"Something like that," Werner allowed.

   A chuckle: "Well, that tells me something, eh?"

   "No, Bill, it doesn't tell you anything at all. Hey, man, I can't break the rules, you know."

   "You always were a straight shooter," Henriksen agreed. "Well, whoever they are, glad they're on our side. The takedown looked pretty good on TV."

   "That it did." Werner had the complete set of tapes, transmitted via encrypted satellite channel from the U.S. Embassy in Madrid to the National Security Agency. and from there to FBI headquarters. He'd seen the whole thing, and expected to have more data that afternoon.

   "Tell them one thing, though, if you get a chance."

   "What's that, Bill?" was the noncommittal response.

   "If they want to look like the local cops, they ought not use a USAF helicopter. I'm not stupid, Gus. The reporters might not catch it, but it was pretty obvious to somebody with half a brain, wasn't it?"

   Oops, Werner thought. He'd actually allowed that one to slip through his mental cracks, but Bill had never been a dummy, and he wondered how the news media had failed to notice it.

   "Oh?"

   "Don't give me that, Gus. It was a Sikorsky Model 60 chopper. We used to play with them when we went down to Fort Bragg to play, remember? We liked it better than the Hueys they issued us, but it ain't civilian-certified, and so they wouldn't let you buy one," he reminded his former boss.

   "I'll pass that one along," Werner promised. "Anybody else catch on to that?"

   "Not that I know of, and I didn't say anything about it on ABC this morning, did I?T'

   "No, you didn't. Thanks."

   "So, can you tell me anything about these folks?"

   "Sorry, man, but no. It's codeword stuff, and truth is," Werner lied, "I don't know all that much myself." Bullshit, he almost heard over the phone line. It was weak. If there were a special counterterror group, and if America had a piece of it, sure as hell the top FBI expert in the field would have to know something about it. Henriksen would know that without being told. But, damn it, rules were rules, and there was no way a private contractor would be let into the classification compartment called Rainbow, and Bill knew what the rules were, too.

   "Yeah, Gus, sure," came the mocking reply. "Anyway, they're pretty good, but Spanish isn't their primary language, and they have access to American aircraft. Tell them they ought to be a little more careful."

   "I'll do that," Werner promised, making a note.

   "Black project," Henriksen told himself, after hanging up. "I wonder where the funding comes from??. . ." Whoever those people were, they had FBI connections, in addition to DOD.What else could he figure? How about where they were based? . . . To do that . . . yes, it was possible, wasn't it? All he needed was a start time for the three incidents, then figure when it was the cowboys showed up, and from that he could make a pretty good guess as to their point of origin. Airliners traveled at about five hundred knots, and that made the travel distance . . .

   . . . has to be England, Henriksen decided. It was the only location that made sense. The Brits had all the infrastructure in place, and security at Hereford was pretty good-he'd been there and trained with the SAS while part of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, working for Gus. Okay, he'd confirm it from written records on the Bern and Vienna incidents. His staff covered all counterterror operations as a normal part of doing business . . . and he could call contacts in Switzerland and Austria to find out a few things. That ought not to be hard. He checked his watch. Better to call right away, since they were six hours ahead. He flipped through his rolodex and placed a call on his private line.

   Black project, eh? he asked himself. He'd see about that. The cabinet meeting ended early. The President's congressional agenda was moving along nicely, which made things easy for everyone. They'd taken just two votes-actually, mere polls of the cabinet members, since the President had the only real vote, as he'd made clear a few times, Carol reminded herself. The meeting broke up, and people headed out of the building.

   "Hi, George," Dr. Brightling greeted the Secretary of the Treasury.

   "Hey, Carol, the trees hugging back yet?" he asked with a smile.

   "Always," she laughed in reply to this ignorant plutocrat. "Catch the TV this morning?"

   "What about?"

   "The thing in Spain-'

   "Oh, yeah, Worldpark. What about it?"

   "Who were those masked men?"

   "Carol, if you have to ask, then you're not cleared into it."

   "I don't want their phone number, George," she replied, allowing him to hold open the door for her. "And I am cleared for just about everything, remember?"

   SecTreas had to admit that this was true. The President's Science Advisor was cleared into all manner of classified programs, including weapons, nuclear and otherwise, and she oversaw the crown jewel secrets of communications security as a routine part of her duties. She really was entitled to know about this if she asked. He just wished she hadn't asked. Too many people knew about Rainbow as it was. He sighed.

   "We set it up a few months ago. It's black, okay? Special operations group, multinational, works out of someplace in England, mainly Americans and Brits, but others, too. The idea came from an Agency guy the Boss likes and so far they seem to be batting a thousand, don't they?"

   "Well, rescuing those kids was something special. I hope they get a pat on the head for it."

   A chuckle. "Depend on it. The Boss sent off his own message this morning."

   "What's it called?"

   "Sure you want to know?" George asked.

   "What's in a name?"

   "True." SecTreas nodded. "It's called Rainbow. Because of the multinational nature."

   "Well, whoever they are, they scored some points last night. You know, I really ought to get briefed in on stuff like this. I can help, you know," she pointed out.

   "So, tell the Boss you want in."

   "I'm kinda on his shit list now, remember?"

   "Yeah, so dial back on your environmental stuff, will you? Hell, we all like green grass and tweety birds. But we can't have Tweety Bird telling us how to run the country, can we?"

   "George, these really are important scientific issues I have to deal with," Carol Brightling pointed out.

   "You say so, doc. But if you dial the rhetoric back some, maybe people will listen a little better. Just a helpful hint," the Secretary of the Treasury suggested, as he opened his car door for the two-block ride back to his department.

   "Thanks, George, I'll think about it," she promised. He waved at her as his driver pulled off.

   "Rainbow," Brightling said to herself as she walked across West Executive Drive. Was it worth taking it a step further? The funny part about dealing with classification issues was that if you were inside, then you were inside .... Reaching her office, she inserted the plastic key into her STU-4 secure telephone and dialed up CIA on the Director's private line.

   "Yeah?" a male voice answered.

   "Ed, this is Carol Brightling."

   "Hi. How'd the cabinet meeting go?"

   "Smooth, like always. I have a question for you."

   "What's that, Carol?" the DCI asked.

   "It's about Rainbow. That was some operation they ran in Spain last night."

   "Are you in on that?" Ed asked.

   "How else would I know the name, Ed? I know one of your people set it up. Can't remember the name, the guy the President likes so much."

   "Yeah, John Clark. He was my training officer once, long time ago. Solid citizen. He's been there and done that even more than Mary Pat and I have. Anyway, what's your interest?"

   "The new tactical-radio encryption systems NSA is playing with. Do they have it yet?"

   "I don't know," the DCI admitted. "Are they ready for prime time yet?"

   "Should be in another month. E-Systems will be the manufacturer, and I thought they ought to be fast-tracked into Rainbow. I mean, they're out there at the sharp end. They ought to get it first."

   On the other end of the line, the Director of Central Intelligence reminded himself that he should pay more attention to the work done at the National Security Agency. He'd allowed himself to forget, moreover, that Brightling had the "black card" clearance that admitted her into that Holy of Holies at Fort Meade.

   "Not a bad idea. Who do I talk to about that'?"

   "Admiral McConnell, I suppose. It's his agency. Anyway, just a friendly suggestion. If this Rainbow team is so hot, they ought to have the best toys."

   "Okay, I'll look into it. Thanks, Carol."

   "Anytime, Ed, and maybe get me fully briefed into the program someday, eh?"

   "Yeah, I can do that. I can send a guy down to get you the information you need."

   "Okay, whenever it's convenient. See you."

   "Bye, Carol." The secure line was broken. Carol smiled at the phone. Ed would never question her about the issue, would he? She'd known the name, said nice things about the team, and offered to help, just like a loyal bureaucrat should. And she even had the name of the team leader now. John Clark. Ed's own training officer, once upon a time. It was so easy to get the information you needed if you spoke the right language. Well, that's why she'd gone after this job, frustrations and all.

   One of his people did the math and estimated the travel times, and the answer came up England, just as he'd suspected. The triangle of time for both Bern and Vienna both apexed at London, or somewhere close to it. That made sense, Henriksen told himself. British Airways went everywhere, and it had always had a cordial relationship with the British government. So, whoever it was, the group had to be based . . . Hereford, almost certainly there. It was probably multinational . . . that would make it more politically acceptable to other countries. So, it would be American and British, maybe other nationalities as well, with access to American hardware like that Sikorsky helicopter. Gus Werner knew about it might it have some FBI people in the team? Probably, Henriksen thought. The Hostage Rescue Team was essentially a police organization, but since its mission was counterterrorism, it practiced and played with other such organizations around the world, even though those were mainly military. The mission was pretty much the same, and therefore the people on the mission were fairly interchangeable – and the FBI HRT members were as good as anyone else in the world. So probably, someone from HRT, perhaps even someone he knew, was on the team. It would have been useful to find out who, but for now, that was too much of a stretch.

   The important thing at the moment was that this national counterterror outfit was a potential danger. What if they deployed to Melbourne? Would that hurt anything? It surely wouldn't help, especially if there was an FBI agent on the team. He'd spent fifteen years in the Bureau, and Henriksen was under no illusions about those men and women. They had eyes that could see and brains that could think, and they looked into everything. And so, his strategy to raise the world's consciousness of the terrorist threat, and so help himself get the Melbourne job, might have gone an unplanned step further. Damn. But the Law of Unintended Consequences could hit anyone, couldn't it? That's why he was in the loop, because it was his job to deal with the unintended things. And so here he was, still in the intelligence-gathering mode. He needed to learn more. The really bad news was that he had to fly off to Australia in less than a day, and would himself be unable to do any more gathering. Well. He'd have dinner tonight with his boss to pass along what he knew, and maybe that ex-KGB guy on the payroll could take it a little further. Damned sure he'd performed pretty well to this point. A pipe smoker. It never ceased to amaze Henriksen how such little things could break open a case. You just had to keep your head up and eyes open.

