by Tom Clancy
O’Donnell raised his glass for a toast: “The devil with the bloody Americans.”
As he drank off the last of his second whiskey, Miller’s eyes snapped open sharply enough to make a click.
“Kevin, we won’t be doing much in the U.K. for a while....”
“Nor in the Six Counties,” O’Donnell said thoughtfully. “This is a time to lie low, I think. We’ll concentrate on our training for the moment and await our next opportunity.”
“Shamus, how effective might Doyle’s men be in Boston?”
Connolly shrugged his shoulders. “Get enough liquor into them and they’ll believe anything they’re told, and toss their dollars into the hat as always.”
Miller smiled for a moment. He refilled his own glass this time as the other two talked on. His own mind began assembling a plan.
Murray had had a number of assignments in the Bureau over his many years of service, ranging from junior agent involved in chasing down bank robbers to instructor in investigation procedures at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. One thing he’d always told the youngsters in the classroom was the importance of intuition. Law enforcement was still as much art as science. The Bureau had immense scientific resources to process evidence, had written procedures for everything, but when you got down to it, there was never a substitute for the mind of an experienced agent. It was mostly experience, Murray knew, the way you fitted evidence together, the way you got a feel for the mind of your target and tried to predict his next move. But more than experience, there was intuition. The two qualities worked together until you couldn’t separate them in your own mind.
That’s the hard part, Murray told himself on the drive home from the embassy. Because intuition can run a little wild if there’s not enough evidence to hold on to.
“You will learn to trust your instincts,” Murray told the traffic, quoting from his memorized class notes. “Instinct is never a substitute for evidence and procedure, but it can be a very useful tool in adapting one to another—oh, Dan, you would have made a hell of a Jesuit.” He chuckled to himself, oblivious of the stare he was getting from the car on his right.
If it’s so damned funny, why does it bother you?
Murray’s instinct was ringing a quiet but persistent bell. Why had Jimmy said that? Obviously it was bothering him, too—but what the hell was it?
The problem was, it wasn’t just one thing. He saw that now. It was several things, and they were interrelated like some kind of three-dimensional crossword puzzle. He didn’t know the number of blanks, and he didn’t have any of the clues to the words, but he did know roughly the way they fitted together. That was something. Given time, it might even be enough, but—
“Damn!” His hands gripped tight on the steering wheel as good humor again gave way to renewed frustration. He could talk it over with Owens tomorrow or the next day, but the bell told him that it was more urgent than that.
Why is it so damned urgent? There is no evidence of anything to get excited about.
Murray reminded himself that the first case that he’d broken more or less on his own, ten months after hitting the street as a special agent, had begun with a feeling like this one. In retrospect the evidence had seemed obvious enough once he’d put the right twist on it, but that twist hadn’t occurred to anyone else. And with Murray himself it had begun as nothing more than the same sort of intellectual headache he was suffering through in his car. Now he was really mad at himself.
Fact: The ULA broke all the rules. Fact: No Irish terrorist organization had ever run an operation in the U.S. There were no more Facts. If they ran an op in America ... well, they were undoubtedly mad at Ryan, but they hadn’t made a move against him over here, and that would have been a hell of a lot easier than staging one in the U.S. What if Miller really was their chief of operations—no, Murray told himself, terrorists don’t usually take things personally. It’s unprofessional, and the bastards are professional. They’d have to have a better reason than that.
Just because you don’t know what the reason is doesn’t mean they don’t have one, Danny. Murray found himself wondering if his intuition hadn’t transformed itself into paranoia with increasing age. What if there’s more than one reason to do it?
“There’s a thought,” he said to himself. One could be an excuse for the other—but what’s the it that they want to do? Motive, all the police procedure manuals said, was the main thing to look for. Murray didn’t have a clue on their motive. “I could go crazy doing this.”
Murray turned left off Kensington Road, into the upscale neighborhood of flats where he had his official residence. Parking was the usual problem. Even when he’d been assigned to the counterespionage section of the New York City Field Office, parking hadn’t been this bad. He found a space perhaps two feet longer than his car and spent nearly five minutes fitting the vehicle into it.
Murray hung his coat on the peg beside the door and walked right into the living room. His wife found him dialing the phone, a ferocious scowl on his face. She wondered what was wrong.
It took a few seconds for the overseas call to go into the proper office.
