Chapter 23
Movement

   "We got these last night." Priorities had changed somewhat at CIA. Ryan could tell. The man going over the photos with him was going gray, wore rimless glasses and a bow tie. Garters on his sleeves would not have seemed out of place. Marty stood in the corner and kept his mouth shut. "We figure it's one of these three camps, right?"
   "Yeah, the others are identified." Ryan nodded. This drew a snort.
   "You say so, son."
   "Okay, these two are active, this one as of last week, and this one two days ago."
   "What about -20, the Action-Directe camp?" Cantor asked.
   "Shut down ever since the Frenchies went in. I saw the tape of that." The man smiled in admiration. "Anyway, here."
   It was one of the rare daylight photographs, even in color. The firing range adjacent to the camp had six men standing in line. The angle prevented them from seeing if the men held guns or not.
   "Weapons training?" Ryan asked cautiously.
   "Either that or they're taking a leak by the numbers." This was humor.
   "Wait a minute, you said these came in last night."
   "Look at the sun angle," the man said derisively.
   "Oh. Early morning."
   "Around midnight our time. Very good," the man observed. Amateurs, he thought. Everybody thinks he can read a recon photo! "You can't see any guns, but see these little points of light here? That might be sunlight reflecting off ejected cartridge brass. Okay, we have six people here. Probably Northern Europeans because they're so pale – see this one here with the sunburn, his arm looks a little pink? All appear to be male, from the short hair and style of dress. Okay, now the question is, who the hell are they?"
   "They're not Action-Directe," Marty said.
   "How do you know that?" Ryan asked.
   "The ones who got picked up are no longer with us. They were given trials by military tribunal and executed two weeks ago."
   "Jesus!" Ryan turned away. "I didn't want to know that, Marty."
   "Those who asked had clergy in attendance. I thought that was decent of our colleagues." He paused for a moment, then went on: "It turns out that French law allows for that sort of trial under very special circumstances. So despite what we both thought all the time, it was all done by the book. Feel better?"
   "Some," Ryan admitted on reflection. It might not have made a great deal of difference to the terrorists, but at least the formality of law had been observed, and that was one of the things "civilization" meant.
   "Good. A couple sang like canaries beforehand, too. DGSE was able to bag two more members outside of Paris – this hasn't made the papers yet – plus a barnful of guns and explosives. They may not be out of business, but they've been hurt."
   "All right," the man in the bow tie acknowledged. "And this is the guy who tumbled to it?"
   "All because he likes to see tits from three hundred miles away," Cantor replied.
   "How come nobody else saw that first?" Ryan would have preferred that someone else had done all this.
   "Because there aren't enough people in my section. I just got authority to hire ten new ones. I've already got them picked out. They're people who're leaving the Air Force. Pros."
   "Okay, what about the other camp?"
   "Here." A new photo came into view. "Pretty much the same thing. We have two people visible –"
   "One's a girl," Ryan said at once.
   "One appears to have shoulder-length hair," the photo expert agreed. He went on: "That doesn't necessarily mean it's a girl." Jack thought about that, looking at the figure's stance and posture.
   "If we assume it's a girl, what does that tell us?" he asked Marty.
   "You tell me."
   "We have no indication that the ULA has female members, but we known that the PIRA does. This is the camp – remember that jeep that was driving from one to the other and was later seen parked at this camp?" Ryan paused before going on. 0h, what the hell . . . He grabbed the photo of the six people on the gun range. "This is the one."
   "And what the hell are you basing that on?" the photo-intel man asked.
   "Call it a strong hunch," Ryan replied.
   "That's fine. The next time I go to the track I'll bring you along to pick my horses for me. Listen, the thing about these photos is, what you see is all you got. If you read too much into these photos, you end up making mistakes. Big ones. What you have here is six people lined up, probably firing guns. That's all."
   "Anything else?" Cantor asked.
   "We'll have a night pass at about 2200 local time – this afternoon our time. I'll have the shots to you right after they come in."
   "Very good. Thanks," Cantor said. The man left the room to go back to his beloved photo equipment.
   "I believe you call that sort of person an empiricist," Ryan observed after a moment.
   Cantor chuckled. "Something like that. He's been in the business since we had U-2s flying over Russia. He's a real expert. The important thing about that is, he doesn't say he's sure about something until he's really sure. What he said's true, you can easily read too much into these things."
   "Fine, but you agree with me."
   "Yeah." Cantor sat on the desk next to Ryan and examined the photo through a magnifying glass.
   The six men lined up on the firing line were not totally clear. The hot air rising off the desert even in early morning was disturbed enough to ruin the clarity of the image. It was like looking through the shimmering mirage on a flat highway. The satellite camera had a very high "shutter" speed – actually the photoreceptors were totally electronic – that cancelled most of the distortion, but all they really had was a poorly focused, high-angle image that showed man-shapes. You could tell what they were wearing – tan short-sleeved shirts and long pants – and the color of their hair with total certainty. A glimmer off one man's wrist seemed to indicate a watch of bracelet. The face of one man was darker than it should have been – his uncovered forearm was quite pale – and that probably indicated a short beard . . . Miller has a beard now, Ryan reminded himself.
   "Damn, if this was only a little better . . . "
   "Yeah," Marty agreed. "But what you see here is the result of thirty years of work and God only knows how much money. In cold climates it comes out a little better, but you can't ever recognize a face."
   "This is it, Marty. This is the one. We have to have something that confirms that, or at least confirms something."
   " 'Fraid not. Our French colleagues asked the people they captured. The answer they got was that the camps are totally isolated from one another. When the groups meet, it's almost always on neutral ground. They didn't even know for sure that there was a camp here."
   "That tells us something!"

  "The thing about the car? It could have been somebody from the Army, you know. The guy who oversees the guards, maybe. It didn't have to be one of the players who drove from this one to the Provisionals' camp. In fact, there is ample reason to believe that it wasn't. Compartmentalization is a logical security measure. It makes sense for the camps to be isolated from one another. These people know about the importance of security, and even if they didn't before, the French op was a gilt-edge reminder."
   Ryan hadn't thought about that. The raid on the Action-Directe camp had to have an effect on the others, didn't it?
   "You mean we shot ourselves in the foot?"
   "No, we sent a message that was worth sending. So far as we can determine, nobody knows what actually happened there. We have reason to believe that the suspicion on the ground is that a rival outfit settled a score – not all of these groups like each other. So, if nothing else, we've fostered some suspicions among the groups themselves, and vis-a-vis their hosts. That sort of thing could break some information loose for us, but it'll take time to find out."
   "Anyway, now that we know that this camp is likely to be the one we want, what are we going to do about it?"
   "We're working on that. I can't say any more."
   "Okay." Ryan gestured to his desk. "You want some coffee, Marty?"
   Cantor's face took on a curious expression. "No, I'm off coffee for a while."
   What Cantor didn't say was that a major operation had been laid on. It was fairly typical in that very few of the participants actually knew what was going on. A Navy carrier battle group centered on USS Saratoga was due to sail west out of the Mediterranean Sea, and would pass north of the Gulf of Sidra in several days. As was routine, the formation was being trailed by a Soviet AGI – a fishing trawler that gathers electronic intelligence instead of mackerel – which would give information to the Libyans. When the carrier was directly north of Tripoli, in the middle of the night, a French-controlled agent would interrupt electrical power to some radar installations soon after the carrier started conducting nighttime flight operations. This was expected to get some people excited, although the carrier group Commander had no idea that he was doing anything other than routine flight ops. It was hoped that the same team of French commandos that had raided Camp -20 would also be able to slip into Camp -18. Marty couldn't tell Ryan any of this, but it was a measure of how well Action-Directe had been damaged that the French were willing to give the Americans such cooperation. While it hadn't exactly been the first example of international cooperation, it was one of three such operations that had actually been successful. The CIA had helped to avenge the murder of a friend of the French President. Whatever the differences between the two countries, debts of honor were still paid in full. It appealed to Cantor's sense of propriety, but was something known to only twenty people within the Agency. The op was scheduled to run in four days. A senior case officer from the Operations Directorate was even now working with the French paratroopers who, he reported, were eager to demonstrate their prowess yet again. With luck, the terrorist group that had had the temerity to commit murder within the United States and the United Kingdom would be hurt by the troops of yet another nation. If successful, the precedent would signal a new and valuable development in the struggle against terrorism.

