Part 32 (1/2)

”For G.o.d's sake.” Caspar took a mobile phone from his pocket and slammed it down on the table. ”It's only for a week.”

Molly took a deep breath and seemed about to explode and then the breath went out of her. She opened her handbag and took out not one but two phones. ”If you must, and Sara's, of course.”

Sara said, ”Cheer up, Mummy, we're going to have a lovely time. Now let's eat.”

IT WAS AFTER LUNCH that Molly Ras.h.i.+d went up to the bedroom and checked the luggage, which included her doctor's bag. She opened it, pulled her stethoscope out of the way and revealed the spare mobile and its charger she always kept in there in case of a hospital emergency. At least she could still check on the progress of the Bedford child, but it could wait.

Chapter 14.

HAL STONE HAD A MEWS COTTAGE IN CHAPEL LANE, Cambridge, even though his position at Corpus Christi ent.i.tled him to rooms at the college. The cottage was somewhere to hide from the incessant demands of students when he was writing a book.

It was a Victorian cottage consisting of three bedrooms, a study, a kitchen and a lovely sitting room, its old-fas.h.i.+oned French windows opening to a garden that was a great pride to him, the garden surrounded by flint walls with a door that led to a back lane.

He was in the kitchen making tea when his phone rang. He answered it, declaring, ”Hal Stone has gone away.”

”No, he hasn't, you daft b.a.s.t.a.r.d,” Roper said. ”You've just got back.”

”Ah, Roper, is that you? You're not wanting me for anything active again? After Hazar, I need a rest. Indiana Jones I'm not.”

”Don't worry, old boy, I'm just bringing you up to speed on what's happened. Just listen.” He went through everything, Hussein's departure from Hazar with Khazid, what had taken place in Algeria, the stolen floatplane to Majorca, the security film at Palma, the plane to Rennes.

”Well, I see where you're coming from. It looks like a stage-by-stage progress to England.”

”Where else could it be? No point in bringing the French in because of that plane at Rennes. He would have been out of France to wherever long ago.”

”I still can't see it, him coming to England, it would be suicide. I mean, his face has been all over the place. Somebody somewhere would be bound to recognize him. He's hardly had time for plastic surgery.”

”G.o.d knows, it's beyond me, but at night alone in front of the computers and fighting my own personal pain with more whiskey, I look at him on the screen and think he's on his way.”

”So what are you doing about it?”

”We've persuaded the Ras.h.i.+ds to vacate the Hampstead house and fly down to the depths of West Suss.e.x for a week in a safe house. Zion House.”

”Now, that does sound interesting. Tell me more.”

Roper did, everything, including the report he'd just had in from Levin. ”Molly Ras.h.i.+d's a tough one. Likes her own way too much. The business about her mobile, all that fuss. Too d.a.m.n much.”

”She's a truly fine surgeon, and people like that are obsessive. They think that what they do is more important than anything else. Unfortunately, it often is.”

”Anyway, now you know the present score,” Roper said. ”To a great extent, we're in Hussein's hands.”

”And I think he won't come at all.” Hal Stone laughed, ”After all, he's a Harvard man. He'd have more sense.”

”Try telling them that at Yale,” Roper told him.

”I wish you luck, my friend. Take care.”

”So long.”

Hal Stone shook his head. Crazy, the whole business. He returned to making his tea.

AT THAT MOMENT, Hussein and Khazid, having arrived without incident on the Cambridge train, were in a shop specializing in academic gowns, college scarves and the like. Khazid, under Hussein's orders, purchased a short gown of the type favored by undergraduates, but not a Corpus Christi scarf.

”I expect the porters pride themselves on knowing their own students.”

Khazid went down the list and chose a New Hall scarf and a dark beret and they left. Entrance to the college was no problem, students pa.s.sing in and out through the gates, students everywhere, or so it seemed. They moved up a floor and Khazid, in his Henri Duval persona, stopped a pa.s.sing female undergraduate and inquired for Professor Stone in English heavily laced with French, his beret helping establish his nationality.

She was obviously amused, but waved toward the other end of the corridor. ”Down there, but he's never in.”

”Then where would he be, mademoiselle?”

”Don't ask me, try the phone book.”

She hurried away, Khazid shrugged and then they reached the end and found a wooden sign hanging on the door saying simply, Hal Stone Is Not Here Today. Hal Stone Is Not Here Today.

Khazid tried the door, but it was locked. ”Now what do we do?”

”The obvious,” Hussein told him. ”We do what the girl suggested and look in a phone book.”

”And what if he's not in?”

”You're a pessimist, my friend. He's a famous man at one of the great colleges, a professor of the University of Cambridge-of course he'll be in the phone book. Now let's find one.”

AT ZION PLACE, Caspar was exploring the garden with his daughter and found some of his cares slipping away. The three Russians sat on the terrace and watched.

”That girl is really quite amazing,” Greta said. ”She can be a child and adore childish things at one minute, and the next, she's like a mature woman.”

”But then if you consider what she's been through,” Levin said, ”the death, the destruction at such a young age.”

Chomsky said, ”In Chechnya, one could see the same look a hundred times on the faces of children that on occasion I have seen on hers. The face goes blank to conceal what lies inside.”

”G.o.d help her survive it all in herself. I know I'll do everything to help that I can,” Greta said.

”But the mother,” Levin said, ”is something else.”

”A brilliant surgeon.” Greta nodded and said the same thing as Hal Stone. ”An obsessive who is convinced that what she does is more important than anything else in her life.”

”Good for her ego, but lousy from a relations.h.i.+p point of view,” Levin pointed out.

And upstairs Molly Ras.h.i.+d was proving him right to a certain extent, locking herself in the bathroom and calling the particular hospital where she'd operated on the Bedford child, on the direct mobile number of a Dr. Harry Samson, who, to a great extent, had taken over for her. She caught him on the ward itself, a private one.

”It's me, Molly Ras.h.i.+d,” she said. ”How is she?”