“I want to drive,” Dino said.
55
DINO GOT THE CAR STARTED AS STONE got in. “Don’t waste any time,” Stone said.
/> Dino hung a right out of the carpark and found himself staring at a moving van coming straight at him in his lane. “Shit!” he yelled, whipping to the other side of the road and nearly running into the ditch.
“Sorry, I forgot to warn you about that first right turn.”
“Maybe I don’t want to do this after all,” Dino said.
“Shut up and drive,” Stone said. “Just remember which side of the road you’re supposed to be on.”
“Very weird, driving on the left,” Dino said. “But I’ll get the hang of it.”
“Soon, please.”
They followed the map into the small village and to Morgan’s street. All the houses seemed identical.
“It’s gotta be the one with no front door,” Dino said, whipping into the driveway.
They walked into the house to find Mason and his people pulling the place apart. A man appeared from the kitchen. “I found a safe in the garage,” he said.
Everybody trooped through the kitchen to the garage. There was, indeed, a safe, the door open, empty.
“He put that in for the device,” Mason said. The group started to pull the garage apart.
Stone motioned Dino back into the house.
“What are we looking for?” Dino asked.
“Anything that might give us a hint where Morgan has gone—travel brochures, reservation forms, anything. You take the desk.”
Dino began going through the desk drawers, while Stone walked around the living room slowly, looking at everything. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but he would know it when he saw it. There was a large television set, and an easy chair and ottoman parked in front of it. On the ottoman was a stack of magazines; Stone began to go through them.
A television guide, a well-marked racing form, a couple of girlie magazines, and a travel magazine. Stone flipped through the travel magazine twice before he found something. A corner of one page had been dog-eared, then flattened again. The page was a continuation of an article on country inns that began earlier in the magazine; there was only one ad. “Take a look at this,” he said to Dino.
“Nothing in the desk,” Dino said. “No secret compartments, no travel receipts, nothing.”
Stone held out the magazine. “This page has been marked,” he said.
Dino looked at the ad in the lower right-hand corner. A photograph of a large country house dominated it. “What’s Cliveden?” he asked, pronouncing it with a long i.
“Cliveden, with a short i, was the country house of Lord Astor, before the war. His wife, an American woman named Nancy, who was a member of parliament, ran a very big salon there. Everybody who was anybody showed up at one time or another—George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin—and every literary or political figure of the time.”
“How do you know this stuff?”
“I read a book about it.”
“So why is this important?”
“It’s a hotel now, and it’s near Heathrow. Suppose Morgan wanted to lie low for a few days, until the heat was off at the airports, then beat it out of the country? He’s got to know everybody will be looking for him.”
“Could be,” Dino said. “You want to check it out?”
“Have we got anything else to do?”
“Nope.”