street and the agents walked up to the back of Louie’s. Just below the roofline of the single-story building, a small rear window about nine feet from the ground with a single jalousie sash was cranked open. “Probably to let the dank out,” Kori surmised.
“They would need more than that,” Anya remarked.
“Like a tornado. Anyway, we don’t dare walk around the front and try to look in through the door. You want to try the window?”
“Sure. Give me a boost.”
Anya pressed her foot into Kori’s cupped hands and drew herself up to the level of the window. She peered in and gazed about the bar below. Four people. The bartender, a customer standing at the end of the bar nursing a dark beer, and, centered at the bar, Sir John Holland in an animated conversation with none other than Andrew Quincy.
“That’s right, Coop. Anything and everything you can find on Sir John Holland. We’ll be waiting.”
The agents were back at the Connaught hanging out in Anya’s room and planning their next move. Anya had seen the conversation between Holland and Quincy but could hear nothing from the small rear window. Ten minutes after Holland had made his way into the pub, he’d left. He hadn’t even stayed long enough to have a drink. The agents followed him back to the office building where he parked his Volvo and watched as he got into the waiting Rolls. Then he was driven back to the headquarters of JEH Financial.
“Cooper’s going to forward me a full report,” Kori said, hanging up the phone.
“What are we hoping to find, my friend?”
“Who knows? A connection, I guess. A connection between one of the wealthiest men in the UK and the Turner crime family.”
“Kori, that connection might go no further than Quincy. We still do not know that Quincy is not acting on his own.”
“Either way, why is Holland dealing with a guy who’s connected in the first place? Holland, a friend of the prince, no less. Oh, there’s my phone. Looks like it’s the chief.” She answered. “Chief, I was just talking to Cooper. We’re going to—”
“Agent Briggs,” Eaglethorpe began, “I’m aware that you were talking to Agent Cooper. I’d like to know why.”
Kori had worked with Rampart director Richard Eaglethorpe long enough to understand his moods. The tone of his voice indicated that he was not in a good one. “Well, Chief,” she replied, “we’re following up on John Holland. I don’t know if Coop explained, but Holland is apparently working with an integral member of the Turner crime family.”
“Yes, Agent Cooper explained. What he didn’t explain is what Holland has to do with the kidnapping of Prince Grayson.”
“Well, Holland and Grayson are close friends. Besties, you could say.”
“Yes? And?”
“And the Turner guy—Quincy—was seen with Grayson on two occasions. In his manor house, as a matter of fact. So, you see, there’s this interesting triangle between the prince, the prince’s best friend, and the London mafia.”
“Interesting triangle, Briggs?”
“Well, I mean—”
“Look, Agent Briggs, I just took a call from the president’s chief of staff. I’m to be at the White House this afternoon to brief POTUS on the kidnapping. Do you have any idea where the prince is?”
“Well, no sir, but—”
“Do you have any idea where Newton Dempsey is? Remember Newton Dempsey, Briggs? The kidnapper? The guy from Boston?”
“Chief, we’re not needed for that. I’m sure MI5 is capable of following any leads Dempsey might have left behind. They know London better than I do, after all. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Dempsey doesn’t fit the crime. He doesn’t, Chief. He just doesn’t. There’s got to be more to this. And I’m convinced, that is, Agent Kovalev and I are both convinced”—strength in numbers, Kori thought—“that this guy Quincy, who, by the way, was following us around, mind you, is somehow involved. And Holland, Grayson’s best buddy, is involved with Quincy. From the Turner crime family, no less. What’s the connection? I’ll admit that right now, we haven’t a clue. But somehow I just know it all fits together. And we have to follow up on it, don’t we, Chief?”
Eaglethorpe was quiet for a moment, no doubt mulling over his top agent’s appraisal of the situation. Finally, he said, “Look, Agent Briggs, can you give me anything to tell the prez?”
“Well, you can tell him that we believe the kidnapping goes deeper than Dempsey and that perhaps Dempsey is partnered with known criminals. And tell him Agent Briggs says ‘hey.’”
Eaglethorpe chuckled but covered his mouth to make sure Kori didn’t hear it. “Okay, Briggs,” he said. “But might I remind you that you have just two and a half days before Dempsey’s deadline to kill the prince? It’s getting late in the game.”
“I know, Chief.”
“So get to work.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And keep me posted.”
“Of course.”
Eaglethorpe paused and then quietly said, “I trust you, Kori.”
Kori smiled. “I know, Chief. I won’t let you down.”
She hung up and turned to Anya. “Chief’s getting a little antsy.”
“I am sure.”
“I know how he feels. He’s got to tell the president something and, let’s be honest, all we have so far are a bunch of riddles.”
“Maybe Cooper will have something on Holland that we can use.”
“Let’s hope so. I guess we’re dead in the water until then. When it gets right down to it, Holland is really our only decent lead right now.”
“Kori, maybe we can make use of our time waiting for Cooper’s report.”
“A drink at the bar? Good thinking, Anya.”
“Well, actually, I was thinking that perhaps we can check into Spenser Burke’s death.”
“Oh, well, that’s not a bad idea either. Graham said they found his body in the Thames, but that’s all we know. I’d be curious how he got there.” She pulled out her phone and opened her map app. “There’s a Metropolitan Police station on Savile Row. A ten-minute walk from here. Why don’t we make an inquiry?”