“Bill, this is Dan Murray ... we’re fine,” his wife heard him say. “I want you to do something. You know that guy Jack Ryan? Yeah, that’s the one. Tell him—hell, how do I say this? Tell him that maybe he should watch his back.... I know that, Bill.... I can’t say, something’s bothering me, and I can’t—something like that, yeah.... I know they’ve never done it before, Bill, but it’s still bothering me.... No, nothing specific that I can point to, but Jimmy Owens brought it up, and now he’s got me worrying about it. Oh, you got the report already? Good, then you know what I mean.”
Murray leaned back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. “Call it feeling, or instinct—call it anything you want, it’s bothering me. I want somebody to act on it.... Good man. How’s the family? Oh, yeah? Great! Well, I guess it’ll be a happy new year for you. Okay. Take care. ’Bye.” He set the phone down. “Well, that feels a little better,” he said quietly to himself.
“The party starts at nine,” his wife said. She was used to his bringing work home. He was used to having her remind him of his social obligations.
“I guess I better get dressed, then. ” Murray rose and kissed his wife. He did feel better now. He’d done something—probably no more than having people in the Bureau wonder what was happening to him over here, but he could live with that. “Bill’s oldest is engaged. He’s going to marry her off to a young agent in the D.C. Field Office.”
“Anyone we know?”
“New kid.”
“We have to leave soon.”
“Okay, okay.” He walked to the master bedroom and started to change for the big embassy party.
11
Warnings
“As you see, ladies and gentlemen, the decision Nelson made in this case had the long-term effect of finally putting an end to the stultifying influence of the Royal Navy’s formal tactics.” Ryan closed his note folder. “There is nothing like a decisive victory to teach people a lesson. Questions?”
It was Jack’s first day back at teaching class. The room had forty students, all third classmen (that title included the six female mids in the class), or sophomores in civilian terms, taking Ryan’s introductory course in naval history. There were no questions. He was surprised. Jack knew he was a pretty good teacher, but not that good. After a moment, one of the students stood up. It was George Winton, a football player from Pittsburgh.
“Doctor Ryan,” he said stiffly, “I’ve been asked to make a presentation on behalf of the class.”
“Uh-oh.” Jack took half a step backward and scanned the body of students theatrically for the advancing threat.
Mid/3 Winton walked forward and produced a small box from behind his back. There was a typed sheet on the top. The young man stood at attention.
“Attention to orders: For service above and beyond the duty of a tourist—even a brainless Marine�
��the class awards Doctor John Ryan the Order of the Purple Target, in the hope that he will duck the next time, lest he become a part of history rather than a teacher of it.”
Winton opened the box and produced a purple ribbon three inches across on which was inscribed in gold: SHOOT ME. Below it was a brass bull’s-eye of equal size. The mid pinned it to Ryan’s shoulder so that the target portion almost covered where he’d been shot. The class stood and applauded as Ryan shook hands with the class spokesman.
Jack fingered the “decoration” and looked up at his class. “Did my wife put you up to this?” They started converging on him.
“Way to go, Doc!” said an aspiring submarine driver.
“Semper fi!” echoed a would-be Marine.
Ryan held up his hands. He was still getting used to the idea of having his left arm back. The shoulder ached now that he was really using it, but the surgeon at Hopkins had told him that the stiffness would gradually fade away, and the net impairment to his left shoulder would be less than five percent.
“Thank you, people, but you still have to take the exam next week!”
There was general laughter as the kids filed out of the room to their next class. This was Ryan’s last for the day. He gathered up his books and notes and trailed out of the room for the walk uphill to his office in Leahy Hall.
There was snow on the ground this frigid January day. Jack had to watch for patches of ice on the brick sidewalk. Around him the campus of the Naval Academy was a beautiful place. The immense quadrangle bordered by the chapel to the south, Bancroft Hall to the east, and classroom buildings on the other sides, was a glistening white blanket with pathways shoveled from one place to another. The kids—Ryan thought of them as kids—marched about as they always did, a little too earnest and serious for Jack’s liking. They saved their smiles for places where no outsiders might notice. Each of them had his (or her) shoes spit-shined, and they moved about with straight backs, books tucked under the left arm so as not to interfere with saluting. There was a lot of that here. At the top of the hill, at Gate #3, a Marine lance corporal stood with the “Jimmy Legs” civilian guard. A normal day at the office, Jack told himself. It was a good place to work. The mids were easily the equal of the students of any school in the country, always ready with questions, and, once you earned their trust, capable of some astonishing horseplay. This was something a visitor to the Academy might never suspect, so serious was the kids’ public demeanor.