   Dennis Cooley was working on his ledger book. It was early. The shop wasn't open for business yet, and this was the time of day for him to set his accounts straight. It wasn't very hard. His shop didn't have all that many transactions. He hummed away to himself, not knowing what annoyance this habit caused for the man listening to the microphone planted behind one of his bookshelves. Abruptly his humming stopped and his head came up. What was wrong . . .?
   The little man nearly leaped from his chair when he smelled the acrid smoke. He scanned the room for several seconds before looking up. The smoke was coming from the ceiling light fixture. He darted to the wall switch and slapped his hand on it. A blue flash erupted from the wall, giving him a powerful electric shock that numbed his arm to the elbow. He stared at his arm in surprise, flexing his fingers and looking at the smoke that seemed to be trailing off. He didn't wait to see it stop. Cooley had a fire extinguisher in the back room. He got it and came back, pulled the safety pin, and aimed the device at the switch. No smoke there anymore. Next he stood on his chair to get close to the ceiling fixture, but already the smoke was nearly gone. The smell remained. Cooley stood on the chair for over a minute, his knees shaking as the chair moved slightly under him, holding the extinguisher and trying to decide what to do. Call the fire brigade? But there wasn't any fire – was there? All his valuable books . . . He'd been trained in many things, but fighting fires was not one of them. He was breathing heavily now, nearly panicked until he finally decided that there wasn't anything to be panicked about. He turned to see three people staring at him through the glass with curious expressions.
   He lowered the extinguisher with a shamefaced grin and gestured comically to the spectators. The light was off. The switch was off. The fire, if it had been a fire, was gone. He'd call the building's electrician. Cooley opened the door to explain what was wrong to his fellow shop owners. One remarked that the wiring in the arcade was horribly out of date. It was something Cooley hadn't ever thought about. Electricity was electricity. You flipped the switch and the light went on, and that was that. It annoyed him that something so reliable, wasn't. A minute later he called the building manager, who promised that an electrician would be there in half an hour.
   The man arrived forty minutes later, apologizing for being held up in traffic. He stood for a moment, admiring the bookshelves.
   "Smells like a wire burned out," he judged next. "You're lucky, sir. That frequently causes a fire."
   "How difficult will it be to fix?"
   "I expect that I'll have to replace the wiring. Ought to have been done years ago. This old place – well, the electric service is older than I am, and that's too old by half." He smiled.
   Cooley showed him to the fuse box in the back room, and the man went to work. Dennis was unwilling to use his table lamp, and sat in the semidarkness while the tradesman went to work.
   The electrician flipped off the outside master switch and examined the fuse box. It still had the original inspection tag, and when he rubbed off the dust, he read off the date: 1919. The man shook his head in amazement. Almost seventy bloody years! He had to remove some items to get at the wall, and was surprised to see that there was some recent plasterwork. It was as good a place to start as any. He didn't want to damage the wall any more than he had to. With hammer and chisel he broke into the new plaster, and there was the wire . . .
   But it wasn't the right one, he thought. It had plastic insulation, not the gutta-percha used in his grandfather's time. It wasn't in quite the right place, either. Strange, he thought. He pulled on the wire. It came out easily.
   "Mr. Cooley, sir?" he called. The shop owner appeared a moment later. "Do you know what this is?"

  "Bloody hell!" the detective said in the room upstairs. "Bloody fucking hell!" He turned to his companion, a look of utter shock on his face. "Call Commander Owens!"

   "I've never seen anything like this." He cut off the end and handed it over. The electrician did not understand why Cooley was so pale.
   Neither had Cooley, but he knew what it was. The end of the wire showed nothing, just a place where the polyvinyl insulation stopped, without the copper core that one expects to see in electrical circuitry. Hidden in the end was a highly sensitive microphone. The shop owner composed himself after a moment, though his voice was somewhat raspy.
   "I have no idea. Carry on."
   "Yes, sir." The electrician resumed his search for the power line.
   Cooley had already lifted his telephone and dialed a number.
   "Hello?"
   "Beatrix?"
   "Good morning, Mr. Dennis. How are you today?"
   "Can you come into the shop this morning? I have a small emergency."
   "Certainly." She lived only a block from the Holloway Road tube station. The Piccadilly Line ran almost directly to the shop. "I can be there in fifteen minutes."
   "Thank you, Beatrix. You're a love," he added before he hung up. By this time Cooley's mind was racing at mach-1. There was nothing in the shop or his home that could incriminate him. He lifted the phone again and hesitated. His instructions under these circumstances were to call a number he had memorized – but if there were a microphone in his office, his phone . . . and his home phone . . . Cooley was sweating now despite the cool temperature. He commanded himself to relax. He'd never said anything compromising on either phone – had he? For all his expertise and discipline, Cooley had never faced danger, and he was beginning to panic. It took all of his concentration to focus on his operational procedures, the things he had learned and practiced for years. Cooley told himself that he had never deviated from them. Not once. He was sure of that. By the time he stopped shaking, the bell rang.
   It was Beatrix, he saw. Cooley grabbed his coat.
   "Will you be back later?"
   "I'm not sure. I'll call you." He went right out the door, leaving his clerk with a very curious look.

   It had taken ten minutes to locate James Owens, who was in his car south of London. The Commander gave immediate orders to shadow Cooley and to arrest him if it appeared that he was attempting to leave the country. Two men were already watching the man's car and were ready to trail him. Two more were sent to the arcade, but the detectives arrived just as he walked out, and were on the wrong side of the street. One hopped out of the car and followed, expecting him to turn onto Berkeley Street toward his travel agent. Instead, Cooley ducked into the tube station. The detective was caught off guard and raced down the entrance on his side of the street. The crowd of morning commuters made spotting his short target virtually impossible. In under a minute, the officer was sure that his quarry had caught a train that he had been unable to get close to. Cooley had escaped.
   The detective ran back to the street and put out a radio call to alert the police at Heathrow airport, where this underground line ended – Cooley always flew, unless he drove his own car – and to get cars to all the underground stations on the Piccadilly Line. There simply wasn't enough time.
   Cooley got off at the next station, as his training had taught him, and took a cab to Waterloo Station. There he made a telephone call.
   "Five-five-two-nine," the voice answered.
   "Oh, excuse me, I was trying to get six-six-three-zero. Sorry." There followed two seconds of hesitation on the other side of the connection.
   "Oh . . . That's quite all right," the voice assured him in a tone that was anything but all right.
   Cooley replaced the phone and walked to a train. It was everything he could do not to look over his shoulder.

