The Lord Advocate entered the Terrace Mews, number 19, at two that afternoon.
He had let himself in with a key that had at least four copies, and going through to the living room that overlooked Regent Park he could not be sure who it was he would be speaking with on the most sensitive and confidential of subjects.
The Mews were a double row of old bow-windowed townhouses shoulder to shoulder on the narrow Pilgert Street. Wallace Breckenridge had been using number 19 since before his Cabinet days, when his Whitestone lieutenants had nowhere else convenient to meet with him. That had changed with the advent of Mr Ingols, who now had one of the spare keys, and who Breckenridge suspected was the person he was about to chat with over something that might ruin his day. Or it might be a social call.
Mr Ingols lived somewhere in England. He was an assistant to the chief operations officer of Black Eagle, the black ops department in the CIA that had sent him to Edinburgh in the mid Nineties to facilitate 'the Lusk,' while the new Parliament building project floundered.
Mr Ingols had brought in 'foundation experts' to redesign a section of the basement for 'security and safety reasons,' and who later had the redesign erased from the floor plans, announcing that the basement section in question was reinforced cement blocks to bolster the quality of the foundation.
To everyone but Breckenridge, Ingols was a construction engineer with the highest credentials. He had consulted with the architect, Maggie Donegal, whose husband was dying at the time of an inflamed liver, thanks to Ingol's specialized treatments given to him with Mrs Donegal's blessings. One less snoopy bastard to worry about.
Breckenridge unwound his wool neckscarf and shrugged out of his tweed overcoat. He dropped them at one end of the central sofa and fixed himself a drink at the mini bar near the fireplace, where he could look down at the park while he shook the martini mix.
He was, as befitted his station, a distinguished-looking man, iron grey hair and moustace, square of jaw, broad of shoulder, a good length of leg, and only the beginning of a paunch, which, if he kept his vest loosely buttoned, was hardly noticeable.
Breckenridge was aware of the blue serge coat on the backrest of a lazyboy armchair. So when he heard the toilet flushing in the half-bathroom he wasn't surprised.
Mr Ingols came out fiddling with a cufflink, a nervous mannerism. He smiled at Breckenridge and they shook hands. He was given a martini glass and accepted the cherry that was dangled above it, dropping it in the drink and saying, "Do you know a Valentina Vizconde?"
Breckenridge turned from the bar and leaned back against it, gratified at being several inches taller than Ingols, who was a small wiry man with frizzled grey hair and a long pointed nose. "Can't say I do," he said to the agent, "though I ought to, if my guess is right."
"Do you know a Tanya Wilde?"
A rhetorical question, the bastard, thought Breckenridge. He bent his smile down at one corner of his wide mouth. "The woman who outed Whitestone, and who we had in our clutches until a nincompoop let her escape. What, she's been found?"
"Maybe and maybe not," Ingols said, his smile twitching as it always did when he found humor in a frustrating situation. "Here's what we think we know. Tanya Wilde was born in Lornaglen on December fourteenth in 'ninety. On that same day in a private residence in Lornaglen Valentina Vizconde was born, aided by a midwife who had the birth certificate signed by a doctor whose name doesn't match any physician practicing at that time.
"The Vizconde family consisted of a man, his wife, and an uncle, all in the same house. The man had been in and out of jail, his wife a very loose woman, and the uncle, the man's brother, was a bum who turned out to have tuberculosis. There is no record of a child in the family, aside from a possibly bogus birth certificate, until Valentina enrolled in Presbyterian College, here in Edinburgh, at age 18. By then the uncle was dead, and the man and his wife had succumbed to pneumonia. There was some question about that, but the authorities let it slide.
"Valentina was an exceptional student. Maggie was very impressed with her. But then she dropped out and began associating with a Edinburgh street gang, the Tollcross Rebels. She met our friend Smitchee, and as you know, Tony D'Arc was using him as the terminus of a drug pipeline from the Napolitano mob in France. Tony gets Valentina involved, then cheats her out of her take and has her beat up and raped by a trio of Gillie boys. Valentina recovers and..."
Ingols' smile twitched as he lifted his glass and plucked out the cherry. "And now we have Tanya Wilde, a month later, in 'O-One, showing up in New York City. We have a witness claiming that there was a Tanya Wilde hobnobbing with the Tollcross Rebels at the time Valentina was doing the same, but there's no mention of them being together.
