Edge of Danger

4

Aidan Bell and Liam Casey shared a suite at the Plaza Hotel beside New York’s Central Park. They had flown over earlier on Concorde, the seats provided by Rashid Investments, and found a chauffeur-driven limousine waiting to take them to the hotel.

‘This is the life, Aidan,’ Casey said.

‘Well, don’t let it go to your head. Shave, shower and put your best suit on. It’s like we’re visiting royalty tonight. I don’t want him to think we’re straight out of the bogs.’

He showered in the second bathroom, then dressed in a white shirt, blue tie and an easy-fitting dark suit. When he went out to the sitting room, Liam Casey was standing at the window, looking out.

‘Jesus, Aidan, what a town.’

He turned, wearing a black suit and shirt and black tie.

‘Will I do?’

‘You look like a bouncer at the Colosseum,’ Bell said. ‘Now let’s go. We’re only a couple of blocks away. Just behave yourself and do as I say, and this ought to go as smooth as butter.’

At Trump Tower, they went up in a private lift to the Rashid penthouse, where Kate opened the door. She wore a black dress and a gold chain round her neck, very understated.

‘Mr Bell.’

‘Lady Kate. What do I give to the woman who has everything?’ He opened his briefcase and took out a cheap plastic box. ‘A present from County Down. A sign of good luck. A four-leafed shamrock.’

‘Well, we can do with lots of that, Mr Casey.’ She nodded. ‘In you come. My brothers are waiting.’

Paul Rashid sat by the fire in the drawing room with Michael and George. Kate made the introductions.

‘Aidan Bell and his associate, Liam Casey.’

‘Mr Bell.’ Paul Rashid didn’t shake hands. ‘My sister tells me you almost had me shot in Crossmaglen.’

‘True, but Allah was good to you,’ Bell told him.

‘I like that – I like it very much. You want a drink?’

‘Perhaps later. For now, let’s get to business, I think.’

‘Fine. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think you could do it, am I right?’

Bell said, ‘Yes, you are. Now, there are two common types of assassination. One is by nutcases who press through the crowd and shoot the President up close, with no chance of getting away. Often, they don’t even want to get away. That’s not for me. Two is the clever, complicated kind, the Day-of-the-Jackal thing, meticulously organized, every possibility accounted for – like I did in Chechnya when I got Petrovsky and his staff. That takes a long time to plan, however, and I sense you want results a little sooner.’

‘You’re quite right,’ Paul said. ‘So what’s the answer?’

Bell smiled. ‘There’s a third way.’

There was silence. It was Kate who said, ‘What, for God’s sake?’

Bell was enjoying himself. ‘Well, to shoot the President of the United States should be an impossibility – or could it be absurdly simple?’ He opened his briefcase and took out a magazine. He held it up. ‘America, like Britain, is a democracy. You can write anything you want about the great and the good. There’s an article in here on Jake Cazalet, everyone’s favourite President. It was in my head, so I looked it up, and it’s all I need for a general plan. Now I only need to finish working out the details.’

The silence was profound. He smiled, feeling his power. ‘I think I’d like a large Bushmills Irish whiskey and then we’ll talk.’

A few minutes later, he stood on the terrace looking down at the traffic while Paul Rashid read the article, then passed it to the others.

‘All right,’ Paul said. ‘Now, tell us your plan, Mr Bell.’

‘As the article says, Jake Cazalet loves to spend his weekends at that old beach house on Nantucket. They helicopter him straight from the White House lawn to the house late Friday, and he spends Saturday and Sunday there before coming back Sunday night. He has no family, just that one daughter in Paris.

‘Cazalet doesn’t like a big fuss: he’s notorious for it. At the house, even the cook and the housekeeper come in on a daily basis; they live in town. There are staff quarters, but he refuses to have more than two Secret Servicemen there at the weekend. I did a little extra research and learned that one is called Harper, he’s the communications officer. The other is his favourite, a big black former Marine named Clancy Smith, who served in the Gulf War. Smith is devoted to Cazalet. He’d step in the way of the bullet if he had to. And then there’s Blake Johnson.’

‘Yes, the article mentions him. It says he is the Director of something called the General Affairs Department at the White House,’ Rashid said.

‘Known as the Basement, because that is where it is. In actuality, it’s the President’s private hit squad, totally separate from the CIA, the FBI or the Secret Service. It’s been passed on from President to President for at least twenty years, no one knows quite how long. Johnson is also Cazalet’s closest friend, a Vietnam vet with a strong record.’

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