   "This is Geoffrey Watkins," he said as he lifted the phone.
   "Oh, I beg your pardon," the voice said. "I was trying to get Mr. Titus. Is this six-two-nine-one?" All contacts are broken until further notice, the number told him. Not known if you are in danger. Will advise if possible.
   "No, this is six-two-one-nine," he answered. Understood. Watkins hung the phone up and booked out his window. His stomach felt as though a ball of refrigerated lead had materialized there. He swallowed twice, then reached for his tea. For the rest of the morning, it was hard to concentrate on the Foreign Office white paper he was reading. He needed two stiff drinks with lunch to settle himself down.

   By noon, Cooley was in Dover, aboard a cross-channel ferry. He was fully alert now, and sat in a corner seat on the upper deck, looking over the newspaper in his hands to see if anyone was watching him. He'd almost bearded the hovercraft to Calais, but decided against it at the last moment. He had enough cash for the Dover-Dunkerque ferry, but not the more expensive hovercraft, and he didn't want to leave a paper trail behind. It was only two and a quarter hours in any case. Once in France, he could catch a train to Paris, then start flying. He started to feel secure for the first time in hours, but was able to suppress it easily enough. Cooley had never known this sort of fear before, and it left a considerable aftertaste. The quiet hatred that had festered for years now ate at him like an acid. They had made him run. They had spied on him! Because of all his training, all the precautions that he'd followed assiduously, and all the professional skill that he'd employed, Cooley had never seriously considered the possibility that he would be turned. He had thought himself too skillful for that. That he was wrong enraged him, and for the first time in his life, he wanted to lash out himself. He'd lost his bookshop and with it all the books he loved, and this, too, had been taken from him by the bloody Brits! He folded the paper neatly and set it down in his lap while the ferry pulled into the English Channel, placid with the summer sun overhead. His bland face stared out at the water with a gaze as calm as a man in contemplation of his garden while he fantasized images of blood and death.

   Owens was as furious as anyone had ever seen him. The surveillance of Cooley had been so easy, so routine – but that was no excuse, he told his men. That harmless-looking little poof, as Ashley had called him, had slipped away from his shadowers as adroitly as someone trained at Moscow Center itself. There were men at every international airport in Britain clutching pictures of Cooley, and if he used his credit card to purchase any kind of ticket, the computers would notify Scotland Yard at once, but Owens had a sickening feeling that the man was already out of the country. The Commander of C-13 dismissed his people.
   Ashley was in the room, too, and his people had been caught equally off guard. He and Owens shared a look of anger mixed with despair.
   A detective had left the tape of a phone call to Geoffrey Watkins made less than an hour after Cooley disappeared. Ashley played it. It lasted all of twenty seconds. And it wasn't Cooley's voice. If it had been, they would have arrested Watkins then and there. For all their effort, they still did not have a single usable piece of evidence on Geoffrey Watkins.
   "There is a Mr. Titus in the building. The voice even gave the correct number. By all rights it could have been a simple wrong number."
   "But it wasn't, of course."

   "That is how it's done, you know. You have pre-set messages that are constructed to sound entirely harmless. Whoever trained these chaps knew what they were about. What about the shop?"
   "The girl Beatrix knows absolutely nothing. We have people searching the shop at this moment, but so far they've found nothing but old bloody books. Same story at his flat." Owens stood and spoke in a voice full of perverse wonder. "An electrician . . . Months of work, gone because he yanks the wrong wire."
   "He'll turn up. He could not have had a great deal of cash. He must use his credit card."
   "He's out of the country already. Don't say he isn't. If he's clever enough for what we know he's done –"
   "Yes." Ashley nodded reluctant agreement. "One doesn't always win, James."
   "It is so nice to hear that!" Owens snapped out his reply. "These bastards have outguessed us every step of the way. The Commissioner is going to ask me how it is that we couldn't get our thumbs out in time, and there is no answer to that question."
   "So what's the next step, then?"
   "At least we know what he looks like. We . . . we share what we know with the Americans, all of it. I have a meeting scheduled with Murray this evening. He's hinted that they have something operating that he's not able to talk about, doubtless some sort of CIA op."
   "Agreed. Is it here or there?"
   "There." Owens paused. "I am getting sick of this place."
   "Commander, you should measure your successes against your failures," Ashley said. "You're the best man we've had in this office in some years."
   Owens only grunted at that remark. He knew it was true. Under his leadership, C-13 had scored major coups against the Provisionals. But in this job, as in so many others, the question one's superiors always asked was, What have you accomplished today? Yesterday was ancient history.

   "Watkins' suspected contact has flown," he announced three hours later.
   "What happened?" Murray closed his eyes halfway through the explanation and shook his head sadly. "We had the same sort of thing happen to us," he said after Owens finished. "A renegade CIA officer. We were watching his place, and let things settle into a comfortable routine, and then – zip! He snookered the surveillance team. He turned up in Moscow a week later. It happens, Jimmy."
   "Not to me," Owens almost snarled. "Not until now, that is."
   "What's he look like?" Owens handed a collection of photographs across the desk. Murray flipped through them. "Mousy little bastard, isn't he? Almost bald." The FBI man considered this for a moment, then lifted his phone and punched in four numbers. "Fred? Dan. You want to come down to my office for a minute?"
   The man arrived a minute later. Murray didn't identify him as a member of the CIA and Owens didn't ask. He didn't have to. He'd given over two copies of each photo.
   Fred – one of the men from "down the hall" – took his photos and looked at them. "Who's he supposed to be?"
   Owens explained briefly, ending, "He's probably out of the country by now."
   "Well, if he turns up in any of our nets, we'll let you know," Fred promised, and left.
   "Do you know what they're up to?" Owens asked Murray.
   "No. I know something is happening. The Bureau and the Agency have a joint task force set up, but it's compartmented, and I don't need to know all of it yet."
   "Did your chaps have a part in the raid on Action-Directe?"
   "I don't know what you're talking about," Murray said piously. How the hell did you hear about that, Jimmy?
   "I thought as much," Owens replied. Bloody security! "Dan, we are concerned here with the personal safety of –"
   Murray held his hands up like a man at bay. "I know, I know. And you're right, too. We ought to cut your people in on this. I'll call the Director myself."
   The phone rang. It was for Owens.
   "Yes?" The Commander of C-13 listened for a minute before hanging up. "Thank you." A sigh. "Dan, he's definitely on the continent. He used a credit card to purchase a railway ticket. Dunkerque to Paris, three hours ago."
   "Have the French pick him up?"
   "Too late. The train arrived twenty minutes ago. He's completely gone now. Besides, we have nothing to arrest him for, do we?"
   "And Watkins has been warned off."
   "Unless that was a genuinely wrong number, which I rather doubt, but try to prove that in a court of law!"
   "Yeah." Judges didn't understand any instinct but their own.
   "And don't tell me that you can't win them all! That's what they pay me to do." Owens looked down at the rug, then back up. "Please excuse me for that."
   "Aah!" Murray waved it off. "You've had bad days before. So have I. It's part of the business we're in. What we both need at a time like this is a beer. Come on downstairs, and I'll treat you to a burger."
   "When will you call your Director?"
   "It's lunchtime over there. He always has a meeting going over lunch. We'll let it wait a few hours."

