exploded, creating a secondary ball of flame. The job was done.

Jasmine put her car in gear and, ignoring the broken glass and small rubble on the hood of her car, made a U-turn from her parking space, drove up to South Audley Street, crossed it, then a block later turned left into Park Lane. Sixty seconds later she was in Hyde Park, and five minutes after that she took a seat at the Serpentine Restaurant in the park and perused the menu. Her lunch date arrived a moment later and sat down.

“I believe there was some sort of explosion over around Berkeley Square,” he said, in perfect, upper-class English, though his appearance was Mediterranean, perhaps even Middle Eastern.

“That must be why we’re hearing all those fire engines and police cars,” she said.

“Let’s see if there’s any news,” he said, taking a smartphone from his jacket pocket and switching it on. A moment later they were watching ITV News as a slide appeared. “Breaking News,” it said.

A young woman, hastily arranging her skirt, gazed into the camera, then read from a sheet of paper in her hand. “ITV News has a reliable report that some sort of bomb has gone off in Mayfair, perhaps in Mount Street. Our reporter, Jason Banks, has just arrived at the scene. Jason?”

The camera jerked about, then stabilized. A man was clipping a microphone to his lapel, then he looked up and saw the camera. “Good afternoon, Jane,” he said. “I’m standing a few yards from the northwest corner of Berkeley Square.” He looked over his shoulder, and the camera zoomed in past him. “As you can see, there has been a very large explosion up there, and it appears that the location was the building housing the Porsche sports car dealership. The front of the building has disappeared, and the fire brigade has just arrived on the scene and are connecting their hose pipes as we speak. The events have only just occurred—I and my crew were on the other side of the square, interviewing a police spokesman about a robbery that occurred in Bruton Place a little over an hour ago. The policeman we were interviewing immediately called New Scotland Yard and reported the explosion, then ran toward the burning building. We moved our equipment as quickly as we could, and this is as close as we could get.”

“Jason,” the anchor said, holding a finger to an ear, “we’re just getting a report from a Westminster correspondent that the foreign secretary is lunching at the Connaught Hotel, about fifty meters up the street from the blast location, and we have a unit on the way there to interview him and see if we can get any further information.”

The camera went back to Jason Banks. He was moving up the street to get closer to the burning building. “Jane, we’ve been able to get a few yards closer, and if our camera can zoom in on that burning motorcar sitting on top of two other cars … Zoom in on it, damn you!” The camera zoomed in on the burning car. “That was, until a few moments ago, a Jaguar motorcar, and as you can see, the front number plate begins with the letters FO, identifying it as a government vehicle assigned to the Foreign Office. We can only hope that is a horrible coincidence and that the foreign secretary is still enjoying his after-lunch port at the Connaught.”

A police car with its lights and siren on came close to running down Jason Banks as it raced toward the burning vehicle. “Shit!” the reporter yelled. “That was close. Let me see if I can get a word.” He began jogging toward the police car, which had stopped a few yards away and was disgorging two high-ranking police officers, judging from their insignia.

“Excuse me, Inspector,” Banks said, thrusting a microphone at one of them, “but does that number plate on that Jaguar belong to the foreign secretary?”

The response to his shouted question was a stout forearm across the face, nearly causing him to eat his microphone. “Get out of the way, you bloody fool!” the officer yelled.

Banks fell back, nursing his lips with the back of his hand. “As you can see, Jane, the inspector is in no mood to chat. Perhaps you can get a confirmation on this number plate.” He began reading the letters and numbers.

“Yes, Jason, we’ll do that,” the anchor said, scribbling down the numbers, then ripping a sheet off a pad and throwing it at someone off camera. “Run that number down!” she shouted at the person, then she recovered

herself. “If you are just joining us, what we know so far is …”

—

The man switched off his smartphone. “I think we can order lunch now,” he said to Jasmine, while beckoning a waiter.

“Order me the Dover sole,” Jasmine said. “And I think, perhaps, a bottle of champagne would be in order.”

Holly Barker, assistant director of Central Intelligence, took her seat at the table in the conference room of her boss, Katharine Rule Lee, the director of Central Intelligence. She was well rested after a couple of days off following a meeting between the presidents of the United States and Mexico, which she had attended in company with the director.

The final seats at the table were filled at fifteen seconds before nine o’clock, according to the GPS-controlled clock on the wall, and at the stroke of nine, the director entered the room and sat down.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Kate Lee said. “Thank you for coming. Holly, what’s on our agenda for this morning?”

“Good morning, Director,” Holly replied. “DDO Lance Cabot has three reports from foreign stations, to start us off.” She nodded at Lance.

Cabot shuffled some papers. “Our station in Lagos, Nigeria, was the target of a Molotov cocktail earlier today. The bottle shattered on the wrought-iron fence, and only slightly splashed the facade of the building. A Marine guard extinguished the flame almost immediately. No one has, as yet, claimed credit, but we suspect either an antigovernment insurgent group or, perhaps, the government itself. Take your pick.” He set aside a sheet of paper, then continued. “We have penetrated the administrative offices of an army base in …” Lance stopped as a middle-aged woman walked behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and placed a sheet of paper in front of him. He read it, then looked up.