CHAPTER 20
CONTACTS

   She knew she was sick. She wasn't sure how much, but Mary Bannister knew that she didn't feel well. And through the drugs, part of her worried that it might be serious. She'd never been in a hospital, except once to the local emergency room for a sprained ankle that her father worried might be broken, but now she was in a hospital type bed with an IV tree next to her, and a clear plastic line that ran down into the inside of her right arm, and just the sight of it frightened her, despite the drugs going into her system. She wondered what they were giving her. Dr. Killgore had said fluids to keep her hydrated and some other stuff, hadn't he? She shook her head, trying to get the cobwebs loose enough to remember. Well, why not find out? She swung her legs to the right and stood, badly and shakily, then bent down to look at the items hanging on the tree. She had trouble making her eyes focus, and bent closer, only to find that the markings on the tag-tapes were coded in a way she didn't understand. Subject F4 stood back up and tried to frown in frustration but didn't quite make it. She looked around the treatment room. Another bed was on the far side of what appeared to be a brick partition about five feet high, but it was unoccupied. There was a TV, off at the moment, hanging on the far wall. The floor was tile, and cold on her bare feet. The door was wood, and had a latch rather than a knob – it was a standard hospital door, but she didn't know that. No phone anywhere. Didn't hospitals have phones in the room? Was she in a hospital? It looked and seemed like one, but she knew that her brain was working more slowly than usual, though she didn't know how she knew. It was as if she'd had too much to drink. Besides feeling ill, she felt vulnerable not in total command of herself. It was time to do something, though exactly what she wasn't sure. She stood there for a brief time to consider it, then took the tree in her right hand and started walking for the door. Fortunately, the electronic control unit on the tree was battery powered and not plugged into the wall. It rolled easily on the rubber wheels.

   The door, it turned out, was unlocked. She pulled it open, stuck her head out, and looked around the door frame into the corridor. Empty. She walked out, still dragging the IV tree behind her. She saw no nurses' station at either end, but did not find that remarkable. Subject F4 headed to her right, pushing the IV tree ahead of her now, looking for-something, she wasn't sure what. She managed a frown and tried other doors, but while they opened, they revealed only darkened rooms, most of them smelling of disinfectant until she got to the very end. This door was labeled T9, and behind it she found something different. No beds here, but a desk with a computer whose monitor screen was on, meaning that the computer was powered up. She walked in and leaned over the desk. It was an IBM-compatible, and she knew how to work those. It even had a modem, she saw. Well, then, she could do what?

   It took another couple of minutes to decide. She could get a message off to her father, couldn't she?

   Fifty feet and one floor away, Ben Farmer got himself a mug of coffee and sat back down into his swivel chair after a quick trip to the men's room. He picked up the copy of Bio-Watch he'd been reading. It was three in the morning, and all was quiet on his end of the building.

   DADDY, I'M NOT SURE WHERE I AM. THEY SAY I SIGNED A FORM ALLOW THEM TO SIGN ME IN FOR SOME MEDICAL TESTS, SOME NEW DRUG OR SOMETHING BUT I FEEL PRETTY CRUMMY NOW, AND IM NOT SUREW WHY. THEY HAVE BE HOOKEDUP TO A MEDICAION THING THATS PLUGGED INTOMY ARM, FEEL PRETTY CRUMMY AND I-

   Farmer finished the article on global warming, and then checked the TV display. The computer flipped through the operating cameras. showing all the sickies in their beds-

   –except one. Huh? he thought, waiting for the cameras to flip back, having missed the code number for the one with the empty bed. It took about a minute. Oh, shit, T-4 was missing. That was the girl, wasn't it? Subject F4, Mary something. Oh, shit, where had she gone to? He activated the direct controls and checked the corridor. Nobody there, either. Nobody had tried to go through the doors into the rest of the complex. They were both locked and alarmed. Where the hell were the docs? The one on duty now was a woman, Lani something, the other staff all disliked her 'cause she was an arrogant, obnoxious bitch. Evidently, Killgore didn't like her either, 'cause she always had the night duty. Palachek, that was her last name. Farmer wondered vaguely what nationality that was as he lifted the microphone for the PA system.

   "Dr. Palacheck, Dr. Palachek, please call security," he said over the speaker system. It took about three minutes before his phone rang.

   "This is Dr. Palachek. What is it?"

   "Subject F4 has taken a walk. I can't spot her on the surveillance cameras."

   "On the way. Call Dr. Killgore."

   "Yes, Doctor." Farmer called that number from memory.

   "Yeah?" came the familiar voice.

   "Sir, it's Ben Farmer. F4 has disappeared from her room. We're looking for her now."

   "Okay, call me back when you find her." And the phone went dead. Killgore wasn't all that excited. You might be able to walk around for a while. but you couldn't lave the building without someone seeing you.

   It was still rush hour in London. Ivan Petrovich Kirilenko had an apartment close to the embassy, which allowed him to walk to work. The sidewalks were crowded with rapidly moving people on their way to their own jobs-the Brits are a polite people, but Londoners tend to race along and he got to the agreed-upon corner at exactly 8:20 A.M. He carried his copy of the Daily Telegraph, a conservative morning newspaper, in his left hand as he stopped at the corner, waiting for the light to change.

   The switch was expertly done. No words were exchanged, just a double bump on the elbow to tell him to slacken his grip, to allow one Telegraph to be changed for another. It was done below the waist, hidden from the casual view of those around him, and low enough to be hidden by the crowd from cameras that might be looking down from the rooftops around the busy corner. It was all the rezident could do not to smile. The exercise of fieldcraft was always a pleasure for him. Despite his currently high rank, he enjoyed the day-to-day business of espionage, just to prove to himself that he could still do it as well as the youngsters. working under him. A few seconds later, the light changed, and a man in a tan coat angled away from him, walking briskly forward with his morning paper. It was two more blocks to the embassy. He walked through the iron gate, into the building, past security, and up to his second-floor office. There, his coat hung on the hook on the back of his door, he sat down and opened the paper on his desk.

   So, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich had kept his word. There were two sheets of unlined white paper liberally covered with handwritten commentary. CIA Field Officer John Clark was now in Hereford, England, and was now the commander of a new multinational counterterrorist group known as "Rainbow," composed of ten to twenty men selected from English, American, and perhaps some other nationalities. It was a black operation, known only to a handful of highly placed people. His wife was a nurse working at the local public hospital. His team was well regarded by the local civilians who worked on the SAS base. Rainbow had been on three missions, Bern, Vienna, and Worldpark, where, in every case, it had dealt with the terrorists-Kirilenko noted that Popov had avoided use of the previous term of art, "progressive elements" efficiently, quickly, and under the cover of local police agencies. The Rainbow team had access to American hardware, which had been used in Spain, as was clear from television coverage of the event. which he recommended that the embassy get hold of. Through the Defense Attaché would probably be best, Popov noted.

   On the whole a useful, concise, and informative report, the rezident thought, and a fair trade for what he'd exchanged on the street corner.

   "Well, see anything this morning?" Cyril Holt asked the head of the surveillance group.

   "No," the other "Five" man replied. "He was carrying the usual paper in the usual hand, but the pavement will crowded. There could have been a switch, but if there was. we didn't see it. And we are dealing with a professional, sir." the chief of the surveillance section reminded the Deputy Director of the Security Service.

   Popov, his brown wide-brimmed hat in his lap, was sitting in the train on the way back to Hereford, seemingly reading the newspaper, but in fact leafing through the photocopies of the single-spaced pages relayed from Moscow. Kirilenko was as good as his word, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich saw with pleasure. As a good rezident should be. And so. now, here he was, sitting alone in the first-class carriage of the inter-city train out of Paddington Station, learning more about this John Clark chap, and impressed with what he saw. His former agency in Moscow had paid quite a bit of attention to him. There were three photographs. one of them quite good that appeared to have been shot in the office of the RVS chairman himself in Moscow. They'd even taken the time to learn about his family. Two daughters, one still in college in America, and one a physician now married to one Domingo Chavez another CIA field officer! Popov saw, in his middle thirties. Domingo Estebanovich, who'd also met Golovko, and was evidently partnered with the older officer. Both were paramilitary officers . . . might this Chavez be in England, too? A physician, so that was easily checked. Clark and his diminutive partner were officially described as formidable and experienced field-intelligence officers, both spoke Russian in a manner described as literate and cultured – Graduates of the U.S. military's language school at Monterey, California, no doubt. Chavez, the report went on, had an undergraduate and a master's degree in International Relations from George Mason University outside of Washington, doubtless paid for by CIA. So, neither he nor Clark was merely a strong back. Both were educated as well. And the younger one was married to a physician.

   Their known and confirmed field operations– -nichevo! Popov thought. Two really impressive ones done with Russian assistance, plus the exfiltration of Gerasimov's wife and daughter ten years before, along with several others suspected but not confirmed.. . "Formidable" was the right word for both of them. Himself a field intelligence officer for over twenty years, he knew what to be impressed with. Clark had to be a star at Langley, and Chavez was evidently his protege, following in the wide, deep footsteps of his . . . father-in-law . . . Wasn't that interesting?

   They found her at three-forty, still typing away on the computer, slowly and badly. Ben Farmer opened the door and saw, first, the IV tree, then the back on the hospital gown.

   "Well, hello," the security guard said, not unkindly. "Taking a little walk, eh?"

   "I wanted to tell Daddy where I was," Mary Bannister replied.

   "Oh, really. By e-mail?"

   "That's right," she answered pleasantly.

   "Well, how about we get you back to your room now, okay?"

   "I guess," she agreed tiredly. Farmer helped her to her feet and walked her out into the corridor, gently, his hand around her waist. It was a short walk, and he opened the door into Treatment 4, got her in bed, and pulled the blanket up. He dimmed the lights before leaving, then found Dr. Palachek walking the halls.

   "We may have a problem, Doc."

   Lam Palachek didn't like being called "doc," but didn't make an issue of it now. "What's the problem?"

   "I found her on the computer in T-9. She says she e-mailed her father."

   "What?" That popped the doc's eyes open, Farmer saw.

   "That's what she said."

   Oh, shit! the doctor thought. "What does she know?"

   "Probably not much. None of them know where they are." And even looking out the windows wouldn't help. The scenery showed only wooded hills, not even a parking lot whose auto license plates might give a clue. That part of the operation had been carefully thought through.

   "Any way to recover the letter she sent?"

   "If we get her password and the server she logged into, maybe," Farmer replied. He was fully checked out on computers. Just about everyone in the company was. "I can try that when we wake her up-say, in about four hours?"

