Honour Among Thieves (4 page)

‘As
long as he’s sober,’ was all the chairman said.

T
HE tall, athletic
MAN stepped off the plane into the US Air terminal at Washington National
Airport. He carried only hand luggage, so he didn’t have to wait at the baggage
carousel where someone might recognise him. He needed just one person to
recognise him – the driver who was picking him up. At six foot one, his fair
hair tousled and with almost chiselled fine features, and dressed in light blue
jeans, cream shirt and a dark blue blazer, he made many women rather hope that
he would recognise them.

The
back door of an anonymous black Ford was opened as soon as he came through the
automatic doors into the bright morning sunlight.

He
climbed into the back of the car without a word and made no conversation during
the twenty-five-minute journey that took him in the opposite direction to the
capital. The forty-minute flight always gave him a chance to compose his
thoughts and prepare his new persona. Twelve times a year he made the same
journey.

It
had all begun when Scott was a child back in his home town of Denver, and he
had discovered his father was not a respectable lawyer but a criminal in a
Brooks Brothers suit, a man who, if the price was right, could always find a
way round the law. His mother had spent years protecting her only child from
the truth, but when her husband was arrested, indicted and finally sentenced to
seven years, the old excuse ‘there must have been some misunderstanding’ no
longer carried any conviction.

His
father survived three years in prison before dying of what was described in the
coroner’s report as a heart attack, without any explanation being given for the
marks around his throat. A few weeks later, his mother did die of a heart
attack, while he was coming to the end of his third year at Georgetown studying
law. Once the body had been lowered into the grave and the sods of earth hurled
on top of the coffin, he left the cemetery and never spoke of his family again.

When
the final rankings were announced, Scott Bradley was placed first in the
graduating class, and several universities and leading law firms contacted him
to ask about his plans for the future. To the surprise of his contemporaries,
Scott applied for an obscure professorship at Beirut University. He didn’t
explain to anyone why he needed a clean break with the past.

Appalled
by the low standard of the students at the university and bored by the social
life, Scott began to fill his hours by attending courses on everything from the
Islamic religions to the history of the Middle East. When three years later the
university offered him the Chair of American Law, he knew it was time to return
to the United States.

A
letter from the Dean of the Law Faculty at Georgetown suggested he should apply
for a vacant professorship at Yale. He wrote the following day and packed his
bags when he received their reply.

Once
he had taken up his new post, whenever he was asked the casual question, ‘What
do your parents do?’ he would simply reply, ‘They’re both dead and I’m an only
child.’ There was a certain type of girl who delighted in this knowledge – they
assumed he would need mothering. Several of them entered his bed, but none of
them became part of his life.

But
he hid nothing from the people he was summoned to see twelve times a year. They
couldn’t tolerate deception of any kind, and were highly suspicious of his real
motives when they learned of his father’s criminal record. He told them simply
that he wished to make amends for his father’s disgrace, and refused to discuss
the subject any further.

At
first they didn’t believe him. After a time they took him on his own terms, but
it was still to be years before they trusted him with any classified
information. It was when he started coming up with solutions for problems in
the Middle East that the computer couldn’t handle that they began to stop doubting
his motives. When the Clinton Administration was sworn in, the new team
welcomed Scott’s particular expertise.

Twice
recently he had penetrated the State Department itself to advise Warren
Christopher. He had been amused to see Mr Christopher suggest on the
early-evening news a solution to the problem of sanctions-busting by Saddam
that he had put to him earlier that afternoon.

The
car turned off Route 123 and drew to a halt outside a pair of massive steel
gates. A guard came out to check on the passenger. Although the two men had
seen each other regularly over the past nine years, the guard still asked to
see his credentials.

‘Welcome
back, Professor,’ the uniformed man finally offered before saluting.

The
driver proceeded down the road and stopped outside an anonymous office block.
The passenger climbed out of the car and entered the building through a
turnstile. His papers were checked once again, followed by another salute. He
walked down a long corridor with cream walls until he reached an unmarked oak
door. He gave a gentle knock and entered before waiting for a reply.

A
secretary was sitting behind a desk on the far side of the room. She looked up
and smiled. ‘Go right in, Professor Bradley, the Deputy Director is expecting
you.’

Columbus
School for Girls, Columbus, Ohio, is one of those establishments that prides
itself on discipline and scholarship, in that order. The headmistress would
often explain to parents that it was impossible to have the second without the
first.

Breaking
school rules could, in the headmistress’s opinion, only be considered in rare
circumstances. The request that she had just received fell into such a
category.

That
night, the graduating class of ‘93 was to be addressed by one of Columbus’s
favourite sons, T. Hamilton McKenzie, Dean of the Medical School at Ohio State
University. His Nobel Prize for Medicine had been awarded for the advances he
had made in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery. T. Hamilton
McKenzie’s work on war veterans from Vietnam and the Gulf had been chronicled
from coast to coast, and there were men in every city who, thanks to his
genius, had been able to return to normal lives. Some lesser mortals who had
trained under the Nobel Laureate used their skills to help women of a certain
age appear more beautiful than their maker had originally intended. The
headmistress of Columbus felt confident that the girls would only be interested
in the work T. Hamilton McKenzie had done for ‘our gallant war heroes’, as she
referred to them.

The
school rule that the headmistress had allowed to be waived on this occasion was
one of dress. She had agreed that Sally McKenzie, head of student government
and captain of lacrosse, could go home one hour early from afternoon class and
change into clothes of a casual but suitable nature to accompany her father
when he addressed the class later that evening. After all, the headmistress had
learned the previous week that Sally had won an endowed national scholarship to
Oberlin College to study medicine.

