Two Chef!

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Kate Stark wished she’d slept on the red-eye from New York to Edinburgh, Scotland, but the missed night’s sleep was hard to regret. She truly enjoyed Rikka Albert’s friendship, and the woman had a direct line to Kate’s funny bone. They were the obnoxious pair giggling like schoolgirls throughout the flight and keeping everyone in First Class awake.

That Kate had at one time arrested Rikka and ruined her career as a money launderer had actually started their friendship rather than ruining it. After five years with little contact, they’d been brought back together just two months ago when they were both kidnapped by the North Koreans.

Rikka was five-foot-nothing of intensely brilliant Eurasian. In the last few months, she’d consumed the knowledge and skills necessary to become a fine television camera operator.

When Kate had chosen the upcoming visit to the kitchen of the Inverlochy Castle Hotel as Rikka’s first field solo, the woman had offered to marry her and have her children. The fact that her boyfriend Sam had been present had neither inhibited Rikka nor fazed Sam. Of course, nothing fazed him.

At least she was pretty sure they were an item. Rikka tended to speak in circles and never on the subject where the conversation began. As to Sam Fierro—he simply didn’t speak at all.

The reason they were Scotland bound was the G-8 summit meeting being held there. Security had allowed Kate one assistant and Rikka had seemed the obvious choice. Kate figured if they focused on having fun during the shoot, it should all come out well enough. But she did wish she’d had a chance to sleep on the flight before facing the DPG.

The moment they exited U.K. Customs, they’d been toted off to a non-descript waterfront warehouse by the British Diplomatic Protection Group in a bright red police car manned by officers who actually carried firearms. They were one of the few groups in the U.K. domestic forces to be Authorized Firearms Officers; AFOs she was informed when she’d been so American as to inquire.

Once she, Rikka, and their equipment had been deemed clear of evil intent, they’d been swept up into the security system that surrounded a meeting like the G-8.

Kate was used to it as she’d spent five years serving as an agent in the Secret Service before she’d left and inherited half-control of America’s number one cooking television network. Her twin brother didn’t care about his half, so it was really hers which worked out fine for both of them. She made them both a great deal of money, but it was the cooking that she loved.

Moments like this one, a trip to interview the chef d’cuisine responsible for the G-8 meeting, reminded Kate of that. It was a connection she sometimes lost in her world of corporate finance, network programming, and a thousand other meetings. Her happiest moments had been on a show: cooking with her mother, learning a new technique, or running a cook-off between the latest James Beard Award Nominees.

As they were processed through security, Rikka kept trying to look casual, but it wasn’t working. For one thing, she was perfectly still—Erika Albert was never completely still. Also, her green eyes were so wide that Kate wondered if Rikka would ever blink again. It was never easy to tell what caught the woman’s attention, because it was often the oddest aspect of something, but it had certainly been caught here at the DPG processing center.

Kate had tried to expose her to cooking, and she’d turned into a world-class sushi chef which involved immense skill, but no cooking other than rice. A tour of Kate’s television studio hadn’t turned her into a console operator despite her massive computer background, but rather into a camera operator.

What captured Rikka about the DPG’s digs in the warehouse was beyond Kate. To her it looked like any overworked pop-up security station right down to the semi-truck that had been pulled inside the warehouse and opened up to reveal a vast array of communications gear.

The G-8 meeting of the world’s leaders was in Scotland this year. Security was at a maximum, possibly the highest in the entire history of the city. The meeting was farther north, but Edinburgh was the common point of entry.

“I’ve never seen so few guns in my life,” Rikka finally whispered. “How does that even work?”

Rikka had come out of the Chinese tong gangs working the d**g and money-laundering trade in Boston. Kate had been the one to remove her, rather abruptly. So, Rikka’s frame of reference about weapons was that of course everyone had one—or two or three—at all times. Kate rather enjoyed the kinder, gentler atmosphere mandated by the British firearms policies.

Once cleared by the DPG, the two of them were tightly escorted to a helicopter waiting on the pier that stuck out into the Firth of Forth. It was a quiet July day on the Firth, mostly left to container ships and pleasure boats. The three massive red latticework sections of the Forth Rail Bridge looked very stately.

The DPG officers were hovering so close to make sure Kate and Rikka didn’t decide to escape by leaping overboard and swimming across the frigid estuary. Or perhaps the DPG just wanted to be sure that she didn’t bend down and trigger some random bomb that happened to be hidden in plain sight on the wharf lined with officers and a pair of roving sniffer dogs.