   "Any way to un-send it?"

   Farmer shook his head. "I doubt it. Not many of them work that way. We don't have AOL software on the systems, just Eudora, and if you execute the IMMEDIATE-SENT) command, it's all the-way gone, Doc. That goes right into the Net, and once it's there-oh, well."

   "Killgore is going to freak."

   "Yes, ma'am," the former Marine said. "Maybe we need to codeword access to the 'puters." He didn't add that he'd been off the monitors for a while, and that it was all his fault. Well, he hadn't been briefed on this contingency, and why the hell didn't they lock the rooms they wanted to keep people out of? Or just locked the subjects in their rooms? The winos from the first group of test subjects had spoiled them. None of those street bums had had the ability to use a computer, nor the desire to do much of anything, and it hadn't occurred to anyone that the current group of experimental animals might. Oops. Well, he'd seen bigger mistakes than that happen before. The good news, however, was that there was no way they could know where they were, nor anything about the name of the company that owned the facility. Without those things, what could F4 have told anyone? Nothing of value, Farmer was sure. But she was right about one thing, Farmer knew. Dr. John Killgore was going to be seriously pissed.

   The English ploughman's lunch was a national institution. Bread, cheese, lettuce, baby tomatoes, chutney, and some meat-turkey in this case-along with a beer, of course. Popov had found it to be agreeable on his first trip to Britain. He'd taken the time to remove his tie and change into more casual clothes, in order to appear a working-class type.

   "Well, hello," the plumber said as he sat down. His name was Edward Miles. A tall, powerfully built man with tattoos on his arm-a British affectation, especially for men in uniform, Popov knew. "Started ahead of me, I see."

   "How did the morning go?"

   "The usual. Fixed a water-heater in one of the houses, for a French chap, in fact, part of the new team. His wife is a smasher," Miles reported. "Only saw a picture of him. A sergeant in the French army, it would seem."

   "Really?" Popov took a bite of his open-face sandwich.

   "Yes, have to go back this afternoon to finish up. Then I have a watercooler to fix in the headquarters building. Bloody things, must be fifty years old. I may have to make the part I need to repair the damned thing. Impossible to get them. The maker went out of business a dog's age ago." Miles started on his own lunch, expertly dividing the various ingredients and then piling them on the freshly made bread.

   "Government institutions are all the same," Popov told him.

   "That's a fact!" Miles agreed. "And my helper called iii sick. Sick my ahss, " the plumber said. "No rest for the bloody wicked."

   "Well, perhaps my tools can help," Popov offered. They continued talking about sports until lunch was finished, then both stood and walked to Miles's truck, a small blue van with government tags. The Russian tossed his collection of tools in the back. The plumber started it up, pulled onto the road. ;end headed for the main gate of the Hereford base. The security guard waved them through without a close look.

   "See, you just need to know the right bloke to get in here." Miles laughed at his conquest of base security, which, the sign said, was on BLACK status, the lowest alert state. "I suppose the IRA chaps have calmed down quite a bit, and it would never have been a good idea to conic here, not against these chaps, like tweaking a lion's nose – bad job, that," he went on.

   "I suppose that's so. All I know about the SAS is what I see on the telly. They certainly look like a dangerous lot."

   "That's the bloody truth," Miles confirmed. "All you need do is to look at them, the way they walk and such. They know they're lions. And this new lot, they're exactly the same, maybe even better, some folks say. They've had three jobs, or so I understand, and they've all been on the telly. They sorted that mob out at Worldpark for fair, didn't they?"

   The base engineer's building was so typical of its type that the ones in the former Soviet Union could hardly have been different. The paint was peeling, and the parking area lumpy and fragmented. The double doors into the back had locks on them, of the type a child could have picked with a hairpin, Popov thought, but, then, the most dangerous weapon in there would have been a screwdriver. Miles parked his truck and waved for Popov to follow him. Inside was also as expected: a cheap desk for the plumber to do his paperwork on, a well-worn swivel chair whose stuffing was visible through the cracked vinyl on the seat, and a pegboard hung with tools, few of which could have been younger than five years, judging by the chipped paint on the forged steel.

   "Do they let you purchase new tools?" Popov asked, just to stay in character.

   "I have to make a request, with justification, to the chief of the physical-plant department. He's usually a decent bloke about it, and I don't ask for things I don't need." Miles pulled a Post-it note from his desk. "They want that watercooler fixed today. Why can't they just drink Coca-Cola?" he wondered aloud. "Well, want to come along?"

   "Why not?" Popov stood and followed him out the door. Five minutes later, he regretted it. An armed soldier was outside the entrance to headquarters-and then he realized that this was the headquarters for Rainbow. Inside would be Clark, Ivan Timofeyevich, himself.

   Miles parked the truck, got out, walked to the rear door, and opened it, pulling out his toolbox.

   "I'll need a small pipe wrench," he told Popov, who opened the canvas sack he'd brought, and extracted a brand-new twelve-inch Rigid wrench.

   "Will this do?"

   "Perfect." Miles waved him along. "Good afternoon, Corp," he said to the soldier, who nodded politely in reply, but said nothing.

   For his part, Popov was more than surprised. In Russia the security would have been much tighter. But this was England, and the plumber was doubtless known to the guard. With that, he was inside, trying not to look around too obviously, and exercising all of his self-control not to appear nervous. Miles immediately set to work, unscrewing the front, setting the cover aside, and peering back into the guts of the watercooler. He held his hand out for the small wrench, which Popov handed to him. "Nice feel for the adjustment . . . but it's brand-new, so that's to be expected. . ." He tightened an a pipe and gave the wrench a twist. "Come on, now . . . there." He pulled the pipe out and inspected it by holding it up to a light. "Ah, well, that I can fix. Bloody miracle," he added. He slid back on his knees and looked in his toolbox. "The pipe is merely clogged up. Look, must be thirty years of sediment in there." He handed it over.

   Popov made a show of looking through the pipe, but saw nothing at all, the metal tube was so packed with sediment, he guessed from what Miles had said. Then the plumber took it back and inserted a small screwdriver, jammed it like the ramrod of a musket to clear it out, then switched ends to do the same from the other direction.

   "So, we're going to get clean water for our coffee?" a voice asked.

   "I expect so, sir," Miles replied.

   Popov looked up and managed to keep his heart beating. It was Clark, Ivan Timofeyevich, as the KGB file had identified him. Tall, middle fifties, smiling down at the two workmen, dressed in suit and tie, which somehow looked uncomfortable on him. He nodded politely at the man, and looked back down to his tools while thinking as loudly as he could, Go away!

   "There, that should do it," Miles said, reaching to put the pipe back inside, then taking the wrench from Popov to screw it into place. In another moment he stood and turned the plastic handle. The water that came out was dirty. "We just need to keep this open for five minutes or so, sir, to allow the pipe to flush itself out."

   "Fair enough. Thanks," the American said, then walked off.

   "A pleasure, sir," Miles said to the disappearing back. "That was the boss, Mr. Clark."

   "Really? Polite enough."

   "Yes, decent bloke." Miles stood and flipped the plastic lever. The water coming out of the spigot was clouded at first, but after a few minutes it appeared totally clear. "Well, that's one job done. It's a nice wrench," Miles said, handing it back. "What do they cost?"

   "This one – it's yours."

   "Well, thank you, my friend." Miles smiled on his way out the door and past the corporal of the British Army's military police.

   Next they rode around the base. Popov asked where Clark lived, and Miles obliged by taking a left turn and heading off to the senior officers' quarters.

   "Not a bad house, is it?"

   "It looks comfortable enough." It was made of brown brick, with what appeared to be a slate roof, and about a hundred square meters, and a garden in the back.

   "I put the plumbing in that one myself, Miles told him, "back when it was renovated. Ah, that must be the missus."

   A woman came out dressed in a nurse's uniform, walked to the car, and got in. Popov looked and recorded the image.

   "They have a daughter who's a doctor at the same hospital the mum works Lit," Miles told him. "Bun in the oven for that one. I think she's married to one of the soldiers. Looks just like her mum, tall, blond, and pretty-smasher, really."

   "Where do they live?"

   "Oh, over that way, I think," Miles replied, waving vaguely to the west. "Officer housing, like this one, but smaller."

   "So, what can you offer us?" the police superintendent asked.

   Bill Henriksen liked the Australians. They came right to the point. They were sitting in Canberra, Australia's capital, with the country's most senior cop and some people in military uniforms.

   "Well, first of all, you know my background." He'd already made sure that his FBI experience and the reputation of his company were well known. "You know that I work with the FBI, and sometimes even with Delta at Fort Bragg. Therefore I have contacts, good ones, and perhaps in some ways better than your own," he said, risking a small boast.

   "Our own SAS are excellent," the chief told him.

  "I know it," Bill responded, with a nod and a smile. "We worked together several times when I was in the Hostage Rescue Team, in Perth twice, Quantico and Fort Bragg once each, back when Brigadier Philip Stocker was the boss. What's he do now, by the way?"

   "Retired three years ago," the chief answered.

   "Well, Phil knows me. Good man, one of the best I ever met," Henriksen pronounced. "Anyway, what do I bring to the party? I work with all the hardware suppliers. I can connect you with H&K for the new MP-10 that our guys like-it was developed for an FBI requirement, because we decided the nine millimeter wasn't powerful enough. However, the new Smith & Wesson ten millimeter cartridge is-it's a whole new world for the H&K weapon. But anyone can get guns for you. I also do business with E-Systems, Collins, Fredericks-Anders, Micro-Systems, Halliday, Inc., and all the other electronics companies. I know what's happening in communications and surveillance equipment. Your SAS is weak in that area, according to my contacts. I can help fix that, and I can get you good prices for the equipment you need. In addition, my people can help train you up on the new equipment. I have a team of former Delta and HRT people. Mostly NCOs, including the regimental sergeant major from the Special Operations Training Center at Bragg, Dick Voss. He's the best in the world, and he works for me now."

   "I've met him," the Aussie SAS major noted. "Yes, he's very good indeed."

   "So, what can I do for you?" Henriksen asked. "Well, you've all seen the upsurge of terrorist activity in Europe, and that's a threat you need to take seriously for the Olympics. Your SAS people don't need any advice from me or anyone else on tactics, but what my company can do is to get you state of-the-art electronics gear for surveillance and communication. I know all the people who custom-make the gear our guys use, and that's stuff your people want to have. I know that-they have to want it. Well, I can help you get exactly what you need, and train your troops up on it. There's no other company in the world with our expertise."

