"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.