Anonymous Sources (20 page)

Not like Alex James. Galloni swatted away the thought of her. Since their brief encounter last week, he had dreamed of Alex. Erotic dreams that left him thrashing beneath his sheets. When he snapped awake, he was sweaty with pleasure and embarrassment. Yeah, he liked her. Annoying that she wasn't here today to cover the funeral. He could have suggested a drink afterward, under the pretense of hearing more about what she'd uncovered in England.

But enough. He had work to do. He left Petronella to her tawdry television chatter and walked back around to the front steps of the church. The crowd was beginning to thin. Galloni wiped the perspiration off his face and noted that the Feds he'd had to put up with for the last two days hadn't showed.

Lowell Carlyle had apparently called in a favor. Word had it he was not happy with the investigation's progress—or lack thereof—and had asked the FBI director to take a personal interest in his son's death. A flurry of phone calls around Washington had resulted in a pair of taciturn Feds swooping in. They had insisted on spending hours up in the Eliot House bell tower, taking photographs and dusting again for prints. At the station they combed through Galloni's notes. It was a nuisance. There was no reason for the FBI to take the lead, no reason not to leave the case to the Cambridge PD, other than Mr. Carlyle's status as a Washington big shot. But that wasn't what bothered Galloni. No, it was something about the two Feds themselves.

It was the questions they asked, and the way they handled evidence. They were simultaneously thorough and oddly careless. Yes, that was it. Thom Carlyle had likely been murdered, and Galloni saw his job as collecting evidence that would lead to an arrest. And then to a trial, and
then eventually to a conviction. He was supposed to find the bad guy and put him behind bars. It was the way police were trained to think, the way they built a case. But these men were trained in something else. They did not appear interested in the wheels of justice.

He hadn't been sure until yesterday. The duo had deigned to join him for a drink after work, in a bar around the corner from the station. Galloni had ordered a pitcher of beer. And they had ordered . . . Chablis.
Chablis?
At happy hour in a police hangout in Kendall Square? No. No self-respecting cop went in for dry French wine. Not in public, anyway. These guys clearly worked for some federal agency. But Galloni was convinced it was not the FBI.

    

    

T
he heat got worse the farther south you went.

In Washington, DC, that day, it was insufferable. The city's notoriously swamplike summers seemed to arrive earlier every year. Local forecasters had already dubbed this first heat wave of the summer the “Beltway Meltaway”; stepping outside felt like getting slapped with a hot, sticky towel.

But inside the rooms of the Key Bridge Marriott, air-conditioning was blasting great gusts of arctic air. And Shaukat Malik was feeling good.

He liked having his own hotel room. Room 609 was near the vending machines and had two queen beds. Both were swathed in navy-and-orange-striped
fabric, as were the matching curtains, obligatory armchair, and bathroom shower curtain. He had a view out over the muddy currents of the Potomac River. And if he stood at the corner of his window and pressed his cheek to the pane, he could glimpse the tall needle of the Washington Monument.

Mind you, he was not in Washington proper, but across the river in Arlington, Virginia. A disappointment. The website had promised “a premier Georgetown location.” But this was a trifle. He would see Washington tomorrow, the real insider's Washington. He would see a room few people ever laid eyes on in person. And in that room he would complete his last critical assignment.

Today, though, he had nothing to do except wait for a message that the shipment had arrived. The confirmation would arrive on his new phone. He was expecting an automated, computer-generated e-mail from the shipping company, which he would forward without comment. And that would be that. The wheels were in motion.

Malik surveyed the brown water below. He wondered what kind of birds lived along the banks of this Potomac River. He liked birds. Perhaps he would take a walk and find out. No reason not to. Let them find him if they needed to. After all, he was an important man now. An indispensable man. He clasped his hands behind his balding round head and savored the feeling: Shaukat Malik was a player.

    

    

I
taxied from Claridge's to my own—considerably less well-appointed—hotel in a state of supreme irritation. The Heathrow Comfort Lodge in Slough was as depressing as it sounds. The
Chronicle
travel agent had given up on me and my ever-changing itinerary and told me to book my own room. Ordinarily I would interpret this as carte blanche to check into the Ritz, but that seemed a bit cheeky given that I hadn't filed a story in three days now.