   The reply was silence. Henriksen could read their minds, however. The terrorism they'd watched on TV, just like everyone else had, had perked up their ears. It must have. People in this line of work worried for a living, always searched for threats, real and imagined. The Olympic games were a catch of immense prestige for their nation, and also the most prestigious terrorist target on the planet, which the German police had learned the hard way at Munich in 1972. In many ways the Palestinian attack had been the kick-off of the world terrorist game, and as a result the Israeli team was always a little better looked after than any other national collection of athletes, and invariably had some of their own military's commandos tucked in with the wrestlers, generally with the knowledge of the host nation's security people. Nobody wanted Munich to happen again.

   The recent terrorism incidents in Europe had lit up awareness across the world, but nowhere more seriously than in Australia, a nation with great sensitivity to crime not long ago, a madman had shot to death a number of innocent people, including children, which had resulted in the outlawing of guns throughout the country by the parliamentarians in this very city.

   "What do you know about the European incidents?" the Aussie SAS officer asked.

   Henriksen affected a sensitive look. "Much of what I know is, well, off-the-record, if you know what I mean."

   "We all have security clearances," the cop told him.

   "Okay, but you see, the problem is, I am not cleared into this stuff, exactly, and-oh, what the hell. The team doing the takedowns is called `Rainbow.' It's a black operation composed mainly of Americans and Brits, but some other NATO nationalities tossed in, too. They're based in U.K., at Hereford. Their commander is an American CIA type, guy name of John Clark. He's a serious dude, guys, and so's his outfit. Their three known operations went down smooth as a baby's ass. They have access to American equipment-helicopters and such-and they evidently have diplomatic agreements in place to operate all over Europe, when the countries with problems invite them in. Has your government talked to anyone about them?"

   "We're aware of it," the chief cop replied. "What you said is correct in all details. In honesty, I didn't know the name of the commander. Anything else you can tell us about him?"

   "I've never met the man. Only know him by reputation. He's a very senior field officer, close to the DCI, and I gather that our president knows him personally as well. So, you would expect him to have a very good intelligence staff and, well, his operational people have shown what they can do, haven't they?"

   "Bloody right," the major observed. "The Worldpark job was as good a bit of sorting out as I have ever seen, even better than the Iranian Embassy job in London, way back when."

   "You could have handled it about the same way," Henriksen observed generously, and meaning it. The Australian Special Air Service was based on the British model, and while it didn't seem to get much work, the times he'd exercised with them during his FBI career had left him in little doubt as to their abilities. "Which squadron, Major?"

   "First Saber," the young officer replied.

   "I remember Major Bob Fremont and-"

   "He's our colonel now," the major informed him.

   "Really? I have to keep better track. That's one kickass officer. He and Gus Werner got along very well." Henriksen paused.. "Anyway, that's what I bring to the party. guys. My people and I all speak the language. We have all the contacts we need on the operational side and the industrial side. We have access to all the newest hardware. And we can be down here to assist your people in three or four days from the moment you say `come.' "

   There were no additional questions. The top cop seemed properly impressed, and the SAS major even more so.

   "Thanks very much indeed for coming," the policeman said, standing. It was hard not to like the Aussies, and their country was still largely in a pristine state. A forbidding desert, most of it, into which camels had been admitted, the only place outside Arabia where they'd done well. He'd read somewhere that Jefferson Davis, of all people, had tried to get them to breed in the American Southwest, but it hadn't worked out, probably because the initial population had been too small to survive. He couldn't decide if that was bad luck or not. The animals weren't native to either country, and interfering with nature's plan was usually a bad thing to do. On the other hand, horses and burros weren't native, either, and he liked the idea of wild horses, so long as they were properly controlled by predators.

   No, he reminded himself, Australia wasn't really pristine, was it? Dingoes, the wild dogs of the Outback, had also been introduced, and they'd killed off or crowded out the marsupial animals that belonged there. The thought made him vaguely sad. There were relatively few people here, but even that small number had still managed to upset the ecostructure. Maybe that was a sign that man simply couldn't be trusted anywhere, he thought, even a few of them in a whole continental landmass. And so, the Project was needed here as well.

   It was a pity he didn't have more time. He wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef. An avid skin diver, he'd never made it down here with flippers and wet suit to see that most magnificent exemplar of natural beauty. Well, maybe someday, in a few years, it would be easier, Bill thought, as he looked across the table at his hosts. He couldn't think of them as fellow human beings, could he' They were competitors, rivals for the ownership of the planet, but unlike himself they were poor stewards. Not all of them, perhaps. Maybe some loved nature as much as he did, but, unfortunately, there wasn't time to identify them, and so they had to be lumped together as enemies, and for that, they'd have to pay the price. A pity.

   Skip Bannister had been worried for some time. He hadn't wanted his daughter to go off to New York in the first place. It was a long way from Gary, Indiana. Sure, the papers said that crime was down in that dreadful city on the Hudson, but it was still too damned big and too damned anonymous for real people to live in especially single girls. For him, Mary would always be his little girl, remembered forever as a pink, wet, noisy package in his arms, delivered by a mother who'd died six years later, a daughter who'd grown up needing dollhouses to be built, a series of bicycles to be assembled, clothes to be bought, an education provided for, and then, finally, to his great discomfort, the little bird had finally grown her feathers and flown from the nest-for New York City, a hateful, crowded place full of hateful, obnoxious people. But he'd kept his peace on that, as he'd done when Mary had dated boys he hadn't been all that crazy about, because Mary had been as strong willed as all girls her age tended to be. Off to make her fortune, meet Mr. Right, or something like that.

   But then she'd disappeared, and Skip Bannister had had no idea what to do. It had started when she hadn't called for five straight days. So, he'd called her New York number and let the phone ring for several minutes. Maybe she'd been out on a date or perhaps working late. He would have tried her work number, but she'd never gotten around to giving it to him. He'd indulged her all through her life maybe a mistake, he thought now, or maybe not-as single fathers tended to do.

   But now she was gone. He'd kept calling that number it all hours of day and night, but the phone had just kept ringing, and after a week of it he'd gotten worried. Another few days and he'd gotten worried enough to call the Police to make a missing person's report. That had been very disagreeable event. The officer he'd finally gotten had asked all manner of questions about his daughter's previous conduct, and explained patiently after twenty minutes that, you know, young women did this sort of thing all the time, and they almost always turned up safe somewhere, hey, you know, it's just part of growing up, proving to themselves that they're their own persons. And so, somewhere in New York was a paper file or a computer entry on one Bannister, Mary Eileen, female, missing, whom the NYPD didn't even regard as important enough for them to send an officer to her apartment on the Upper West Side to check things out. Skip Bannister had done that himself, driving in only to find a "super" who asked him if he was going to take his daughter's stuff out, because he hadn't seen her in weeks, and the rent would soon be due . . .

   At that point Skip-James Thomas-Bannister had panicked and gone to the local police precinct station to make a report in person and demand further action, and learned that he'd come to the wrong place, but, yes, they could take down a missing person's report there, too. And here, from a fiftyish police detective, he'd heard exactly the same thing he'd listened to over the phone. Look, it's only been a few weeks. No dead female of your daughter's description has turned up-so, she's probably alive and healthy somewhere, and ninety-nine out of a hundred of these cases turn out to be a girl who just wanted to spread her wings some and fly on her own, y'know?

   Not his Mary, James T. "Skip" Bannister had replied in a calm and unlistening policeman. Sir, they all say that, and in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases-no, you know, it 's actually higher than that-that's how it turns out, and I'm sorry but we don't have the manpower to investigate all of these cases. Sorry, but that's just how this sort of thing works. So, why not just go home and wait for the phone to ring?

   That he'd done, and driven all the way back to Gary in a rage that grew out of his panic, arriving, finally, to find six messages on his answering machine, and he'd run through them quickly, hoping to-but not finding one from his missing daughter.

   Like most Americans, James Thomas Bannister owned a personal computer, and while he'd bought it on a whim and not really used it all that much, this day, like every other, he turned it on and logged onto the Net to check his e-mail. And finally, this morning, he saw a letter in the IN box from his daughter. He moved his mouse, clicking on the letter, which sprang into life on his RGB monitor and

   –now he was truly panicked.

   She didn't know where she was? Medical experiments? Most frightening of all, the letter was disjointed and poorly written. Mary had always gotten good marks in school. Her handwriting was always neat and easy to read. Her letters had been like reading stories in the morning paper, loving, of course, and clear, concise, easy to read. This could have been written by a three-year-old, Skip Bannister thought. Not even typed neatly, and his daughter knew how to type well-she'd gotten an "A" in that class.

   What to do now? His little girl was missing .... And now his gut told him that his daughter was in danger. His stomach compressed into a knot just below his sternum. His heart speeded up. His face broke out in beads of sweat. He closed his eyes, thinking as hard as he could. Then he picked up his phone book. On the first page were the emergency numbers, from which he selected one and dialed it.

   "FBI," the female voice said. "How can I help you?"

CHAPTER 21
STAGES

   The last of the winos had outlasted all predictions, but it lead only prolonged the inevitable. This one was named Henry, a black man of forty-six years who only appeared to be twenty years older. A veteran, he'd told everyone who'd listen, and a man with a considerable thirst, which had not, miraculously, done a great deal of liver damage. And his immune system had done a valiant job of fighting off Shiva. He was probably from the deep part of the gene pool, Dr. Killgore thought, for what little good it had clone him. It would have been useful to take a history from him, to find out how long his parents had lived, but lie was too far gone by the time they'd realized it. But now, the printout of his blood work said, he was surely doomed. I l is liver had finally succumbed to the Shiva strands, and his blood chemistry was off the chart in every category that mattered. In a way, it was too bad. The doctor still living in Killgore somehow wanted patients to survive. Maybe it was sportsmanship, he thought, heading down to the patient's room. "How are we doing, Henry?" the doctor asked.

   "Shitty, Doc, just shitty. Feels like my belly is coming a hart inside out."

   "You can feel it?" Killgore asked. That was a surprise. 1 I e was getting nearly twelve milligrams of morphine a day now-a lethal dose for a healthy man, but the really sick ones could somehow take a lot more of the drug.

   "Some," Henry replied, grimacing.

   "Well, let me fix that for you, okay?" The physician extracted a 50cc needle from his pocket. along with a vial of Dilaudid. Two to four milligrams was a strong dose for a normal person. He decided to go to forty, just to be sure. Henry had suffered enough. He filled the syringe, flicked the plastic body with a fingernail to take care of the little air bubble, then inserted it in the IV line. and pushed the plunger down quickly

   "All," Henry had time to say as the dazzling rush hit him. And just that fast, his face went still, eyes wide open, pupils dilated in the last pleasure he would ever know. Ten seconds later, Killgore touched the right carotid artery. There was nothing happening there, and Henry's breathing had stopped at once. Just to be completely sure, Killgore took his stethoscope from his pocket and touched it to Henry's chest. Sure enough, the heart had stopped.