   Ryan had lunch with Cantor that day in the CIA cafeteria. It could have been the eating place in any other government building. The food was just as unexciting. Ryan decided to try the lasagna, but Marty stuck with fruit salad and cake. It seemed an odd diet until Jack watched him take a tablet before eating. He washed it down with milk.
   "Ulcers, Marty?"
   "What makes you say that?"
   "I'm married to a doc, remember? You just took a Tagamet. That's for ulcers."
   "This place gets to you after a while," Cantor explained. "My stomach started acting up last year and didn't get any better. Everyone in my family comes down with it sooner or later. Bad genes, I guess. The medication helps some, but the doctor says that I need a less stressful environment." A snort.
   "You do work long hours," Ryan observed.
   "Anyway, my wife got offered a teaching position at the University of Texas – she's a mathematician. And to sweeten the deal they offered me a place in the Political Science Department. The pay's better than it is here, too. I've been here twelve years," he said quietly. "Long time."
   "So what do you feel bad about? Teaching's great. I love it, and you'll be good at it. You'll even have a good football team to watch."
   "Yeah, well, she's already down there, and I leave in a few weeks. I'm going to miss this place."
   "You'll get over it. Imagine being able to walk into a building without getting permission from a computer. Hey, I walked away from my first job."
   "But this one's important." Cantor drank his milk and looked across the table. "What are you going to do?"
   "Ask me after the baby is born." Ryan didn't want to dwell on this question.
   "The Agency needs people like you, Jack. You've got a feel for things. You don't think and act like a bureaucrat. You say what you think. Not everyone in this building does that, and that's why the Admiral likes you."
   "Hell, I haven't talked to him since –"

  "He knows what you're doing." Cantor smiled.
   "Oh." Ryan understood. "So that's it."
   "That's right. The old man really wants you, Jack. You still don't know how important that photo you tripped over was, do you?"
   "All I did was show it to you, Marty," Ryan protested. "You're the one who really made the connection."
   "You did exactly the right thing, exactly what an analyst is supposed to do. There was more brains in that than you know. You have a gift for this sort of work. If you can't see it, I can." Cantor examined the lasagna and winced. How could anybody eat that greasy poison? "Two years from now you'll be ready for my job."
   "One bridge at a time, Marty." They let it go at that.
   An hour later Ryan was back in his office. Cantor came in.
   "Another pep talk?" Jack smiled. Full-court press time . . .
   "We have a picture of a suspected ULA member and it's only a week old. We got it in from London a couple of hours ago."
   "Dennis Cooley." Ryan examined it and laughed. "He looks like a real wimp. What's the story?"
   Cantor explained. "Bad luck for the Brits, but maybe good luck for us. Look at the picture again and tell me something important."
   "You mean . . . he's lost most of his hair. Oh! We can ID the guy if he turns up at one of the camps. None of the other people are bald."
   "You got it. And the boss just cleared you for something. There's an op laid on for Camp -18."
   "What kind?"
   "The kind you watched before. Is that still bothering you?"
   "No, not really." What bothers me is that it doesn't bother me, Ryan thought. Maybe it should . . . "Not with these guys, I don't. When?"
   "I can't tell you, but soon."
   "So why did you let me know – nice one, Marty. Not very subtle, though. Does the Admiral want me to stay that bad?"
   "Draw your own conclusions." An hour after that the photo expert was back. Another satellite had passed over the camp at 2208 local time. The infrared image showed eight people standing at line on the firing range. Bright tongues of flame marked two of the shapes. They were firing their weapons at night, and there were now at least eight of them there.

   "What happened?" O'Donnell asked. He'd met Cooley at the airport. A cutout had gotten word out that Cooley was on the run, but the reason for it had had to wait until now.
   "There was a bug in my shop."
   "You're sure?" O'Donnell asked.
   Cooley handed it over. The wire had been in his pocket for thirty hours. O'Donnell pulled the Toyota Land Cruiser over to examine it.
   "Marconi make these for intelligence use. Quite sensitive. How long might it have been there?"
   Cooley could not remember having anyone go into his back room unsupervised. "I've no idea."
   O'Donnell put the vehicle back into gear, heading out into the desert. He pondered the question for over a mile. Something had gone wrong, but what . . .?
   "Did you ever think you were being followed?"
   "Never."
   "How closely did you check, Dennis?" Cooley hesitated, and O'Donnell took this for an answer. "Dennis, did you ever break tradecraft – ever?"
   "No, Kevin, of course not. It isn't possible that – for God's sake, Kevin, it's been weeks since I've been in contact with Watkins."
   "Since your last trip to Cork." O'Donnell squinted in the bright sun.
   "Yes, that's right. You had a security man watching me then – was there anyone following me?"
   "If there were, he must have been a damnably clever one, and he could not have been too close . . . " The other possibility that O'Donnell was, considering, of course, was that Cooley had turned traitor. But if he'd done that, he wouldn't have come here, would he? the chief of the ULA thought. He knows me, knows where I live, knows McKenney, knows Sean Miller, knows about the fishing fleet at Dundalk. O'Donnell realized that Cooley knew quite a lot. No, if he'd gone tout, he wouldn't be here. Cooley was sweating despite the air conditioning in the car. Dennis didn't have the belly to risk his life that way. He could see that.
   "So, Dennis, what are we to do with you?"
   Cooley's heart was momentarily irregular, but he spoke with determination. "I want to be part of the next op."
   "Excuse me?" O'Donnell's head came around in surprise.
   "The fucking Brits – Kevin, they came after me!"
   "That is something of an occupational hazard, you know."
   "I'm quite serious," Cooley insisted.
   It wouldn't hurt to have another man . . . "Are you in shape for it?"
   "I will be."
   The chief made his decision. "Then you can start this afternoon."
   "What is it, then?"
   O'Donnell explained.

   "It would seem that your hunch was correct. Doctor Ryan," the man with the rimless glasses said the next afternoon. "Maybe I will take you to the track."
   He was standing outside one of the huts, a dumpy little man with a head that shone from the sunlight reflecting off his sweaty, hairless dome. Camp -18 was the one.
   "Excellent," Cantor observed. "Our English friends have really scored on this one. Thanks," he said to the photo expert.
   "When's the op?" Ryan asked after he left.
   "Early morning, day after tomorrow. Our time . . . eight in the evening, I think."
   "Can I watch in real time?"
   "Maybe."
   "This is a secret that's hard to keep," he said.