   "The Interleukin isn't doing anything," John Killgore said, looking away from the monitor. The screen of the electron microscope was clear. The Shiva strands were reproducing merrily away, devouring healthy tissue in the process.

   "So?" Dr. Archer asked.

   "So, that's the only treatment option I was worried about: -3a is an exciting new development, but Shiva just laughs at it and moves on. This is one scary little mother of a bug, Barb."

   "And the subjects?"

   "I was just in there. Pete's a goner, so are the rest. The Shiva's eating them up. They all have major internal bleeds, and nothing is stopping the tissue breakdown. I've tried everything in the book. These poor bastards wouldn't be getting better treatment at Hopkins, Harvard, or the Mayo Clinic, and they're all going to die. Now," he allowed, "there will be some whose immune systems can deal with it, but that's going to be pretty damned rare."

   "-How rare?" she asked the epidemiologist.

   "Less than one in a thousand, probably, maybe one in ten thousand. Even the pneumonic variant of plague doesn't kill everybody," he reminded her. That was about the most lethal disease on the planet, and allowed only one in ten thousand to survive. Some people, she knew, had immune systems that killed everything that didn't belong. Those were the ones who lived to a hundred years of age or so. It had nothing to do with smoking, not smoking. having a drink in the morning, or any of the other rubbish they published in the papers as the secret of living forever. It was all in the genes. Some were better than others. It was that simple.

   "Well, that's not really something to worry about. is it?"

   "World population is between five and six billion now. That's a little more than five times ten to the ninth people, subtract four orders from that and you have something on the order of five times ten to the fifth survivors. Figure a few hundred thousand who might not like us very much."

   "Spread all over the world," Barbara told him. "Not organized, needing leadership and scientific knowledge to help them survive. How will they even connect? The only eight hundred people surviving in New York? And what about the diseases that come with all those deaths? The best immune system in the world can't protect you against them."

   "True," Killgore conceded. Then he smiled. "We're even improving the breed, aren't we?"

   Dr. Archer saw the humor of that. "Yes, John, we are. So, Vaccine-B is ready°"

   He nodded. "Yes, I had my injection a few hours ago. Ready for yours?"

   "And -A?"

   "In the freezer, ready for mass production as soon as people need it. We'll be able to turn it out in thousand-liter lots per week when we have to. Enough to cover the planet," he told her. "Steve Berg and I worked that out yesterday."

   "Can anybody else-"

   "No way. Not even Merck can move that fast – and even if they did, they'd have to use our formula, wouldn't they?"

   That was the ultimate hook. If the plan to spread Shiva around the globe didn't work as well as hoped, then the entire world would be given Vaccine-A, which Antigen Laboratories, a division of The Horizon Corp., just happened to be working on as part of its corporate effort to help the Third World, where all the hemorrhagic fevers lived. A fortunate accident, albeit one already known in the medical literature. Both John Killgore and Steve Berg had published papers on these diseases, which had been made quite high-profile by the big scare America and the world had gone through not so long before. So, the medical world knew that Horizon/Antigen was working in this area, and wouldn't be surprised to learn that there was a vaccine in the works. They'd even test the vaccines in laboratories and find that, sure enough, the liquid had all manner of antibodies. But they'd be the wrong antibodies, and the live-virus vaccine would be a death sentence to anyone who had it enter his system. The time from injection to onset of frank symptoms was programmed at four to six weeks, and, again, the only survivors would be those lucky souls from the deepest end of the gene pool. One hundred such people out of a million would survive. Maybe less. Ebola-Shiva was one nasty little bastard of a bug, three years in the making, and how odd Killgore thought, that it had been that easy to construct. Well, that was science for you. Gene manipulation was a new field, and those things were unpredictable. The sad part, maybe, was that the same people in the same lab were charging along a new and unexpected path – human longevity and reportedly making real progress. Well, so much the better. An extended life to appreciate the new world that Shiva would bring about.

   And the breakthroughs wouldn't stop. Many on the select list to receive Vaccine-B were scientists. Some of them wouldn't like the news, when they were told, but they'd have little choice, and being scientists, they'd soon get back to their work.

   Not everyone in the Project approved. Some of the radical ones actually said that bringing physicians along was contrary to the nature of the mission-because medicine didn't allow nature to take her course. Sure, Killgore snorted to himself. Fine, they'd let those idiots have their babies in farm fields after a morning's plowing or hunter gathering, and soon enough those ideologues would breed themselves out. He planned to study and enjoy nature, but he'd do so wearing shoes and a jacket to keep the chill out. He planned to remain an educated man, not revert to the naked ape. His mind wandered .... There'd be a division of labor, of course. Farmers to grow the food and tend the cattle they'd eat – or hunters to shoot the buffalo, whose meat was healthier, lower in cholesterol. The buffalo should come back pretty fast, he thought. Wheat would continue to grow wild in the Great Plains, and they'd grow fat and healthy, especially since their predators had been so ruthlessly hunted down that they'd be slower to catch up. Domestic cattle would thrive also, but they'd ultimately be edged out by the buffalo, a much hardier breed better suited to free life. Killgore wanted to see that, see the vast herds that had once covered the West. He wanted to see Africa, too.

   That meant that the Project needed airplanes and pilots. Horizon already had its own collection of G-V business jets, capable of spanning most of the world, and so they'd also need small teams of people to manage and maintain a few airports-Zambia, for instance. He wanted to see Africa wild and free. That would take perhaps ten years to come about, Killgore estimated, and it wasn't all that big a deal. AIDS was killing off that continent at a nasty pace, and Shiva would only make it go faster, and so the Dark Continent would again be free of man, and he'd be able to go there and observe nature in all her glory . . . and maybe shoot a lion to make a rug for his home in Kansas? Some of the people in the Project would raise pure fucking hell over that, but what was one lion more or less? The Project would be saving hundreds of thousands of them, perhaps millions, free to roam and hunt in their prides. What a beautiful New World it would be, once you eliminated the parasitic species that was working so hard to destroy it.

   A beeper went off. He turned to look at the control panel. "It's Ernie, MS-looks like cardiac arrest," he said.

   "What are you going to do?" Barbara Archer asked.

   Killgore stood. "Make sure he's dead." He bent down to select a camera for the big monitor on his desk. "Here, you can watch."

   Two minutes later, he appeared on the screen. An orderly was already there, but did little more than watch. She saw Killgore check the man's pulse, then check his eyes. Despite having the -B vaccine, Killgore used gloves and a mask. Well, that made sense. Then he stood back pup and switched off the monitoring equipment. The orderly detached the IV lines and covered the body with a sheet. Killgore pointed to the door, and soon the orderly wheeled the gurney out, heading off for the incinerator. Killgore took the time to look at other subjects, and even appeared to speak with one before leaving the screen for good.

   "I figured that," he said, returning to the control room without his protective gear. "Ernie's heart wasn't all that good, and Shiva went right after it. Wendell's going to be next, M2. Maybe tomorrow morning. Liver function's off the chart, and he's bleeding out big-time in the upper GI."

   "What about the control group?"

   "Mary, F4, two more days she's going to be in frank symptoms."

   "So the delivery system works?" Archer asked.

   "Like a charm." Killgore nodded, getting some coffee before he sat back down. "It's all going to work, Barb, and the computer projections look better than our requirement parameters. Six months from initiation, the world is going to be a very different place," he promised her.

   "I still worry about those six months, John. If anybody figures out what's happened – their last conscious act will be to try and kill us all."

   "That's why we have guns, Barb."

   "It's called 'Rainbow,'" he told them, having gotten the best information of the day. "It's based in England. It was set up by a CIA guy named John Clark, and he's evidently the boss of the outfit."

   "That makes sense," said Henriksen. "Multinational, right?"

   "I think so," John Brightling confirmed.

   "Yes," Dmitriy Popov said, picking at his Caesar salad. "That is all sensible, some sort of NATO unit, I imagine, based at Hereford?"

   "Correct," said Henriksen. "By the way, nice job figuring out who they were."

   Popov shrugged. "It was simple, really. I ought to have made the guess sooner. My question now, what do you want me to do about it?"

   "I think we need to learn more," Henriksen said, with a glance at his boss. "A lot more."

   "How do you do that?" Brightling asked.

   "It is not difficult," Popov assured him. "Once you know where to look-that is most of the battle. Once you know that, you merely go there and look. And I already have one name, do I not?"

   "You want to take it?" John asked the Russian.

   "Certainly." If you pay me to do so. "There are dangers, but-"

   "What kind of dangers?"

   "I once worked in England. There is the possibility that they have a photograph of me, under a different name, but I do not think that likely."

   "Can you fake the accent?" Henriksen asked.

   "Most certainly, old boy," Popov replied with a grin. "You were FBI once?"

   Nod. "Yep."

   "Then you know how it is done. A week, I think."

   "Okay," Brightling said. "Fly over tomorrow."

   "Travel documents?" Henriksen asked.

   "I have several sets, all current, and all perfect," the intelligence officer assured him.

   It was nice to have a pro on the payroll, Henriksen thought to himself. "Well, I have an early flight, and I haven't packed yet, guys. See you next week when I get back."