   "Nice Fight, partner," the doctor told the body. Then he unhooked the IV line, switched off the electronic drug monitor system, and tossed the sheet over the face. So, that was the end of the winos. Most of them had checked out early, except for Henry. The bastard was a fighter to the end, defying all predictions. Killgore wondered if they might have tried one of the vaccines on him– "B" would almost certainly have saved him, but then they'd just have a healthy wino on their hands, and the Project wasn't aimed at saving that sort of person. What use was he to anyone, really? Except maybe a liquor-store owner. Killgore left the room, waving to an orderly as he did so. In fifteen minutes, Henry would be ashes floating in the air, his chemicals useful to some grass and trees as fertilizer when they fell back to earth, which was about as much a contribution as a person like that could hope to make.

   Then it was time to see Mary, F4, in her room.

   "How are you doing?" he asked.

   "Fine," she replied sleepily. Whatever discomfort she ought to be feeling was well submerged in the morphine drip.

   "You took a little walk last night?" Killgore asked, checking her pulse. It was 92, strong and regular still. Well, she wasn't really into serious symptoms yet, though she'd never last as long as Henry had.

   "Wanted to tell Daddy that I was okay," she explained.

   "Think he's worried?"

   "I haven't talked to him since I got here, and, I thought. . ." She dozed off.

   "Yeah, sure, you thought," Dr. Killgore said to the unconscious form, "and we'll make sure that doesn't happen again." He changed the programming on the IV monitor, increasing the morphine drip by 50 percent. That should keep her in the bed.

   Ten minutes later he was outside, walking north to where . . . there it was, and he saw Ben Farmer's pickup truck parked in the usual place. The inside of the building smelled of birds, as well it might, though it looked more like a horse barn. Every door was barred too closely for an arm to reach in--or for a bird to get out. He walked down the row of doors until he found Farmer in with one of his favorites.

   "Working overtime?" Killgore asked.

   "A little," the security man agreed. Come on, Festus," he said next. The barn owl flapped its wings angrily then lifted off for the six-foot trip to Farmer's gloved arm. "I think you're all fixed, my friend."

   "Doesn't look very friendly," the physician observed.

   "Owls are hard to work with sometimes, and Festus has a mean side," the former Marine told him, walking the owl back to its perch and leaving him there. Then he slipped out of the door. "Not the smartest raptors, owls. Hard as hell to train. Not even going to try with him."

   "Just release him?"

   "Yeah. End of the week, I think." Farmer nodded. "It's been two months, but his wing's all healed now. I 'spect he's ready to go back out and find hisself a barn full o' mice to eat."

   "Was that the one hit by the car?"

   "No, that's Niccolo, the great horned owl. No, Festus, I think he probably flew into a power line. Wasn't looking the right way, I guess. Both his eyes seem to work just fine. But birds screw up, too, just like people. Anyway, I fixed his broke wing – did a good job of it, if I do say so myself." Farmer allowed himself a satisfied smile. "But of Festus ain't very grateful about it."

   "Ben, you ought to be a doctor, you're so good at this. Were you a medic in the Marines?"

   "Just a grunt. Marines get their medics from the Navy, Doc." Farmer took off his thick leather gauntlet and flexed his fingers before putting it back on. "You here about Mary?"

   "What happened?"

   "Truth? I was off taking a leak, sat back down reading my magazine, and when I looked up, she wasn't there. I figure she was loose for, oh, ten minutes before I put the call out. I screwed up, Doc, and that's a fact," he admitted.

   "No real harm done, I think."

   "Yeah, well, how about me moving that computer to a room with a lock on the door, eh?" He walked to the end of the room, opened another door. "Hey, Baron," the man said next. A moment later, the Harris hawk jumped onto the offered leather arm. "Yeah, that's my buddy. You're ready to go back outside, too, ain't you? Find yourself some juicy rabbits, maybe?"

   There was a real nobility to these birds, Killgore thought. Their eyes were sharp and clear, their motions powerful and redolent of purpose, and while that purpose might seem cruel to their prey, that was Nature at work, wasn't it? These raptors kept the balance in place, winnowing out the slow, the crippled, and the stupid-but more than that, the birds of prey were just plain noble in the way they soared upward and looked down on the world that lay beneath them and decided who would live and who would die. Much as he and his fellow team members were doing, Killgore thought, though human eyes lacked the hardness he saw here. He had to smile at Baron, who was soon to be released into the wild, soon to soar on the thermals above Kansas ....

   "Will I be able to do this when we're out in the Project?" Farmer asked, setting Baron back on his wooden perch.

   "What do you mean, Ben?"

   "Well, Doc, some people say that I won't be able to keep birds once we're out there, 'cuz it interferes, like. Hell, I take good care of my birds-you know, captive raptors live two, three times as long as the ones in the wild, and, yeah, I know that upsets things a little bit, but, damn it-"

   "Ben, it's not big enough to worry about. I understand you and the hawks, okay? I like 'em, too."

   "Nature's own smart bomb, Doc. I love to watch 'em work. And when they get hurt, I know how to fix 'em."

   "You're very good at that. All your birds look healthy."

   "Oughta be. I feed 'em good. I live-trap mice for 'em. They like their meals warm, y'know?" He walked back to his worktable, took his gauntlet off, and hung it on the hook. "Anyway, that's my work for the morning."

   "Okay, get on home, Ben. I'll see that the computer room is secured. Let's not have any more subjects taking any walks."

   "Yes, sir. How's Henry doing?" Farmer asked, fishing in his pocket for his car keys.

   "Henry checked out."

   "I didn't figure he had much time left. So, no more of the winos, eh?" He saw the shake of Killgore's head. "Well, too bad for him. Tough bastard, wasn't he?"

   "Sure was, Ben, but that's the way it goes."

   "Sure 'nuff, Doc. Shame we can't just lay the body out for the buzzards. They have to eat, too, but it is kinda gross to watch how they do it." He opened the door. "See you tonight, Doc."

   Killgore followed him out, killing the lights. No, they couldn't deny Ben Farmer the right to keep his birds. Falconry was the real sport of kings, and from it you could learn so much about birds, how they hunted, how they lived. They'd fit into Nature's Great Plan. The problem was that the Project had some really radical people in it, like the ones who objected to having physicians, because they interfered with Nature-curing people of disease was interference, allowed them to multiply too fast and upset the balance again. Yeah, sure. Maybe in a hundred years, more like two hundred, they might have Kansas fully repopulated-but not all of them would remain in Kansas, would they? No, they'd spread out to study the mountains, the wetlands, the rain forests, the African savanna, and then they'd return to Kansas to report what they'd learned, to show their videotapes of Nature in action. Killgore looked forward to that. Like most Project members he devoured the Discovery Channel on his cable system. There was so much to learn, so much to understand, because he, like many, wanted to get the whole thing, to understand Nature in Her entirety. That was a tall order, of course, maybe an unrealistic one, but if he didn't make it, then his children would. Or their children, who'd be raised and educated to appreciate Nature in all her glory. They'd travel about, field scientists all. He wondered what the ones who went to the dead cities would think . . . . It'd probably be a good idea to make them go, so that they'd understand how many mistakes man had made and learn not to repeat them. Maybe he'd lead some of those field trips himself. New York would be the big one, the really impressive don't-do-this lesson. It would take a thousand years, maybe more, before the buildings collapsed from rusting structural steel and lack of maintenance .... The stone parts would never go away, but relatively soon, maybe ten years or so, deer would return to Central Park

   The vultures would do just fine for some time. Lots of bodies to eat . . . or maybe not. At first the corpses would be buried in the normal civilized way, but in a few weeks those systems would be overwhelmed, and then people would die, probably in their own beds and then-rats, of course. The coming year would be a banner one for rats. The only thing was: Rats depended on people to thrive. They lived on garbage and the output of civilization, a fairly specialized parasite, and this coming year they'd have a gut-filling worldwide feast and then-what? What would happen to the rat population? Dogs and cats would live off them, probably, gradually reaching a balance of some sort, but without millions of people to produce garbage for the rats to eat, their numbers would decline over the next five or ten years. That would be an interesting study for one of the field teams. How quickly would the rat population trend down, and how far down might it go?

   Too many of the people in the Project concerned themselves with the great animals. Everyone loved wolves and cougars, noble beautiful animals so harshly slaughtered by men because of their depredation of domestic animals. And they'd do just fine once the trapping and poisoning stopped. But what of the lesser predators? What about the rats? Nobody seemed to care about them, but they were part of the system, too. You couldn't apply aesthetics to the study of Nature, could you? If you did, then how could you justify killing Mary Bannister, Subject F4? She was an attractive, bright, pleasant woman, after all, not very like Chester, or Pete, or Henry, not offensive to behold as they had been . . . but like them, a person who didn't understand Nature, didn't appreciate her beauty, didn't see her place in the great system of life, and was therefore unworthy to participate. Too bad for her. Too bad for all the test subjects, but the planet was dying, and had to be saved, and there was only one way to do it, because too many others had no more understanding of the system than the lower animals who were an unknowing part of the system itself. Only man could hope to understand the great balance. Only man had the responsibility to sustain that balance, and if that meant the reduction of his own species, well, everything had its price. The greatest and finest irony of all was that it required a huge sacrifice, and that the sacrifice came from man's own scientific advances. Without the instrumentalities that threatened to kill the planet, the ability to save it would not have existed. Well, of such irony was reality made, the epidemiologist told himself.

   The Project would save Nature Herself, and the Project was made of relatively few people, less than a thousand, plus those who had been selected to survive and continue the effort, the unknowing ones whose lives would not be forfeit to the crimes committed in their names. Most would never understand the cause for their survival-that they were the wife or child or close relative of ii Project member, or had skills that the Project needed: airplane pilots, mechanics, farmers, communication specialists, and the like. Someday they might figure it out that was inevitable, of course. Some people talked, and others listened. When the listeners figured it out, they would probably be horrified, but then it would be far too late for them to do anything about it. There was a wonderful inevitability to it all. Oh, there would be some things he'd miss. The theater, the good restaurants in New York, for example, but surely there would be some good cooks in the Project-certainly there would be wonderful raw materials for them to work with. The Project's installation in Kansas would grow all the grain they needed, and there would be cattle as well, until the buffalo spread out.

