Patriot games - Tom Clancy [62]
"I practically had to hold a gun on somebody to get to do this," Murray said over his shoulder. The FBI agent was driving his personal car, with a Diplomatic Protection Group escort on the left front seat, and a chase car of C-13 detectives trying to keep up.
Keep your eyes on the damned road, Ryan wished as hard as he could. His exposure to London traffic to this point had been minimal, and only now did he appreciate that the city's speed limit was considered a matter of contempt by the drivers. Being on the wrong side of the road didn't help either.
"Tom Hughes-he's the Chief Warder-told me what he had planned, and I figured you might want an escort who talks right."
And drives right, Ryan thought as they passed a truck-lorry- on the wrong side. Or was it the right side? How do you tell? He could tell that they'd missed the truck's taillights by about eighteen inches. English roads were not impressive for their width.
"Damned shame you didn't get to see very much."
"Well, Cathy did, and I caught a lot of TV."
"What did you watch?"
Jack laughed. "I caught a lot of the replays of the cricket championships."
"Did you ever figure out the rules?" Murray asked, turning his head again.
"It has rules?" Ryan asked incredulously. "Why spoil it with rules?"
"They say it does, but damn if I ever figured them out. But we're getting even now."
"How's that?"
"Football is becoming pretty popular over here. Our kind, I mean. I gave Jimmy Owens a big runaround last year on the difference between offside and illegal procedure."
"You mean encroachment and false start, don't you?" the DPG man inquired.
"See? They're catching on."
"You mean I could have gotten football on TV, and nobody told me!"
"Too bad, Jack," Cathy observed.
"Well, here we are." Murray stood on the brakes as he turned downhill toward the river. Jack noticed that he seemed to be heading the wrong way down a one-way street, but at least he was going more slowly now. Finally the car stopped. It was dark. The sunset came early this time of year.
"Here's your surprise." Murray jumped out and got the door, allowing Ryan to repeat his imitation of a fiddler crab exiting from a car. "Hi, there, Tom!"
Two men approached, both in Tudor uniforms of blue and red. The one in the lead, a man in his late fifties, came directly to Ryan.
"Sir John, Lady Ryan, welcome to Her Majesty's Tower of London. I am Thomas Hughes, this is Joseph Evans. I see that Dan managed to get you here on time." Everyone shook hands.
"Yeah, we didn't even have to break mach-1. May I ask what the surprise is?"
"But then it wouldn't be a surprise," Hughes pointed out. "I had hoped to conduct you around the grounds myself, but there's something I must attend to. Joe will see to your needs, and I will rejoin you shortly." The Chief Warder walked off with Dan Murray in his wake.
"Have you been to the Tower before?" Evans asked. Jack shook his head.
"I have, when I was nine," Cathy said. "I don't remember very much."
Evans motioned for them to come along with him. "Well, we'll try to implant the knowledge more permanently this time."
"You guys are all soldiers, right?"
"Actually, Sir John, we are all ex-sergeant majors-well, two of us were warrant officers. I was sergeant major in 1 Para when I retired. I had to wait four years to get accepted here. There is quite a bit of interest in this job, as you might imagine. The competition is very keen."
"So, you were what we call a command sergeant-major, sir?"
"Yes, I think that's right."
Ryan gave a quick look to the decorations on Evans' coat-it looked more like a dress, but he had no plans to say that. Those ribbons didn't mean that Evans had come out of the dentist's office with no cavities. It didn't take much imagination to figure what sort of men got appointed to this job. Evans didn't walk; he marched with the sort of pride that took thirty years of soldiering to acquire.
"Is your arm troubling