A
car service had been called with instructions to pick Sally up at four o’clock.
She would miss one hour of school, but the driver had confirmed that he would
deliver father and daughter back by six.

As
four chimed on the chapel clock, Sally looked up from her desk. A teacher
nodded and the student gathered up her books. She placed them in her bag, and
left the building to walk down the long drive in search of the car. When Sally
reached the old iron gates at the entrance to the drive, she was surprised to
find the only car in sight was a Lincoln Continental stretch limousine. A
chauffeur wearing a grey uniform and a peaked cap stood by the driver’s door.
Such extravagance, she knew only too well, was not the style of her father, and
certainly not that of the headmistress.

The
man touched the peak of his hat with his right hand and enquired, ‘Miss
McKenzie?’

‘Yes,’
Sally replied, disappointed that the long winding drive prevented her
classmates from observing the whole scene.

The
back door was opened for her. Sally climbed in and sank into the luxurious
leather upholstery.

The
driver jumped into the front, pressed a button and the window that divided the
passenger from the driver slid silently up. Sally heard the safety lock click into
place.

She
allowed her mind to drift as she glanced out of the misty windows, imagining
for a moment that this was the sort of lifestyle she might expect once she left
Columbus.

It
was some time before the seventeen-year-old girl realised the car wasn’t
actually heading in the direction of her home.

Had
the problem been posed in textbook form, T. Hamilton McKenzie would have known
the exact course of action to be taken. After all, he lived ‘by the book’, as
he so often told his students. But when it happened in real life, he behaved
completely out of character.

Had
he consulted one of the senior psychiatrists at the university, they would have
explained that many of the anxieties he’d kept suppressed over a long period of
time had, in his new circumstances, been forced to the surface.

The
fact that he adored his only child, Sally, was clear for all to see. So was the
fact that for many years he had become bored with, almost completely
uninterested in, his wife Joni. But the discovery that he was not good under
pressure once he was outside the operating theatre – his own little empire –
was something he could never have accepted.

T.
Hamilton McKenzie became at first irritated, then exasperated, and finally
downright angry when his daughter failed to return home that Tuesday evening.
Sally was never late, or at least not for him. The journey by car from Columbus
should have taken no more than thirty minutes, even in the rush-hour traffic.
Joni would have picked Sally up if she hadn’t fixed her hair appointment so
late. ‘It’s the only time Julian could fit me in,’ she explained. She always
left everything to the last minute. At 4.50 T. Hamilton McKenzie phoned
Columbus School for Girls to check there had been no late change of plan.

Columbus
doesn’t change its plans, the headmistress would have liked to tell the Nobel
Laureate, but satisfied herself with assuring him that Sally had left school at
four o’clock, and that the limousine company had phoned an hour before to
confirm that they would be waiting for her at the end of the drive by the main
school gates.

Joni
kept repeating in that Southern accent he had once found so attractive, ‘She’ll
be here at any minute, jus’ you wait. You can always rely on our Sally.’

Another
man, who was sitting in a hotel room on the other side of town and listening to
every word they exchanged, poured himself a beer.

By
five o’clock, T. Hamilton McKenzie had taken to looking out of the bedroom
window every few moments, but the path to their front door lay obstinately
unbeaten.

He
had hoped to leave at 5.20 p.m., allowing himself enough time to arrive at the
school with ten or fifteen minutes to spare. If his daughter did not appear
soon, he would have to go without her. He warned his wife that nothing would
stop him leaving at 5.20 p.m.

At
5.20 p.m. T. Hamilton McKenzie placed the notes for his speech on the hall
table and began pacing up and down the front path as he waited for his wife and
daughter to come from opposite directions. By 5.25 p.m., neither of them was at
his side and his famous ‘cool’ was beginning to show distinct signs of
steaming.

Joni
had taken some considerable time te select an appropriate outfit for the
occasion, and was disappointed when she appeared in the hall that her husband
didn’t even seem to notice.

‘We’ll
have to go without her,’ was all he said. ‘If Sally hopes to be a doctor one
day, she’ll have to learn that people have a tendency to die when you keep them
waiting.’

‘Shouldn’t
we give her just a li’l longer, honey?’ asked Joni.

‘No,’
he barked, and without even looking back set off for the garage. Joni spotted
her husband’s notes on the hall table and stuffed them into her handbag before
she pulled the front door closed and double-locked it. By the time she reached
the road, her husband was already waiting behind the wheel of his car, drumming
his fingers on the gear lever.

They
drove in silence towards Columbus School for Girls. T. Hamilton McKenzie
checked every car heading towards Upper Arlington to see if his daughter was in
the back seat.

A
small reception party, led by the headmistress, was waiting for them at the
foot of the stone steps at the school’s main entrance. The headmistress walked
forward to shake hands with the distinguished surgeon as he stepped out of the
car, followed by Joni McKenzie. Her eyes searched beyond them for Sally. She
raised an eyebrow.

‘Sally
never came home,’ Dr McKenzie explained.

‘She’ll
probably join us in a few minutes, if she’s not already here,’ suggested his
wife. The headmistress knew Sally was not on the school premises, but did not
consider it courteous to correct the guest of honour’s wife, especially as she
had just received a call from the car service that required an explanation.

At
fourteen minutes to six they walked into the headmistress’s study, where a
young lady of Sally’s age offered the guests a choice of dry sherry or orange
juice. McKenzie suddenly remembered that in the anxiety of waiting for his
daughter he had left his notes on the hall table. He checked his watch and
realised that there wasn’t enough time to send his wife back for them. In any
case, he was unwilling to admit such an oversight in front of this particular
gathering. Damn it, he thought. Teenagers are never an easy audience, and girls
are always the worst. He tried to marshal his thoughts into some sort of order.