   "Easy on the jet lag, Bill," John advised.

   The former FBI agent laughed. "You got a drug that works on that?"

CHAPTER 18
LOOKS

   Popov boarded the morning Concorde flight. He'd never flown the Concorde before, and found the interior of the aircraft cramped, though the legroom was all right. He settled into seat 4C. Meanwhile, at another terminal, 13 Henriksen was in a first-class seat in an American DC for his trip to Los Angeles.

   William Henriksen, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov thought. Formerly of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Teams: and an expert on counter-terrorism, president of an international security-consulting company now headed oft Australia to seek a consulting contract for the next Olympics .... How did that factor into what Popov had been doing for John Brightling's Horizon Corporation? What, exactly, was he doing-more properly, what idea was he serving? What task? He was certainly being paid top dollar-he hadn't even raised the money issue over dinner, because he was sure he'd get whatever he asked for. He was thinking in terms of $250,000 for this job alone, even though it held few dangers, aside from driving an automobile in British traffic. $250,000? Maybe more, Popov told himself. After all, this mission seemed pretty important to them.

   How did an expert on the mission side of terrorism and an expert on counterterrorism factor into the same plan? Why had they so rapidly seized on his discovery that there was a new international counterterror organization? It was important to them but why? What the hell were they up to? He shook his head. He was so smart, yet he didn't have a clue. And he wanted to know, now more than ever.

   Again, it was the not-knowing that worried him. Worried? Yes, he was worried now. The KGB had never encouraged curiosity, but even they knew that you had to tell intelligent people something and so with mission orders had usually come some kind of explanation – and at the least he'd always known that he was serving the interests of his country. Whatever information he'd gathered, whatever foreign national he'd recruited, it had all been aimed at making his nation more secure, more knowledgeable, more strong. That the entire effort had failed was not his fault. The KGB had never failed the State. It had been the State that had failed the KGB. He'd been part of the world's finest intelligence service, and he remained proud of its abilities and his own.

   But he didn't know what he was doing now. He was supposed to gather information, and it was quite easy for him, but he still didn't know why. The things he'd learned at dinner the night before had merely opened another door into another mystery. It seemed so like some Hollywood movie of conspiracy or some detective book whose ending he could not yet discern. He'd take the money and do the job, but for the first time he was uneasy, and the feeling was not a pleasant one, as the aircraft raced down the runway and took off into the rising sun for London Heathrow.

   "Any progress, Bill?"

   Tawney leaned back in his chair. "Not much. The Spanish have identified two of the terrorists as Basque separatists, and the French think they have a line on another of their citizens at the park, but that's all. I suppose we could ask Carlos for some information, but it's rather doubtful that he'd cooperate-and who's to say that he even knew the buggers in the first place?"

   "True." Clark took a seat. "You know, Ding's right – One of these incidents was probably to be expected, but three all in the brief time we've been here seems like a lot. Is it possible that somebody is setting them loose somehow, Bill?"

   "I suppose it's possible, but who would do it – and why would he do it?" Tawney asked.

   "Back up. Stay with the 'who' part first. Who has the ability?"

   "Someone who had access to them back in the seventies and eighties-that means someone well inside the movement or someone who controlled them, 'influenced' them, from the outside. That would mean a KGB type. Notionally this chap would be known to them, would have means to contact them, and thus the ability to activate them."

   "All three groups have been heavily ideological . . . ."

   "That's why the contact would have to be former-or maybe active?-KGB. He'd have to be someone they trust – more than that, a person with the kind of authority they would recognize and respect." Tawney sipped at his tea. "That has to mean an intelligence officer, perhaps a fairly senior one with whom they'd worked back in the old days, someone who interfaced with them for their training and support in the old East Bloc."

   "German, Czech, Russian?"

   "Russian," Tawney said. "Remember that KGB let the other Bloc countries support them only under their close direction – the standoff nature of the arrangement was always paper-thin, John. It was meant more for their own comfort than for anyone else's. `Progressive elements,' and all that rubbish. They were usually trained outside of Moscow, and then quartered in safe houses in Eastern Europe, mainly East Germany. We got a good deal of material from the old East German Stasi when the DDR collapsed. I have some colleagues at Century House going back over the information right now. That will take time. It was, unfortunately, never computerized or even properly cross-referenced. Funding problems," Tawney explained.

   "Why not go straight to KGB? Hell, I've met Golovko."

   Tawney didn't know that. "You're kidding."

   "How do you think Ding and I got into Iran so quick with a Russian cover? You think CIA can pull off an operation that fast? I wish, Bill. No, Golovko set it up, and Ding and I were in his office before we flew down."

   "Well, then, if you can, why not give it a try?"

   "I'd have to get authorization from Langley."

   "Will Sergey actually cooperate?"

   "Not sure," John admitted. "Even money at best. But before I do, such a thing, I'd need a good idea of exactly what I want. It can't be a fishing expedition. It has to be well directed."

   "I can see what we might have on the name of an intelligence officer who worked with them .... Problem is, it won't be a real name, will it?"

   Clark nodded. "Probably not. You know, we have to try harder to get one of these people alive. Kinda hard to interrogate a corpse."

   "That opportunity hasn't presented itself yet," Tawney pointed out.

   "Maybe," Clark thought. And even if you got one alive, who was to say that he'd know what was needed? But you had to start somewhere.

   "Bern was a bank robbery. Vienna was an attempted kidnapping, and from what Herr Ostermann said, the subjects were after something that doesn't exist-private, insider computer codes into the international trading system. The most recent incident was something right out of the seventies."

   "Okay, two out of three were about money," Clark agreed. "But the terrorists in both those cases were supposed to be ideological, right?"

   "Correct."

   "Why the interest in money? In the first one, okay, maybe it was a straight robbery. But the second one was more sophisticated well, both sophisticated and dumb, 'cuz they were after something that doesn't exist, but as ideological operators they would not have known that. Bill, somebody told them to go after it. They didn't start that one by themselves, did they?"

   "I agree, your supposition is likely," the spook said. "Very likely, perhaps."

   "So, in that case we have two ideological operators, technically fairly competent, but going after something that doesn't really exist. The combination of operational cleverness and objective stupidity just seems to cry out to us, doesn't it?"

   "But what of Worldpark?"

   Clark shrugged. "Maybe Carlos knows something they need. Maybe he has a stash somewhere that they want, or information, or contact numbers, maybe even cash-there's no telling, is there?"

   "And I think it unlikely that he can be persuaded to cooperate with us."

   Clark grunted. "Damned skippy."

   "What I can do is talk with the chaps at `Five,' too. Perhaps this Russian shadow fellow worked with the PIRA. Let me do some nosing around, John." ,

   "Okay, Bill, and I'll talk things over with Langley." Clark stood, wandered out of the room, and headed back to his own, still groping for the idea he needed before he could do something useful.

   It didn't start well, and Popov nearly laughed about it. On reaching his rental car he opened the left-side door instead of the right side. But he figured it out in as few seconds as it took him to load his luggage into the trunk – boot – and get in the driver's side. From that point he opened the map book he'd purchased in the terminal and made his way away from Heathrow's Terminal Four onto the motorway that would lead him to Hereford.

   "So, how does this thing work, Tim?" Noonan moved his hand away, but the pointer stayed right on Chavez. "Damn, this is slick. It's supposed to track the electromagnetic field generated by the human heart. It's a unique low-frequency signal . . . doesn't even get confused by gorillas and animals . . . ."

   The gadget looked like a ray-gun pistol from a '30s science fiction movie, with a slim antenna wire out the front and a pistol grip underneath. It swung on a frictionless bearing, drawn to the signal it received. Noonan moved away from Chavez and Covington, and headed for the wall. There was a secretary sitting right . . . there. The gadget locked on her. As he walked, it stayed pointed at her, through the blank wall.

   "It's like a bloody divining rod," Peter observed, no small amount of wonder in his voice. "Like finding water. . ."

   "Does look that way, doesn't it? Damn, no wonder the Army wants this baby. Forget about being ambushed. This thing's supposed to find people underground, behind trees, in the rain – whenever they're there, this thing'll pick them up."

   Chavez thought about that. He thought especially about his operation in Colombia so many years before, walking point in the weeds, looking and listening for people who might have worried his ten-man team. Now this thing replaced all the skills he'd learned in the 7th Light. As a defensive tool, it could put the ninjas out of business. As an offensive tool, it could tell you where the bad guys were long before you could see or hear them, and allow you to get close enough to . . .

   "What's it for – what's the manufacturer say, I mean?"

   "Search and rescue – firemen in a burning building, avalanche victims, lots of things, Ding. As a counter intruder tool, this puppy's going to be hard to beat. They've been playing with it at Fort Bragg for a couple of weeks. The Delta Guys have fallen in love with it. Still a little hard to use, and it can't tell range yet, but all they have to do is modify the antenna for greater gain, then link two of the detectors with GPS, and triangulate . . . . The ultimate range this thing can achieve hasn't been determined yet. They say this one can lock onto a person at five hundred meters."

   "Bloody hell," Covington observed. But the instrument still looked like some sort of an expensive small-boy's toy.

   "What good will it be for us? It can't tell a hostage from a terrorist," Chavez pointed out.

   "Ding you never know, do you? Damned sure it can tell you where the bad guys are not, " Noonan pointed out. He'd be playing with this thing all day, getting a feel for how to use it effectively. He hadn't felt like a kid with a new toy in quite a while, but this gadget was so new and so unexpected that it should have arrived under a decorated pine tree.

