“Miss Heller, I caution you to be careful how you speak to me.”
“Very well, I will not speak to you again, until I have seen and spoken to Mr. Barrington.” She folded her arms and stared at a spot on the wall across the room.
DuBois got up so quickly that he knocked over his chair. He strode around the desk and came at Holly.
Holly stood up and faced him. He was about five-ten and slim; she was nearly as big.
DuBois drew back his right hand and swung it at her face.
Holly stepped inside the blow, grabbed his wrist, twisted his arm behind his back and, in the same motion, used a leg to sweep his feet from under him and slam him hard onto the floor. “You have no manners,” she said. She took the handcuffs from the desk and cuffed his hands behind his back. She heard a door open behind her.
“What is the meaning of this?” a deep voice said.
Holly turned and saw the imposing figure of Sir Winston Sutherland filling the doorway.
“Uh, good afternoon, Prime Minister,” she said, rising to her full height and leaving duBois on the floor.
“What is this, Marcel?” Sutherland demanded, “some kind of sex game?”
“Colonel duBois lacks charm,” Holly said. “Apparently he enjoys beating up women.”
Sutherland stepped into the room and was followed by Stone and another man.
“Ginny,” Stone said, “this is Mr. James Tiptree of the American Embassy.”
“How do you do?” Tiptree said, looking baffled.
DuBois attempted to get up, but Holly put her foot on his neck. “Be still,” she said.
Sir Winston Sutherland smiled, then began to laugh. Stone laughed, too. Tiptree just shook his head.
45
Stone and Holly sat in the backseat of a police car, headed back toward the inn.
“What the hell happened in there?” Stone whispered.
“Not now,” Holly said.
They sat in silence until they were driven to the inn and deposited at their cottage.
“Now,” Stone said as the police car drove away, “what the hell happened in there?”
“I freed myself from the handcuffs, pissed off duBois and, when he came at me, I put him on the floor and cuffed him.”
“So while I’m playing the lawyer and demanding to see everybody in authority, you’re beating up the guy who was supposed to beat you up?”
“Pretty much.”
“Do you know, I think that’s what got us released so quickly? Sir Winston just loved it!”
“What was he doing there?”
“Tiptree, from the embassy, tried to reach him, couldn’t, and then, as he arrived at police headquarters, so did Sir Winston. He professed to be shocked, shocked that we had been arrested, and you know the rest.”
“Why were we arrested in the first place?”
“My guess is that we were at the top of the list of foreign visitors, so they came after us.”