The Cutthroat (Isaac Bell 10)
Page 66
“Not if you’re expecting immediate action.”
“Then Military Intelligence.”
Abbington-Westlake regarded him shrewdly. “I regret to inform you that your old friend Lord Strone has been put out to pasture.”
“Leaving only you?”
“To your great good fortune,” said the commander. “I will have that cab surrounded by twenty picked men.”
“No,” said Bell. “Not one. This German is as sharp as they come. He’s survived twenty years’ spying in London and you never caught him. You don’t even know his name. He’ll spot your picked men in a flash. We will keep it simple—you, me, and him.”
“How did you stumble upon him?”
“Sheer luck,” said Bell.
“I thought so. How?”
“I was closing in on a Japanese. The German beat me to him. He wrecked everything I’d been working for. I lit out after him and caught up.”
“So you made your luck.”
“Exactly as you would, Commander. Shall we shake hands on it?”
Abbington-Westlake extended a soft pink hand. Bell gripped it hard. “Just so we understand each other, sir, I will spot your ‘picked men’ just as I spotted your shadow. Don’t try to slip them past me.”
“Wouldn’t have dreamed of it.”
Fog was thickening when Isaac Bell pulled up in front of the Charing Cross railroad station in a closed carriage, a roomy cab that Londoners called a growler. He opened the door and beckoned Commander Abbington-Westlake. The Navy spy was dressed identically to the hordes of City bankers rushing home in bowlers and raincoats, with one exception. Instead of an umbrella, he carried a walking stick with an ivory knob carved to resemble the head of a crocodile.
Bell moved over to make room on the seat beside him. Abbington-Westlake climbed in, and the Van Dorn driver set his horse at a quick trot up the Strand.
“Wait. Where are we going?”
“Our German changed his mind at the last minute. Trafalgar Square.”
“But—”
“But your picked men are at Charing Cross?”
“Of course not.”
“Good. Because I suspect this fellow is going to run us in circles until he feels safe.”
At Trafalgar Square, a flower girl tapped the window and handed Bell a scrap of paper.
Bell read aloud, “‘Berkeley Square.’”
“How did that girl distinguish this cab from a hundred others?”
“The same way the German will. The driver has a white ribbon tied to his whip.”
The horse trotted up Cockspur to Pall Mall, up Pall Mall and across Regent Street to Piccadilly, where it turned at the Ritz Hotel onto Dover and down Hay Hill into Berkeley Square. It stopped abruptly. James Mapes flung open the cab door and climbed heavily inside with a strongbox under his arm. He was dressed in a fine suit of clothes, a rabbit-felt fedora, and the latest Burberrys waterproof. Bell could almost hear Joe Van Dorn’s howls of protest over his expense sheet.
“Took your time,” Mapes said in an accent so heavy that Abbington-Westlake, straining to see his face in the dark, said, “What was that?”
“He said,” said Bell, “we took our time.”
“Damn right, we took our time, and we’ll continue to take our time until we’re convinced you have something of value.”