   The Project would support itself by hunting for much of its meat. Needless to say, some members objected to that – they objected to killing anything, but cooler and wiser heads had prevailed on that issue. Man was both a predator and a toolmaker, and so guns were okay, too. A far more merciful way to kill game, and man had to eat, too. And so, in a few years men would saddle up their horses and ride out to shoot a few buffalo, butcher them, and bring back the healthy low-fat meat. And deer, and pronghorn antelope, and elk.

   Cereals and vegetables would be grown by the farmers. They'd all eat well, and live in harmony with Nature guns weren't all that great an advancement on bows and arrows, were they?-and they'd be able to study the natural world in relative peace.

   It was a beautiful future to look forward to, though the initial four to eight months would be pretty dreadful. The stuff that'd be on TV, and the radio, and the newspapers-while they lasted would be horrible, but again, everything had a price. Humanity as the dominant force on the planet had to die, to be replaced by Nature herself, with just enough of the right people to observe and appreciate what she was and what she did.

   "Dr. Chavez, please," Popov told the operator at the hospital.

   "Wait, please," the female voice replied. It took seventy seconds.

   "Dr. Chavez," another female voice said.

   "Oh, sorry, I have the wrong number," Popov said, and cradled the phone. Excellent, both Clark's wife and daughter worked at the hospital, just as he'd been told. That confirmed that this Domingo Chavez was over in Hereford as well. So, he knew both the chief of this Rainbow group, and one of its senior staff members. Chavez probably was one of those. Maybe the chief of intelligence for the group? No, Popov thought, he was too junior for that. That would be a Brit, a senior man from MI-6, someone known to the continental services. Chavez was evidently a paramilitary officer, just as his mentor was. That meant that Chavez was probably a soldier type, maybe a field leader? A supposition on his part, but a likely one. A young officer, physically fit by reports. Too junior for much of anything else. Yes, that made sense.

   Popov had stolen a base map from Miles, and had marked the location of Clark's home on it. From that he could easily deduce the route his wife took to the local hospital, and figuring out her hours would not be terribly difficult. It had been a good week for the intelligence officer, and now it was time to leave. He packed his clothes and walked to his rented car, then drove to the lobby to check out. At London-Heathrow, a ticket was waiting for the 747 flight back to New York's JFK International. He had sometime, so he rested in the British Airways first-class lounge, always a comfortable place, with the wine even champagne-bottles set out in the open. He indulged himself, then sat on one of the comfortable couches and picked up a complimentary newspaper, but instead of reading, he started going over the things he'd learned and wondering what use his employer would wish to make of it. There was no telling at the moment, but Popov's instincts made him think about telephone numbers he had in Ireland.

   "Yes, this is Henriksen," he said into the hotel phone.

   "This is Bob Aukland," the voice said. He was the senior cop at the meeting, Bill remembered. "I have good news for you."

   "Oh? What might that be, sir?"

   "The name's Bob, old man. We spoke with the Minister, and he agrees that we should award Global Security the consulting contract for the Olympics."

   "Thank you, sir."

   "So, could you come down in the morning to work out the details with me?"

   "Okay, good. When can I go out to the facility?"

   "I'll fly you down myself tomorrow afternoon."

   "Excellent, Bob. Thank you for listening to me. What about your SAS people?"

   "They'll be at the stadium as well."

   "Great. I look forward to working with them," Henriksen told them.

   "They want to see that new communications equipment you told them about."

   "E-Systems has just started manufacturing it for our Delta people. Six ounces per unit, real-time 128bit encryption, X-band frequency, side-band, burst transmission. Damned near impossible to intercept, and highly reliable."

   "For what do we deserve this honor, Ed?" Clark asked.

   "You have a fairy godmother at the White House. The first thirty sets go to you. Ought to be there in two days," the DCI told Rainbow Six.

   "Who at the White House?"

   "Carol Brightling, Presidential Science Advisor. She's into the cryppie gear, and after the Worldpark job she called me to suggest you get these new radios. "

   "She's not cleared into us, Ed," Clark remembered. "At least, I don't remember her name on the list."

   "Well, somebody must have told her something, John. When she called, she knew the codeword, and she is cleared into damned near everything, remember. Nuclear weapons, and all the commo stuff."

   "The President doesn't like her, or so I hear . . . ."

   "Yeah, she's a radical tree-hugger, I know. But she's pretty smart, too, and getting you this gear was a good call on her part. I talked to Sam Wilson down at Snake Headquarters, and his people have signed off on it with enthusiasm. Jam-proof, encrypted, digital clarity, and light as a feather." As well it ought to be, at seven thousand dollars per set, but that included the R&D costs, Foley reminded himself. He wondered if it might be something his field officers could use for covert operations.

   "Okay, two days, you said?"

   "Yep. Regular trash-haul out of Dover to RAF Mildenhall, and a truck from there, I guess. Oh, one other thing."

   "What's that?"

   "Tell Noonan that his letter about that people-finder gadget has generated results. The company's sending a new unit for him to play with-four of them, as a matter of fact. Improved antenna and GPS locator, too. What is that thing, anyway?"

   "I've only seen it once. It seems to track people from their heartbeats."

   "Oh, how's it do that?" Foley asked.

   "Damned if I know, Ed, but I've seen it track people through blank walls. Noonan's going nuts over it. He said it needed improvements, though."

   "Well, DKL – that's the company – must have listened. Four new sets are in the same shipment with a request for our evaluation of the upgrade."

   "Okay, I'll pass that along to Tim."

   "Any further word on the terrorists you got in Spain?"

   "We're faxing it over later today. They've ID'd six of them now. Mainly suspected Basques, the Spanish figured out. The French have largely struck out, just two probables – well, one of them's fairly certain. And still no clue on who might be sending these people out of the dugout after us."

   "Russian," Foley said. "A KGB RIF, I bet."

   "I won't disagree with that, seeing how that guy showed "p in London-we think-but the Five' guys haven't turned up anything else."

   "Who's working the case at `Five'?"

   "Holt, Cyril Holt," Clark answered.

   "Oh, okay, I know Cyril. Good man. You can believe what he tells you."

   "That's nice, but right now I believe it when he says he doesn't have jack shit. I've been toying with the idea of calling Sergey Nikolay'ch myself and asking for a little help."

   "I don't think so, John. That'll have to go through me, remember? I like Sergey, too, but not on this one. Too open-ended."

   "That leaves us dead in the water, Ed. I do not like the fact that there's some Russkie around who knows my name and my current job."

   Foley had to nod at that. No field officer liked the idea of being known to anyone at all, and Clark had ample reason to worry about it, with his family sharing his current duty station. He'd never taken Sandy into the field to use diem as cover on a job, as some field officers had done in their careers. No officer had ever lost a spouse that way, but a few had been roughed up, and it was now contrary to CIA policy. More than that, John had lived his entire professional life as an unperson, a ghost seen by few, recognized by none, and known only to those on his own side. He would no more wish to change that than to change his sex, but his anonymity had been changed, and it upset him. Well, the Russians knew him and knew about him, and that had been his own doing in Japan and Iran; he must have known then that his actions would have consequences.

   "John, they know you. Hell, Golovko knows you personally, and it figures they'd be interested in you, right?"

   "I know, Ed, but-damn it!"

   "John, I understand, but you're high-profile now, and there's no evading that fact. So, just sit tight, do your job, and let us rattle some bushes to find out what's happening, okay?"

   "I guess, Ed" was the resigned reply.

   "If I turn anything, I'll be on the phone to you immediately."

   "Aye aye, sir," Clark replied, using the naval term that had been part of his life a long time ago. Now he reserved it for things he really didn't like.

   The Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Gary, Indiana, FBI field office was a serious black man named Chuck Ussery. Forty-four, a recent arrival in this office, he'd been in the Bureau for seventeen years, and before that a police officer in Chicago. Skip Bannister's call had rapidly been routed to his desk, and inside five minutes he'd told the man to drive to the office at once. Twenty-five minutes later, the man came in. Five-eleven, stocky, fifty-five or so, and profoundly frightened, the agent saw. First of all he got the man sat down and offered him coffee, which was refused. Then came the questions, routine at first. Then the questions got a lot more directed.

   "Mr. Bannister, do you have the e-mail you told me about?"

   James Bannister pulled the sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it across.

   Three paragraphs, Ussery saw, disjointed and ungrammatical. Confused. His first impression was . . .

   "Mr. Bannister, do you have any reason to suspect that your daughter has ever used drugs of any kind?"

   "Not my Mary!" was the immediate reply. "No way. Okay, she likes to drink beer and wine, but no drugs, not my little girl, not ever!"

   Ussery held up his hands. "Please, I understand how you feel. I've worked kidnappings before and-"

   "You think she's been kidnapped?" Skip Bannister asked, now faced with the confirmation of his greatest fear. That was far worse than the suggestion that his daughter was a doper.

   "Based on this letter, yes, I think it's a possibility, and we will treat this case as a kidnapping investigation." Ussery lifted his phone. "Send Pat O'Connor in, will you?" he told his secretary.

   Supervisory Special Agent Patrick D. O'Connor was one of the Gary office's squad supervisors. Thirty-eight, red-haired, fairskinned, and very fit, O'Connor headed the office kidnapping squad. "Yeah, Chuck?" he said coming in.

   "This is Mr. James Bannister. He has a missing daughter, age twenty-one, disappeared in New York about a month ago. Yesterday he got this on his e-mail." Ussery handed it over.

   O'Connor scanned it and nodded. "Okay, Chuck."

   "Pat, it's your case. Run with it."

   "You bet, Chuck. Mr. Bannister, would you come with me, please?"

   "Pat runs these cases for us," Ussery explained. "He will take charge of it, and report to me on a daily basis. Mr. Bannister, the FBI treats kidnappings as major felonies. This will be a top priority case until we clear it. Fen men, Pat?"

   "For starters, yes, more in New York. Sir," he said to their guest, "we all have kids. We know how you feel. If there's a way to locate your daughter for you, we'll find it. Now I need to ask you a bunch of questions so that we can get started, okay?"

   "Yeah." The man stood and followed O'Connor out into the office bay. He'd be there for the next three hours, telling everything he knew about his daughter and her life in New York to this and other agents. First of all he handed over a recent photograph, a good one as it turned out. O'Connor looked at it. He'd keep it for the case file. O'Connor and his squad hadn't worked a kidnapping in several years. It was a crime the FBI had essentially extinguished in the United States-kidnapping for money, in any case. There was just no percentage in it. The FBI always solved them, came down on the perps like the Wrath of God. Today's kidnappings were generally of children, and, parental kidnappings aside, were almost always by sexual deviants who most often used them for personal gratification, and often as not killed them thereafter. If anything, that merely increased the FBI's institutional rage. The Bannister Case, as it was already being called, would have the highest priority in manpower and resources in every office it might touch. Pending cases against organized crime families would be set aside for this one. That was just part of the FBI's institutional ethos.