  "Most of the good ones are," Cantor agreed. "But –"
   "Yeah, I know." Jack put his coat on and locked up his files. "Tell the Admiral that I owe him one."
   Driving home, Ryan thought about what might be happening. He realized that his anticipation was not very different from . . . Christmas? No, that was not the right way to think about this. He wondered how his father had felt right before a big arrest after a lengthy investigation. It was something he'd never asked. He did the next best thing. He forgot about it, as he was supposed to do with everything that he saw at Langley.
   There was a strange car parked in front of the house when he got there, just beyond the nearly completed swimming pool. On inspection he saw that it had diplomatic tags. He went inside to find three men talking to his wife. He recognized one but couldn't put a name on him.
   "Hello, Doctor Ryan, I'm Geoffrey Bennett from the British Embassy. We met before at –"
   "Yeah, I remember now. What can we do for you?"
   "Their Royal Highnesses will be visiting the States in a few weeks. I understand that you offered an invitation when you met, and they wish to see if it remains open."
   "Are you kidding?"
   "They're not kidding. Jack, and I already said yes," his wife informed him. Even Ernie was wagging his tail in anticipation.
   "Of course. Please tell them that we'd be honored to have them down. Will they be staying the night?"
   "Probably not. It was hoped that they could come in the evening."
   "For dinner? Fine. What day?"
   "Friday, 30th July."
   "Done."
   "Excellent. I hope you won't mind if our security people – plus your Secret Service chaps – conduct a security sweep in the coming week."
   "Do I have to be home for that?"
   "I can do it, Jack. I'm off work now, remember?"
   "Oh, of course," Bennett said. "When is the baby due?"
   "First week of August – that might be a problem for this," Cathy realized belatedly.
   "If something unexpected happens, you may be sure that Their Highnesses will understand. One more thing. This is a private matter, not one of the public events for the trip. We must ask that you keep this entirely confidential."
   "Sure, I understand," Ryan said.
   "If they're going to be here for dinner, is there anything we shouldn't serve?" Cathy asked.
   "What do you mean?" Bennett responded.
   "Well, some people are allergic to fish, for example."
   "Oh, I see. No, I know of nothing along those lines."
   "Okay, the basic Ryan dinner," Jack said. "I – uh-oh."
   "What's the matter?" Bennett asked.
   "We're having company that night."
   "Oh," Cathy nodded. "Robby and Sissy."
   "Can't you cancel?"
   "It's a going-away party. Robby – he's a Navy fighter pilot, we both teach at the Academy – is transferring back to the fleet. Would they mind?"
   "Doctor Ryan, His Highness –"
   "His Highness is a good guy. So's Robby. He was there that night we met. I can't cancel him out, Mr. Bennett. He's a friend. The good news is. His Highness will like him. He used to fly fighter planes, too, right?"
   "Well, yes, but –"
   "Do you remember the night we met? Without Robby I might not have gotten through it. Look, this guy's a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy who happens to fly a forty-million-dollar fighter airplane. He probably is not a security risk. His wife plays one hell of a piano." Ryan saw that he hadn't quite gotten through yet. "Mr. Bennett, check Rob out through your attache and ask His Highness if it's all right."
   "And if he objects?"
   "He won't. I've met him. Maybe he's a better guy than you give him credit for," Jack observed. He won't object, you dummy. It's the security pukes who'll throw a fit.
   "Well." That remark took him somewhat aback. "I cannot fault your sense of loyalty. Doctor. I will pass this through His Highness's office. But I must insist that you do not tell Commander Jackson anything."
   "You have my word." Jack nearly laughed. He couldn't wait to see the look on Robby's face. This would finally even the score for that kendo match.

   "Contraction peaks," Jack said that night. They were practicing the breathing exercises in preparation for the delivery. His wife started panting. Jack knew that this was a serious business. It merely looked ridiculous. He checked the numbers on his digital watch. "Contraction ends. Deep, cleansing breath. I figure steaks on the grill, baked potatoes, and fresh corn on the cob, with a nice salad."
   "It's too plain," Cathy protested.
   "Everywhere they go over here, people will be hitting them with that fancy French crap. Somebody ought to give them a decent American meal. You know I do a mean steak on the grill, and your spinach salad is famous from here to across the road."
   "Okay." Cathy started laughing. It was becoming uncomfortable for her to do so. "If I stand over a stove for more than a few minutes, I get nauseous anyway."
   "It must be tough, being pregnant."
   "You should try it," she suggested.
   Her husband went on: "It's the only hard thing women have to do, of course."
   "What!" Cathy's eyes nearly popped out.
   "Look at history. Who has to go out and kill the buffalo? The man. Who has, to carry the buffalo back? The man. Who has to drive off the bear? The man. We do all the hard stuff. I still have to take out the garbage every night! Do I ever complain about that?" He had her laughing again. He'd read her mood right. She didn't want sympathy. She was too proud of herself for that.
   "I'd hit you on the head, but there's no sense in breaking a perfectly good club over something worthless."
   "Besides, I was there the last time, and it didn't look all that hard."
   "If I could move, Jack, I'd kill you for that one!"
   He moved from opposite his wife to beside her. "Nah, I don't think so. I want you to form a picture in your mind."
   "Of what?"
   "Of the look on Robby's face when he gets here for dinner. I'm going to jiggle the time a little."
   "I'll bet you that Sissy handles it better than he does."
   "How much?"
   "Twenty."

   "Deal." He looked at his watch. "Contraction begins. Deep breath." A minute later, Jack was amazed to see that he was breathing the same way as his wife. That got them both laughing.