   The Brown Stallion was the name of the pub right next door to his motel. It was only half a kilometer from the main gate at Hereford, and seemed like a good place to start, and better yet to have a beer. Popov ordered a pint of Guinness and sipped at it, surveying the room. A television was on, carrying a soccer match-live or taped, he couldn't tell at the moment-between Manchester United and Rangers from up in Scotland, and that attracted the attention of the pub's patrons, and the barman, as it turned out. Popov watched as well, sipping at his pint and listening to the chitchat around the room. He was trained to be patient, and knew from experience that patience was usually rewarded in the business of intelligence, all the more so in this culture, where people came to their regular pub every night to chat with their friends, and Popov had unusually good hearing.

   The football game ended in a 1-1 tie around the time Popov ordered a second pint.

   "Tie, bloody tie," one man observed at the bar seat next to Popov's.

   "That's sport for you, Tommy. At least the chaps down the road never tie, and never bloody lose."

   "How are the Yanks fitting in, Frank?"

   "Good bunch, that lot, very polite. I had to fix the sink for one of the houses today. The wife is very nice indeed, tried to give me a tip. Amazing people, the Americans. Think they have to give you money for everything." The plumber finished off his pint of lager and called for another.

   "You work on the base?" Popov asked.

   "Yes, have for twelve years, plumbing and such."

   "Good lot of men, the SAS. I like how they sort the IRA buggers out," the Russian offered, in his best British blue-collar accent.

   "That they do," the plumber agreed. "So, some Americans are based there now, eh?"

   "Yes, about ten of them, and their families." He laughed. "One of the wives nearly killed me in her car last week, driving on the wrong side of the bloody road. You do have to be careful around them, especially in your car."

   "I may know one of them, chap name of Clark, I think," Popov offered as a somewhat dangerous ploy.

   "Oh? He's the boss. Wife's a nurse in the local hospital. Haven't met him, but they say he's a very serious chappie must be to command that lot. Scariest people I've ever met, not the sort you'd like to find in a dark alley – very polite of course, but you only have to look at them to know. Always out running and such, keeping fit, practicing with their weapons, looking dangerous as bloody lions."

   "Were they involved in the show down in Spain last week?"

   "Well, they don't tell us any of that, see, but" – the man smiled – "I saw a Hercules fly out of the airstrip the very day it happened, and they were back in their club late that night, Andy told me, looking very chuffed with themselves, he said. Good lads, dealing with those bastards."

   "Oh, yes. What sort of swine would kill a sick child? Bahst'ds, " Popov went on.

   "Yes, indeed. Wish I could have seen them. Carpenter I work with, George Wilton, sees them practice their shooting from time to time. George says they're like something from a film, magical stuff, he says."

   "Were you a soldier?"

   "Long time ago, Queen's Regiment, made corporal. That's how I got this job." He sipped at his beer while the TV screen changed over to cricket, a game for which Popov had no understanding at all. "You?"

   Popov shook his head. "No, never. Thought about it, but decided not to."

   "Not a bad life, really, for a few years anyway," the plumber said, reaching for the bar peanuts.

   Popov drained his glass and paid the bill. It had been a pretty good night for him, and he didn't want to press his luck. So, the wife of John Clark was a nurse at the local hospital, eh? He'd have to check that out.

   "Yeah, Patsy, I did," Ding told his wife, reading the morning paper a few hours late. Press coverage on the Worldpark job was still on page one, though below the fold this time. Fortunately, nobody in the media had a clue yet about Rainbow, he saw. The reporters had bought the story about the well-trained special-action group of the Spanish Civil Guard.

   "Ding, I – well, you know, I-"

   "Yeah, baby, I know. You're a doc, and your job is saving lives. So's mine, remember? They had thirty-some kids in there, and they murdered one . . . I didn't tell you. I was less than a hundred feet away when they did it. I saw that little girl die, Pats. Worst damned thing I ever saw, and I couldn't do a damned thing about it," he said darkly. He'd have dreams about that for a few more weeks, Chavez knew.

   "Oh?" She turned her head. "Why?"

   "'Cuz we didn't – I mean we couldn't, because there was still a bunch of others inside with guns on them, and we'd just got there, and we weren't ready to hit the bastards yet, and they wanted to show us how serious and dedicated they were – and that's how people like that show their resolve, I suppose. They kill a hostage so we'll know how tough they are." Ding set his paper down, thinking about it. He'd been brought up with a particular code of honor even before the United States Army had taught him the Code of Arms: you never, ever hurt an innocent person. To do so forever placed you beyond the pale, irredeemably cursed among men as a murderer, unworthy to wear a uniform or accept a salute. But these terrorists seemed to revel in it. What the hell was wrong with them? He'd read all of Paul Bellow's books, but somehow the message had not gotten through. Bright as he was, his mind could not make that intellectual leap. Well, maybe all you really needed to know about these people was how to put steel on target. That always worked, didn't it?

   "What's with them?"

   "Hell, baby, I don't know. Dr. Bellow says they believe in their ideas so much that they can step away from their humanity, but I just don't get it. I can't see myself doing that. Okay, sure, I've dropped the hammer on people, but never for kicks, and never for abstract ideas. There has to be a good reason for it, something that my society says is important, or because somebody broke the law that we're all supposed to follow. It's not nice. and it's not fun, but it is important, and that's why we do it. Your father's the same way."

   "You really like Daddy," Patsy Chavez, M.D., observed.

   "He's a good man. He's done a lot for me, and we've had some interesting times in the field. He's smart, smarter than the people at CIA ever knew – well, maybe Mary Pat knew. She really gets it, though she's something of a cowgirl."

   "Who? Mary who?"

   "Mary Patricia Foley. She's DO, head of the field spooks at the Agency. Great gal, in her mid-forties now, really knows her stuff. Good boss, looks out for us worker bees."

   "Are you still in the CIA, Ding?" Patsy Clark Chavez asked.

   "Technically yes." Her husband nodded. "Not sure how the administrative chain works, but as long as the checks keep coming"-he smiled-"I'm not going to worry about it. So, how's life at the hospital?"

   "Well, Mom's doing fine. She's charge nurse for her shift in the ER now, and I'm rotating to ER, too, next week."

   "Deliver enough babies?" Ding asked.

   "Just one more this year, Domingo," Patsy replied. patting her belly. "Have to start the classes soon, assuming you're going to be there."

   "Honey, I will be there," he assured her. You ain't having my kid without my help."

   "Daddy was never there. I don't think it was allowed back then. Prepared childbirth wasn't fashionable yet."

   "Who wants to read magazines at a time like that?" Chavez shook his head. "Well, I guess times change, eh? Baby, I will be there, unless some terrorist jerk gets us called out of town, and then he better watch his ass, 'cuz this boy's going to be seriously pissed if that happens."

   "I know I can depend on you." She sat down next to him, and as usual he took her hand and kissed it. "Boy or girl?"

   "Didn't get the sonogram, remember? If it's a boy-

   "He'll be a spook, like his father and grandfather," Ding observed with a twinkle. "We'll start him on languages real early."

   "What if he wants to be something else?"

   "He won't," Domingo Chavez assured her. "He'll see what fine men his antecedents are, and want to emulate them. It's a Latino thing, babe"-he kissed her with a smile-"following in the honorable footsteps of your father." He couldn't say that he hadn't done so himself. His father had died at too early an age for his son to be properly imprinted. Just as well. Domingo's father, Esteban Chavez, had driven a delivery truck. Too dull, Domingo thought.

   "What about the Irish? I thought it was their `thing,' too."

   "Pretty much." Chavez grinned. "That's why there are so many paddies in the FBI."

   "Remember Bill Henriksen?" Augustus Werner asked Dan Murray.

   "Used to work for you on HRT, bit of a nut, wasn't he?"

   "Well, he was heavily into the environmental stuff, hugging trees and all that crap, but he knew the job at Quantico. He laid a good one on me for Rainbow."

   "Oh?" The FBI Director looked up and instantly focused at the use of the codeword.

   "In Spain they were using an Air Force chopper. The media hasn't caught on to it, but it's there on the videotapes if anyone cares to notice. Bill said it wasn't real bright. He's got a point."

   "Maybe," the FBI Director allowed. "But as a practical matter"

   "I know, Dan, there are the practical considerations, but it is a real problem."

   "Yeah, well, Clark's thinking about maybe going a little public on Rainbow. One of his people brought it up, he tells me. If you want to deter terrorism, you might want to let the word get out there's a new sheriff in town, he said. Anyway, he hasn't made any decision for an official recommendation to the Agency, but evidently he's kicking the idea around."

   "Interesting," Gus Werner said. "I can see the point, especially after three successful operations. Hey, if I were one of those idiots, I'd think twice before having the Wrath of God descend on me. But they don't think like normal people, do they?"

   "Not exactly, but deterrence is deterrence, and John has me thinking about it now. We could leak the data at several levels, let the word out that there's a secret multinational counterterror team now operating." Murray paused. "Not take them black to white, but maybe black to gray."

   "What will the Agency say?" Werner asked.

   "Probably no, with an exclamation point behind it," the Director admitted. "But like I said, John has me thinking about it a little."

   "I can see his point, Dan. If the world knows about it, maybe people will think twice, but then people will start to ask questions, and reporters show up, and pretty soon you have people's faces on the front page of USA Today, along with articles about how they screwed up on a job, written by somebody who can't even put a clip in a gun the right way."

   "They can put a D-Notice on stories in England," Murray reminded him. "At least they won't make the local papers."