   Four hours after Skip Bannister's arrival in the Gary office, two agents from the New York field division in the Jacob Javits Building downtown knocked on the door of the superintendent of Mary Bannister's dingy apartment building. The super gave them the key and told them where the apartment was. The two agents entered and commenced their search, looking first of all for notes, photographs, correspondence, anything that might help. They'd been there an hour when a NYPD detective showed up, summoned by the FBI office to assist. There were 30,000 policemen in the city, and for a kidnapping, they could all be called upon to assist in the investigation and canvassing.

   "Got a picture?" the detective asked. "Here." The lead agent handed over the one faxed from Gary.

   "You know, I got a call a few weeks ago from somebody in Des Moines, girl's name was . . . Pretloe, I think. Yeah, Anne Pretloe, mid-twenties, legal secretary. Lived a few blocks from here. Just up and disappeared. Didn't show up for work just vanished. Roughly the same age Lind sex, guys," the detective pointed out. "Connection, maybe?"

   "Been checking Jane Does?" the junior agent asked. He didn't have to go further. Their instant thought was the obvious one: Was there a serial killer operating in New York City? That sort of criminal nearly always went after women between eighteen and thirty years of age, as selective a predator as there was anywhere in nature.

   "Yeah, but nothing that fit the Pretloe girl's description, or this one for that matter." He handed the photo back. "This case is a head-scratcher. Find anything?"

   "Not yet," the senior agent replied. "Diary, but nothing useful in it. No photos of men. Just clothes, cosmetics, normal stuff for a girl this age."

   "Prints?"

   A nod. "That's next. We have our guy on the way now." But they all knew that this was a thin reed, after the apartment had been vacant for a month. The oils hat made fingerprints evaporated over time, though there ,,vas some hope here, in a climate-controlled and sealed Apartment.

   "This one's not going to be easy," the NYPD detective observed next.

   "They never are," the senior FBI agent replied.

   "What if there's more than two?" the other FBI agent Asked.

   "Lots of people turn up missing in this town," the detective said. "But I'll run a computer check."

   Subject F5 was a hot little number, Killgore saw. And she liked Chip, too. That wasn't very good news for Chip Smitton, who hadn't been exposed to Shiva by injection, vaccine testing, or the fogging system. No, he'd been exposed by sexual contact only, and now his blood was showing antibodies, too. So, that means of transmission worked also, and better yet, it worked female-to-male, not just male-to-female. Shiva was everything they'd hoped it would be.

   It was distasteful to watch people making love. Not the least bit arousing for him, playing voyeur. Anne Pretloe, F5, was within two days of symptoms, judging by her blood work, eating, drinking, and being very merry right before his eyes on the black and-white monitor. Well, the tranquilizers had lowered every subject's resistance to loose behavior, and there was no telling what she was like in real life, though she certainly knew the techniques well enough.

   Strangely, Killgore had never paid attention to this sort of thing in animal tests. Rats, he imagined, came into season, and when they did, the boy rats and girl rats must have gotten it on, but somehow he'd never noticed. He respected rats as a life-form, but didn't find their sexual congress the least bit interesting, whereas here, he had to admit to himself, he did find his eyes returning to the screen every few seconds. Well, Pretloe, Subject F5, was the cutest of the bunch, and if he'd found her in a singles bar, he might have offered her a drink and said hello and . . . let things develop. But she was doomed, too, as doomed as white, bred-for-the purpose lab rats. Those cute little pink-eyed creatures were used all over the world because they were genetically identical, and so test results in one country would match the test results generated anywhere else in the world. They probably didn't have the wherewithal to survive in the wild, and that was too bad. But their white color would work against them-cats and dogs would spot them far more easily, and that was not a good thing in the wild, was it? And they were an artificial species anyway, not part of Nature's plan, but a work of Man, and therefore unworthy of continuance. A pity they were cute, but that was a subjective, not objective, observation, and Killgore had long since learned to differentiate between the two. After all, Pretloe, F5, was cute, too, and his pity for her was a lingering atavistic attitude on his part, unworthy of a Project member. But that got him thinking as he watched Chip Smitton screw Anne Pretloe. This was the kind of thing Hitler might have done with Jews, saved a small number of them as human lab rats, maybe as crash-test dummies for auto-safety tests .... So, did that make him a Nazi? Killgore thought. They were using F5 and M7 as such . . . but, no, they didn't discriminate on race or creed, or gender, did they? There were no politics involved, really-well, maybe, depending on how one defined the term, not in the way he defined the term. This was science, after all. The whole Project was about science and love of Nature. Project members included all races and categories of people, though not much in the way of religions, unless you considered love of Nature to be a religion . . . which in a way it was, the doctor told himself. Yes, surely it was.

   What they were doing on his TV screen was natural, or nearly so-as it had been largely instigated by mood depressants-but the mechanics certainly were. So were their instincts, he to spread his seed as far as possible, and she to receive his seed-and his own, Killgore's mind went on, to be a predator, and through his depredations to decide which members of that species would live and which would not.

   These two would not live, attractive as both were . . . like the lab rats with their cute white hair and cute pink eyes and twitching white whiskers. Well, none of them would be around much longer, would they? It was aesthetically troubling, but a valid choice in view of the future that they all beheld

CHAPTER 22
COUNTERMEASURES

   "So, nothing else from our Russian friend?" Bill Tawney asked.

   "Nothing," Cyril Holt confirmed. "Tapes of Kirilenko show that he walks to work the same way every day and at exactly the same time, when the streets are crowded, stops in his pub for a pint four nights out of five, and bumps into all manner of people. But all it takes is a minor attempt at disguise and a little knowledge of trade-craft to outfox us, unless we really tighten our coverage, and there's too great a chance that Ivan Petrovich would notice it and simply upgrade his own efforts to remain covert. It's a chance we'd prefer not to take."

   "Quite so," Tawney had to agree, despite his disappointment. "Nothing from other sources?"

   "Other sources" meant whomever the Security Service might have working for them inside the Russian Embassy. There almost had to be someone there, but Holt would not discuss it over a telephone line, encrypted or not, because if there was one thing you had to protect in this business, it was the identity of your sources. Not protecting them could get them killed.

   "No, Bill, nothing. Vanya hasn't spoken over his phone line to Moscow on this subject. Nor has he used his secure fax line. Whatever discussions developed from this incident, well, we do not have even a confirmed face, just that chap in the pub, and that might well have been nothing Three months ago, I had one of my chaps strike up a conversation with him at the pub, and they talked about football – he's a serious fan, and he knows the game quite well, and never even revealed his nationality. His accent is bloody perfect. So that chap in the photo might well be nothing at all just another coincidence. Kirilenko is a professional, Bill. He doesn't make many mistakes. Whatever information came out of this was doubtless written up and couriered off."

   "So we probably have a KGB RIF prowling around London still, probably with whatever information Moscow has on our Mr. Clark, and doing what, we do not know."

   "Correct, Bill," Holt agreed. "I can't say that I like it either, but there you are."

   "What have you turned up on KGB-PIRA contacts?"

   "We have a few things. One photo of someone else from a meeting in Dublin eight years ago, and oral reports of other contacts, with physical description. Some might be the chap in the photo, but the written descriptions fit about a third of male humanity, and we're leery of showing the photos around quite yet." Tawney didn't need to be told why. It was well within the realm of possibility that some of Holt's informants were indeed double-agents, and showing them the photos of the man in the pub might well do nothing more than alert the target of the investigation to the fact that someone knew who he was. That would cause him to become more cautious, perhaps change his appearance, and the net result would be to make things worse instead of better. This was the most complex of games, Tawney reminded himself. And what if the whole thing was nothing more than curiosity on the part of the Russians, merely keeping track of a known intelligence officer on the other side? Hell, everyone did that. It was just a normal part of doing business.

   The bottom line was that they knew what they didn't know no, Tawney thought. They didn't even know that much. They knew that they didn't know something, but they didn't even know what it was that they wanted to find out. What was the significance of this blip of information that had appeared on the scope?

   "What's this for?" Henriksen asked innocently.

   "A fog-cooling system. We got it from your chaps," Aukland said.

   "Huh? I don't understand," the American replied.

   "One of our engineers saw it in – Arizona, I think. It sprays a very fine water mist. The tiny droplets absorb heat energy and evaporate into the atmosphere, has the same effect as air-conditioning, but with a negligible energy expenditure."

   "Ahh," Bill Henriksen said, doing his best to act surprised. "How widely distributed is the system?"

   "Just the tunnels and concourses. The architect wanted to put it all over the stadium, but people objected, said it would interfere with cameras and such," Aukland answered, "too much like a real fog."

   "Okay, I think I need to look at that."

   "Why?"

   "Well, sir, it's a hell of a good way to deliver a chemical agent, isn't it?" The question took the police officer seriously aback.

   "Well . . . yes, I suppose it would be."

   "Good. I have a guy in the company, former officer in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, expert on this sort of thing, degree from MIT. I'll have him check it out ASAP

   "Yes, that is a good idea, Bill. Thank you," Aukland said, kicking himself for not thinking of that on his own Well, he was hiring expertise, wasn't he? And this man certainly seemed to be an expert.

   "Does it get that hot here?"

   "Oh, yes, quite. We expect temperatures in the nineties Fahrenheit, that is. We're supposed to think Celsius nowadays, but I never did learn that."

   "Yeah, me neither," Henriksen noted.

   "Anyway, the architect said that this was an inexpensive way to cool the spectators down, and quite reasonable to install. It feeds off the fire-sprinkler system. Doesn't even use much water for what it does. It's been install, for over a year. We test it periodically. American company, can't recall the name at the moment."

   Cool-Spray of Phoenix, Arizona, Henriksen thought He had the plans for the system in the file cabinet in his office. It would play a crucial role in the Project's plat and had been seen as a godsend from the first moment. Here was the place. Soon would come the time.

   "Heard anything more from the Brits?"

   "We have an inquiry in, but no reply yet." Aukland answered. "It is a very hush-hush project, evidently."

   Henriksen nodded. "Politics, always gets in the way." And with luck it would stay that way.

   "Quite," Aukland agreed, with a nod.