"So, here's Tanya recruited by Red Rum through Smitchee, going through her initial training, while Valentina is somewhere trying to hire a hit-man off the Deep Web set up by the US military, which still runs the goddamn thing. She's spotted online by a Red Rum negotiator. They communicate through encrypted emails. Encryption, ha, what a joke. Anyway, to make a long story short, she wants Tony 'salted,' as she put it. Killed. Kaputed. But she hasn't the funds. So she runs a drug scam on the Web that she learned through Tony during the good times. Red Rum finds out and they cancel the contract."
Ingols put the cherry in his mouth and chewed it pensively.
"Fascinating," drawled Breckenridge. "Let's have a seat before you get to the point and I fall over backwards."
He sat on the sofa; Ingols in the lazyboy armchair.
"I might have heard Tony saying something about a Valentina," Breckenridge remarked. "He's here in the city, I think. I can ask him. But how does this fit in with the Wilde bitch? She knows about the Lusk. She's got to be shut up."
"According to a mole of ours in Red Rum, those guys don't know where she's roosting. But let me continue. Valentina goes off the radar after her scam was busted. Tanya Wilde learns the ropes of the vigilante business through a master of the art, a man called Sanguineus. I know his real name but the boss doesn't want me telling you. Tanya gets really good at what she does. Then for some reason she shows up in Paris, late last year.
"She meets Francois Benz. You know who I'm talking about. Was she there to bump him? Well, we don't know. She's real friendly with him. He likes her. She's plenty hot, you know. But then he learns what she does for a living, through someone close to Smitchee and Tony, we think. We don't know. We can be kinda fucking stupid sometimes.
"So now Benz is sweating bullets. He orders Tanya killed. He's told that she's escargot now, and word gets back to Red Rum with the same conclusion. Sanguineus is sent to kill Benz, to avenge Tanya. He does. But as you know, she had slipped out of the trap the strongman had set, and came back up here, followed at a distance by Tony, who thinks she's Valentina. He wants to get back in her good graces, no doubt because he can make money off her. Then he learns she's not Valentina, but the notorious shrill who uncovered Whitestone.
"He's told to cuff her and bring her to the Lusk. Well, you know all this. She escapes, and according to our mole at Red Rum, she shows up in New York and has dinner with Sanguineus. Then she disappears. If our mole is being straight up with us, they still don't know where she is. But I think WE do."
Breckenridge looked doubtful. "I've had three of my best investigators from the Advocate office looking for any trace of Tanya Wilde. If Tony mentioned Valentina to me, and the name does ring a faint bell, then it may be that your boys are mistaking her for Tanya Wilde, as perhaps my own boys have done."
"Wallace," said Ingols patiently. "Tanya and Valentina might be one and the same person. I'm thinking that Tanya fabricated the Valentina birth certificate for the purpose of enjoying the advantages of a secret life, a separate identity. She's that kind of entrepreneur. Like all good spies and assassins, she's an actor. If Valentina Vizconde is here, and we have Maggie and Gerard to vouch for it, then it is possible that Tanya is here too."
"For what?"
"We'll know eventually. But it may have a lot to do with her desiring revenge on Tony, and quite possibly assisting Sanguineus on the MacGalt hit."
"HE'S here? This Sanguineus you've been talking about?"
Ingols fiddled with a cufflink. "Tony contacted me not an hour ago," he said in a dubious tone, as if he wasn't sure of himself. "He says he told Sanguineus that Valentina wants him, Sanguineus, killed, but didn't explain why and Sanguineus didn't ask why. He says Sanguineus tends to believe the way we do, that Valentina is Tanya. So, it appears that he and Tanya have had a falling out, since he didn't question Tony's comment about Valentina wanting him dead."
Ingols sipped the dregs of his martini and twitched a smile. "By the way, arrange to go on a hiking trip this weekend with Gerard. Tony thinks Sanguineus prefers to snuff Gerard in what is to look like an outing accident in the highlands."
Breckenridge stood. He took Ingols' glass to the bar to refill it. "If Interpol didn't have their noses up Whitestone's ass I could've taken care of Gerard myself. That Jekyll and Hyde son of a bitch."
"Don't fret over Interpol," said Ingols, turning a cufflink around and around. "We've assured them that Whitestone has scattered to the four winds."
Tanya heard the door open. She shifted over on her side and pulled the covers up to her nose, her eyes on Sanguineus as he came in and pushed the door shut.
The late afternoon sun was blinded by ominous clouds. The parted curtains showcased a dim silvery blush on the window pane. Beyond, the woods of Holyrood park were shaking their green crowns. A storm was coming.
Sanguineus sat on the edge of the bed.
Tanya saw many things in his eyes that worried her. What he said was, "You mentioned having proof of a secret room at the Parliament building. Show it to me."
She reached for her iPhone on the nightstand.
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