   "Fine, so then they come out in the Washington Post, and nobody reads that, right?" Werner snorted. And he well knew the problems that the FBI's HRT had gotten into with Waco and Ruby Ridge after his tenure as commander of the unit. The media had screwed up the reporting of events in both cases-as usual, he thought, but that was the media for you. "How many people are into Rainbow?"

   "About a hundred . . . pretty big number for a black outfit. I mean, their security hasn't been broken yet that we know of, but-"

   "But as Bill Henriksen said, anybody who knows the difference 'tween a Huey and a Black Hawk knows that there was something odd about the Worldpark job. Hard to keep secrets, isn't it?"

   "Sure as hell, Gus. Anyway, give the idea some thought, will you?"

   "Will do. Anything else?"

   "Yeah, also from Clark-does anybody think three terrorist incidents since Rainbow set up is a big number? Might somebody be activating cells of bad guys and turning them loose? If so, who, and if so, what for?"

   "Christ, Dan, we get our European intelligence from them, remember? Who's the guy they have working the spook side?"

   "Bill Tawney's his chief analyst. `Six' guy, pretty good as a matter of fact-I know him from when I was the legal attaché in London a few years ago. He doesn't know, either. They're wondering if some old KGB guy or something like that might be traveling around, telling the sleeping vampires to wake up and suck some blood."

   Werner considered that for about half a second or so before speaking. "If so, he hasn't been a raving success. The operations have some of the earmarks of professionalism, but not enough of it to matter. Hell, Dan, you know the drill. If the bad guys are in the same place for more than an hour, we descend on them and take them out the instant they screw up. Professional terrorists or not, they are not well-trained people, they don't have anything like our resources, and they surrender the initiative to us sooner or later. All we need to know is where they are, remember? After that, the thunderbolt is in our hands."

   "Yeah, and you have zapped a few, Gus. And that's why we need better intelligence, to zap them before they show up on the radarscope of their own accord."

   "Well, one thing I can't do is their intel for them. They're closer to the sources than we are," Werner said, "and I bet they don't send us everything they have anyway."

   They can't. Too much of it to fax back and forth."

   "Okay, yes, three hard incidents looks like a lot, but we can't tell if it's just coincidence or part of a plan unless we have people to ask. Like a live terrorist. Clark's boys haven't taken anyone alive yet, have they?"

   "Hope," Murray agreed. "That's not part of their mission statement."

   "So tell them that if they want hard intel, they have to have somebody with a live brain and a mouth after the shooting stops." But Werner knew that that wasn't easy under the best of circumstances. Just as taking tigers alive was far harder than taking them dead, it was difficult to capture someone possessing a loaded submachine gun and the will to use it. Even the HRT shooters, who were trained to bring them in alive in order to toss them in front of a Federal District Court judge for proper sentencing and caging at Marion, Illinois, hadn't done well in that area. And Rainbow was made up of soldiers for whom the niceties of law were somewhat foreign. The Hague Convention established rules for war that were looser than anything found in the United States Constitution. You couldn't kill prisoners, but you had to capture them alive before they were prisoners, and that was something armies generally didn't emphasize.

   "Does our friend Mr. Clark require any more guidance from us?" Werner asked.

   "Hey, he's on our side, remember?"

   "He's a good guy, yes. Hell, Dan, I met with him while they were setting Rainbow up, and I let him have one of our best troops in Timmy Noonan, and I'll grant you he's done a great job-three of them so far. But he's not one of us, Dan. He doesn't think like a cop, but if he wants better intel, that's what he has to do. Tell him that, will ya?"

   "I will, Gus," Murray promised. Then they moved on to other things.

   "So what are we supposed to do?" Stanley asked. "Shoot the bloody guns out of their hands? That only happens in the cinema, John."

   "Weber did exactly that, remember?"

   "Yes, and that was against policy, and we damned well can't encourage it," Alistair replied.

   "Come on, Al, if we want better intelligence information, we have to capture some alive, don't we?"

   "Fine, if possible, which it rarely will be, John. Blood rarely."

   "I know," Rainbow Six conceded. "But can we at least get the boys to think about it?"

   "It's possible, but to make that sort of decision on the fly is difficult at best."

   "We need the intel, Al," Clark persisted.

   "True, but not at the cost of death or injury to one of our men."

   "All things in life are a compromise of some sort," Rainbow Six observed. "Would you like to have some hard intelligence information on these people?"

   "Of course, but-"

   "'But,' my ass. If we need it, let's figure a way to get it," Clark persisted.

   "We're not police constables, John. That is not part of our mission."

   "Then we're going to change the mission. If it becomes possible to take a subject alive, then we'll give it a try. You can always shoot'em in the head if it's not. The guy Homer took with that gut shot. We could have taken him alive, Al. He wasn't a direct threat to anyone. Okay, he deserved it, and he was standing out in the open with a weapon, and our training said kill, and sure enough, Johnston took the shot, and decided to make a statement of his own because he wanted to-but it would have been just as easy to take out his kneecap, in which case we'd have somebody to talk to now, and maybe he would have sung like most of them do, and then maybe we'd know something we'd sure as hell like to know now, wouldn't we?"

   "Quite so, John," Stanley conceded. Arguing with Clark wasn't easy. He'd come to Rainbow with the reputation of a CIA knuckle dragger, but that's not what he was at all, the Brit reminded himself.

   "We just don't know enough, and I don't like not knowing enough about the environment. I think Ding's right. Somebody's setting these bastards loose. If we can figure out a little about that, then maybe we can locate the guy and have the local cops put the bag on him wherever he is, and then maybe we can have a friendly little chat and maybe the ultimate result will be fewer incidents to go out and take risks on." The ultimate goal of Rainbow was an odd one, after all: to train for missions that rarely-if ever-came, to be the fire department in a town with no fires.

   "Very well, John. We should talk with Peter and Domingo about it first of all, I think."

   "Tomorrow morning, then." Clark stood from his desk. "How about a beer at the club?"

   "Dmitriy Arkadeyevich, I haven't seen you in quite some time," the man said.

   "Four years," Popov confirmed. They were in London, at a pub three blocks from the Russian Embassy. He'd taken the train here just on the off chance that one of his former colleagues might show up, and so one had, I van Petrovich Kirilenko. Ivan Petrovich had been a rising star, a few years younger than Popov, a skilled field officer who'd made full colonel at the age of thirty-eight. Now, he was probably

   "You are the rezident for Station London now?"

   "I am not allowed to say such things, Dmitriy." Kirilenko smiled and nodded even so. He'd come very far and very fast in a downsized agency of the Russian government, and was doubtless still actively pursuing political and other intelligence, or rather, had a goodly staff of people to do it for him. Russia was worried about NATO expansion; the alliance once so threatening to the Soviet Union was now advancing eastward toward his country's borders, and some in Moscow worried, as they were paid to worry, that this could be the precursor to an attack on the Motherland. Kirilenko knew this was rubbish, as did Popov, but even so he was paid to make sure of it. and the new rezident was doing his job as instructed. "So, what are you doing now?"

   "I am not permitted to say." Which was the obvious reply. It could mean anything, but in the context of their former organization, it meant that Popov was still a player of some sort. What sort, Kirilenko didn't know, though lied heard that Dmitriy Arkadeyevich had been RIF'd from the organization. That had been a surprise to him.

   Popov still enjoyed an excellent service reputation as a field spook. "I am living between worlds now, Vanya. I work for a commercial business, but I perform other duties as well," he allowed. The truth was so often a useful tool, in the service of lies.

   "You did not appear here by accident," Kirilenko pointed out.

   "True. I hoped to see a colleague here." The pub was too close to the Embassy on Palace Green, Kensington, for serious work, but it was a comfortable place, for casual meets, and besides, Kirilenko believed his status as rezident to be entirely secret. Showing up in a place like this enhanced that. No real spook, everybody knew, would take the chance. "I need some help with something."

   "What might that be?" the intelligence officer asked, over a sip of bitter.

   "A report on a CIA officer who is probably known to us."

   "The name?"

   "John Clark."

   "Why?"

   "He is now, I believe, the leader of a black operation based here in England. I would like to offer the information I have on the man in return for whatever information you might have. I can perhaps add a few things to that dossier. I believe my information will be of interest," Popov concluded mildly. In context, it was a large promise.

   "John Clark," Kirilenko repeated. "I will see what I can do for you. You have my number?"

   Popov slipped a piece of paper on the bar unseen. "Here is my number. No. Do You have a card?"

   "Certainly." The Russian pocketed the scrap of paper and pulled out his wallet and handed the card over. I. P. Kirilenko, it said, Third Secretary, Russian Embassy, London. 0181-567-9008, with -9009 as the fax number. Popov pocketed the card. "Well, I must get back. Good to see you, Dmitriy." The rezident set his glass down and walked out onto the street.

   "Get the picture?" one "Five" man said to the other on the way out the door, about forty seconds behind their surveillance target.

   "Well not good enough for the National Portrait Gallery, but . . ." The problem with covert cameras was that the lenses were too small to make a really good photo. They were usually good enough for identification purposes, however, and he'd gotten eleven exposures, which. combined with computer-enhancement, should be entirely adequate. Kirilenko, they knew, thought his cover to be adequate. He didn't and couldn't know that "Five," once called MI5, and now officially called the Security Service. had its own source inside the Russian Embassy. The Great Game was still ongoing in London and elsewhere, new world order or not. They hadn't caught Kirilenko in a compromising act yet, but he was the rezident, after all, and therefore not given to such action. But you tracked such people anyway, because you knew who they were, and sooner or later, you got something on them, or from them. Like the chap he'd just had a beer with. Not a regular for this pub-they knew who they were. No name. Just some photos that would be compared with the library of photos at "Five's" new headquarters building, Thames House, right on the river near Lambeth Bridge.