“Do you think they will tell us anything?”
“Well, the death is public information, right? Maybe they can’t tell us everything about the investigation, but we might learn something of interest. It’s worth asking. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the station sergeant will be a lonely guy only too happy to accommodate a couple of eye-batting females.”
As it happened, the station sergeant was no such thing. The station sergeant was a happily married woman on whom eye-batting from two other women was lost. Nevertheless, because she was a public servant, she had no problem disclosing what the official record showed.
“Gunshot wound to the back of the head,” she reported, standing behind the counter looking at a computer screen.
“He didn’t drown?” Kori asked.
“No, ma’am. He was apparently dead long before being tossed into the river.”
“Are you able to disclose any details on the investigation?” Anya asked. “Are there any suspects, for instance?”
“Well, of course, we rarely comment on ongoing investigations,” the station sergeant replied. “But, as it happens, I can tell you that this particular investigation is closed.”
“Closed?” Kori said. “How can that be? I mean, did they find the killer already?”
The desk sergeant looked closer at the screen and shook her head. “Don’t know. It is strange, though. I was here when the call came in that the body was found. Obviously murdered. That normally marks the start of a very long and very comprehensive investigatory process. But there’s nothing really here. Just an order for the case to be closed.”
“Order from whom?”
“MI5, ma’am. They have ultimate jurisdiction. I’m sorry, did you know the poor bloke?”
“Sort of.”
“I see. Well, I’m afraid I have no further information. Now, I reckon you can take it up with MI5 to see what they know or why they might have ordered the investigation closed, but I think you’ll find they’re a pretty tight-lipped bunch.”
“Okay, well thank you, anyway,” Kori said. The agents turned to go and Kori thought of one more question. “Officer, does it say who with MI5 ordered the case closed?”
The desk sergeant looked back at the screen. “An agent by the name of Graham, ma’am. Agent Victor Graham.”
It was late in the afternoon and the agents were doing what Kori had earlier suggested. Having a drink in the hotel bar.
“That son of a bitch,” Kori was saying. “The case isn’t closed. It isn’t closed at all. MI5 took it over and is working on it in secret. Graham probably knew we’d check with the police. I’ll bet he closed the case even before he called me to tell me Burke was a dead end.”
On a muted TV above the bar, a news report showed another picture of Dempsey, again with the caption “Person of interest.” Then came a picture of the queen with its own caption: “Queen remains confident in investigation of missing son.”
“So Burke is evidently not a dead end,” Anya said.
“Nope. But God forbid that Graham should admit that to me. Now, we’re not going to find out anything about Burke’s death.”
“Well, we know one thing, Kori.”
“What’s that?”
“He was killed by a bullet to the back of the head.”
“Right. Execution style.”
“Mob-style.”
“Exactly.”
Kori’s phone buzzed. “The call we’ve been waiting for,” she said. “Talk to me, Coop,” she said into the phone. “What the scoop on our man Holland?”
“Well, Kori, I’m not sure what you expected, but the man is spotless. His finance company is clean and so is he. He’s well-respected personally and professionally. He’s married and has two grown children, one male, one female. He lives a quiet life and is rarely seen in public. He frequents Whites’s, but you already knew that. He gives a lot of money to charity, and I mean a lot. Enough to get knighted, hence the “Sir” appellation. He started a charity foundation for orphans and the homeless about ten years ago, and today, his wife runs the day-to-day details of it. Holland keeps mostly to his business. Nose to the grindstone. Kori, I can’t find anything negative about him. The man has never had so much as a parking ticket.”
“Wow, Coop, nothing?”
“Nothing in his adult life.”
“Hmm . . . well what about when he was younger?”
“Ah, well, that’s where it gets interesting, Kori.”
“Geez, Coop, you might have led with the interesting part.”
“Sorry. But get this: we can find nothing on John Holland’s life before the year 1988.”
“What do you mean nothing? Nothing incriminating?”
“I mean nothing period. It’s as if he just came out of nowhere sometime around his twentieth birthday. Like he was just beamed to this planet. No parents, no childhood home, no grade school records, not even a birth certificate. For all intents and purposes, the man didn’t even exist before 1988.”
“That can’t be right, Coop.”
“I had Foster digging, too. We came up empty.”
“Well, where was he when the records of his life start showing up?”
“The trail starts at the University of Cambridge. John Holland was an economics student. After he graduated, he stuck around and earned a master’s degree in finance. Then he went to London and began the life everybody knows about.”
“And you can’t trace him backward from Cambridge?”
“Kori, there is no John Holland before Cambridge.”
“But, Coop, I’m sure he’s been interviewed for magazines and TV. Profile pieces, right? Someone must have asked him about his childhood at some point.”
“Yes, there have been several profile pieces that we uncovered. Insider Magazine, Business Matters, and other periodicals. The BBC did a piece on him a few years back. But he’s always very vague about his background. He claims to have grown up in Canterbury, about sixty miles southeast of London. But we can find no records of him there. And in interviews, that’s about all he says before changing the subject. Apparently, nobody’s thought to dig any further. His life as an adult is all anyone wants to report about. People just want to know how he became so successful.”
“That’s beyond strange, Coop. It’s downright suspicious.”
“Indeed it is. Thirty-five years of details. And before that? Twenty years of total nonexistence.”