Chapter 16
Objectives and Patriots

   Like most professional officers, Lieutenant Commander Robby Jackson had little use for the press. The irony of it was that Jack had tried many times to tell him that his outlook was wrong, that the press was as important to the preservation of American democracy as the Navy was. Now, as he watched, reporters were hounding his friend with questions that alternated between totally inane and intrusively personal. Why did everyone need to know how Jack felt about his daughter's condition? What would any normal person feel about having his child hovering near death – did they need such feelings explained? How was Jack supposed to know who'd done the shooting – if the police didn't know, how could he?
   "And what's your name?" one finally asked Robby. He gave the woman his name and rank, but not his serial number.
   "What are you doing here?" she persisted.
   "We're friends. I drove him tip here." You dumbass.
   "And what do you think of all this?"
   "What do you think I think? If that was your friend's little girl up there, what the hell would you think?" the pilot snapped back at her.
   "Do you know who did it?"
   "I fly airplanes for a living. I'm not a cop. Ask them."
   "They're not talking."
   Robby smiled thinly. "Well, score one for the good guys. Lady, why don't you leave that man alone? If you were going through what he is, do you think you would want a half-dozen strangers asking you these kind of questions? That's a human being over there, y'know? And he's my friend and I don't like what you people are doing to him."
   "Look, Commander, we know that his wife and daughter were attacked by Terrorists –"
   "Says who?" Jackson demanded.
   "Who else would it be? Do you think we're stupid?" Robby didn't answer that. "This is news – it's the first attack by a foreign terrorist group on American soil, if we're reading this right. That is important. The people have a right to know what happened and why," the reporter said reasonably.
   She's right, Robby admitted reluctantly to himself. He didn't like it, but she was right. Damn.
   "Would it make you feel any better to know that I do have a kid about that age? Mine's a boy," she said. The reporter actually seemed sympathetic.
   Jackson searched for something to dislike about her. "Answer me this: if you have a chance to interview the people who did this, would you do it?"
   "That's my job. We need to know where they're coming from."
   "Where they're comin' from, lady, is they kill people for the fun of it. It's all part of their game." Robby remembered intelligence reports he'd seen while in the Eastern Med. "Back a couple of years ago – you never heard this from me, okay?"
   "Off the record," she said solemnly.
   "I was on a carrier off Beirut, okay? We had intelligence reports – and pictures – of people from Europe who flew in to do some killing. They were mainly kids, musta been from good families – I mean, from the way they dressed. No shit, this is for real, I saw the friggin' pictures. They joined up with some of the crazies, got guns, and just started blasting away, at random, for the pure hell of it. They shot from those high-rise hotels and office buildings into the streets. With a rifle you can hit from a thousand yards away. Something moves – boom, they blast it with automatic weapons fire. Then they got to go home. They were killing people, for fun! Maybe some of them grew up to be real terrorists, I don't know. It was pretty sickening stuff, not the sort of thing you forget. That's the kind of people we're talking about here, okay?
   "I don't give a good goddamn about their point of view, lady! When I was a little kid in Alabama, we had problems with people like that, those assholes in the Klan. I don't give a damn about their point of view, either. The only good thing about the Klan was they were idiots. The terrorists we got running around now are a lot more efficient. Maybe that makes them more legitimate in your eyes, but not mine."
   "That thing in Beirut never made the papers," the reporter said.
   "I know for a fact that one reporter saw it. Maybe he figured that nobody would believe it. I don't know that I would have without the photos. But I saw 'em. You got my word on that, lady."
   "What kind of pictures?"
   "That I can't say – but they were good enough to see their shiny young faces." The photos had been made by U.S. and Israeli reconnaissance aircraft.
   "So what do you do about it?"
   "If you could arrange to have all these bastards in one place, I think we and the Marines could figure something out," Robby replied, voicing a wish common to professional soldiers throughout the world. "We might even invite you newsies to the wake. Who the hell is that?" Two new people came into the room.
   Jack was too tired to be fully coherent. The news that Sally was out of immediate danger had been like a giant weight leaving his shoulders, and he was waiting for the chance to see his wife, who would soon be moved to a regular hospital floor. A few feet away, Wayson, the British security officer, watched with unconcealed contempt, refusing even to give his name to the reporters who asked. The State Police officers were unable to keep the press away, though hospital personnel flatly refused to let the TV equipment in the front door, and were able to make that stick. The question that kept repeating was. Who did it? Jack said he didn't know, though he thought he did. It was probably the people he'd decided not to worry about.
   It could have been worse, he told himself. At least it was now probable that Sally would be alive at the end of the week. His daughter was not dead because of his misjudgment. That was some consolation.
   "Mr. Ryan?" one of the new visitors asked.
   "Yeah?" Jack was too exhausted to look up. He was awake only because of adrenaline now. His nerves were too ragged to allow him sleep, much as he needed it.
   "I'm Special Agent Ed Donoho, Boston Field Office of the FBI. I have somebody who wants to say something to you."
   Nobody ever said that Paddy O'Neil was stupid, Donoho thought. As soon as the report had made the Eleven O'clock News, the man from Sinn Fein had asked his FBI "escort" if he might fly down to Baltimore. Donoho was in no position to deny him the right, and had been co-opted into bringing the man himself on the first available plane into BWI.
   "Mr. Ryan," O'Neil said with a voice that dripped sympathy, "I understand that the condition of your child has been upgraded. I hope that my prayers had something to do with it, and . . ."
   It took Ryan over ten seconds to recognize the face that he'd seen a few days before on TV. His mouth slowly dropped open as his eyes widened. For some reason he didn't hear what the man was saying. The words came through his ears, but, as though they were in some unknown tongue, his brain did not assemble them into speech. All he saw was the man's throat, five feet away. Just about five feet, was what his brain told him.
   "Uh-oh," Robby said on the other side of the room. He stood as his friend went beet-red. Two seconds later, Ryan's face was as pale as the collar on his white cotton shirt. Jack's feet shifted, sliding straight beneath his body as he leaned forward on the couch.
   Robby pushed past the FBI agent as Ryan launched himself from the couch, hands stretching out for O'Neil's neck. Jackson's shoulder caught his friend's chest, and the pilot wrapped Jack up in a bear hug, trying to push him backward as three photographers recorded the scene. Jack didn't make a sound, but Robby knew exactly what he wanted to do. Jackson had leverage going for him, and pushed Ryan back, hurling him onto the couch. He turned quickly

