the military, which must have been a real disappointment to the old man. The Gunny had a son himself, and the kid’s first words, swear to God, were Semper Fi. (Of course, Jenks had coached the baby for months, much to his wife’s disgust, but still…) Now six, Connor practically slept in his miniature size cammies and could hardly wait to join the Corps.
MacNeil the younger hadn’t gone the military route, though. Apparently he’d washed out of West Point and avoided the service altogether after that, trading instead on his rep as a Yale man. The Gunny had heard people in a position to know say Drummond MacNeil had done more partying than studying at the Ivy League school. Only the family’s connections had swung his admission and protected a bare “C” average. After spending most of the seventies swanning around beaches, bars, and no-brainer jobs, MacNeil had apparently used those same connections to land himself a job at Langley.
Still, he must have done something right at the Agency, the Gunny conceded, since he’d ended up with this plum London job and, by all reports, was on the fast track to the top. Go figure. Her Majesty’s official diplomatic list identified MacNeil as a trade counselor, but a select few knew he was actually chief of the CIA’s London station.
“Anyway, sir, did you need anything?” Jenks asked him.
“I just stepped out of the meeting to see this guy in,” MacNeil said, nodding at the monitor as the French ambassador’s car pulled up to the double front doors. “I was also hoping to spot my wife. Has she shown up yet, do you know?”
“I haven’t seen her, sir.”
Now, that’s what wasn’t fair, the Gunny thought. The guy was married to a great girl, his second wife, by all accounts. Carrie MacNeil was young, pretty, and nice as all get-out. The MacNeils’ son, Jonah, was in Connor’s kindergarten class at the American International School, and Carrie was one of the hardest-working parent volunteers there. Their boys always ended up playing together at embassy family functions, like the Fourth of July picnic and the annual Christmas party, where by tradition the biggest Marine in the detachment dressed up as Santa and handed out presents to the diplobrats and assorted other embassy offspring. And when Carrie got herself done up to the nines for some fancy dress function, with her long, reddish hair and those shy, gray-green eyes—well, all the Gunny knew was that he’d had to warn several of his randier guys that wives of senior staff (especially the CIA head of station, for chrissakes) were strictly off-limits.
“She’s supposed to be coming in for this reception and dinner of the ambassador’s,” MacNeil was saying. “Wives were originally invited to both, but then the ambassador’s wife begged off dinner, so now the other wives are uninvited and it’s turned into a working dinner. I tried calling Carrie to let her know, but there’s no answer at the house and she doesn’t seem to have her mobile turned on. What’s the point of having a cell phone, I keep asking her, if you don’t turn it on? That’s why I got her the damn thing.” MacNeil leaned closer to the monitors to scan the surrounding streets. “Jesus! Who can spot anybody under all these umbrellas. Anyway, Gunny,” he added, straightening as the French ambassador swept into the lobby, “I’ve got to get back upstairs. Could you let her know when she comes in that dinner’s off? As long as she’s here, she might as well come up for the reception, though, meet a couple of senators.”
“I’ll pass the message on, sir.”
But the Station Chief was already out the door, embracing the Parisian envoy like a long-lost brother and leading him back into the embassy’s inner sanctum.
The Gunny sighed and turned again to his monitors, studying the feeds from the street outside, wondering which umbrella belonged to Carrie MacNeil, and how she’d feel about finding out she’d been uninvited to the ambassador’s dinner after trekking out in this dismal weather.
Gunnery Sergeant Jenks wasn’t the only one in Grosvenor Square on the lookout that afternoon.
Across from the embassy, a hard-eyed man was parked in a squat London cab with its service lights switched to the “Off Duty” position. The cab was parked out of sight next to a London branch of the Canton-Shanghai Bank. A knit black watch cap was pulled low over his forehead, completely obscuring his hairline, but the thick black stubble on his chin and his heavy moustache suggested a heritage rooted anywhere around the Mediterranean or beyond—which could mean Spain, Italy, Greece, India, or any one of half a dozen Middle Eastern countries. There were so many immigrants in London nowadays that the man’s swarthy appearance was completely unremarkable.
In fact, this man’s ancestors hailed from the Caucuses, but he himself had been born and bred in an east-end London suburb only four miles from where he now sat waiting for his target to appear out of the mist.
National Gallery, Trafalgar Square
4:28 p.m.
The clerk at the youth hostel near St. Paul’s Cathedral had told Karen Ann Hermann and her two girlfriends that morning that heavy rain was predicted to begin in the afternoon and continue for the next couple of days, so the girls had decided to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace first thing, while the weather was still on their side. From there, they’d wandered up to Trafalgar Square to feed the pigeons, then ducked into the National Gallery across the road as the rain moved in.
It was late afternoon when Karen, sitting on a padded bench near the gallery’s Leonardo etchings, consulted her much-thumbed guide book, her finger tracing a map of central London.
“The American Embassy’s just a few blocks from here,” she told her friends. “I think I could run over there and be back in an hour or so.”
Kristina Finch looked doubtful. “Maybe we should go with you.” The girls had been roommates at the University of Maryland.
“Seems like a waste of time for you guys if you’re going to bother registering,” said Karen.
Caitlin Bercha, the third in the group, had lived across the hall from the other two. “You don’t really have to, you know. That’s just something you do in places where there might be a revolution or something. Not much chance of that here.”
“Yeah, plus we’re only going to be here for ten days,” Kristina added.
Karen hesitated, then exhaled wearily, the much-put-upon sigh of youth everywhere. “I know, but I promised my parents.”
“But it’s pouring out there. You’ll get soaked walking all that way.”
“Why don’t you just tell them you registered?” Kristina suggested brightly.
“Yeah! How are they ever going to know?” Caitlin asked. “Then we can see if we can get some stand-by tickets for the theater tonight. The guy at the youth hostel said they disappear fast, so we should get to the box office early.”
Karen looked from one eager face to the other, sorely tempted. But then her conscience kicked in. She was an only child and her parents worried more than most. She couldn’t lie to them.
“I can’t. I promised. Look, I’ll tell you what. How about if you guys go over and see about the tickets, and I’ll do this embassy thing, and then we’ll meet up at, umm…” Her forefinger slid across her guidebook map. “Leicester Square. That’s in the theater district.”
The two other girls exchanged glances. “I don’t know,” Caitlin said. “Maybe we’d better stick together.”
“No, really, guys, this is a good idea. You go for the tickets