   Detective Lieutenant Mario d'Allessandro punched up his computer and accessed the NYPD central-records file. Sure enough, Mary Bannister was in there, as was Anne Pretloe. Then he set up a search routine, picking gender WOMEN, age eighteen to thirty for starters, and picking the RUN icon with his mouse. The system generated forty-six names, all of which he saved to a file he created for the purpose. The system didn't have photos built in. He'd have to access the paper files for those. He de-selected ten names from Queens and Richmond boroughs for the moment, saving for the moment only Manhattan missing girls. That came down to twenty-one. Next he de-selected African-American women, because if they were dealing with a serial killer, such criminals usually selected clones as victims – the most famous of them, Theodore Bundy, had almost exclusively picked women who parted their hair down the middle, for instance. Bannister and Pretloe were white, single, reasonably attractive, ages twenty-one and twenty-four, and dark-haired. So, eighteen to thirty should be a good straddle, he thought, and he further deselected the names that didn't fit that model.

   Next he opened the department's Jane Doe file, to look up the recovered bodies of murder victims who had not yet been identified. He already knew all of these cases from his regular work. Two fit the search parameters, but neither was Bannister or Pretloe. So this was, for the moment, a dry hole. That was both good and bad news. The two missing women were not definitely dead, and that was the good news. But their bodies could have been cleverly disposed of the Jersey marshes were nearby, and that area had been a prime dumping site for bodies since the turn of the century.

   Next he printed up his list of missing women. He'd want to examine all the paper files, including the photos, with the two FBI agents. Both Pretloe and Bannister had brown hair of roughly the same length, and maybe that was enough of a commonality for a serial killer-but, no, Bannister was still alive, or so the e-mail letter suggested . . . unless the serial killer was the kind of sick person who wanted to taunt the families of his victims. D'Allessandro had never come across one of those before, but serial killers were seriously sick bastards, and you could never really predict the things they might do for personal amusement. If one of those fucks were loose in New York, then it wasn't just the FBI who'd want his ass. Good thing the state of New York finally had a death-penalty statute . . .

   "Yes, I've seen him," Popov told his boss.

   "Really?" John Brightling asked. "How close?"

   "About as close as we are, sir," the Russian replied. "It was not intentional, but it happened. He's a large, powerful man. His wife is a nurse at the local community hospital, and his daughter is a medical doctor, married to one of the other team members, working at the same hospital. She is Dr. Patricia Chavez. Her husband is Domingo Chavez, also a CIA field officer, now assigned to this Rainbow group, probably as a commando leader. Both Clark and Chavez are CIA field officers. Clark was involved in the rescue of the former KGB chairman's wife and daughter from Soviet territory some years ago-you'll recall the story made the press recently. Well, Clark was the officer who got them out. He was also involved in the conflict with Japan, and the death of Mahmoud Hagi Daryaei in Iran. He and Chavez are highly experienced and very capable intelligence officers. It would be very dangerous to underestimate either of them," Popov concluded.

   "Okay, what does that tell us?"

   "It tells us that Rainbow is what it appears to be, a multinational counterterror group whose activities spread all across Europe. Spain is a NATO member, but Austria and Switzerland are not, you will recall. Could they expand their operations to other countries? Certainly, yes. They are a very serious threat to any terrorist operation. It is not," Popov went on, "an organization I would like to have in the field against me. Their expertise in actual 'combat' operations we have seen on television. Behind that will be excellent technical and intelligence support as well. The one cannot exist without the other."

   "Okay. So we know about them. Is it possible that they know about us?" Dr. Brightling asked.

   "Possible, but unlikely," Popov thought. "If that were the case, then you would have agents of your FBI in here to arrest you – and me – for criminal conspiracy. I am not being tracked or followed – well, I do not think that I am. I know what to look for, and I have seen nothing of the sort, but, I must also admit, it is possible that a very careful and expert effort could probably follow me without my noticing it. That is difficult – I have been trained in counter surveillance – but theoretically possible."

   That shook his employer somewhat, Popov saw. He'd just made an admission that he was not perfect. His former supervisors in KGB would have known it beforehand and accepted it as a normal risk of the intelligence trade . . . but those people never had to worry about being arrested and losing their billions of dollars of personal worth.

   "What are the risks?"

  "If you mean what methods can be used against you?. . ." He got a nod. "That means that your telephones could be tapped, and-"

   "My phones are encrypted. The system is supposed to be break-proof. My consultants on that tell me-"

   Popov cut him off with a raised hand. "Sir, do you really think that your government allows the manufacture of encryption systems that it cannot itself break?" he asked, as though explaining something to a child. "The National Security Agency at Fort Meade has some of the brightest mathematicians in the world, and the world's most powerful computers, and if you ever wonder how hard they work, you need only look at the parking lots."

   "Huh? What do you mean?"

   "If the parking lots are filled at seven in the evening, that means they are hard at work on something. Everyone has a car in your country, and parking lots are generally too large to be enclosed and protected from even casual view. It's an easy way for an intelligence officer to see how active one of your government agencies is." And if you were really interested, you found out a few names and addresses, so as to know the car types and tag numbers. The KGB had tracked the head of NSA's "Z" group – the people tasked both to crack and to create encryption systems and codes – that way for over a decade, and the reborn RVS was doubtless doing the same. Popov shook his head. "No, I would not trust a commercially available encoding system. I have my doubts about the systems used by the Russian government. Your people are very clever at cracking cipher systems. They've been so for over sixty years, well before World War Two, and they are allied with the British, who also have a tradition of excellence in that area of expertise. Has no one told you this?" Popov asked in surprise.

   "Well . . . no, I've been told that this system I have here could not be broken because it is a 128-bit-"

   "Ah, yes, the STU-3 standard. That system has been around in your government for about twenty years. Your people have changed to STU-4. Do you think they made that change merely because they wanted to spend money, Dr. Brightling? Or might there have been another reason? When I was in the field for KGB, I only used one-time pads. That is an encryption system only used one time, composed of random transpositions. It cannot be broken, but it is tedious to use. To send a single message that way could take hours. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to use for verbal communications. Your government has a system called TAPDANCE, which is similar in concept, but we never managed to copy it."

   "So, you mean people could be listening in on every phone call I make?"

   Popov nodded. "Of course. Why do you suppose all of our substantive conversations have been made face-to-face?" Now he was really shaken, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich saw. The genius was a babe-in-the-woods. "Now, perhaps, is the time for you to tell me why I have undertaken these missions for you?"

   "Yes, Minister . . . excellent . . . thank you," Bob Aukland said into his cellular phone. He thumbed the END button and put the phone back in his pocket, then turned to Bill Henriksen. "Good news. We'll have that Rainbow group down to consult on our security as well."

   "Oh?" Bill observed. "Well, I guess it can't hurt all that much."

   "Nose a little out of joint?" the cop asked.

   "Not really," Henriksen lied. "I probably know a few of them, and they know me."

   "And your fee will remain the same, Bill," the Aussie said. They headed off to his car, and from there they'd drive to a pub for a few pints before he drove the American off to the airport.

   Oh, shit, the American thought. Once more the Law of Unintended Consequences had risen up to bite him in the ass. His mind went briefly into overdrive, but then persuaded itself that it didn't really matter all that much as long as he did his job right. It might even help, he told himself, almost believing it.

   He couldn't tell Popov, Brightling knew. He trusted him in many ways – hell, what Popov knew could put him in federal prison, even on death row – but to tell him what this was really all about? No, he couldn't risk that. He didn't know Popov's views on the Environment and Nature. So he couldn't predict the Russian's reaction to the project. Popov was dangerous to him in many ways, like a falcon trained to the fist, but still a free agent, willing to kill a quail or a rabbit, perhaps, but never entirely his, always able to fly off and reclaim his previous free life . . . and if he was free to do that, he was also free to give information to others. Not for the first time, Brightling thought about having Bill Henriksen take care of this potential problem. He'd know how. Surely, the former FBI agent knew how to investigate a murder, and thus how to befuddle the investigators as well, and this little problem would go away.

   Assets, Brightling thought next. What other things could he do to make his position and his Project more secure? If this Rainbow was a problem, would it be possible to strike at it directly? To destroy it at best, or at worst, distract it, force it to focus in another direction?

   "I have to think that one through first, Dmitriy," he said finally.

   Popov nodded soberly, wondering what thoughts had gone through his employer's mind in the fifteen seconds he'd taken to consider the question. Now it was his turn to be concerned. He'd just informed John Brightling of the operational dangers involved in using him, Popov, to set up the terrorist incidents, and especially of the flaws in his communications security. The latter, especially, had frightened the man. Perhaps he ought to have warned him earlier, but somehow the subject had never arisen, and Dmitriy Arkadeyevich now realized that it had been a serious error on his part. Well, perhaps not that great an error. Operational security was not all that bad. Only two people knew what was happening . . . well, probably that Henriksen fellow as well. But Bill Henriksen was former FBI, and if he were an informer, then they'd all be in jail now. The FBI would have all the evidence it needed for a major felony investigation and trial, and would not allow things to proceed any further unless there were some vast criminal conspiracy yet to be uncovered

   –but how much larger would it have to be than conspiracy to commit murder? Moreover, they would have to know what the conspiracy was, else they would have no reason to hold off on their arrests. No, security here was good. And though the American government had the technical ability to decode Brightling's supposedly secure phone lines, even to tap them required a court order, and evidence was needed for that, and that evidence would itself be sufficient to put several people in death row cages. Including me, Popov reminded himself.

   What was going on here? the Russian demanded. He'd just thought it through enough to realize something. Whatever his employer was doing, it was larger than mass murder. What the hell could that be? Most worrisome of all, Popov had undertaken the missions in the hope – a realized hope, to be sure – of making a good deal of money off the job. He now had over a million dollars in his Bern bank account. Enough for him to return to Mother Russia and live very well indeed . . . but not enough for what he really wanted. So strange to discover that a "million," that magic word to describe a magic number, was something that, once you had it . . . wasn't magical at all. It was just a number from which you had to subtract to buy the things you wanted. A million American dollars wasn't enough to buy the home he wanted, the car he wanted, the food he wanted, and then have enough left over to sustain the lifestyle he craved for the remainder of his life – except, probably, in Russia, where he did not, unfortunately, wish to live. To visit, yes; to stay, no. And so Dmitriy was trapped, too.

   Trapped into what, he didn't know. And so here he was, sitting across the desk from someone who, like himself, was also busily trying to think things through, but neither of them knew where to go just yet. One of them knew what was happening and the other did not-but the other one knew how to make things happen, and his employer did not. It was an interesting and somewhat elegant impasse.

