Dark Ambition (40 page)

 

Ben drained the last of his espresso. "This evening's been great, Jenny," he said. "Really great." He meant it, too. Sitting at a corner table in the small, intimate Marquis restaurant on Mount Street, they'd recaptured some of the spirit of their past relationship. They didn't talk about Clyde Gillis, or Winthrop, or the case. None of those things existed for two hours. They caught up on each other's lives for the past five years. The sarcasm and wisecracks had stopped. They were getting to know each other again. They felt comfortable together. Maybe there was hope for them after all, Ben thought.

He reached across the table and put his right hand on hers. Frowning, she pulled it away and sipped a little of the wine in her glass.

Take it slowly, he cautioned himself. It's been a long time. Don't push her too hard.

After he paid the bill and they left the restaurant, they walked in silence on the deserted Mayfair Street, toward Claridge's. Suddenly, he thought of Amy and began worrying. He glanced at his watch, which was still on Washington time. Amy should be home from school by now. As soon as they got back to their hotel suite, he would call home and talk to her.

"What do you think we should do tomorrow?" Jennifer asked.

He considered their options for a moment. "If Amy's okay, let's fly directly to New York. We've got to find Alexandra Hart."

"I sometimes use a PI who's a former New York City cop. Mark Bonner."

"The one who took those pictures about the video and the Chinese embassy?"

She nodded. "He still has great contacts in the NYPD. He'll be able to find Alexandra Hart for us in no time at all."

A heavy mist had settled over London. They reached a corner and turned, three blocks from the American embassy in Grosvener Square. Parked at the curb was a dark green van with the legend A&A Plumbing Company printed in white letters on the side.

They were walking past the van when suddenly the double doors in back exploded open and two powerfully built men wearing black leather jackets, leather gloves, and ski caps over their faces, with cutouts for their eyes and mouths, jumped out. Ben and Jennifer, their senses deadened from alcohol and lack of sleep, never had time to react. One of the men grabbed each of them roughly from behind and looped an arm around their neck and a hand over their mouth. Quickly, they were hustled into the back of the van.

Two other men, similarly dressed, were waiting there. An instruction was shouted to the driver in front in Greek. The van began moving slowly. They drove for a couple of minutes. During that time, cloth gags were tied over Ben's and Jennifer's mouths. They stood Ben up against one side of the truck and tied his arms and legs tightly to the wooden racks along the side. Meanwhile, they pushed Jennifer down on her stomach, hard, against the dirty wooden floor of the truck. One of them pressed his boot firmly on the center of her back, keeping her flat against the floor of the truck. Her glasses had fallen off and were lying next to her, where a large boot smashed down hard on them.

When the van stopped moving. Ben watched with growing fear as one of the men put on a pair of boxing gloves. An experienced pugilist, he went to work on Ben's body, starting with his chest and working down. Defenseless and unable to cry out, Ben bit his lip as wave after wave of pain shot through his body.

When the thug began working on his stomach, punching hard, Ben threw up his dinner. That didn't stop the hard, stiff blows. Ben twisted his arms to get free, but the ropes were too tight. He started working on Ben's groin, pounding away with blow after blow. Finally, Ben passed out.

One of the thugs barked an order, which was the signal to untie the unconscious Ben. Roughly, a man pulled Jennifer to her feet. He raised the bottom of his mask to uncover his mouth. In English, he said, "You go home tomorrow morning, and take him with you. No snooping around London. You understand?"

She nodded weakly.

"We'll be watching your hotel. We'll be there to make sure you get on an airplane." He paused. "Otherwise, you'll suffer far more than tonight."

Her body convulsed in spasms of fear.

One of the men opened the rear double doors of the van. They pushed Jennifer and Ben out onto a small grassy plot and tossed her shattered glasses after her. Then the van sped away.

Jennifer saw that Ben was still unconscious. She had to get help for him. She wrenched herself to her feet and struggled to the corner. She managed to flag down a cab.

"My friend's sick," she said. "Take us to the nearest hospital."

* * *

It was two-thirty in the morning when they got back to Claridge's. The diagnosis on Ben was no permanent injuries or damage. It would take a while, but his body would heal from the pounding he had taken. They had filed the required emergency room police reports, saying that they were tourists who had been attacked and robbed by assailants on the street, whom they never saw well enough to identify.

While they were waiting for a doctor, Ben had taken Jennifer into a corner of the hospital emergency room. "I'm so sorry I got you into this," he said in an anguished voice.

She was frantic with worry about him. My God, they had hit him so hard. She could still hear the blows and see it in her head. "Please don't think about that, Ben. It's not your fault. I had as much to do with it as you did."

She fiddled with the broken, bent glasses in her hand. Suddenly it all became too much for her. She broke down and cried, a soft weeping, with tears rolling down her cheeks. Ben put an arm around her and held her tight. He wiped the tears from her face with his hand.

"I'm all right now," she finally said.

He looked down at her useless glasses. "You never needed those."

"I did, too."

"Not to see, I mean."

"That's true, but I needed them so men like you wouldn't think that because I'm pretty, I must be an airhead."

He summoned up a crooked smile. "You sure didn't fool me."

Confused, she said. "What do you mean?"

"The first time I met you, I had you pegged for an airhead all the way." He smiled, hoping for some levity.

It worked. She returned his smile, saying, "And I had you pegged for a total nerd."

They laughed together. "Boy, were we both wrong," Jennifer said.

"This isn't my idea of a great evening out in London," Ben said, wincing from the aches he felt all over. "We'll have to come back after all this is over and try it again."

Ben's words made her think about Slater. This was the second invitation she'd gotten to London in the last two days.