   Popov stepped outside, turned left, and walked past Kensington Palace to catch a cab to the train station. Now, if only Kirilenko could get him something of use. He should be able to. He'd offered something juicy in return.

CHAPTER 19
SEARCHING

   Three of the winos died that day, all from internal bleeds in the upper GI. Killgore went down to check them. Two had died in the same hour, the third five hours later, and the morphine had helped them expire either unconscious or in a painless, merciful stupor. That left five out of the original ten, and none of them would see the end of the week. Shiva was every bit as deadly as they'd hoped, and, it would seem, just as communicable as Maggie had promised. Finally, the delivery system worked. That was proven by Mary Bannister, Subject F4, who'd just moved into the treatment center with the onset of frank symptoms. So, the Shiva Project was fully successful to this point. Everything was nominal to the test parameters and the experimental predictions.

   "How bad is the pain?" he asked his doomed patient.

   "Cramping, pretty bad," she replied. "Like flu, plus something else."

   "Well, you do have a moderate fever. Any idea where you may have caught it? I mean, there is a new strain of flu out of Hong Kong, and looks like you have it."

   "Maybe at work . . . before I came here. Can't remember. I'm going to be okay, right?" The concern had fought its way through the Valium-impregnated food she got every day.

   "I think so." Killgore smiled around his surgical mask. "This one can be dangerous, but only to infants and the elderly, and you're not either one of those, are you?"

   "I guess not." She smiled, too, at the reassurance from the physician, which was always comforting.

   "Okay, what we're going to do is get an IV started to keep you properly hydrated. And we'll work on the discomfort a little with a little morphine drip, okay?"

   "You're the doctor," Subject F4 replied.

   "Okay, hold your arm still. I have to make a stick, and it will hurt a little bit . . . there," he said, on doing it. "How was that?"

   "Not too bad."

   "Okay." Killgore punched in the activation number on the Christmas tree. The morphine drip started instantly. About ten seconds later, it got into the patient's bloodstream.

   "Ohhhh, oh yes," she said, eyes closed when the initial rush of the drug hit her system. Killgore had never experienced it himself, but he imagined it to be almost a sexual feeling, the way the narcotic soothed her entire body. The tension in her musculature all went away at once. You could see the body relax. Her mouth changed most of all, from tension to the slackness of sleep. It was too bad, really. F4 wasn't exactly beautiful, but she was pretty in her way, and judging from what he'd watched on the control-room TV monitor, she was a sexual treat for her partners, even though that had been caused by the tranquilizers. But, good lay or not, she would be dead in five to seven days, despite the best efforts he and his people would render. On the tree was a small drip-bottle of Interleukin-3a, recently developed by SmithKline's excellent collection of research scientists for cancer treatment-it had also shown some promise in countering viruses, which was unique in the world of medicine. Somehow it encouraged the body's immune system, though through a mechanism that was not yet understood. It would be the most likely treatment for Shiva victims once the disease became widespread, and he had to confirm that it wouldn't work. That had been the case with the winos, but they also needed to test it in fundamentally healthy patients, male and female, just to make sure. Too bad for her, he thought, since she had a face and a name to go along with her number. It would also be too bad for millions-actually billions-of others. But it would be easier with them. He might see their faces on TV, but TV wasn't real, was it? Just dots on a phosphor screen.

   The idea was simple enough. A rat was a pig was a dog, was a boy – woman in this case. All had an equal right to life. They'd done extensive testing of Shiva on monkeys, for whom it had proved universally lethal, and he'd watched all those tests, and shared the pain of the subsentient animals who felt pain as real as what F4 felt, though in the case of the monkeys morphine hadn't been possible, and he'd hated that hated inflicting pain on innocent creatures with whom he could not talk and to whom he could not explain things. And though it was justifiable in the big-picture sense – they would be saving millions, billions of animals from the depredations of humans – to see an animal suffer was a lot for him and his colleagues to bear, for they all empathized with all creatures great and small, and more for the small, the innocent, and the helpless than for the larger two-legged creatures who cared not a whim about them. As F4 probably did not, though they'd never asked. Why confuse the issue, after all? He looked down again. F4 was already stuporous from the narcotic he'd administered. At least she, unlike the experimental monkeys, was not in pain. That was merciful of them, wasn't it?

   "What black operation is that?" the desk officer asked over the secure phone link.

   "I have no idea, but he is a serious man, remember? A colonel of the Innostrannoye Upravleniye, you will recall, Division Four, Directorate S."

   "Ah, yes, I know him. He spent much time at Fensterwalde and Karlovy Vary. He was RIF'd along with all those people. What is he doing now?"

   "I do not know, but he offers us information on this Clark in return for some of our data. I recommend that we make the trade, Vasily Borissovich."

   "Clark is a name known to us. He has met personally with Sergey Nikolay'ch," the desk officer told the rezident. "He's a senior field officer, principally a paramilitary type, but also an instructor at the CIA Academy in Virginia. He is known to be close to Mary Patricia Foleyeva and her husband. It is also said that he has the ear of the American President. Yes, I think we would be interested in his current activities."

   The phone they spoke over was the Russian version of the American STU-3, the technology having been stolen about three years before by a team working for Directorate T of the First Chief Directorate. The internal microchips, which had been slavishly copied, scrambled the incoming and outgoing signals with a 128-bit encryption system whose key changed every hour, and changed further with the individual users whose personal codes were part of the insertable plastic keys they used. The STU system had defied the Russians' best efforts to crack it, even with exact knowledge of the internal workings of the system hardware, and they assumed that the Americans had the same problems – after all, for centuries Russia had produced the world's best mathematicians, and the best of them hadn't even come up with a theoretical model for cracking the scrambling system.

   But the Americans had, with the revolutionary application of quantum theory to communications security, a decryption system so complex that only a handful of the "Directorate 2" people at the National Security Agency actually understood it. But they didn't have to. They had the world's most powerful supercomputers to do the real work. These were located in the basement of the sprawling NSA headquarters building, a dungeon like area whose roof was held up with naked steel I-beams because it had been excavated for just this purpose. The star machine there was one made by a company gone bankrupt, the Super-Connector from Thinking Machines, Inc., of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The machine, custom-built for NSA, had sat largely unused for six years, because nobody had come up with a way to program it efficiently, but the advent of quantum theory had changed that, too, and the monster machine was now cranking merrily away while its operators wondered who they could find to make the next generation of this complex machine.

   All manner of signals came into Fort Meade, from all over the world, and one such source included GCHQ, Britain's General Communications Headquarters at Cheltenham, NSA's sister service in England. The British knew what phones were whose in the Russian Embassy-they hadn't changed the numbers, even with the demise of the USSR-and this one was on the desk of the rezident. The sound quality wasn't good enough for a voice-print, since the Russian version of the STU system digitized signals less efficiently than the American version, but once the encryption was defeated, the words were easily recognizable. The decrypted signal was cross-loaded to yet another computer, which translated the Russian conversation to English with a fair degree of reliability. Since the signal was from the London rezident to Moscow, it was placed on the top of the electronic pile, and cracked, translated, and printed less than an hour after it had been made. That done, it was transmitted to Cheltenham immediately, and at Fort Meade routed to a signals officer whose job it was to send intercepts to the people interested in the content. In this case, it was routed straight to the Director of Central Intelligence and, because it evidently discussed the identity of a field spook, to the Deputy Director (Operations), since all the field spooks worked for her. The former was a busier person than the latter, but that didn't matter, since the latter was married to the former.

   "Ed?" his wife's voice said.

   "Yeah, honey?" Foley replied. "Somebody's trying to ID John Clark over in U.K."

   Ed Foley's eyes went fully open at that news. "Really? Who?"

   "The station chief in London talked with his desk officer in Moscow, and we intercepted it. The message ought to be in your IN pile, Eddie."

   "Okay." Foley lifted the pile and leafed through it. "Got it. Hmmm," he said over the phone. "The guy who wants the information, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov, former Colonel in a terrorism guy, eh? I thought they were all RIF'd . . . Okay, they were, at least he was."

   "Yeah, Eddie, a terrorism guy is interested in Rainbow Six. Isn't that interesting?"

   "I'd say so. Get this out to John?"

   "Bet your sweet little tushie," the DO replied at once.

   "Anything on Popov?"

   "I ran the name through the computer. Zip," his wife responded. "I'm starting a new file on the name. Maybe the Brits have something."

   "Want me to call Basil about it?" the DCI asked.

   "Let's see what we develop first. Get the fax off to John right away, though."

   "It'll go out soon as I get the cover note done," Mary Pat Foley promised.

   "Hockey game tonight." The Washington Capitals were closing in on the playoffs, and tonight was a grudge match with the Flyers.

   "I haven't forgotten. Later, honey-bunny."

   "Bill," John said over the office phone forty minutes later. "You want to come into my office?"

   "On the way, John." He walked through the door in about two minutes. "What's the news?"

   "Check this out, pal." Clark handed over the four pages of transcript.

   "Bloody hell," the intelligence officer said, as soon as he got to page two. "Popov, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich. Doesn't ring a bell-oh, I see, they don't know the name at Langley either. Well, one cannot know them all. Call Century House about it?"

   "I think we cross-index our files with yours, but it can't hurt. It would appear that Ding was right on this one. How much you want to bet that this is our guy? Who's your best friend in the Security Service?"