   "Get that asshole outa here before I kill him!" Jackson was four inches shorter than the Irishman, but his rage was scarcely less than Ryan's. "Get that terrorist bastard out of here!"
   "Officer!" Special Agent Donoho pointed to a state trooper, who grabbed O'Neil and dragged him from the room in an instant. For some reason the reporters followed as O'Neil loudly protested his innocence.
   "Are you out of your fucking mind!" Jackson snarled at the FBI agent.
   "Cool down, Commander. I'm on your side, okay? Cool it down some."
   Jackson sat down beside Ryan, who was breathing like a horse at the end of a race while he stared at the floor. Donoho sat down on the other side.
   "Mr. Ryan, I couldn't keep him from coming down. I'm sorry, but we can't do that. He wanted to tell you – shit, all the way down on the plane, he told me that his outfit had nothing to do with this; that it would be a disaster for them. He wanted to extend his sympathy, I guess." The agent hated himself for saying that, even though it was true enough. He hated himself even more because he'd almost started to like Paddy O'Neil over the past week. The front man for Sinn Fein was a person of considerable charm, a man with a gift for presenting his point of view in a reasonable way. Ed Donoho asked himself why he'd been assigned to this job. Why couldn't they have picked an Italian? He knew the answer to that, of course, but just because there was a reason didn't mean that he had to like it. "I'll make sure he doesn't bother you anymore."
   "You do that," Robby said.
   Donoho went back into the hall, and unsurprisingly found O'Neil giving his spiel to the reporters. Mr. Ryan is distraught, he was saying, as any family man would be in similar circumstances. His first exposure to the man the previous week had given him a feeling of distaste. Then he'd started to admire his skill and charm. Now Donoho's reaction to the man's words was one of loathing. An idea blinked on in his head. He wondered if the Bureau would approve and decided it was worth the risk. First the agent grabbed a state trooper by the arm and made sure that the man wouldn't get close to Ryan again. Next he got hold of a photographer and talked to him briefly. Together they found a doctor.
   "No, absolutely not," the surgeon replied to the initial request.
   "Hey, Doc," the photojournalist said. "My wife's pregnant with our first. If it'll help this guy, I'm for it. This one doesn't make the papers. You got my word. Doc."
   "I think it'll help," the FBI agent said. "I really do."
   Ten minutes later Donoho and the photographer stripped off their scrub clothing. The FBI agent took the film cassette and tucked it in his pocket. Before he took O'Neil back to the airport, he made a call to headquarters in Washington, and two agents drove out to Ryan's home on Peregrine Cliff. They didn't have any problem with the alarm system.

   Jack had been awake for more than twenty-four hours now. If he'd been able to think about it, he would have marveled at the fact that he was awake and functional, though the latter observation would have been a matter of dispute to anyone who saw him walking. He was alone now. Robby was off attending to something that he couldn't remember.
   He would have been alone in any case. Twenty minutes earlier, Cathy had been moved into the main University Hospital complex, and Jack had to go see her. He walked like a man facing execution down a drab corridor of glazed institutional brick. He turned a corner and saw what room it had to be. A pair of state troopers was standing there. They watched him approach, and Jack watched their eyes for a sign that they knew all of this was his fault, that his wife and daughter had nearly died because he'd decided that there was nothing to worry about. Not once in his life had Jack experienced failure, and its bitter taste made him think that the whole world would hold him in the same contempt he felt for himself.
   You're so fucking smart.
   It seemed to his senses that he did not so much approach the door – it approached him, looming ever larger in his sight. Behind the door was the woman he loved. The woman who had nearly died because of his confidence in himself. What would she say to him? Did he dare to find out? Jack stood at the door for a moment. The troopers tried not to stare at him. Perhaps they felt sympathy, Jack thought, knowing that he didn't deserve it. The doorknob was cold, accusing metal in his hand as he entered the room.
   Cathy was lying in her single-bed room. Her arm was in a cast. An enormous purple bruise covered the right side of her face and there was a bandage over half her forehead. Her eyes were open but almost lifeless, staring at a television that wasn't on. Jack moved toward her as though asleep. A nurse had set a chair alongside the bed. He sat in it, and took his wife's hand while he tried to think of something he could say to the wife he had failed. Her face turned toward his. Her eyes were blackened and full of tears.
   "I'm sorry. Jack," she whispered.
   "What?"
   "I knew she was fooling with the seat belt, but I didn't do anything because I was in a hurry – and then that truck came, and I didn't have time to – if I had made sure she was strapped in, Sally would be fine . . . but I was in a hurry," she finished, and looked away. "Jack, I'm so sorry."
   My God, she thinks it's her fault . . . what do I say now?
   "She's going to be okay, babe," Ryan managed to say, stunned at what he'd just heard. He held Cathy's hand to his face and kissed it. "And so are you. That's the only thing that matters now."
   "But –" She stared at the far wall.

   "No 'buts.' "
   Her face turned back. Cathy tried to smile but tears were rolling from her eyes. "I talked to Doctor Ellingstone at Hopkins – he came over and saw Sally. He says – he says she'll be okay. He says that Shapiro saved her life."
   "I know."
   "I haven't even seen her – I remember seeing the bridge and then I woke up two hours ago, and – oh, Jack!" Her hand closed on his like a claw. He leaned forward to kiss her, but before their lips touched, both started weeping.
   "It's okay, Cathy," Jack said, and he started to believe that it really was, or at least that it would be so again. His world had not ended, not quite.
   But someone else's will, Ryan told himself. The thought was a quiet, distant one, voiced in a part of his mind that was already looking at the future while the present occupied his sight. Seeing his wife weeping tears caused by someone else started a cold rage in him which only that someone's death could ever warm.
   The time for grief was already ending, carried away by his own tears. Though it had not yet happened, Ryan's intellect was already beginning to think of the time when his emotions would be at rest – most of them. One would remain. He would control it, but it would also control him. He would not feel like a whole man again until he was purged of it.
   One can only weep for so long; it is as though each tear carries a finite amount of emotion away with it. Cathy stopped first. She used her hand to wipe her husband's face. She managed a real smile now. Jack hadn't shaved. It was like rubbing sandpaper.
   "What time is it?"
   "Ten-thirty." Jack didn't have to check his watch.
   "You need sleep, Jack," she said. "You have to stay healthy, too."
   "Yeah." Jack rubbed his eyes.
   "Hi, Cathy," Robby said as he came through the door. "I've come to take him away from you."
   "Good."
   "We're checked into the Holiday Inn over on Lombard Street."
   "We? Robby, you don't –"
   "Stuff it, Jack," Robby said. "How are you, Cathy?"
   "I have a headache you wouldn't believe."
   "Good to see you smile," Robby said softly. "Sissy'll be up after lunch. Is there anything she can get for you?"
   "Not right now. Thanks, Rob."
   "Hang in there, Doc." Robby took Jack's arm and hauled him to his feet. "I'll have him back to you later today."
   Twenty minutes later Robby led Jack into their motel room. He pulled a pill container from his pocket. "The doc said you should take one of these."
   "I don't take pills."
   "You're taking one of these, sport. It's a nice yellow one. That's not a request, Jack, it's an order. You need sleep. Here." Robby tossed them over and stared until Jack swallowed one. Ryan was asleep in ten minutes. Jackson made certain that the door was secured before settling down on the other bed. The pilot dreamed of seeing the people who had done all this. They were in an airplane. Four times he fired a missile into their bird and watched their bodies spill out of the hole it made so that he could blast them with his cannon before they fell into the sea.