Ben groaned loudly. "God, my body's so sore."

"So what do we tell the doctor?"

He had already thought of that. "As little as possible. There's no point getting Scotland Yard involved," he reasoned. "That would only lead to alerting the administration in Washington. Let's face it—there's no possibility that our attackers will ever be found. These people are pros. I'll bet you anything there's no A and A Plumbing. That van probably had magnetic signs on it that have already been changed. Besides, they never touched my face. They even wore boxing gloves to avoid leaving any marks on my body."

"Who do you think sent them?"

"We've got three choices. The Chinese government, our blond friend George Nesbitt, or..." He hesitated.

"Or what?"

"Somebody in our wonderful government back home."

A dark shadow crossed her face. "I don't even want to consider that possibility."

"Unfortunately, we have to. The silver lining in this cloud is that they were too late. They were supposed to get to us before we learned anything useful in England. In fact, we already got what we wanted from Peg Barton. Whoever sent them didn't know that, or they would have killed us."

His words made her tremble.

"For once," he added, "we were ahead of them."

A spasm of pain shot through his body, and Ben bent forward. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it, wanting him to know she was there. "A lot of good it did us."

Before they left the hospital, Jennifer checked a London telephone directory. Ben was right, of course. There was no listing for an A&A Plumbing Company.

The lobby of Claridge's was deathly still. The tall bald night clerk showed no emotion when the two Americans asked for the key to their suite. His guess was that they had been out losing their money at one of Mayfair's gambling clubs that catered to wealthy American tourists.

"Oh, and you have a telephone message, Mr. Hartwell," he said, handing Ben a small white envelope along with the key.

Ben's heart leaped, and he could feel his battered chest muscles tighten. Please, God, no, Ben thought. Don't let anything happen to Amy.

Ben ripped open the envelope. The message said,
Call Ann as soon as possible.
There was a Washington, D.C., phone number Ben didn't recognize.

He showed it to Jennifer. "Is this Ann's home number?" he asked frantically.

She shook her head, as anxious as he was.

Ben gingerly walked across the lobby to the elevator with Jennifer right behind.

Inside the suite, he punched out the telephone number before he even took off his coat. His heart was pounding.

A woman answered the phone. "George Washington Hospital."

Ben stammered, his throat dry, "I-I want to speak with Ann Winthrop."

There were several minutes of silence. "It's G.W. Hospital," he said to Jennifer in a panicked whisper. Finally he heard Ann come on the line. "Ben?"

"What's wrong?" Ben asked.

"Everything's all right. Amy has a broken leg, but everything's all right."

"What happened?"

She described what had occurred as she had pieced it together from Amy and from Campbell.

"How bad's the break in Amy's leg?" he asked.

"Not bad. I got one of the top orthopedists in town to set it. He said to tell you that kids' bones heal fast. There won't be any permanent damage. And there are two armed cops outside of her hospital room in case anybody else makes a move against her."

"What about Art?" He held his breath.

"He's in surgery now. I'll know something in about an hour."

"What's the prognosis?"

"Nobody's talking yet. They don't know what may have been hit."

"Oh, Christ. What about Elana?"

"She'll be okay. They're keeping her here overnight for observation."

"And the blonde?"

"Still unconscious. I haven't heard anything beyond that."

"Call me as soon as Art's out of surgery," he said.

"It's the middle of the night for you."

"I don't care how late it is," Ben said emphatically, and hung up.

He was racked with guilt for the harm he had inflicted on Amy and Campbell. What if Amy was hurt worse, and Ann was trying to soften the blow? He should never have left her. He should never have gotten both of them into this mess. His priorities were all screwed up. He was...

Jennifer read his mind and tried to reassure him. "They'll both be okay. Ann wouldn't give you anything but a straight story. That's the way she is."

* * *

As a result of the painkillers the doctor had given him, Ben was sleeping fitfully when the phone rang an hour later. He grabbed it from its cradle.

"Ben, it's Ann."

"How's Art?"

"They got the bullet. No severe damage. The doctor says he'll be up and around in a week."

"Which for Art means three days. And you're sure it's only a broken leg for Amy?"

"I'm absolutely sure. In fact," Ann said in a lighter voice, "somebody wants to talk to you. She'll sound a little drugged. They gave her medication when they set the leg."

"Put her on."

He was overjoyed to hear Amy's groggy voice.

"Daddy, I'm okay. I was really scared, but Art told me they got the bad lady. Aunt Ann's real nice. She got me a hot-fudge sundae with three cherries. It was yummy."

"I'm so glad, honey."

"When are you coming home, Daddy?"

"I'll be back tomorrow afternoon."

"I love you, Daddy."

"I love you, too, Amy."

When Amy handed the phone back to Ann, Ben asked her, "Any other developments in the case in Washington since we left?"

"Not a thing."

"See you tomorrow, then."

As Ben put the phone down, his forehead was damp with perspiration. He couldn't wait to get back to Washington. Too wired to sleep, he went into the other bedroom of the suite. Jennifer was sleeping on her stomach with her arm thrown across the other side of the king-size bed and hair strewn over her face. He watched her sleeping for several minutes. He had been terrified of what those men in the van would do to her, and relieved that they had decided to deliver their message to him rather than her.

Was there a future for them? he wondered. He certainly hoped so. He knew very well that there was no point even thinking about it until the Winthrop affair was over.

 

 

 

Chapter 26

 

"Well, we got our shooter," Art Campbell said as Ben walked into his hospital room with Amy in his arms, a cast on her leg.

Art was propped up in bed with a large bandage on his left shoulder.