   "Cyril Holt," Tawney said at once. Deputy Director. I've known Cyril back to Rugby. He was a year behind me there. Outstanding chap." He didn't have to explain to Clark that old school ties were still a major part of British culture.

   "Want to get him into this?"

   "Bloody right, John."

   "Okay, let's make the call. If we decide to go public, I want us to make the decision, not the fucking Russians."

   "They know your name, then?"

   "More than that. I've met Chairman Golovko. He's the guy who got Ding and me into Tehran last year. I've run a couple of cooperative operations with 'em, Bill. They know everything down to my dick size."

   Tawney didn't react. He was learning how Americans talked. and it was often very entertaining. "You know, John, we ought not to get too excited about this information."

   "Bill, you've been in the field as much as I have, maybe a little more. If this doesn't make your nose twitch, get something to clean your sinuses out, will you?" Clark paused for a second. "We got somebody who knows me by name, and is hinting that he can tell the Russians what I'm doing now. He's gotta know, man. He picked the London rezident to tell, not the one in Caracas. A terrorism guy, maybe a guy who knows names and numbers, and we've had three incidents since we got here, and we've agreed that's a lot for so short a time, and now this guy comes up on the scope, asking about me. Bill, I think it's time to get a little excited, okay?"

   "Quite so, John. I'll get Cyril on the phone." Tawney left the room.

   "Fuck," John breathed, when the door closed. That was the problem with black operations. Sooner or later, some bastard flipped the light switch, and it was generally somebody you didn't even want in the room. How the hell has this one leaked? His face darkened as he looked down at his desk, acquiring an expression that those who knew it considered very dangerous indeed.

   "Shit," Director Murray said at his desk in FBI Headquarters.

   "Yeah, Dan, that about covers it," Ed Foley agreed from his seventh-floor office in Langley. "How the hell did this leak?"

   "Beats the hell out of me, man. You have anything on this Popov that I don't know about?"

   "I can check with Intelligence and Terrorism divisions, but we cross-deck everything to you. What about the Brits?"

   "If I know John, he's already on the phone to `Five' and `Six.' His intel guy is Bill Tawney, and Bill's top-drawer in any outfit. Know him?"

   "Rings a vague bell, but I can't put a face on it. What's Basil think of him?"

   "Says he's one of his best analysts, and was a primo field-spook until a few years ago. He's got a good nose," the DCI told Murray.

   "How big a threat is this?"

   "Can't tell yet. The Russians know John pretty well from Tokyo and Tehran. Golovko knows him personally – called me about the Tehran job to compliment him on the job he and Chavez pulled off. I gather they hit it off, but this is business, not personal, y'know?"

   "I hear you, Don Corleone. Okay, what do you want me to do?"

   "Well, there's a leak somewhere. I haven't got a clue vet where it might be. The only talk I've heard about Rainbow has been people with codeword clearance. They're supposed to know about keeping their mouths shut."

   "Right." Murray snorted. The only people able to leak stuff like this were the people you trusted, people who'd passed a serious background check done by special agent is of the FBI. Only a trusted and checked-out person could really betray his country, and unfortunately the FBI hadn't yet learned to look inside a person's brain and heart. And what if it had been an inadvertent leak? You could interview the person who'd done it, and even he or she couldn't reply that it had happened. Security and counterespionage were two of the hardest tasks in the known universe. Thank God, he thought, for the cryppies at NSA, as always the most trusted and productive of his country's intelligence services.

   "Bill, we have a two-man team on Kirilenko almost continuously. They just photographed him having a pint with a chap at his usual pub last night," Cyril Holt told his "Six" colleague.

   "That may well be our man," Tawney said.

   "Quite possible. I need to see your intercepts. Want me to drive out?"

   "Yes, as quickly as you can."

   "Fine. Give me two hours, old man. I still have a few things on my desk to attend to."

   "Excellent."

   The good news was that they knew this phone was secure in two different ways. The STU-4 encryption system could be beaten, but only by technology that only the Americans had-or so they thought. Better still, the phone lines used were computer generated. One advantage to the fact that the British telephone system was essentially owned by the government was that the computers controlling the switching systems could randomize the routings and deny anyone the chance to tap into a call, unless there was a hard-wire connection at the point of origin or reception. For that bit of security, they relied on technicians who checked the lines on a monthly basis-unless one of them was working for someone else as well, Tawney reminded himself. You couldn't prevent everything, and while maintaining telephone silence could deny information to a potential enemy, it also had the effect of stopping the transfer of information within the government-thus causing that institution to grind to an immediate, smoking halt. "Go ahead, say it," Clark told Chavez.

   "Easy, Mr. C, not like I predicted the outcome of the next World Series. It was pretty obvious stuff."

   "Maybe so, Domingo, but you still said it first."

   Chavez nodded. "Problem is, what the hell do we do about it? John, if he knows your name, he either already knows or can easily find out your location-and that means us. Hell, all he needs is a pal in the phone company, and he starts staking us out. Probably has a photo of you, or a description. Then he gets a tag number and starts following you around."

   "We should be so lucky. I know about counter surveillance, and I have a shoe-phone everywhere I go. I'd lone for somebody to try that on me. I'd have you and some of your boys come out to the country, do a pick-and-roll, bag the fucker, and then we could have a friendly little chat with him." That generated a thin smile. John Clark knew how to extract information from people, though his techniques for doing so didn't exactly fit guidelines given to the average police departments. "I suppose, John. But for now there's not a damned thing we can do 'cept to keep our eyes open and wait for someone else to generate some information for us."

   "I've never been a target like this before. I don't like it."

   "I hear you, man, but we live in an imperfect world. What's Bill Tawney say?"

   "He has a `Five' guy coming out later today."

   "Well, they're the pros from Dover on this. Let 'em do their thing," Ding advised. He knew it was good advice-indeed, the only possible advice-and knew that John knew that, and he also knew that John would hate it. His boss liked doing things himself, not waiting for others to do things for him. If Mr. C had a weakness, that was it. He could be patient while working, but not while waiting for things to happen beyond his purview. Well, nobody was perfect.

   "Yeah, I know" was the reply. "How are your troops?"

   "Riding the crest of the wave, man, right in the curl and looking down the pipeline. I have never seen morale this good, John. The Worldpark job just lit everybody up. I think we can conquer the whole world if the bad guys line up properly."

   "The eagle looks pretty good in the club, doesn't it?"

   "Bet your sweet ass, Mr. C. Ain't no nightmares from this one. . . well, except for the little girl. That wasn't fun to watch, even if she was dying anyway, you know? But we got the bastards, and Mr. Carlos is still in his cage. I don't figure anybody else is going to try to spring his sorry ass."

   "And he knows it, the French tell me."

   Chavez stood. "Good. I gotta get back. Keep me in the loop on this, okay?"

   "Sure will, Domingo," Rainbow Six promised.

   "So what sort of work do you do?" the plumber asked.

   "I sell plumbing supplies," Popov said. "Wrenches and so forth, wholesale to distributors and retailers."

   "Indeed. Anything useful?"

   "Rigid pipe wrenches, the American brand. They're the best in the world, and they have a lifetime guarantee. If one breaks, we replace it free, even twenty years from now. Various other things as well, but Rigid wrenches are my best product."

   "Really? I've heard about them, but I've never used them."

   "The adjustment mechanism is a little steadier than the English Stilson spanner. Other than that, the only real advantage is the replacement policy. You know, I've been selling these things for . . . what? Fourteen years, I think. I've had one break from all the thousands I've sold."

   "Hmph. I broke a wrench last year," the plumber said.

   "Anything unusual about work on the base?"

   "Not really. Plumbing is plumbing. Some of the things I work on are rather old-the watercoolers, for example. Getting parts for the bloody things can be troublesome, and they can't make the decision to get new ones. Bloody government bureaucrats. They must spend thousands a week for bullets for their bloody machine guns, but purchase some new watercoolers that people will use every day? Not bloody likely!" The man had a good laugh and sipped at his lager.

   "What sort of people are they?"

   "The SAS team? Good blokes, very polite chaps. They make no trouble for me and my mates at all."

   "What about the Americans?" Popov asked. I've never really known any, but you hear stories about how they do things their own way and-"

   "Not in my experience. Well, I mean, only lately have we had any at the base, but the two or three I've worked for are just like our chaps-and remember I told you, they try to tip us! Bloody Yanks! But friendly chaps. Most of them have kids, and the children are lovely. Learning to play proper football now, some of them. So, what are you doing around here?"

   "Meeting with the local ironmongers, trying to get them to carry my brands of tools, and also the local distributor."

   "Lee and Dopkin?" The plumber shook his head. "Both are old buggers, they won't change very much. You'll do better with the little shops than with them, I'm afraid."

   "Well, how about your shop? Can I sell you some of my tools?"

   "I don't have much of a budget but, well, I'll look at your wrenches."

   "When can I come in?"

   "Security, mate, is rather tight here. I doubt they'll allow me to drive you onto the base . . . but, well, I could bring you in with me-say, tomorrow afternoon?"

   "I'd like that. When?"

   "Tomorrow afternoon? I could pick you up here."

   "Yes," Popov said. "I'd like that."

   "Excellent. We can have a ploughman's lunch here and then I'll take you in myself."

   "I'll be here at noon," Popov promised. "With my tools."

   Cyril Holt was over fifty, and had the tired look of a senior British civil servant. Well dressed in a finely tailored suit and an expensive tie – clothing over there, Clark knew, was excellent, but not exactly cheap – he shook hands all around and took his seat in John's office.

