him seem about a thousand years old, a look that had earned him the nickname Gimli in the Bureau. If Waldo was aware of this nickname, he was not sufficiently bothered by it to invest in a razor.
“Hey, Waldo,” said Chevie. “What’s up?”
Waldo scowled. “What’s up, Agent Savano? What’s up is that you should have requested an escort through the service entrance. We try to maintain a low profile here in order to avoid raising suspicion, and yet here you stand in tattered training gear with a chimney-cleaning midget in tow. Hardly low profile. That is what is up, Agent.”
At least he called me Agent, thought Chevie.
Waldo turned on his heel and strode through the small lobby furnished in late Victorian style, which was a huge relief to Riley, whose head was bursting with revelations.
“Should we follow the elf?” he asked Chevie.
Chevie smiled. “We should, or he gets really annoyed.”
Waldo translated his irritation into a quickstep, so Chevie and Riley had to hustle to keep on his tail. He led them around the front desk and into a small steel elevator, which he summoned with a remote control fob on his waistcoat.
Riley tried to appear blasé. “It’s an ascending room, no great shakes. I saw ’em at the Savoy years ago when Garrick sent me to suss out some swell’s gaff.”
Waldo raised an eyebrow at Chevie, who knew exactly what the unasked question was. “Yes, he talks like that all the time. It’s all Strike me blind or Cor, luv a duck with this little gent.”
Waldo took a smartphone from his pocket and typed a note. Chevie would be willing to bet that the word delusional was in the note somewhere.
They took the elevator to the fourth floor, with Riley holding grimly onto the rail.
“You can’t be overcautious,” he told Chevie. “I heard about one of these things snapping its cable in New York City. It dropped quicker than a shirkster at closing time. Made jam of the passengers.”
“I’m getting a headache listening to this cockney speak,” said Waldo. “Please God there won’t be any rhyming slang.”
Riley literally jumped from the elevator when the door opened, then they pushed through a fire door and climbed some back stairs up two more flights.
“Here we are,” said Waldo, indicating a nondescript gray door with the sweep of his arm, as though it was the gateway to a palace of wonder. “Room seventeen seventy-six.”
He pressed another button on his remote and the door swung smoothly open.
“In you go, Agent. You can hole up here until a field team arrives. It shouldn’t be too long, though head office tells me that our team has already been deployed to deal with a suspected terrorist hive, in Devon, of all places. False alarm, as it turned out. So I’m guessing it’ll take an hour for them to make it back here. Plenty of time for you to get some clothes on, and for the Artful Dodger to take a bath.”
“Cheers, guv’nor, you is a proper swell,” said Riley innocently, and Chevie guessed that he knew exactly who the Artful Dodger was.
Waldo frowned suspiciously but continued his briefing. “We have a range of clothes in the closet, so you should find something to fit. And there is a fridge with cold food. Don’t open the door to anyone but me, and if someone comes through that door who is not me, then feel free to shoot them. While we are not in the embassy and so technically not on American soil, this suite is attached to the embassy, and so a strong case can be made. In any event, jurisdiction over these rooms is a gray area, which should be enough to get you back Stateside if anything goes wrong.” Waldo opened a drawer in a writing desk. “In the event you are out of ammunition, we have a selection here, behind the stationery.”
“Ooh,” said Chevie. “Stationery. Cool.”
Waldo bristled. “I would have thought, Agent Savano, that after the Los Angeles foul-up, you would take this job a little more seriously.”
“I am being serious,” said Chevie. “One of my foster moms collects stationery.”
“I shall be writing a full report,” continued Waldo, “and your attitude will be both underlined and in italics.”
Chevie selected a clip for her Glock. “Sorry, Waldo. I get a little giddy under pressure. There’s someone after us. Someone a little out of the ordinary.”
Waldo was not impressed. “Well, your someone won’t be coming in here without an assault team behind him. And even then he’d