Chapter 24
Connections Missed and Made

   There were no new pictures of Camp-18 the day of the raid. A sandstorm had swept over the area at the time of the satellite pass, and the cameras couldn't penetrate it, but a geosynchronous weather satellite showed that the storm had left the site. Ryan was cued after lunch that day that the raid was on, and spent his afternoon in fidgety anticipation. Careful analysis of the existing photos showed that between twelve and eighteen people were at the camp, over and above the guard force. If the higher number was correct, and the official estimate of the ULA's size was also accurate, that represented more than half of its membership. Ryan worried a little about that. If the French were sending in only eight paratroopers . . . but then he remembered his own experiences in the Marine Corps. They'd be hitting the objective at three in the morning. Surprise would be going for them. The assault team would have its weapons loaded and locked – and aimed at people who were asleep. The element of surprise, in the hands of elite commandos, was the military equivalent of a Kansas tornado. Nothing could stand up to it.
   They're in their choppers now, Ryan thought. He remembered his own experience in the fragile, ungainly aircraft. There you are, all your equipment packed up, clean utilities, your weapons ready, and despite it all you're as vulnerable as a baby in the womb. He wondered what sort of men they were, and realized that they wouldn't be too very different from the Marines he'd served with: all would be volunteers, doubly so since you also had to volunteer for parachute training. They'd opted a third time to be part of the antiterror teams. It would be partly for the extra pay they got and partly for the pride that always came with membership in a small, very special force – like the Marine Corps' Force Recon – but mostly they'd be there because they knew that this was a mission worth doing. To a man, professional soldiers despised terrorists, and each would dream about getting them in an even-up-battle – the idea of the Field of Honor had never died for the real professionals. It was the place where the ultimate decision was made on the basis of courage and skill, on the basis of manhood itself, and it was this concept that marked the professional soldier as a romantic, a person who truly believed in the rules.
   They'd be nervous in their helicopter. Some would fidget and be ashamed of it. Others would make a great show of sharpening their knives. Some would joke quietly. Their officers and sergeants would sit quietly, setting an example and going over the plans. All would look about the helicopter and silently hate being trapped within it. For a moment Jack was there with them.
   "Good luck, guys," he whispered to the wall. "Bonne chance. "
   The hours crept by. It seemed to Ryan that the numbers on his digital watch were reluctant to change at all, and it was impossible for him to concentrate on his work. He was going over the photos of the camp again, counting the man-figures, examining the ground to predict for himself how the final approach would be made. He wondered if their orders were to take the terrorists alive. He couldn't decide on that question. From a legal perspective, he didn't think it really mattered. If terrorism were the modern manifestation of piracy – the analogy seemed apt enough – then the ULA was fair game for any nation's armed forces. On the other hand, taken alive, they could be put on trial and displayed. The psychological impact on other such groups might be real. If it didn't put the fear of God in them, it would at least get their attention. It would frighten them to know that they were not safe even in their most remote, most secure sanctuary. Some members might drift away, and maybe one or two of them would talk. It didn't take much intelligence information to hammer them. Ryan had seen that clearly enough. You needed to know where they were, that was all. With that knowledge you could bring all the forces of a modern nation to bear, and for all their arrogance and brutality, they couldn't hope to stand up to that.
   Marty came into the office. "Ready to go over?"
   "Hell, yes!"
   "Did you have dinner?"
   "No. Maybe later."
   "Yeah." Together they walked to the annex. The corridors were nearly empty now. For the most part, CIA worked like any other place. At five the majority of the workers departed for home and dinner and evening television.
   "Okay, Jack, this is real-time. Remember that you can't discuss any aspect of this." Cantor looked rather tired. Jack thought.
   "Marty, if this op is successful, I will tell my wife that the ULA is out of business. She has a right to know that much."
   "I can understand that. Just so she doesn't know how it happens."
   "She wouldn't even be interested," Jack assured him as they entered the room with the TV monitor. Jean-Claude was there again.
   "Good evening, Mr. Cantor, Professor Ryan," the DGSE officer greeted them both.
   "How's the op going?"
   "They are under radio silence," the Colonel replied.
   "What I don't understand is how they can do it the same way twice," Ryan went on.
   "There is a risk. A little disinformation has been used," Jean-Claude said cryptically. "In addition, your carrier now has their full attention."
   "Saratoga has an alpha-strike up," Marty explained. "Two fighter squadrons and three attack ones, plus jamming and radar coverage. They're patrolling that 'Line of Death' right now. According to our electronics listening people, the Libyans are going slightly ape. Oh, well."
   "The satellite comes over the horizon in twenty-four minutes," the senior technician reported. "Local weather looks good. We ought to get some clear shots."
   Ryan wished he had a cigarette. They made the waiting easier, but every time Cathy smelled them on his breath, there was hell to pay. At this point the raiding force would be crawling across the last thousand yards. Ryan had done the drill himself. They'd come away with bloody hands and knees, sand rubbed into the wounds. It was an incredibly tiring thing to do, made more difficult still by the presence of armed soldiers at the objective. You had to time your moves for when they were looking the other way, and you had to be quiet. They'd be carrying the bare minimum of gear, their personal weapons, maybe some grenades, a few radios, slinking across the ground the way a tiger did, watching and listening.
   Everyone was staring at the blank TV monitor now, each of them bewitched by his imagination's picture of what was happening.
   "Okay," the technician said, "cameras coming on line, attitude and tracking controls in automatic, programming telemetry received. Target acquisition in ninety seconds."
   The TV picture lit up. It showed a test pattern. Ryan hadn't seen one of those in years.
   "Getting a signal."
   Then the picture appeared. Disappointingly, it was in infrared again. Somehow Ryan had expected otherwise. The low angle showed very little of the camp. They could discern no movement at all. The technician frowned and increased the viewing field. Nothing more, not even the helicopters.
   The viewing angle changed slowly, and it was hard to believe that the reconnaissance satellite was racing along at over eighteen thousand miles per hour. Finally they could see all of the huts. Ryan blinked. Only one was lit up on the infrared picture. Uh-oh. Only one hut – the guards' one – had had its heater on. What did that mean? They're gone – nobody's home . . . and the assault force isn't there either.
   Ryan said what the others didn't want to say: "Something's gone wrong."
   "When can they tell us what happened?" Cantor asked.

   "They cannot break silence for several hours."
   Two more hours followed. They were spent in Marty's office. Food was sent up. Jean-Claude didn't say anything, but he was clearly disappointed by it. Cantor didn't touch his at all. The phone rang. The Frenchman took the call, and spoke in his native tongue. The conversation lasted four or five minutes. Jean-Claude hung up and turned.
   "The assault force came upon a regular army unit a hundred kilometers from the camp, apparently a mechanized unit on an exercise. This was not expected. Coming in low, they encountered them quite suddenly. It opened fire on the helicopters. Surprise was lost, and they had to turn back." Jean-Claude didn't have to explain that, at best, operations like this were successful barely more than half the time.
   "I was afraid of that." Jack stared at the floor. He didn't need to have anyone tell him that the mission could not be repeated. They had run a serious risk, trying a covert mission the same way twice. There would be no third attempt. "Are your people safe?"
   "Yes, one helicopter was damaged, but managed to return to base. No casualties."
   "Please thank your people for trying, Colonel." Cantor excused himself and walked to his private bathroom. Once in there, he threw up. His ulcers were bleeding again. Marty tried to stand, but found himself faint. He fell against the door with a hard rap on the head.
   Jack heard the noise and went to see what it was. It was hard to open the door, but he finally saw Marty lying there. Ryan's first instinct was to tell Jean-Claude to call for a doctor, but Jack himself didn't know how to do that here. He helped Marty to his feet and led him back into his office, setting him in a chair.
   "What's the matter?"
   "He just tossed up blood – how do you call . . . " Ryan said the hell with it and dialed Admiral Greer's line.
   "Marty's collapsed – we need a doctor here."
   "I'll take care of it. Be there in two minutes," the Admiral answered.
   Jack went into the bathroom and got a glass of water and some toilet paper. He used this to wipe Cantor's mouth, then held up the glass. "Wash your mouth out."
   "I'm okay," the man protested.
   "Bullshit," Ryan replied. "You jerk. You've been working too damned late, trying to finish up all your stuff before you leave, right?"
   "Got – got to."
   "What you got to do, Marty, is get the hell out of here before it eats you up."
   Cantor gagged again.
   You weren't bidding, Marty, Jack thought. The war is being fought here, too, and you're one of the casualties. You wanted that mission to score as much as I did.
   "What the hell!" Greer entered the room. He even looked a little disheveled.
   "His ulcers let go," Jack explained. "He's been puking blood."
   "Aw, Jesus, Marty!" the Admiral said.
   Ryan hadn't known that there was a medical dispensary at Langley. Someone identifying himself as a paramedic arrived next. He examined Cantor quickly, then he and a security guard loaded the man on a wheelchair. They took him out, and the three men left behind stared at each other.