   The Patriots Club was a bar across the street from Broadway Station in one of South Boston's Irish enclaves. Its name harkened not back to the revolutionaries of the 1770s, but rather to the owner's image of himself. John Donoho had served in the First Marine Division on the bitter retreat from the Chosin Reservoir. Wounded twice, he'd never left his squad on the long, cold march to the port of Hungnam. He still walked with a slight limp from the four toes that frostbite had taken from his right foot. He was prouder of this than of his several decorations, framed under a Marine Corps standard behind the bar. Anyone who entered the bar in a Marine uniform always got his first drink free, along with a story or two about the Old Corps, which Corporal John Donoho, USMC (ret.), had served at the ripe age of eighteen.
   He was also a professional Irishman. Every year he took an Aer Lingus flight from Boston's Logan International Airport to the old sod, to brush up on his roots and his accent, and sample the better varieties of whiskey that somehow were never exported to America in quantity. Donoho also tried to keep current on the happenings in the North, "the Six Counties," as he called them, to maintain his spiritual connection with the rebels who labored courageously to free their people from the British yoke. Many a dollar had been raised in his bar, to aid those in the North, many a glass raised to their health and to the Cause.
   "Hello, Johnny!" Paddy O'Neil called from the door.
   "And good evening to you, Paddy!" Donoho was already drawing a beer when he saw his nephew follow O'Neil through the door. Eddie was his dead brother's only son, a good boy, educated at Notre Dame, where he'd played second string on the football team before joining up with the FBI. It wasn't quite as good as being a Marine, but Uncle John knew that it paid a lot better. He'd heard that Eddie was following O'Neil around, but was vaguely sad to see that it was true. Perhaps it was to protect Paddy from a Brit assassin, the owner rationalized.
   John and Paddy had a beer together before the latter joined a small group waiting for him in the back room. His nephew stayed alone at the end of the bar, where he drank a cup of coffee and kept an eye on things. After ten minutes O'Neil went back to give his talk. Donoho went to say hello to his nephew.
   "Hi, Uncle John," Eddie greeted him.
   "Have you set the date yet, now?" John asked, affecting an Irish accent, as he usually did when O'Neil was around.
   "Maybe next September," the younger man allowed.
   "And what would your father say, you living with the girl for almost a year? And the good fathers at Notre Dame?"
   "Probably the same thing they'd say to you for raising money for terrorists," the young agent replied. Eddie was sick and tired of being told how to live his life.
   "I don't want to hear any of that in my place." He'd heard that line before, too.
   "That's what O'Neil does, Uncle John."
   "They're freedom fighters. I know they bend some of our laws from time to time, but the English laws they break are no concern of mine – or yours," John Donoho said firmly.

   "You watch TV?" The agent didn't need an answer to that. A wide-screen TV in the opposite corner was used for baseball and football games. The bar's name had also made it an occasional watering hole for the New England Patriots football players. Uncle John's interest in TV was limited to the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins. His interest in politics was virtually nil. He voted for Teddy Kennedy every six years and considered himself a staunch proponent of national defense. "I want to show you a couple of pictures."
   He set the first one on the bar. "This is a little girl named Sally Ryan. She lives in Annapolis."
   His uncle picked it up and smiled. "I remember when my Kathleen looked like that."
   "Her father is a teacher at the Naval Academy, used to be a Marine lieutenant. He went to Boston College. His father was a cop."
   "Sounds like a good Irishman. Friend of yours?"
   "Not exactly," Eddie said. "Paddy and I met him earlier today. This is what his daughter looked like then." The second photo was laid on the bar.
   "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph." It wasn't easy to discern that there was a child under all the medical equipment. Her feet stuck out from heavy wrappings. An inch-wide plastic pipe was in her mouth, and what parts of her body were visible formed a horribly discolored mass that the photographer had recorded with remarkable skill.
   "She's the lucky one, Uncle John. The girl's mother was there, too." Two more photos went onto the bar.
   "What happened, car accident – what are you showing me?" John Donoho asked. He really didn't know what this was all about.
   "She's a surgeon – she's pregnant, too, the pictures don't show that. Her car was machine-gunned yesterday, right outside of Annapolis, Maryland. They killed a State Police officer a few minutes later." Another picture went down.
   "What? Who did it?" the older man asked.
   "Here's the father, Jack Ryan." It was the same picture that the London papers had used. Jack's graduation shot from Quantico. Eddie knew that his uncle always looked at Marine dress blues with pride.
   "I've seen him before somewhere . . . "
   "Yeah. He stopped a terrorist attack over in London a few months back. It looks like he offended the terrorists enough that they came after him and his family. The Bureau is working on that."
   "Who did it?"
   The last photo went down on the bar. It showed Ryan's hands less than a foot from Paddy O'Neil, and a black man holding him back.
   "Who's the jig?" John asked. His nephew almost lost his temper.
   "Goddammit, Uncle John! That man is a Navy fighter pilot."
   "Oh." John was briefly embarrassed. He had little use for blacks, though one who wore a Marine uniform into his bar got his first drink free, too. It was different with the ones in uniform, he told himself. Anyone who served the flag as he had done was okay in his book, John Donoho always said. Some of my best friends in the Corps . . . He remembered how Navy strike aircraft had supported his outfit all the way back to the sea, holding the Chinese back with rockets and napalm. Well, maybe this one was different, too. He stared at the rest of the picture for a few seconds. "So, you say Paddy had something to do with this?"
   "I've been telling you for years who the bastard fronts for. If you don't believe me, maybe you want to ask Mr. Ryan here. It's bad enough that O'Neil spits on our whole country every time he comes over here. His friends damned near killed this whole family yesterday. We got one of 'em. Two Marine guards at the Naval Academy grabbed him, waiting to shoot Ryan. His name's Eamon Clark, and we know that he used to work for the Provisional Wing of the IRA – we know it. Uncle John, he's a convicted murderer. They caught him with a loaded pistol in his pocket. You still think they're good guys? Dammit, they're going after Americans now! If you don't believe me, believe this!" Eddie Donoho rearranged the photos on the wooden surface. "This little girl, and her mother, and a kid not even born yet almost died yesterday. This state trooper did. He left a wife and a kid behind. That friend of yours in the back room raises the money to buy the guns, he's connected with the people who did this."
   "But why?"
   "Like I said, this girl's dad got in the way of a murder over in London. I guess the people he stopped wanted to get even with him – not just him, though, they went for his whole family," the agent explained slowly.
   "The little girl didn't –"
   "Goddammit," Eddie swore again. "That's why they're called terrorists!" It was getting through. He could see that he was finally getting the message across.
   "You're sure that Paddy is part of this?" his uncle asked.
   "He's never lifted a gun that we know of. He's their mouthpiece, he comes over here and raises money so that they can do things like this at home. Oh, he never gets his hands bloody. He's too smart for that. But this is what the money goes for. We are absolutely sure of that. And now they're playing their games over here." Agent Donoho knew that the money raising was secondary to the psychological reasons for coming over, but now wasn't the time to clutter the issue with details. He watched his uncle stare at the photos of the little girl. His face showed the confusion that always accompanies a completely new thought.
   "You're sure? Really sure?"
   "Uncle John, we have over thirty agents on the case now, plus the local police. You bet we're sure. We'll get 'em, too. The Director's put the word out on this case. We want 'em. Whatever it takes, we'll get these bastards," Edward Michael Donoho, Jr., said with cold determination.
   John Donoho looked at his nephew, and for the first time he saw a man. Eddie's FBI post was a source of family pride, but John finally knew why this was so. He wasn't a kid anymore. He was a man with a job about which he was deadly serious. More than the photographs, it was this that decided things. John had to believe what he'd been told.
   The owner of the Patriots Club stood up straight and walked down the bar to the folding gate. He lifted it and made for the back room, with his nephew trailing behind.
   "But our boys are fighting back," O'Neil was telling the fifteen men in the room. "Every day they fight back to – joining us, Johnny?"
   "Out," Donoho said quietly.