So the Comfort Lodge it was. At least it would be convenient for my flight in the morning. I checked in and got my room key, but there
was no point rushing up to what would surely be grim quarters. Instead I flounced into the bar and ordered a double.

Then I sat brooding. This Crispin Withington character. Who the hell was he? And his parting shot—
You might want to think about keeping it that way
—What the hell was that supposed to mean? The whole encounter left me feeling unclean. I'd been outmaneuvered so thoroughly I hadn't even understood what game I was supposed to be playing.

What I wanted now was to vent to someone who would listen and not judge. I thought for a moment and then pulled out my phone and rang Lucien.

“Hallo, lovely lamb chop,” he answered. “You've caught me headed to dinner. How's London?”

I glanced around the seedy little bar. “Well, I'm drinking cheap gin in a cocktail lounge, which is empty except for me and an off-duty flight crew for Aeroflot, and the sound track here appears to be Michael Bublé's greatest hits. So, you know. A promising start to the evening.”

He chuckled. “Sorry it's not up to the high standards of the Eagle. And what about the banana sleuthing? Any developments on the Pakistani fruit front?”

“Umm-hmm. I spent a bizarre afternoon at Claridge's with a man purporting to be from the US embassy. He says Nadeem Siddiqui is still in Britain.”

“The plot thickens!” Lucien whispered delightedly.

“Well, but I couldn't get anything else out of him. He didn't seem to think there was any connection between Siddiqui and Thom Carlyle. He wouldn't tell me anything else, not that it matters anyway, because the whole conversation was off the record. And I don't even know who this source really was, and I haven't filed a story in days, not that I even know what the story is anymore—”

“All right, all right, it's not as bad as all that,” said Lucien, cutting across my ravings.

“Actually, it is.”

“If you say so. Now, listen, I need to hop off—I'm just walking in to dinner with Mum and Dad—but how about I ask Dad tonight if he can help. If you think this Siddiqui chap is in Britain, and you say the American embassy is watching him, maybe Scotland Yard is too. I could ask Dad's people to make some calls.”

“What do you mean ‘Dad's people'?”

“His staff. He must be on some committee that has clearance for this sort of thing. God knows they sit around doing bugger all else all day.”

“Sorry, I'm not following you.”

“Westminster, silly. Parliament. Dad's in the House of Lords.”

“Your father—you father is in the House of
Lords
?”

“Of course. Along with eight hundred other pompous old gits with titles. Not that I can think of the last time he bothered to show up and actually, say, vote on anything.”

I was dumbstruck.

Lucien interpreted my silence as acceptance of his offer. “So what did you say this embassy officer's name was? Might be useful to know where the information is coming from.”

“Er—I hadn't. He was a bit funny about it. Didn't want to be quoted or anything. But his name is Crispin Withington.”

There was a pause.

“Crispin Withington?”
repeated Lucien.

“Ridiculous name, I know.”

“Complete bollocks name is what it is.”

“What?”

But now Lucien was roaring with laughter. It was a full thirty seconds before he could pull himself together to speak.

“Let me take a wild guess here and assume that you don't closely follow British sport?”

“British—sport? What are you talking about?”

“Only that Crispin Withington”—he had to stop here and chortle again—“only that Crispin Withington is wicketkeeper for the England
cricket team, Alex. He's in the papers quite often. And it's, um, rather a distinctive name. So unless our man Crisps is exploring a radical career change, I very much doubt he's now spokesman for the American embassy.”

For the second time in this conversation I was stunned into silence. Then, slowly, I began to smile. The ludicrousness, the sheer absurdity, of the last few days hit me with force. Hyde was right. I was on a goddamn bastard wild-goose chase. I was meeting men masquerading as English cricket players for tea, and swapping banana-bread recipes with loopy landladies, and stalking fruit exporters in Pakistan. And none of it was yielding a single scrap of news about my alleged assignment, Thomas Carlyle.

“Alex? Are you still there?” Lucien sounded worried.

I began to giggle.

He began to laugh again.

Soon the two of us were cackling away like a couple of demented hyenas. What can you do?

THE SITUATION DID NOT SEEM
so funny later that evening when I finally dragged myself up to my room, opened my laptop, and typed in the website address for Habibi Farms.

I had decided to go back over everything I knew. I wanted to write it all down in one place and see if the fragments added up to something. Otherwise I would have to call Hyde back in the newsroom and admit defeat.