   "So," Holt said. "I gather we have a problem here."

   "You've read the intercept?"

   "Yes." Holt nodded. "Good work by your NSA chaps." He didn't have to add that it was good work by his chaps as well, identifying the line used by the rezident.

   "Tell me about Kirilenko," Clark said.

   "Competent chap. He has a staff of eleven field officers, and perhaps a few other off-the-books helpers to do pick ups and such. Those are all `legals' with diplomatic cover. He has illegals as well who report to him, of course. We know two of them, both covered as businessmen who do real business in addition to espionage. We've been building up this book for some time. In any case, Vanya is a competent, capable chap. He's covered as the embassy's third secretary, does his diplomatic duties like a genuine diplomat, and is well liked by the people with whom he comes into contact. Bright, witty, good chap to have a pint with. Drinks beer more than vodka, oddly enough. He seems to like it in London. Married, two children, no bad habits that have come to our attention. His wife doesn't work at all, but we haven't seen anything covert on her part. Just a housewife, so far as we can discern. Also well liked in the diplomatic community." Holt passed across photographs of both. "Now," he went on, "just yesterday our friend was having a friendly pint in his favorite pub. It's a few blocks from the embassy in Kensington, close to the palace-the embassy dates back to the Czars, just like the one you have in Washington-and this pub is rather upscale. Here's the enhanced photo of the chap he had his beer with." Another photo was passed across.

   The face, Clark and Tawney saw, was grossly ordinary. The man had brown hair and eyes, regular features, and was about as distinctive as a steel garbage can in an alley. In the photo, he was dressed in jacket and tie. The expression on his face was unremarkable. They might have been discussing football, the weather, or how to kill someone they both didn't like-there was no telling.

   "I don't suppose he has a regular seat?" Tawney asked.

   "No, usually sits at the bar, but sometimes in a booth, and rarely in the same seat twice in a row. We've thought about placing a bug," Holt told them, "but it's technically difficult, it would let the publican know we're up to something, and it's very doubtful that we'd get anything useful from it. His English is superb, by the way. The publican seems to think he's a Briton from the North Country."

   "Does he know you're following him?" Tawney asked, before Clark could.

   Holt shook his head. "Hard to say, but we do not think so. The surveillance teams switch off, and they're some of my best people. They go to this pub regularly, even when he's not there, in case he has a chap of his own there to do counter surveillance. The buildings in the area allow us to track him fairly easily by camera. We've seen a few possible brush-passes, but you both know the drill on that. We all bump into people on a crowded sidewalk, don't we? They're not all brush-passes. That's why we teach our field officers to do it. Especially when the streets are crowded, you can have a dozen cameras on your subject and not see it being done."

   Clark and Tawney both nodded at that. The brush-pass had probably been around as long as spies had. You walked down a street and at most you pretended to bump into someone. In the process, his hand delivered something into yours, or dropped it in your pocket, and with minimal practice it was virtually invisible even to people watching for it. To be successful, only one of the parties had to wear something distinctive, and that could be a carnation in your buttonhole, the color of a necktie or the way one carried a newspaper, or sunglasses, or any number of other markers known only to the participants in the mini-operation. It was the simplest of examples of fieldcraft, the easiest to use, and for that reason the curse of counterespionage agencies.

   But if he did a pass to this Popov guy, they had a photograph of the bastard. Maybe had it, he reminded himself. There was no guarantee that the guy he'd drunk with yesterday was the right fellow. Maybe Kirilenko was swift enough that he'd go to a pub and strike up a conversation with some other patron just to piss the "Five" people off and give them another randomly selected person to check out. Doing that required personnel and time, neither of which the Security Service had in infinite quantities. Espionage and counterespionage remained the best damned game in town, and even the players themselves never really knew what the score was.

   "So, you'll increase your coverage of Kirilenko?" Bill Tawney asked.

   "Yes." Holt nodded. "But do remember we're up against a highly skilled player. There are no guarantees."

   "I know that, Mr. Holt. I've been in the field, and the Second Chief Directorate never got their hands on me," Clark told the visitor from the Security Service. "So anything at all on Popov?"

   He shook his head. "That name is not in our files. It's possible, I suppose, that we have him under another name. Perhaps he's been in contact with our PIRA friends-that ;actually seems likely, if he's a terrorism specialist. There are many such contacts. We've got informers inside the PIRA, and I'm thinking about showing the photograph to some of them. But that's something we have to do carefully. Some of our informers are doubles. Our Irish friends have their own counterespionage operations, remember'."' "I've never worked directly against them," John said next. "How good are they?"

   "Bloody good," Holt assured him, catching a nod also from Bill Tawney. "They're highly dedicated, and superbly organized, but now the organization's fragmenting somewhat. Obviously, some of them do not want peace to break out. Our good friend Gerry Adams is by profession a publican, and if the Troubles come to an end, and he fails to get himself elected to high public office, as he clearly hopes, then his fallback job is rather lower in prestige than the position he now holds-but the majority of them seem willing to terminate their operations, declare victory. and give peace a chance. That has helped our infomer-recruiting somewhat, but there are elements of the PIRA who are more militant today than they were ten years ago. It's a cause for concern," Holt told them.

   "Same story in the Bekaa Valley," Clark agreed. What did you do when Satan came to Jesus? Some would never want to stop fighting sin, and if that meant creating some sin themselves, well, that was just the cost of doing business, wasn't it? "They just don't want to let go."

   "That is a problem. And I need not tell you that are of the main targets of those chaps is right here. The SAS is not exactly beloved of the PIRA."

   That wasn't news either. The British Special Air Service commandos had gone into the field often enough to "sort out" IRA members who had made the two serious mistakes of breaking the law and being known. John thought it a mistake to use soldiers to perform what was essentially a police function-but then he had to admit that Rainbow was tasked to that exact mission, in a manner of speaking. But the SAS had done things that in some contexts could be called premeditated murder. Britain, much as it resembled America in so many ways, was a different country with different laws and very different rules in some areas. So security at Hereford was tight, because someday ten or so bad guys might appear with AK-47s and in attitude, and his people, like many of the resident SAS troops, had families, and terrorists didn't always respect the rights of noncombatants, did they? Not hardly.

   The decision had come with unusual speed from Number Two Dzerzhinsky Square, and a courier was now on his way. Kirilenko was surprised to get the coded message. The courier was flying Aeroflot to Heathrow with a diplomatic bag, which was inviolable so long as the courier kept it in his possession countries had been known to steal them for their contents, which were often uncoded, but couriers knew about that, and played by a strict set of rules-if they had to visit the can, so did the bag. And so with their diplomatic passports they breezed through control points and went off to the waiting cars that were always there, carrying the usually canvas bags often full of valuable secrets past the eyes of people who would trade their daughters' virtue for one look.

   So it happened here. The courier arrived on the evening flight from Moscow's Sheremetyevo International, was waved through customs, and hopped into the waiting car driven by an embassy employee. From there it was a mere forty minutes through rush-hour traffic to Kensington, Lind from there to Kirilenko's office. The manila envelope was sealed with wax to ensure that it hadn't been tampered with. The rezident thanked the courier for this and two other packages and went to work. It was late enough that he'd have to pass on his usual pint of bitter tonight. It was an annoyance to him. He honestly enjoyed the atmosphere of his favorite pub. There was nothing like it in Moscow, or any of the other countries he'd served in. So now, in his hands was the complete dossier on Clark, John T., senior CIA field officer. It ran to twenty single-spaced pages, plus three photographs. He took the time to read the package over. It was impressive. According to this, in his first and only meeting with Chairman Golovko, he'd admitted to smuggling the wife and daughter of former KGB Chairman Gerasimov right out of the country . . . using a submarine to do it? So, the story he'd read in the Western media was true? It was like something from Hollywood. Then later he'd operated in Romania around the time of Nicolae Ceaucescu's downfall, then in cooperation with Station Tokyo he'd rescued the Japanese prime minister, and again with Russian assistance participated in the elimination of Mamoud Haji Daryaei? "Believed to have the ear of the American president," the analysis page pronounced-and well he should! Kirilenko thought. Sergey Nikolay'ch Golovko himself had added his thoughts to the file. A highly competent field officer, an independent thinker, known to take his own initiative on operations, and believed never to have put a foot wrong . . . training officer at the CIA Academy in Yorktown, Virginia, believed to have trained both Edward and Mary Patricia Foley, respectively the Director of Central Intelligence and the Deputy Director for Operations. This was one formidable officer, Kirilenko thought. He'd impressed Golovko himself, and few enough Russians accomplished that.

   So, now, he was in England somewhere, doing something covert, and his parent agency wanted to know about it, because you tried very hard to keep track of such people. The rezident took the paper scrap from his wallet. It looked like a cellular phone number. He had several of those in his desk drawers, all cloned from existing accounts, because it kept his signals people busy, cost the embassy no money, and was very secure. Tapping into a known cellular account was difficult, but absent the electronic codes, it was just one more signal in a city awash in them.

   Dmitriy Arkadeyevich had the same thing. In every city in the world were people who cloned phones and sold them illegally on the street. London was no exception.

   "Yes?" a distant voice said.

   "Dmitriy, this is Vanya."

   "Yes?"

   "I have the package you requested. I will require payment in the terms we agreed upon."

   "It will be done," Popov promised. "Where can we make the exchange?"

   That was easy. Kirilenko proposed the time, place, and method.

   "Agreed." And the connection broke after a mere seventy seconds. Perhaps Popov had been RIF'd, but he still knew about communications discipline.