   "How hard is it to die from ulcers?" Ryan asked his wife just before midnight.
   "How old is he?" she asked. Jack told her. Cathy thought about it for a moment. "It can happen, but it's fairly rare. Somebody at work?"
   "My supervisor at Langley. He's been on Tagamet, but he vomited blood tonight."
   "Maybe he tried going without it. That's one of the problems. You give people medications, and as soon as they start feeling better, they stop taking the meds. Even smart people," Cathy noted. "Is it that stressful over there?"
   "I guess it was for him."
   "Super." It was the kind of remark that should have been followed by a roll-over, but Cathy hadn't been able to do that for some time. "He'll probably be all right. You really have to work at it to be in serious trouble from ulcers nowadays. Are you sure you want to work there?"
   "No. They want me, but I won't decide until you lose a little weight."
   "You'd better not be that far away when I go into labor."
   "I'll be there when you need me."

   "Almost got 'em," Murray reported.
   "The same mob who raided Action-Directe, eh? Yes, I've heard that was a nicely run mission. What happened?" Owens asked.
   "The assault group was spotted seventy miles out and had to turn back. On reexamination of the photos, it may be that our friends were already gone anyway."
   "Marvelous. I see our luck is holding. Where did they go, you reckon?"
   Murray grunted. "I've got to make the same assumption you have, Jimmy."
   "Quite." He looked out the window. The sun would be rising soon. "Well, we've cleared the DPG man and told him the story."
   "How'd he take it?"
   "He immediately offered his resignation, but the Commissioner and I prevailed upon him to withdraw it. We all have our little foibles," Owens said generously. "He's a very good chap at what he does. You'll be pleased to learn that his reaction was precisely the same as yours. He said we should arrange for His Highness to fall off one of his polo ponies and break his leg. Please don't quote either of us on that!"
   "It's a hell of a lot easier to protect cowards, isn't it? It's the brave ones who complicate our lives. You know something? He's going to be a good king for you someday. If he lives long enough," Murray added. It was impossible not to like the kid, he thought. And his wife was dynamite. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, the security on 'em in the States will be tight. Just like what we give the President. Even some of the same people are involved."
   That's supposed to make me feel happy? Owens asked himself silently, remembering how close several American Presidents had come to death at the hands of madmen, not to mention John F. Kennedy. It could be, of course, that the ULA was back wherever it lived, but all his instincts told him otherwise. Murray was a close friend, and he also knew and respected the Secret Service agents who'd formed the security detail. But the security of Their Highnesses was properly the responsibility of the Yard, and he didn't like the fact that it was now largely in others' hands. Owens had been professionally offended the last time the American President had been in the U.K., when the Secret Service had made a big show of shoving the locals as far aside as they dared. Now he understood them a little better.

  "How much is the rent?" Dobbens asked.
   "Four-fifty a month," the agent answered. "That's furnished."
   "Uh-huh." The furnishings weren't exactly impressive, Alex saw. They didn't have to be.
   "When can my cousin move in?"
   "It's not for you?"
   "No, it's my cousin. He's in the same business I am," Alex explained. "He's new to the area. I'll be responsible for the rent, of course. A three-month deposit, you said?"
   "Okay." The agent had specified two months' rent up-front.
   "Cash all right?" Dobbens asked.
   "Sure. Let's go back to the office and get the paperwork done."
   "I'm running a little late. I'm afraid. Don't you have the contract with you?"
   The agent nodded. "Yeah, I can do it right here." He walked out to his car and came back with a clipboard and a boilerplate rental contract. He didn't know that he was condemning himself to death, that no one else from his office had seen this man's face.
   "My mail goes to a box – I get it on the way into work." That took care of the address.
   "What sort of work, did you say?"
   "I work at the Applied Physics Laboratory, electrical engineer. I'm afraid I can't be more specific than that. We do a lot of government work, you understand." Alex felt vaguely sorry for the man. He was pleasant enough, and hadn't given him a runaround like many real estate people did. It was too bad. That's life.
   "You always deal in cash?"
   "That's one way to make sure you can afford it," Alex chuckled.
   "Could you sign here, please?"
   "Sure thing." Alex did so with his own pen, left-handed as he'd practiced. "And that's thirteen-fifty." He counted off the bills.
   "That was easy," the agent said as he handed over the keys and a receipt.
   "It sure was. Thank you, sir." Alex shook his hand. "He'll probably be moving in next week, certainly by the week after that."
   The two men walked out to their cars. Alex wrote down the agent's tag number: he drove his own car, not one belonging to the brokerage. Alex noted his description anyway, just to be sure that his people didn't kill the wrong man. He was glad he hadn't drawn a woman agent. Alex knew that he'd have to overcome that prejudice sooner or later, but for the moment it was an issue he was just as happy to avoid. He followed the agent for a few blocks, then turned off and doubled back to the house.
   It wasn't exactly perfect, but close enough. Three small bedrooms. The eat-in kitchen was all right, though, as was the living room. Most important, it had a garage, and sat on nearly an acre of ground. The lot was bordered by hedges, and sat in a semirural working-class neighborhood where the houses were separated by about fifty feet. It would do just fine as a safehouse.
   Finished, he drove to Washington National Airport, where he caught a flight to Miami. There was a three-hour layover until he took another airplane to Mexico City. Miller was waiting for him in the proper hotel.
   "Hello, Sean."
   "Hello, Alex. Drink?"
   "What do you have?"
   "Well, I brought a bottle of decent whiskey, or you can have some of the local stuff. The beer isn't bad, but I personally stop short of drinking something with a worm in the bottle."
   Alex selected a beer. He didn't bother with a glass.
   "So?"
   Dobbens drained the beer in one long pull. It was good to be able to relax – really relax. Play-acting all the time at home could be a strain. "I got the safehouse all set up. Did that this morning. It'll do fine for what we want. What about your people?"
   "They're on the way. They'll arrive as planned."
   Alex nodded approval as he got a second beer. "Okay, let's see how the operation's going to run."
   "In a very real sense, Alex, you inspired this." Miller opened his briefcase and extracted the maps and charts. They went on the coffee table. Alex didn't smile. Miller was trying to stroke him, and Dobbens didn't like being stroked. He listened for twenty minutes.
   "Not bad, that's pretty fair, but you're going to have to change a few things."
   "What?" Miller asked. He was already angered by Dobbens' tone.
   "Look, man, there's going to be at least fifteen security guys right here." Alex tapped the map. "And you're going to have to do them right quick, y'know? We're not talking street cops here. These guys are trained and well armed. They're not exactly dumb, either. If you want this to work, man, you have to land the first punch harder. Your timing is off some, too. No, we have to tighten this up some, Sean."
   "But they'll be in the wrong place!" Miller objected as dispassionately as he could manage.
   "And you want them to be running around loose? No way, boy! You'd better think about taking them out in the first ten seconds. Hey, think of them as soldiers. This ain't no snatch-and-run job. We're talking combat here."
   "But if the security is going to be as tight as you say –"
   "I can handle that, man. Don't you pay attention to what I'm doing? I can put your shooters in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time."
   "And how the hell will you do that!" Miller was unable to calm himself anymore. There was just something about Alex that set him off.
   "It's easy, man." Dobbens smiled. He enjoyed showing this hotshot how things were done. "All you gotta do . . . "
   "And you really think you can get past them just like that!" Miller snapped after he finished.
   "Easy. I can write my own work orders, remember?"
   Miller struggled with himself again, and this time he won. He told himself to view Alex's idea dispassionately. He hated admitting to himself that the plan made sense. This amateur black was telling him how to run an op, and the fact that he was right just made it worse.
   "Hey, man, it's not just better, it's easier to do." Alex backed off somewhat. Even arrogant whities needed their pride. This boy was used to having his own way. He was smart enough, Dobbens admitted to himself, but too inflexible. Once he got himself set on an idea, he didn't want to change a thing. He never would have made a good engineer, Alex knew. "Remember the last op we ran for you? Trust me, man. I was right then, wasn't I?"
   For all his technical expertise, Alex did not have tremendous skills for handling people. This last remark almost set Miller off again, but the Irishman took a deep breath as he continued to stare at the map. Now I know why the Yanks love their niggers so much.
   "Let me think about it."