Actually, if she were running the protection detail for the G-8, she’d be escorting herself just as closely.

Whatever their reasons, the pretty brown-and-white Eurocopter EC135 Hermes VIP-version was indeed as smooth and lush a ride as the rust-red Hermes wool blazer that Kate wore against the cool July weather. The takeoff was smooth and the midday sunshine radiant on the Firth.

During the hour-long flight to the helipad at the Inverlochy Castle Hotel, two interpreters also headed for the meeting had discreetly ensured that she had their phone numbers, just in case. They were so identically dull that she wasn’t sure whose number was which. She and Rikka had traded eye rolls at how hopelessly obvious the two men were and Rikka burst into giggles, much to the men’s consternation.

Kate tried to remember the last time she’d giggled. It felt like years since she’d unbent even this much. She’d have to remember to spend more time with Rikka in the future.

It was early afternoon as the helicopter soared from the Lowlands into the Highlands. The terrain made an abrupt shift from rolling hills covered in trees to steep hills covered in low heath, long narrow slices of water filling the valleys, and the occasional barren peak soaring several thousand feet above.

The approach to the hotel was beautiful, except Kate was on the wrong side of the helicopter and couldn’t look at the hotel without one of the interpreters thinking it was a come-on. Since she’d forgotten his name somewhere back around Falkirk or Stirling, she instead admired the steep hills out her side of the helicopter.

The pilot was good, the landing as smooth as the takeoff, and the rotors spun down to a slow thud without stopping. He was clearly only waiting to rid himself of his human cargo and race back to Edinburgh for more.

For the hundred meters from the hotel’s helipad to the back entrance of the kitchen, security tried to bundle them into a Rolls Royce. Their refusal earned them a Protection Branch escort to the kitchen door.

As they walked, Kate was finally able to inspect the Inverlochy Castle Hotel. It was her first visit here and it didn’t disappoint.

The television producer side of her was captivated by the aesthetics.

It was a three-story building built in the late nineteenth century after castles had long since become meaningless except as a statement of status. And Inverlochy stated that with a passion. Built of heavy stone, but with generous windows. Bays and even turrets boasted of defense, but defense against the busy world rather than Scottish clan leaders wielding trebuchets.

Kate the woman appreciated that the perfectly groomed walkways, and gardens told her of the elegance she could anticipate within. The castle faced its own private lake. It glittered beneath the midday sun that warmed the gray stone edifice isolated upon the rolling hills of Scotland.

The former United States Secret Service agent part of her was noting patrol positions, spotted the snipers on the hotel’s roof, and picked out the communications-and-command van tucked back in the trees to the north. She picked out three outposts perched on nearby hillsides offering a wide range of view and fire; and could see where two others should be. They must be there, just too well hidden to spot at this distance.

Though the kitchen was to the north end of the building, the officers walked them around the south side. Something about not wanting to “be shot up a bit.” Kate decided not to find out whether that was British humor or British understatement and went along with the slightly longer route the agents required. They had her luggage in impound, again, so her burdens were light.

All they’d managed to keep from the agents was Rikka’s camera case, and that only after careful inspection. Discovering that its contents were worth over fifty thousand pounds if they were the ones to drop or damage it might have been a contributing factor to its rapid release.

They circled by the main entrance out front. Halfway across the lawn to a patch of friendly looking woods stood a chess game. Most of the pieces were thigh-high, the king reaching to her waist. They were so orderly on their black-and-white stone chessboard. It would be very easy to spend a great deal of time here.

“Want to play?” Rikka made a move toward one of the pawns.

“Not against you,” Kate had made that mistake before and learned her lesson.

“Bawk-bawk-bawk-ba-caw!” Rikka danced in circles making triumphant chicken noises, if there was such a thing, and flapping her elbows with her thumbs tucked under her arms. The action had both of the interpreters as well as the Protection Group agents edging away from her.

“Stop gloating.”

Rikka didn’t.

Kate ignored her, as well as she could ever ignore Rikka, and looked across the chessboard to the front of Inverlochy Castle. It was as impressive as the back, again the curious mixture of daunting and welcoming.

“Damn!” was Rikka’s whispered comment, thankfully done with her crowing for the moment. “No wonder Queen Victoria went nuts about this place.”