   "What – I don't understand, John," O'Neil said, genuinely puzzled.
   "You must think I'm pretty stupid. I guess maybe I was. Leave." The voice was more forceful now, and the feigned accent was gone. "Get out of my club and don't ever come back."
   "But, Johnny – what are you talking about?"
   Donoho grabbed the man by his collar and lifted him off his chair. O'Neil's voice continued to protest as he was propelled all the way out the front door. Eddie Donoho waved to his uncle as he followed his charge out onto the street.
   "What was that all about?" one of the men from the back room asked. Another of them, a reporter for the Boston Globe, started making notes as the bar owner stumbled through what he had finally learned.
   To this point no police agency had implicated any terrorist group by name, and in fact neither had Special Agent Donoho done so. His instructions from Washington on that score had been carefully given and carefully followed. But in the translation through Uncle John and a reporter, the facts got slightly garbled – as surprised no one – and within hours the story was on the AP wire that the attack on Jack Ryan and his family had been made by the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army.
   Sean Miller's mission in America had been fully accomplished by an agency of the United States government.

   Miller and his party were already back home. As many people in this line of work had done before. Sean reflected on the value of rapid international air travel. In this case it had been off to Mexico from Washington's Duties International, from there to the Netherlands Antilles, to Schiphol International Airport on a KLM flight, and then to Ireland. All one needed were correct travel documents and a little money. The travel documents in question were already destroyed, and the money untraceable cash. He sat across from Kevin O'Donnell's desk, drinking water to compensate for the dehydration normal to flying.
   "What about Eamon?" One rule of ULA operations was that no overseas telephone calls ever came to his house.
   "Alex's man says he was picked up." Miller shrugged. "It was a risk I felt worth taking. I selected Ned for it because he knows very little about us." He knew that O'Donnell had to agree with that. Clark was one of the new men brought into the Organization, and more of an accident than a recruit. He'd come south because one of his friends from the H-blocks had come. O'Donnell had thought him of possible use, since they had no experienced work-alone assassins. But Clark was stupid. His motivations came from emotion rather than ideology. He was, in fact, a typical PIRA thug, little different from those in the UVF for that matter, useful in the same sense that a trained dog was useful, Kevin told himself. He knew but a few names and faces within the Organization. Most damning of all, he had failed. Clark's one redeeming characteristic was his doglike loyalty. He hadn't broken in Long Kesh prison and he probably wouldn't break now. He lacked the imagination.
   "Very well," Kevin O'Donnell said after a moment's reflection. Clark would be remembered as a martyr, gaining greater respect in failure than he had managed to earn in success. "The rest?"
   "Perfect. I saw the wife and child die, and Alex's people got us away cleanly." Miller smiled and poured some whiskey to follow his liter of ice water.
   "They're not dead, Sean," O'Donnell said.
   "What?" Miller had been on an airplane less than three hours after the shooting, and hadn't seen or heard a snippet of news since. He listened to his boss's explanation in incredulous silence.
   "But it doesn't matter," O'Donnell concluded. He explained that, too. The AP story that had originated in the Boston Globe had been picked up by the Irish Times of Dublin. "It was a good plan after all, Sean. Despite everything that went wrong, the mission is accomplished."
   Sean didn't allow himself to react. Two operations in a row had gone wrong for him. Before the fiasco in London, he'd never failed at all. He'd written that off to random chance, pure luck, nothing more. He didn't even think of that in this case. Two in a row, that wasn't luck. He knew that Kevin would not tolerate a third failure. The young operations officer took a deep breath and told himself to be objective. He'd allowed himself to think of Ryan as a personal target, not a political one. That had been his first mistake. Though Kevin hadn't said it, losing Ned had been a serious mistake. Miller reviewed his plan, rethinking every aspect of the operation. Just going after the wife and child would have been simple thuggery, and he'd never approved of that; it was not professional. Just going after Ryan himself, however, would not have carried the same political impact, which was the whole point of the operation. The rest of the family was – had been necessary. So his objectives had been sound enough, but . . .
   "I should have taken more time on this one," he said finally. "I tried to be too dramatic. Perhaps we should have waited."
   "Yes," his boss agreed, pleased that Sean saw his errors.

   "Any help we can give you," Owens said, "is yours. You know that, Dan."
   "Yeah, well, this has attracted some high-level interest." Murray held a cable from Director Emil Jacobs himself. "Well, it was only a matter of time. It had to happen sooner or later." And if we don't bag these sons of bitches, he thought, it'll happen again. The ULA just proved that terrorists could operate in the U.S. The emotional shock of the event had come as a surprise to Murray. As a professional in the field, he knew that it was mere luck that it hadn't happened already. The inept domestic terrorist groups had set off some bombs and murdered a few people, but the Bureau had experienced considerable success running them to ground. None of them had ever gotten much in the way of foreign support. But that had changed, too. The helicopter pilot had identified one of the escaping terrorists as black, and there weren't many of them in Ireland.
   It was a new ball game, and for all his experience in the FBI, Murray was worried about how well the Bureau would be able to handle it. Director Jacobs was right on one thing: this was a top-priority mission. Bill Shaw would run the case personally, and Murray knew him to be one of the best intellects in the business. The thirty agents initially assigned to the case would treble in the next few days, then treble again. The only way to keep this from happening again was to demonstrate that America was too dangerous a place for terrorists. In his heart, Murray knew that this was impossible. No place was too dangerous, certainly no democracy.
   But the Bureau did have formidable resources, and it wouldn't be the only agency involved.