   "Sure. Tell you what. I'm going to get some sleep. You can pray over the map all you want."
   "Who else besides the security and the targets?"
   Alex stretched. "Maybe they're going to cater it. Hell – I don't know. I imagine they'll have their maid. I mean, you don't have that kind of company without one servant, right? She doesn't get hurt either, man. She's a sister, handsome woman. And remember what I said about the lady and the kid. If it's necessary, I can live with it, but if you pop 'em for fun, Sean, you'll answer to me. Let's try to keep this one professional. You have three legitimate political targets. That's enough. The rest are bargaining chips, we can use 'em to show good will. That might not be important to you, boy, but it's fucking well important to me. You dig?"
   "Very well, Alex." Sean decided then and there that Alex would not see the end of this operation. It shouldn't be too hard to arrange. With his absurd sentimentality, he was unfit to be a revolutionary. You'll die a brave death. At least we can make a martyr of you.
   Two hours later Miller admitted to himself that this was unfortunate. The man did have a flair for operations.

   The security people were late enough that Ryan pulled into the driveway right behind them. There were three of them, led by Chuck Avery of the Secret Service.
   "Sorry, we got held up," Avery said as he shook hands. "This is Bert Longley and Mike Keaton, two of our British colleagues."
   "Hello, Mr. Longley," Cathy called from the door.
   His eyes went wide as he saw her condition. "My goodness, perhaps we should bring a physician in with us! I'd no idea you were so far along."
   "Well, this one will be part English." Jack explained. "Come on in."
   "Mr. Longley arranged our escort when you were in the hospital," Cathy told her husband. "Nice to see you again."
   "How are you feeling?" Longley asked.
   "A little tired, but okay," Cathy allowed.
   "Have you cleared the problem about Robby?" Jack asked.
   "Yes, we have. Please excuse Mr. Bennett. I'm afraid he took his instructions a bit too literally. We have no problems with a naval officer. In fact, His Highness is looking forward to meeting him. So, may we look around?"
   "If it's all right with you, I want to see that cliff of yours," Avery said.
   "Follow me, gentlemen." Jack led the three through the sliding-glass doors onto the deck that faced Chesapeake Bay.
   "Magnificent!" Longley observed.
   "The only thing we did wrong is that the living and dining room aren't separated, but that's how the design was drawn, and we couldn't figure a graceful way to change it. But all those windows do give us a nice view, don't they?"
   "Indeed, also one that gives our chaps good visibility," Keaton observed, surveying the area.
   Not to mention decent fields of fire, Ryan thought.
   "How many people will you be bringing?" Jack asked.
   "I'm afraid that's not something we can discuss," Longley replied.
   "More than twenty?" Jack persisted. "I plan to have coffee and sandwiches for your troops. Don't worry, I haven't even told Robby."
   "Enough for twenty will be more than ample," Avery said after a moment. "Just coffee will be fine." They'd be drinking a lot of coffee, the Secret Service man thought.
   "Okay, let's see the cliff." Jack went down the steps from the deck to the grass. "You want to be very careful here, gentlemen."
   "How unstable is it?" Avery asked.
   "Sally has been past where the fence is twice. Both times she got smacked for it. The problem's erosion. The cliff's made out of something real soft – sandstone, I think. I've been trying to stabilize it. The state conservation people talked me into planting this damned kudzu, and – stop right there!"
   Keaton had stepped over the low fence.
   "Two years ago I watched a twenty-square-foot piece drop off. That's why I planted these vines. You don't think somebody's going to climb that, do you?"
   "It's one possibility," Longley answered.
   "You'd think different if you looked at it from a boat. The cliff won't take the weight. A squirrel can make it up, but that's all."
   "How high is it?" Avery asked.
   "Forty-three feet over there, almost fifty here. The kudzu vines just make it worse. The damned stuffs nearly impossible to kill, but if you try grabbing onto it, you're in for a big surprise. Like I said, if you want to check it, do it from a boat," Ryan said.
   "We'll do that," Avery replied.
   "Coming in, that driveway must be three hundred yards," Keaton said.
   "Just over four hundred, counting the curves. It cost an arm and a leg to pave it."
   "What about the swimming pool people?" It was Longley this time.
   "The pool's supposed to be finished next Wednesday."
   Avery and Keaton walked around the north side of the house. There were trees twenty yards from there, and a swarm of brambles that went on forever. Ryan had planted a long row of shrubs to mark the border. Sally didn't go in there either.
   "This looks pretty secure," Avery said. "There's two hundred yards of open space between the road and the trees, then more open ground between the pool and the house."
   "Right." Ryan chuckled. "You can set up your heavy machine guns in the treeline and put the mortars over by the pool."
   "Doctor Ryan, we are quite serious about this," Longley pointed out.
   "I'm sure. But it's an unannounced trip, right? They can't –" Jack stopped short. He didn't like the look on their faces.
   Avery said, "We always assume that the other side knows what we're up to."
   "Oh." Is that all of it, or is there more? He knew it wouldn't do any good to ask. "Well, speaking as a has-been Marine, I wouldn't want to hit this place cold. I know a little about how you guys are trained. I wouldn't want to mess with you."
   "We try," Avery assured him, still looking around. The way the driveway came through the trees, he could use his communications van to block vehicles out entirely. He reminded himself that there would be ten people from his agency, six Brits, a liaison guy from the Bureau, and probably two or three State Police for traffic control on the road. Each of his men would have both a service revolver and a submachine gun. They practiced at least once a week.
   Avery still was not happy, not with the possibility of an armed terrorist group running around loose. But all the airports were being watched, all the local police forces alerted. There was only one road in here. The surrounding terrain would be difficult even for a platoon of soldiers to penetrate without making all kinds of noise, and as nasty as terrorists were, they'd never fought a set-piece battle. This wasn't London, and the potential targets weren't driving blithely about with a single armed guard.
   "Thank you, Doctor Ryan. We will check the cliff out from the water side. If you see a Coast Guard cutter, that'll be us."
   "You know how to get to the station at Thomas Point? You take Forest Drive east to Arundel-on-the-Bay and hang a right. You can't miss it."
   "Thanks, we'll do that."