   And so they just sat there for a minute or so, each regarding the other, and if not not knowing what to say, then unwilling to take the risk of saying what they needed to. Finally, Brightling broke the silence.

   "I really need to think this situation through. Give me a day or so to do that?"

   "Certainly." Popov stood, shook hands, and walked out of the office. A player for most of his adult life in that most interesting and fascinating of games, he realized now that he was in a new game, with new parameters. He'd taken possession of a vast sum of money-but an amount that his employer had regarded as trivial. He was involved in an operation whose import was larger than that of mass murder. That was not entirely new to him, Popov realized on reflection. He'd once served a nation called by its ultimately victorious enemy the Evil Empire, and that cold war had been greater in size than mass murder. But Brightling was not a nation-state, and however huge his resources might be, they were minuscule in comparison with those of any advanced country. The great question remained-what the hell was this man trying to achieve?

   And why did he need the services of Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov to achieve it?

   Henriksen caught the Qantas flight for Los Angeles. He had the better part of a day ahead of him in his first-class seat, a good deal of time to consider what he knew.

   The plan for the Olympics was essentially in the bag. The fogging system was in place, which was just plain perfect for the Project's purposes. He'd have one of his men check out the system, and thereby get himself in place for the delivery part on the last day. It was that simple. He had the consulting contract needed to make it all happen. But now this Rainbow bunch would be down there as well. How intrusive might they be? Damn, there was just no telling -on that one. Worst case, it was possible that something small could toss a wrench into the works. It so often happened that way. He knew that from his time in the FBI. A random police patrol, a man on foot or in a radio-car could wander by and cause a well-planned robbery to stop. Or in the investigation phase, the unexpectedly sharp memory of a random passerby, or a casual remark made by a subject to a friend, could come to the right investigator and blow a case wide open. Boom, that simple-it had happened a million times. And the breaks always went to the other side, didn't they?

   And so, from his perspective, he knew he had to eliminate the chance for such random events. He'd been so close to it. The operational concept had been brilliant it had mainly been his from the beginning; John Brightling had merely funded it. Getting the terrorists to operate in Europe had raised the international consciousness about the threat, and that had allowed him and his company to get the contract to oversee the security for the Olympics. But then this damned Rainbow team had appeared, and handled three major incidents-and what asshole had instigated the third one? he demanded of himself-so well that now the Australians had asked them to come down for a look. And if they came down, they'd stay and keep looking, and if that happened, they might be there for the games, and if they wondered about chemical weapons. then they might spot the perfect delivery system for them and-

   A lot of ifs, Henriksen told himself. A lot of ifs. A lot of things had to go wrong for the Project to be thwarted. There was comfort in that thought. Maybe he could meet with the Rainbow people and direct them away from the threat. After all, he had a chemical weapons expert on the payroll, and they probably did not, and that gave him the edge, didn't it? With a little cleverness, his man could do his job right in front of them and not even be seen to have done it. That's what planning was for, wasn't it?

   Relax, he told himself, as the stewardess came around with drinks, and he had another glass of wine. Relax. But, no, he couldn't do that. He had too much experience as an investigator to accept the mere chance of random interference without consideration of the possible consequences. If his man were stopped, even by accident, then it was also possible that the entire Project could be uncovered. And that would mean more than failure. It would mean lifelong imprisonment at best, which was not something he was prepared to accept. No, he was committed to the Project for more than one reason. It was his task to save the world first of all-and second, he wanted to be around to enjoy what he'd had a hand in saving.

   And so, risks of any type and any magnitude were unacceptable. He had to come up with a way to eliminate them. The key to that was the Russian, Popov. He wondered what that spook had discovered on his trip to England. With the right information, he could devise a plan to deal with that Rainbow bunch directly. Wouldn't that be interesting? He settled back into his seat and chose a movie to semi watch, to disguise what he was doing. Yes. he decided ten minutes later, with the right people and the right assets, it could work.

   Popov was eating dinner alone in a disreputable-looking restaurant at the southern end of Manhattan. The food was reportedly good, but the place looked as though rats cleaned up the floor at night. But the vodka here was superb, and as usual, a few drinks helped him think abstractly.

   What did he know about John Brightling? Well, the man was a scientific genius and also very impressive in his business skills. He'd been married some years ago to another bright person, now the presidential science advisor, but the marriage had ended badly, and now his employer flitted from bed to bed, one of the most eligible bachelors in America-and with the financial statement to prove it-with his photo frequently in the society pages, which must have been the cause of some discomfort to his former wife.

   He had good connections in the community of people admitted into classified matters. This Rainbow group was evidently "black," but he'd gotten its name and the name of its commander in a day. Just one day, Popov reminded himself. That was beyond impressive. It was startling. How the hell had he accomplished that?

   And he was into an operation whose implications were more serious than mass murder. That was where his mind came to a befuddled halt once again. It was like walking down a busy street and then coming up against a blank wall. What could a businessman be doing that was more serious than that? More serious than the risk of losing his freedom, even the death penalty? If it were greater than mass murder, then did the plan contemplate even larger murder? But to serve what end? To start a war, perhaps, but he was not a chief of state, and could not, therefore, start a war. Was Brightling a spy, feeding vital national security class information to a foreign government-but in return for what? How could anyone, government or not, bribe a billionaire? No, money was out. What did that leave?

   There was a classic acronym for the reasons for making treason against your native land: MICE. Money, Ideology, Conscience, and Ego. Money was out. Brightling had too much of that. Ideology was always the best motivation for a traitor/spy-people would risk their lives far more readily for their closely held beliefs than for filthy lucre-but what ideology did this man have? Popov didn't know. Next came Conscience. But Conscience against what? What wrong was he trying to right? There could hardly be one, could there? That left Ego. Well, Brightling had a capacious ego, but ego assumed the motive of revenge against some more powerful person or institution that had wronged him. Who could possibly have hurt billionaire John Brightling, so much that his material success was not a sufficient salve against the wound? Popov waved to the waiter for another vodka. He'd be taking a cab home tonight.

   No, Money was out. So was Ego. That left Ideology and Conscience. What beliefs or what wrong could motivate a man to do murder on a large scale? In the former case, Brightling was not a religious fanatic. In the latter, he had no overt dissatisfaction with his country. And so while Money and Ego could readily be dismissed, Ideology and Conscience were almost as unlikely, and Popov did not dismiss them only because – why? he asked himself. Because he only had four possible motivations, unless Brightling was a total madman, and he wasn't that, was he?

   No, Popov told himself. His employer was not mentally unbalanced. He was thoughtful in his every action, and though his perspective, especially on the issue of money, was very different from his own-well, he had so much that such a difference in outlook was understandable; it was just a matter of perspective, and to him a million dollars was like pocket change to Dmitriy Arkadeyevich. Could he then be some sort of madman who . . . like a chief of state, a new Saddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler or Josef Vissarionovich Stalin-but, no, he was not a chief of state, had no aspirations for such a thing, and only those men could entertain that form of madness.

   In his career in the KGB, Popov had dealt with all manner of curiosities. He'd played the game against world-class adversaries and never once been caught, never once failed in an assignment. As a result, he considered himself a clever sort. That made the current impasse all the more frustrating. He had over a million dollars in a Bern bank. He had the prospect of more in due course. He'd set up two terrorist missions that had accomplished their goal--had they? His employer evidently thought so, despite the abject tactical failure of both. But he knew even less now, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich told himself. The more he delved into it, the less he knew. And the less he knew, the unhappier he became. He'd asked his employer more than once the reason for his activities, but Brightling wasn't telling. It had to be something vast . . . but what the devil was it?

   They practiced the breathing exercises. Ding found it amusing, but he was also persuaded that it was necessary. Tall and rangy though Patsy was, she was not the athlete he'd become to lead Team-2, and so she had to practice how to breathe to make the baby come more easily, and practice did make perfect. And so they sat on the floor of their house, both with their legs spread, huffing and puffing as though to destroy the home of a mythical pig, and it was all he could do not to laugh.

   "Deep, cleansing breath," Domingo said, after timing the notional contraction. Then he reached for her hand and bent forward to kiss it. "How we doing, Pats?"

   "I'm ready, Ding. I just want it to happen and be over."

   "Worried?"

   "Well," Patsy Clark Chavez, M.D., replied, "I know it's going to hurt some, and I'd just as soon have it behind me, y'know?"

   "Yeah." Ding nodded. The anticipation of unpleasant things was usually worse than their realization, at least on the physical side. He knew that from experience, but she didn't yet. Maybe that was why second deliveries were almost always easier than the first. You knew what to expect, knew that though it was uncomfortable you'd make it through, and have a baby at the end of it. That was the key to the whole thing for Domingo. To be a father! To have a child, to begin the greatest of all adventures, raising a new life, doing the best you could, making some mistakes, but learning from all of them, and ultimately presenting to society a new, responsible citizen to carry on. That, he was sure, was what it meant to be a man. Oh, sure, carrying a gun and doing his job was important, too, since he was now a guardian of society, a righter of wrongs, a protector of the innocent, one of the forces of order from which came civilization itself, but this was his chance to be personally involved in what civilization really was, the raising of kids in the right way, educating and guiding them to do the Right Thing, even at three in the morning and half asleep. Maybe the kid would be a spook/soldier like him, or maybe even better, a physician like Pats, an important and good part of society, serving others. Those things could only happen if he and Pats did the job right, and that responsibility was the greatest that any person could undertake. Domingo looked forward to it, lusted to hold his child in his arms, to kiss and cuddle, to change diapers and clean bottoms. He'd already assembled the crib, decorated the walls of the nursery with pink and blue bunnies, and bought toys to distract the little beast, and though all of these things seemed incongruous with his regular life, both he and the men of Rainbow knew different, for all of them had children as well, and for them the covenant was exactly the same. Eddie Price had a boy of fourteen years, somewhat rebellious and decidedly headstrong probably just as his father had once been-but also bright enough to question everything to seek his own answers, which he would find in due course, just as his father had done. The kid had "soldier" written all over him, Ding thought . . . but with luck he'd go to school first and become an officer, as Price should have done, and would have done in America. Here the system was different, though, and so he'd become a superb command sergeant major, Ding's most trusted subordinate, always ready to offer his thoughts, and then execute his orders perfectly. Yes, there was much to look forward to, Ding told himself, still holding Patsy's hand in his own.

   "Scared?"

   "Not scared, a little nervous," Patsy admitted.

   "Honey, if it were all that hard, how come there's so many people in the world?"

   "Spoken like a man," Dr. Patricia Chavez noted. "It's easy for you to say. You don't have to do it."

   "I'll be there to help." her husband promised.

   "You better be!"