Chapter 17
Recriminations and Decisions

   Ryan awoke to find Robby waving a cup of coffee under his nose. Jack had managed to sleep without dreams this time, and the oblivion of undisturbed slumber had worked wonders on him.
   "Sissy was over the hospital earlier. She says Cathy looks all right, considering. It's all set up so you can get in to see Sally. She'll be asleep, but you can see her."
   "Where is she?"
   "Sissy? She's out runnin' some errands."
   "I need a shave."
   "Me, too. She's getting what we need. First I'm gonna get some food in ya'," Robby said.
   "I owe you, man," Jack said as he stood.
   "Give it a rest, Jack. That's what the Lord put us here for, like my pappy says. Now, eat!" Robby commanded.
   Jack realized that he'd not eaten anything for a long time, and once his stomach reminded itself of this, it cried out for nourishment. Within five minutes he'd disposed of two eggs, bacon, hash-browns, four slices of toast, and two cups of coffee.
   "Shame they don't have grits here," Robby observed. A knock came to the door. The pilot answered it. Sissy breezed in with a shopping bag in one hand and Jack's briefcase in the other.
   "You better freshen up, Jack," she said. "Cathy looks better than you do."
   "Nothing unusual about that," Jack replied – cheerfully, he realized with surprise. Sissy had bailed him into it.
   "Robby?"
   "Yeah?"
   "What the hell are grits?"
   "You don't want to know," Cecilia Jackson answered.
   "I'll take your word for it." Jack walked into the bathroom and started the shower. By the time he got out, Robby had shaved, leaving the razor and cream on the sink. Jack scraped his beard away and patched the bloody spots with toilet paper. A new toothbrush was sitting there too, and Ryan emerged from the room looking and feeling like a human being.
   "Thanks, guys," he said.
   "I'll take you home tonight," Robby said. "I have to teach class tomorrow. You don't. I fixed it with the department."
   "Okay."
   Sissy left for home. Jack and Robby walked over to the hospital. Visiting hours were under way and they were able to walk right up to Cathy's room.
   "Well, if it isn't our hero!" Joe Muller was Cathy's father. He was a short, swarthy man – Cathy's hair and complexion came from her mother, now dead. A senior VP with Merrill Lynch, he was a product of the Ivy League, and had started in the brokerage business much as Ryan had, though his brief stint in the military had been two years of drafted service in the Army that he'd long since put behind him. He'd once had big plans for Jack and had never forgiven him for leaving the business. Muller was a passionate man who was also well aware of his importance in the financial community. He and Jack hadn't exchanged a civil word in over three years. It didn't look to Jack as though that was going to change.
   "Daddy," Cathy said, "we don't need that."
   "Hi, Joe." Ryan held out his hand. It hung there for five seconds, all by itself. Robby excused himself out the door, and Jack went to kiss his wife. "Lookin' better, babe."
   "What do you have to say for yourself?" Muller demanded.
   "The guy who wanted to kill me was arrested yesterday. The FBI has him," Jack said carefully. He amazed himself by saying it so calmly. Somehow it seemed a trivial matter compared with his wife and daughter.
   "This is all your fault, you know." Muller had been rehearsing this for hours.
   "I know," Jack conceded the point. He wondered how much more he could back up.
   "Daddy –" Cathy started to say.
   "You keep out of this," Muller said to his daughter, a little too sharply for Jack.
   "You can say anything you want to me, but don't snap at her," he warned.
   "Oh, you want to protect her, eh? So where the hell were you yesterday!"
   "I was in my office, just like you were."
   "You had to stick your nose in where it didn't belong, didn't you? You had to play hero – and you damned near got your family killed," Muller went on through his lines.
   "Look, Mr. Muller." Jack had told himself all these things before. He could accept the punishment from himself. But not from his father-in-law. "Unless you know of a company on the exchange that makes a time machine, we can't very well change that, can we? All we can do now is help the authorities find the people who did this."
   "Why didn't you think about all this before, dammit!"
   "Daddy, that's enough!" Cathy rejoined the conversation.
   "Shut up – this is between us!"
   "If you yell at her again, mister, you'll regret it." Jack needed a release. He hadn't protected his family the previous day, but he could now.
   "Calm down, Jack." His wife didn't know that she was making things worse, but Jack took the cue after a moment. Muller didn't.
   "You're a real big guy now, aren't you?"
   Keep going, Joe, and you might find out. Jack looked over to his wife and took a deep breath. "Look, if you came down here to yell at me, that's fine, we can do that by ourselves, okay? – but that's your daughter over there, and maybe she needs you, too." He turned to Cathy. "I'll be outside if you need me."
   Ryan left the room. There were still two very serious state troopers at the door, and another at the nurses' station down the hall. Jack reminded himself that a trooper had been killed, and that Cathy was the only thing they had that was close to being a witness. She was safe, finally. Robby waved to his friend from down the hall.
   "Settle down, boy," the pilot suggested.
   "He has a real talent for pissing me off," Jack said after another deep breath.
   "I know he's an asshole, but he almost lost his kid. Try to remember that. Taking it out on him doesn't help things."
   "It might," Jack said with a smile, thinking about it. "What are you, a philosopher?"
   "I'm a PK, Jack. Preacher's Kid. You can't imagine the stuff I used to hear from the parlor when people came over to talk with the old man. He isn't so much mad at you as scared by what almost happened," Robby said.
   "So am I, pal." Ryan looked down the hall.
   "But you've had more time to deal with it."
   "Yeah." Jack was quiet for a moment. "I still don't like the son of a bitch."
   "He gave you Cathy, man. That's something."
   "Are you sure you're in the right line of work? How come you're not a chaplain?"

