The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [156]
Brian and Dominic rendezvoused at a pub, just uphill from the Tower of London. They picked a booth, and scarcely had they sat down when a waitress came to them and asked what they wanted.
"Two pints," Enzo told her.
"We have Tetley's Smooth and John Smith's, love."
"Which one do you drink?" Brian shot back.
"John Smith's, of course."
"Two of those," Dominic ordered. He took the lunch menu from her,
"Not sure I want anything to eat, but the beer's a good idea," Brian said, taking the menu, his hands shaking ever so slightly.
"And a cigarette, maybe." Dominic chuckled. Like most kids, they'd experimented with smoking in high school, but both had sworn off it before getting hooked. Besides, the cigarette machine in the corner was made of wood, and was probably too complex for a foreigner to operate.
"Yeah, right," Brian dismissed the thought.
Just as the beers arrived, they heard the dissonant note of a local ambulance three blocks away.
"How you feel?" Enzo asked his brother.
"Little shaky."
"Think about last Friday," the FBI agent suggested to the Marine.
"I didn't say I regretted it, dumbass. You just get a little worked up. You distract the tail?"
"Yeah, he was looking right into my eyes when you made the stick. Your subject walked maybe twenty feet before he collapsed. I didn't see any reaction from the stick. You?"
Brian shook his head. "Not even an 'ouch,' bro." He took a sip. "This is pretty good beer."
"Yeah, shaken, not stirred, Double-Oh-Seven."
In spite of himself, Brian laughed aloud. "You asshole!" he said.
"Well, that's the business we've fallen into, right?"
CHAPTER 18-THE DEPARTING FOXHOUNDS
Jack Jr. found out first. He was just starting his coffee and doughnuts, and had lit up his computer, navigating his way first to the message traffic from CIA to NSA, and at the very top of the electronic pile was a FLASH-priority alert for NSA to pay special attention to "known associates" of Uda bin Sali, who had, CIA said the Brits had reported, evidently dropped dead of a heart attack in central London. The Security Service FLASH traffic, included in the CIA-gram, said in terse English prose that he'd collapsed on the street before the eyes of their surveillance officer, and had been rushed by ambulance to Guy's Hospital, where he "had failed to revive." The body was now being posted, MI5 said.
In London, Special Branch Detective Bert Willow called Rosalie Parker's apartment.
"Hello." She had a charming, musical voice.
"Rosalie, this is Detective Willow. We need to see you as soon as possible here at the Yard."
"I'm afraid I am busy, Bert. I have a client coming any minute. It will take two hours or so. I can come directly after that. Will that be okay?"
At the other end of the line, the detective took a deep breath, but, no, it really wasn't that urgent. If Sali had died of drugs-the most likely cause that had occurred to him and his colleagues-he hadn't gotten them from Rosalie, who was neither an addict nor a supplier. She wasn't stupid for a girl whose entire education had been in state schools. Her work was too lucrative to take that risk. The girl even attended church occasionally, her file read. "Very well," Bert told her. He was curious about how she'd take the news, but didn't expect anything important to develop there.
"Excellent. Bye-ee," she said before hanging up.
At Guy's Hospital, the body was already in the postmortem lab. It had been undressed and laid faceup on a stainless steel table by the time the senior duty pathologist came in. He was Sir Percival Nutter, a distinguished academic physician, and chairman of the hospital's Department of Pathology, sixty years of age. His technicians had already drawn 0.1 liter of blood for the lab to work on. It was quite a lot, but they'd be running every test known to man.
"Very well, he has the