Kate couldn’t agree more. She felt like some poor supplicant approaching grandeur as the agents led them to the kitchen entrance.

Chef de cuisine Vivienne Jacquard greeted them warmly and then was immediately called away to taste a sauce. Her thick Scottish brogue could be heard throughout the kitchen no matter what other noise filled the air. Her manners were as chaotic as her wild red hair; cajoling one moment, berating the next, complimentary on only the rarest occasion.

Kate had done a lot kitchen interviews, and turned them into a very successful series. Kate’s Kitchen Raids had become a top show and allowed her to spend a couple days a month working with some of the world’s best chefs. That she always raided kitchens tied to major events—Hollywood premieres, the Super Bowl executive box’s kitchen, key corporate retreats in foreign luxury, and the like—had certainly added to the show’s high profile. It offered the added bonus of a sneak peak into the meals of the famous and powerful.

Though the G-8 meeting was something of a coup, so to speak.

They were gathering tonight before two days of meetings and Vivienne Jacquard’s kitchen had become the center of a very hot universe. The presidents and prime ministers of the eight largest economies in the world, at least by someone’s form of measure that always precluded the People’s Republic of China, were in attendance and expecting the very best food.

Vivienne certainly ranked in the best chefs’ category. She had taken a small seventeen-room luxury hotel in the Scottish Highlands and earned a Michelin star and three rosettes from the British Automobile Association. Those were big league levels that had helped the hotel garner Travel + Leisure’s Best Luxury Hotel in Europe award a few years back.

Kate sat at the small wood-surfaced prep station where Vivienne had plunked them down. It was the only horizontal surface not in use. A long steel counter sported iced trays of half-meter across turbot, one of the uglier but more delicately flavored flatfish. A chef was working them into individual fillets, four per fish.

In a large wash sink, another chef was processing radishes, dandelion greens, and young white asparagus—Scotland was far enough north for it to still be in season in late July.

Tall windows faced a stand of trees trimmed back far enough to shed a gentle northerly light over the tidy, white-tiled workspace. The cookware had seen a thousand meals, and their scrubbed surfaces looked it, but the steel counters were generous and a chef could travel down the cook line without having to squeeze past others.

It was only mid-afternoon in Scotland, about the time she’d normally get to the office in New York, and nothing had hit the cook line yet except for sauces and some tasting samples. The air was lush with herbs and wine reductions. Vanilla bean and lemon were radiating from the baking ovens. The air in the kitchen was practically a consumable delicacy all its own.

Vivienne worked down one side of the line, tasting as she went, disappeared briefly into the storerooms and her office, then back up the other side of the kitchen directing various preparations.

Rikka had booted up the Panasonic P2HD Varicam and followed Vivienne down and back. That was one of Rikka’s skills. In addition to being physically small, a highly technical computer geek, and a wizard with a chef’s knife, she was also one of the naturally stealthiest individuals Kate had ever met. Rikka was constantly surprising Kate by being right at her elbow when she least expected it. It was a significant advantage for a camera operator and a great combination of skills for Cooks Network.

As Vivienne came closer, she aimed a smile at Kate, but it slid strangely off her face. Not as if she was upset, rather, as if…

Rikka had somehow slipped through the kitchen to be again at Kate’s side to film the “first meeting” of the two chefs.

Kate could see the composition in her head from Rikka’s angle. It would be a good shot. Both she and Vivienne were tall, one redhead, one brunette, and both with bright blue eyes.

This would be the show’s opening shot.

Between them, Vivienne and Kate would easily engage the male audience sitting on the couch beside their wives, even though it was a cooking show.

Vivienne staggered, almost running into the chef with the de-boning knife used to prepare the turbot.

“Too ‘arly to be so daft clumsy, t’isn’t it?” Vivienne regained her balance. “Should na be doing such until this lot are fed and I’ve had me a wee whisky as an excuse.”

Then whatever had momentarily sustained her was spent and Vivienne Jacquard collapsed forward into Kate’s arms.

By the time Kate had eased her to the floor, the looseness of her body told Kate that it was too late.

Vivienne’s eyes were open when Kate rolled the chef onto her back on the rubber matting. Her neck flopped loose and her jaw sagged.

The nearest prep chef turned and screamed.

The final release of the chef de cuisine’s bladder added a final seasoning to the burgeoning kitchen panic.