   "I am the voice of reason in a chaotic world. You don't accomplish as much when you're pissed off. That's why we train people to be professionals. If you want to get the job done, emotions don't help. You've already gotten even with the man, right?"
   "Yeah. If he'd had his way, I'd be living up in Westchester County, taking the train in every day, and – crap!" Jack shook his head. "He still makes me mad."
   Muller came out of the room just then. He looked around for a moment, spotted Jack, and walked down. "Stay close," Ryan told his friend.
   "You almost killed my little girl." Joe's mood hadn't improved.
   Jack didn't reply. He'd told himself that about a hundred times, and was just starting to consider the possibility that he was a victim, too.
   "You ain't thinking right, Mr. Muller," Robby said.
   "Who the hell are you!"
   "A friend," Robby replied. He and Joe were about the same height, but the pilot was twenty years younger. The look he gave the broker communicated this rather clearly. The voice of reason didn't like being yelled at. Joe Muller had a talent for irritating people. On Wall Street he could get away with it, and he assumed that meant that be could do it anywhere he liked. He was a man who had not learned the limitations of his power.
   "We can't change what has happened," Jack offered. "We can work to see that it doesn't happen again."
   "If you'd done what I wanted, this never would have happened!"
   "If I'd done what you wanted. I'd be working with you every day, moving money from Column A to Column B and pretending it was important, like all the other Wall Street wimps – and hating it, and turning into another miserable bastard in the financial world. I proved that I could do that as well as you, but I made my pile, and so now I do something I like. At least we're trying to make the world a better place instead of trying to take it over with leveraged buyouts. It's not my fault that you don't understand that. Cathy and I are doing what we like to do."
   "Something you like," Muller snapped, rejecting the concept that making money wasn't something to be enjoyed in and of itself. "Make the world a better place, eh?"
   "Yeah, because I'm going to help catch the bastards who did this."
   "And how is a punk history teacher going to do that!"
   Ryan gave his father-in-law his best smile. "That's something I can't tell you, Joe."
   The stockbroker swore and stalked away. So much for reconciliation, Jack told himself. He wished it had gone otherwise. His estrangement with Joe Muller was occasionally hard on Cathy.
   "Back to the Agency, Jack?" Robby asked.
   "Yeah."
   Ryan spent twenty minutes with his wife, long enough to learn what she'd told the police and to make sure that she really was feeling better. She was dozing off when he left. Next he went across the street to the Shock-Trauma Center.
   Getting into scrubs reminded him of the only other time he'd done so, the night Sally was born. A nurse took him into the Critical Care Recovery Unit, and he saw his little girl for the first time in thirty-six hours, a day and a half that had stretched into an eternity. It was a thoroughly ghastly experience. Had he not been told positively that her survival chances were good, he might have broken down on the spot. The bruised little shape was unconscious from the combination of drugs and injuries. He watched and listened as the respirator breathed for her. She was being fed from bottles and tubes that ran into her veins. A doctor explained that her condition looked far worse than it was. Sally's liver was functioning well, under the circumstances. In two or three more days the broken legs would be set.
   "Is she going to be crippled?" Jack asked quietly.
   "No, there isn't any reason to worry about that. Kids' bones – what we say is, if the broken pieces are in the same room, they'll heal. It looks far worse than it is. The trick with cases like this is getting them through the first hour – in her case, the first twelve or so. Once we get kids through the initial crisis, once we get the system working again, they heal fast. You'll have her home in a month. In two months, she'll be running around like it never happened. As crazy as that sounds, it's true. Nothing heals like a kid. She's a very sick little girl right now, but she's going to get well. Hey, I was here when she arrived."
   "What's your name?"
   "Rich Kinter. Barry Shapiro and I did most of the surgery. It was close – God, it was so close! But we won. Okay? We won. You will be taking her home."
   "Thanks – that doesn't cover it, Doc." Jack stumbled over a few more words, not knowing what to say to the people who had saved his daughter's life.
   Kinter shook his head. "Bring her back sometime and we're even. We have a party for ex-patients every few months. Mr. Ryan, there is nothing you can do that comes close to what we all feel when we see our little patients come back – walk back. That's why we're here, man, to make sure they come back for cake and juice. Just let us bounce her on our knees after she's better."
   "Deal." Ryan wondered how many people were alive because of the people in this room. He was certain that this surgeon could be a rich man in private practice. Jack understood him, understood why he was here, and knew that his father-in-law wouldn't. He sat for a few minutes at Sally's side, listening to the machine breathe for her through the plastic tube. The nurse-practitioner overseeing the case smiled at him around her mask. He kissed Sally's bruised forehead before leaving. Jack felt better now, better about almost everything. But one item remained. The people who had done this to his little girl.

