The Short Forever(95)

“Yes,” Plumber replied.

“I want to see his house.”

“Me, too,” Dino said.

Carpenter handed Stone the keys to the Jaguar. “Give them a map,” she said. “I can’t spare anybody to go with you, Stone.”

Stone took the keys and ran for the car.

“I want to drive,” Dino said.





Chapter 55



DINO GOT THE CAR STARTED AS STONE got in. “Don’t waste any time,” Stone said.

Dino hung a right out of the carpark and found himself staring at a moving van coming straight at him in his lane. “Shit!” he yelled, whipping to the other side of the road and nearly running into the ditch.

“Sorry, I forgot to warn you about that first right turn.”

“Maybe I don’t want to do this after all,” Dino said.

“Shut up and drive,” Stone said. “Just remember which side of the road you’re supposed to be on.”

“Very weird, driving on the left,” Dino said. “But I’ll get the hang of it.”

“Soon, please.”

They followed the map into the small village and to Morgan’s street. All the houses seemed identical.

“It’s gotta be the one with no front door,” Dino said, whipping into the driveway.

They walked into the house to find Mason and his people pulling the place apart. A man appeared from the kitchen. “I found a safe in the garage,” he said.

Everybody trooped through the kitchen to the garage. There was, indeed, a safe, the door open, empty.

“He put that in for the device,” Mason said. The group started to pull the garage apart.

Stone motioned Dino back into the house.

“What are we looking for?” Dino asked.

“Anything that might give us a hint where Morgan has gone—travel brochures, reservation forms, anything. You take the desk.”

Dino began going through the desk drawers, while Stone walked around the living room slowly, looking at everything. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but he would know it when he saw it. There was a large television set, and an easy chair and ottoman parked in front of it. On the ottoman was a stack of magazines; Stone began to go through them.

A television guide, a well-marked racing form, a couple of girlie magazines, and a travel magazine. Stone flipped through the travel magazine twice before he found something. A corner of one page had been dog-eared, then flattened again. The page was a continuation of an article on country inns that began earlier in the magazine; there was only one ad. “Take a look at this,” he said to Dino.

“Nothing in the desk,” Dino said. “No secret compartments, no travel receipts, nothing.”

Stone held out the magazine. “This page has been marked,” he said.

Dino looked at the ad in the lower right-hand corner. A photograph of a large country house dominated it. “What’s Cliveden?” he asked, pronouncing it with a long i.

“Cliveden, with a short i, was the country house of Lord Astor, before the war. His wife, an American woman named Nancy, who was a member of parliament, ran a very big salon there. Everybody who was anybody showed up at one time or another—George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin—and every literary or political figure of the time.”

“How do you know this stuff?”

“I read a book about it.”

“So why is this important?”

“It’s a hotel now, and it’s near Heathrow. Suppose Morgan wanted to lie low for a few days, until the heat was off at the airports, then beat it out of the country? He’s got to know everybody will be looking for him.”

“Could be,” Dino said. “You want to check it out?”

“Have we got anything else to do?”

“Nope.”

“Then let’s do it.”



They were on the M4 motorway, driving fast.

“Why aren’t we looking for Lance instead?” Dino asked.

“Two reasons: First, Lance is a lot smarter than Morgan, I think, and he’s going to be a lot harder to find; second, Morgan has my money.”

“And that’s the important one, huh?”

“You bet your ass; I don’t give a damn about the device, whatever it is, but Carpenter and her people don’t give a damn about my money, either.”

Following a small map in the magazine ad, they found the house.

“Jesus Christ,” Dino said, as they drove up the drive and came to the place. “I didn’t expect it to be so big.”

“Neither did I,” Stone said, getting out of the car. He took the photograph of Morgan from his pocket and showed it to Dino. “This is our guy.” Morgan was late fifties, heavyset, balding, with graying hair and a military mustache.