Albert Street is a tree-lined collection of middle-class row homes just outside the main business district in London’s Camden Town. The London Zoo and Regent’s Park are minutes away. It’s the kind of neighborhood that London urbanites settle in to raise their kids without fully committing to suburban life.
We pulled up to a house that had been painted an unappealing blend of white and tan. A pink tricycle with plastic tassels sprouting from each handlebar sat just inside the black, wrought-iron fence guarding the tiny, well-manicured lawn.
The female agent opened my door and led me up the short flight of concrete steps. There were no other cars parked at the curb. A stack of coupon circulars and other assorted junk mail protruded from the mailbox next to the door. It had all the trappings of a safe house, further cementing my Interpol theory.
The male agent stepped around me with a key and unlocked the door. Inside, the house was silent. The living room was furnished in turn-of-the-century IKEA and everything was covered with a thin layer of dust. The female agent took the lead while I followed behind. Her partner shut and locked the door and brought up the rear. We walked single file down a short hallway, hung a right, and went down a flight of stairs to the basement.
The steps were old and rickety. They creaked beneath our weight. At the bottom was an equally old door, its white paint faded, cracked, and peppered with black mold. The female agent opened it and stepped into a dank washroom, illuminated by a single exposed, hanging bulb with a pull chain. There was a washer and dryer against one bare, cinder block wall. Next to them stood a water heater wrapped in a sheet of yellow fiberglass insulation to shield it from the cold. The wrap was secured in the front with three strips of frayed duct tape that were slowly losing their battle against time and the elements. The space was tight, so much so that the male agent had to hang back on the steps.
“Cozy,” I said. “Is your boss going to pop out of the washing machine, or did we make a wrong turn back at the half bathroom?”
The female agent crouched in front of the water heater and pulled apart the bottom edges of the insulation, exposing a metal plate covering the temperature controls. She loosened the top and bottom screws with her fingers and pulled the plate off, revealing not little dials regulating the heat of the water in the tank, but a telephonic keypad. She punched in a nine-digit code (I made out an eight and a two, but missed the others) and a hydraulic hiss escaped from behind the wall to my right. The outline of a door formed in the mortar between the cinder blocks as an entire section pulled backward, revealing the entrance to a corridor, brightly lit with fluorescent overhead lighting. I took an involuntary step backward and knocked into the male agent, who shoved me back toward the door.
The female agent replaced the plate over the keypad and ushered me through the hidden passageway, which was a first for me. I’d attended client meetings in plenty of sketchy locations over the past decade, but none of them were accessed through the washroom of an empty row home.
Keep your shit together, Rick. These guys aren’t playing around.
I wiped my palms on my pant legs, hoping my escorts didn’t notice how badly I’d started sweating.
Everything about this . . . bunker, I guess? . . . was the exact opposite of the house that camouflaged it. The walls were white and the floor was shiny gray linoleum. Nothing cracked or faded. Everything sleek and new. We formed a single line again and walked down the corridor, past two sets of standard office doors, one on each side. There was a final pair of doors before the corridor ended in a T junction, and we turned into the one on the left.
It was an interrogation room. Clearly soundproofed, with foam walls and the low, persistent hum of noise-canceling speakers filling the air. There was a metal table with two chairs, one on each side. A steel bar was welded to the table by the chair on the left. If I’d been wearing handcuffs, that’s where they’d have secured them.
“Please, sit,” the female agent said. Her accent was rich, smooth. Upper-crust British all the way.
“It speaks,” I replied, sitting in the chair without the handcuff bar in front of it. She smiled.
“Would you like anything?” she asked. “Coffee? Water?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Then I’ll let our host know that you’re here. Won’t be more than a few minutes.”
“And what is our host’s name?” I asked, but she only smiled, as if the question amused her, and left the room, her brown ponytail bouncing behind her. Her partner hung behind, standing guard by the door.
I took a quick survey of my surroundings. No glass, so no two-way mirror. No visible cameras, but there was no doubt they were there. Tucked into the lighting, most likely. Or embedded in the walls.
Curbside, the place screamed safe house. The inside too. But down here, this was different. Safe houses are just that: houses. They may have a crawlspace or a false floor somewhere to hide in case of emergency, but nothing like this. This was something else.
There was no clock on the wall, but I still heard one ticking. For a brief moment I thought it was my heart, pounding in my ears, but then realized it was the male agent’s watch. He stood motionless by the door, his arms straight down in front of him, crossed at the wrists.
“Nice timepiece,” I said. “Mine has Spider-Man on it, but I only wear it on special occasions.”
The door opened, ending my attempt at witty banter. Ponytail entered, followed by a woman wearing a white suit with sharp edges. She had a blue blouse beneath the jacket, and her blonde hair—though styled short—was accented by darker roots. She could have been forty just as easily as she could have been sixty. I stood as she approached and shook her hand. There was a thin gold band on her right ring finger. No other visible jewelry. Not even a tiny pair of earrings.
“Mr. Carter?” she said, still holding my hand. “My name is Patricia Baum. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise,” I said. She had the same sophisticated air to her accent as Ponytail, but it was disingenuous. It came off as something practiced. Polished and fine-tuned over many years.
“Please sit,” she said. I did, and she took the other chair. The two agents bracketed the door. “How was your flight? Did you enjoy the Macallan? I do hope we got that right.”
“The scotch was delicious and the plane was immaculate,” I said. “Can’t say I cared for the pickup service, though.”
She lowered her head and tried to look disappointed. It rang as empty as her accent. “Yes, I apologize for that. I hope you understand why we need to take precautions in regard to allowing outside parties to carry weapons into a meeting, but it could have been handled more delicately.”
“In all honesty, Trish—can I call you Trish?” Her lips smiled but her eyes didn’t. “I don’t understand any of this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the opportunity and value all the referral business that comes my way, but there are some unspoken rules that weren’t followed here.”
“Indeed there were,” she said. “Regrettable, but necessary.”
“And why is that, exactly?”
She sat back in her chair. Crossed her slender legs and folded her hands across her knee. “You come to us very highly recommended, Mr. Carter. May I call you Rick?”
“Please, call me Trish.” Behind me, one of the agents stifled a laugh.
“Not just by Leon,” she said, unfazed, “although his glowing review of your work was what finally convinced us to reach out. In particular, we were impressed with your ability to find professionals who are adept at, shall we say, sleight of hand.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“We are dealing with a very delicate situation. It needs to be resolved quickly and efficiently but can never be traced back to us or our business partners. From what we’ve been told, you’re the best there is at finding people capable of pulling that off.”
“Who is ‘we’?” I asked.
“My superiors.”
“And they are?”
“Let’s call them the Board of Directors.”