   "It had wheelchair tags," the clerk in the 7-Eleven was saying, "but the dude who drove it didn't look crippled or anything."
   "You remember what he looked like?" Special Agent Nick Capitano and a major from the Maryland State Police were interviewing the witness.
   "Yeah, he was 'bout as black as me. Tall dude. He wore sunglasses, the mirror kind. Had a beard, too. There was always at least one other dude in the truck, but I never got a look at him – black man, that's all I can say."
   "What did he wear?"
   "Jeans and a brown leather jacket, I think. You know, like a construction worker."
   "Shoes or boots?" the Major asked.
   "Never did see that," the clerk said after a moment.
   "How about jewelry, T-shirt with a pattern, anything special or different about him?"
   "No, nothin' I remember."
   "What did he do here?"
   "He always bought a six-pack of Coke Classic. Once or twice he got some Twinkies, but he always got hisself the Cokes."
   "What did he sound like? Anything special?"
   The clerk shook her head. "Nah, just a dude, y'know?"
   "Do you think you could recognize him again?" Capitano asked.
   "Maybe – we get a lot of folks through here, lotta regulars, lotta strangers, y'know?"
   "Would you mind looking through some pictures?" the agent went on.
   "Gotta clear it with the boss. I mean, I need the job, but you say this chump tried to kill a little girl – yeah, sure, I'll help ya."
   "We'll clear it with the boss," the Major assured her. "You won't lose pay over it."
   "Gloves," she said, looking up. "Forgot to say that. He wore work gloves. Leather ones, I think." Gloves, both men wrote in their notebooks.
   "Thank you, ma'am. We'll call you tonight. A car will pick you up tomorrow morning so you can look at some pictures for us," the FBI agent said.
   "Pick me up?" The clerk was surprised.
   "You bet." Manpower was not a factor on this case. The agent who picked her up would pick her brain again on the drive into D.C. The two investigators left. The Major drove his unmarked State Police car.
   Capitano checked his notes. This wasn't bad for a first interview. He, the Major, and fifteen others had spent the day interviewing people in stores and shops up and down five miles of Ritchie Highway. Four people thought they remembered the van, but this was the first person who had seen one of its occupants closely enough for a description. It wasn't much, but it was a start. They already had the shooter ID'd. Cathy Ryan had recognized Sean Miller's face – thought she did, the agent corrected himself. If it had been Miller, he had a beard now, on the brown side of black and neatly trimmed. An artist would try to re-create that.
   Twenty more agents and detectives had spent their day at the three local airports, showing photos to every ticket agent and gate clerk. They'd come up blank, but they hadn't had a description of Miller then. Tomorrow they would try again. A computer check was being made of international flights that connected to flights to Ireland, and domestic flights that connected to international ones. Capitano was happy that he didn't have to run all of those down. It would take weeks, and the chance of getting an ID from an airport worker diminished measurably every hour.
   The van had been identified for more than a day, off the FBI's computer. It had been stolen a month before in New York City, repainted – professionally, by the look of it – and given new tags. Several sets of them, since the handicap tags found on it yesterday had been stolen less than two days before from a nursing home's van in Hagerstown, Maryland, a hundred miles away. Everything about the crime said it was a professional job from start to finish. Switching cars at the shopping center had been a brilliant finale to a perfectly planned and executed operation. Capitano and the Major were able to restrain their admiration, but they had to make an objective assessment of the people they were after. These weren't common thugs. They were professionals in every perverted sense of the word.
   "You suppose they got the van themselves?" Capitano asked the Major.
   The State Police investigator grunted. "There's some outfit in Pennsylvania that steals them from all over the Northeast, paints them, reworks the interior, and sells 'em. You guys are looking for them, remember?"
   "I've heard a few things about the investigation, but that's not my territory. It's being looked at. Personally, I think they did it themselves. Why risk a connection with somebody else?"
   "Yeah," the Major agreed reluctantly. The van had already been checked out by state and federal forensic experts. Not a single fingerprint had been found. The vehicle had been thoroughly cleaned, down to the knobs on the window handles. The technicians found nothing that could lead them to the criminals. Now the dirt and fabric fibers vacuumed from the van's carpet were being analyzed in Washington, but this was the sort of clue that worked reliably only on TV. If the people had been smart enough to clean out the van, they were almost certainly smart enough to burn the clothing they'd worn. Everything was being checked out anyway, because even the smartest people did make mistakes.
   "You heard anything on the ballistics yet?" the Major asked, turning the car onto Rowe Boulevard.
   "Oughta be waiting for us." They'd found almost twenty nine-millimeter cartridge cases to go along with the two usable bullets recovered from the Porsche, and the one that had gone through Trooper Fontana's chest and lodged in the back seat of his wrecked car. These had gone directly to the FBI laboratory in Washington for analysis. The evidence would tell them that the weapon was a submachine gun, which they already knew, but might give them a type, which they didn't yet know. The cartridge cases were Belgian-made, from the Fabrique Nationale at Liege. They might be able to identify the lot number, but FN made so many millions of such rounds per year, which were shipped and reshipped all over the world, that the lead was a slim one. Very often such shipments simply disappeared, mainly from sloppy – or creative – bookkeeping.
   "How many black groups are known to have contact with these ULA characters?"
   "None," Capitano replied. "That's something we are going to have to establish."
   "Great."

   Ryan arrived home to find an unmarked car and a liveried State Police cruiser in his driveway. Jack's own FBI interview wasn't a long one. It hadn't taken long to confirm the fact that he quite simply knew nothing about the attempt on his family or himself.
   "Any idea where they are?" he asked finally.
   "We're checking airports," the agent answered. "If these guys are as smart as they look, they're long gone."
   "They're smart, all right," Ryan noted sourly. "What about the one you caught?"
   "He's doing one hell of a good imitation of a clam. He has a lawyer now, of course, and the lawyer is telling him to keep his mouth shut. You can depend on lawyers for that."
   "Where'd the lawyer come from?"
   "Public defender's office. It's a rule, remember. You hold a suspect for any length of time, he has to have a lawyer. I don't think it matters. He probably isn't talking to the lawyer either. We have him on a state weapons violation and federal immigration laws. He goes back to the U.K. as soon as the paperwork gets done. Maybe two weeks or so, depending on if the attorney contests things." The agent closed his notebook. "You never know, maybe he'll start talking, but don't count on it. The word we get from the Brits is that he's not real bright anyway. He's the Irish version of a street hood, very good with weapons but a little slow upstairs."
   "So if he's dumb, how come –"
   "How come he's good at what he does? How smart do you have to be to kill somebody? Clark's a sociopathic personality. He has very little in the way of feelings. Some people are like that. They don't relate to the people around them as being real people. They see them as objects, and since they're only objects, whatever happens to them is not important. Once I met a hit man who killed four people – just the ones we know about – and didn't bat an eye, far as I could tell; but he cried like a baby when we told him his cat died. People like that don't even understand why they get sent to prison; they really don't understand," he concluded. "Those are the scary ones."
   "No," Ryan said. "The scary ones are the ones with brains, the ones who believe in it."
   "I haven't met one of those yet," he admitted.
   "I have." Jack walked him to the door and watched him pull away. The house was an empty, quiet place without Sally running around, without the TV on, without Cathy talking about her friends at Hopkins. For several minutes Jack wandered around aimlessly, as though expecting to find someone. He didn't want to sit down, because that would somehow be an admission that he was all alone. He walked into the kitchen and started to fix a drink, but before he was finished, he dumped it all down the sink. He didn't want to get drunk. It was better to keep his mind unimpaired. Finally he lifted the phone and dialed.
   "Yes," a voice answered.
   "Admiral, Jack Ryan."
   "I understand that your girl's going to be all right," James Greer said. "I'm glad to hear that, son."
   "Thank you, sir. Is the Agency involved in this?"
   "This is an unsecure line, Jack," the Admiral replied.
   "I want in," Ryan said.
   "Be here tomorrow morning."
   Ryan hung up and went looking for his briefcase. He opened it and took out the Browning automatic pistol. After setting it on the kitchen table, he got out his shotgun and cleaning kit. He spent the next hour cleaning and oiling first the pistol, then the shotgun. When he was satisfied, he loaded both.

   He left for Langley at five the next morning. Ryan had managed to get four more hours of sleep before rising and going through the usual morning ritual of coffee and breakfast. His early departure allowed him to miss the worst of the traffic, though the George Washington Parkway was never really free of the government workers heading to and from the agencies that were always more or less awake. After getting into the CIA building, he reflected that he had never called here and found Admiral Greer absent. Well, he told himself, that's one thing in this world that I can depend on. A security officer escorted him to the seventh floor.
   "Good morning, sir," Jack said on entering the room.
   "You look better than I expected," the DDI observed.
   "It's an illusion mostly, but I can't solve my problem by hiding in a corner, can I? Can we talk about what's going on?"
   "Your Irish friends have gotten a lot of attention. The President himself wants action on this. We've never had international terrorists play games in our country – at least, not things that ever made the press," Greer said cryptically. "It is now a high-priority case. It's getting a lot of resources."
   "I want to be one of them," Ryan said simply.
   "If you think that you can be part of an operation –"
   "I know better than that, Admiral."
   Greer smiled at the younger man. "That's good to see, son. I thought you were smart. So what do you want to do for us?"
   "We both know that the bad guys are part of the network. The data you let me look at was pretty limited. Obviously you're going to be trying to collate data on all the groups, searching for leads on the ULA. Maybe I can help."
   "What about your teaching?"
   "I can be here when I'm not teaching. There isn't much to hold me at home at the moment, sir."
   "It isn't good practice to use people who are personally involved in the investigation," Greer pointed out.
   "This isn't the FBI, sir. I'm not going out into the field. You just told me that. I know you want me back here on a permanent basis, Admiral. If you really want me, let me start off doing something that's important to both of us." Jack paused, searching for another point. "If I'm good enough, let's find out now."
   "Some people aren't going to like it."
   "There's things happening to me that I don't like very much, sir, and I have to live with it. If I can't fight back somehow, I might as well stay at home. You're the only chance I have to do something to protect my family, sir."
   Greer turned to refill his coffee cup from the drip machine behind his desk. He'd liked Jack almost from the first moment he'd met him. This was a young man accustomed to having his way, though he was not arrogant about it. That was a point in his favor: Ryan knew what he wanted, but wasn't overly pushy. He wasn't a person driven by ambition, another point in his favor. Finally, he had a lot of raw talent to be shaped and trained and directed. Greer was always looking for talent. The Admiral turned back.
   "Okay, you're on the team. Marty's coordinating the information. You'll work directly with him. I hope you don't talk in your sleep, son, because you're going to see stuff that you're not even allowed to dream about."
   "Sir, there's only one thing that I'm going to dream about."

   It had been a very busy month for Dennis Cooley. The death of an earl in East Anglia had forced his heirs to sell off a massive collection of books to pay the death duties, and Cooley had used up nearly all of his available capital to secure no less than twenty-one items for his shop. But it was worth it: among them was a rare first-folio of Marlowe's plays. Better still, the dead earl had been assiduous in protecting his treasures. The books had been deep-frozen several times to kill off the insects that desecrated these priceless relics of the past. The Marlowe was in remarkably good shape, despite the waterstained cover that had put off a number of less perceptive buyers. Cooley was stooped over his desk, reading the first act of The Jew of Malta, when the bell rang.
   "Is that the one I heard about?" his visitor asked at once.
   "Indeed." Cooley smiled to cover his surprise. He hadn't seen this particular visitor for some time, and was somewhat disturbed that he'd come back so soon. "Printed in 1633, forty years after Marlowe's death. Some parts of the text are suspect, of course, but this is one of the few surviving copies of the first printed edition."
   "It's quite authentic?"
   "Of course," Cooley replied, slightly put off at the question. "In addition to my own humble expertise, it has authentication papers from Sir Edmund Grey of the British Museum."
   "One cannot argue with that," the customer agreed.
   "I'm afraid I have not yet decided upon a price for it." Why are you here?
   "Price is not an object. I understand that you may wish to enjoy it for yourself, but I must have it." This told Cooley why he was here. He leaned to look over Cooley's shoulder at the book. "Magnificent," he said, placing a small envelope in the book dealer's pocket.
   "Perhaps we can work something out," Cooley allowed. "In a few weeks, perhaps." He looked out the window. A man was window-shopping at the jewelry store on the opposite side of the arcade. After a moment he straightened up and walked away.
   "Sooner than that, please," the man insisted.
   Cooley sighed. "Come see me next week and we may be able to discuss it. I do have other customers, you know."
   "But none more important, I hope."
   Cooley blinked twice. "Very well."
   Geoffrey Watkins continued to browse the store for another few minutes. He selected a Keats that had also come from the dead earl's estate and paid six hundred pounds for it before leaving. On leaving the arcade he failed to notice a young lady at the newsstand outside and could not have known that another was waiting at the arcade's other end. The one who followed him was dressed in a manner guaranteed to garner attention, including orange hair that would have fluoresced if the sun had been out. She followed him west for two blocks and kept going in that direction when he crossed the street. Another police officer was on the walk down Green Park.

   That night the daily surveillance reports came to Scotland Yard where, as always, they were put on computer. The operation being run was a joint venture between the Metropolitan Police and the Security Service, once known as MI-5. Unlike the American FBI, the people at "Five" did not have the authority to arrest suspects, and had to work through the police to bring a case to a conclusion. The marriage was not entirely a happy one. It meant that James Owens had to work closely with David Ashley. Owens entirely concurred with his FBI colleague's assessment of the younger man: "a snotty bastard."
   "Patterns, patterns, patterns," Ashley said, sipping his tea while he looked at the printout. They had identified a total of thirty-nine people who knew, or might have known, information common to the ambush on The Mall and Miller's transport to the Isle of Wight. One of them had leaked the information. Every one of them was being watched. Thus far they had discovered a closet homosexual, two men and one woman who were having affairs not of state, and a man who got considerable enjoyment watching pornographic movies in the Soho theaters. Financial records gotten from Inland Revenue showed nothing particularly interesting, nor did living habits. There was the usual spread of hobbies, taste in theatrical plays, and television shows. Several of the people had wide collections of friends. A few had none at all. The investigators were grateful for these sad, lonely people – many of the other people's friends had to be checked out, too, and this took time and manpower. Owens viewed the entire operation as something necessary but rather distasteful. It was the police equivalent of peering through windows. The tapes of telephone conversations – especially those between lovers – made him squirm on occasion. Owens was a man who appreciated the individual's need for privacy. No one's life could survive this sort of scrutiny. He told himself that one person's life wouldn't, and that was the point of the exercise.
   "I see Mr. Watkins visited a rare book shop this afternoon," Owens noted, reading over his own printout.
   "Yes. He collects them. So do I," Ashley said. "I've been in that shop once or twice myself. There was an estate sale recently. Perhaps Cooley bought a few things that Geoffrey wants for himself." The security officer made a mental note to look at the shop for himself. "He was in there for ten minutes, spoke with Dennis –"
   "You know him?" Owens looked up.
   "One of the best men in the trade," Ashley said. He smiled at his own choice of words: the Trade. "I bought a Bronte there for my wife, Christmas two years ago, I think. He's a fat little poof, but he's quite knowledgeable. So Geoffrey spoke with him for about ten minutes, made a purchase, and left. I wonder what he bought." Ashley rubbed his eyes. He'd been on a strict regimen of fourteen-hour days for longer than he cared to remember.
   "The first new person Watkins has seen in several weeks," Owens noted. He thought about it for a moment. There were better leads than this to follow up on, and his manpower was limited.