Jack got into the steam-heated warmth of Leahy Hall and bounded up the steps to his office, laughing to himself at the absurd award that dangled from his shoulder. He found Robby sitting opposite his desk.
“What in the hell is that?” the pilot inquired. Jack explained as he set his books down. Robby started laughing.
“It’s nice to see the kids can unwind a little, even in exam season. So what’s new with you?” Jack asked his friend.
“Well, I’m a Tomcat driver again,” Robby announced. “Four hours over the weekend. Oh, man! Jack, I’m telling you, I had that baby talking to me. Took her offshore, had her up to mach one-point-four, did a midair refueling, then I came back for some simulated carrier landings, and—it was good, Jack,” the pilot concluded. “Two more months and I’ll be back where I belong.”
“That long, Rob?”
“Flying this bird is not supposed to be easy or they wouldn’t need people of my caliber to do it,” Jackson explained seriously.
“It must be hard to be so humble.”
Before Robby could respond, there came a knock on the opened door and a man stuck his head in. “Doctor Ryan?”
“That’s right. Join us.”
“I’m Bill Shaw, FBI.” The visitor came all the way in and held up his ID card. About Robby’s height, he was a slender man in his mid-forties with eyes so deep set that they almost gave him the look of a raccoon, the kind of eyes that got that way from sixteen-hour days. A sharp dresser, he looked like a very serious man. “Dan Murray asked me to come over to see you.”
Ryan rose to take his hand. “This is Lieutenant Commander Jackson.”
“Howdy.” Robby shook his hand, too.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Not at all—we’re both finished teaching for the day. Grab a chair. What can I do for you?”
Shaw looked at Jackson but didn’t say anything.
“Well, if you guys have to talk, I can mosey on over to the O-Club—”
“Relax, Rob. Mr. Shaw, you’re among friends. Can I offer you anything?”
“No, thank you.” The FBI agent pulled the straight-back chair from next to the door. “I work in the counterterrorism unit at FBI headquarters. Dan asked me to—well, you know that the ULA rescued their man Miller from police custody.”
Now Ryan was completely serious. “Yeah—I caught that on TV. Any idea where they took him to?”
Shaw shook his head. “They just disappeared.”
“Quite an operation,” Robby noted. “They escaped to seaward, right? Some ship pick them up maybe?” This drew a sharp look. “You notice my uniform, Mr. Shaw? I earn my living out there on the water.”
“We’re not sure, but that is a possibility.”
“Whose ships were out there?” Jackson persisted. This wasn’t a law-enforcement problem to Robby. It was a naval matter.
“That’s being looked at.”
Jackson and Ryan traded a look. Robby fished out one of his cigars and lit it.
“I got a call last week from Dan. He’s a tittle—I wish to emphasize this, only a little—concerned that the ULA might ... well, they don’t have much of a reason to like you, Doctor Ryan. ”
“Dan said that none of these groups has ever operated over here,” Ryan said cautiously.
“That’s entirely correct. ” Shaw nodded. “It’s never happened. I imagine Dan explained why this is true. The Provisional IRA continues to get money from over here, I am sorry to say, not much, but some. They still get some weapons. There is even reason to believe that they have some surface-to-air missiles—”
“What the hell!” Jackson’s head snapped around.
“There have been several thefts of Redeye missiles—the man-portable one the Army’s phasing out now. They were stolen from a couple of National Guard armories. This isn’t new. The RUC has captured M-60 machine guns that got over to Ulster the same way. These weapons were either stolen or bought from some supply sergeants who forgot who they were working for. We’ve convicted several of them in the past year, and the Army’s setting up a new system to keep track of things. Only one missile has turned up. They—the PIRA—tried to shoot down a British Army helicopter a few months back. It never made the papers over here, mainly because they missed, and the Brits were able to hush it up.
“Anyway,” Shaw went on, “if they were to conduct actual terrorist operations over here, the money and the weapons would probably dry up quite a bit. The PIRA knows that, and it stands to reason that the ULA does, too.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “They’ve never operated over here. But Murray asked you to come here and warn me. How come?”
“There isn’t any reason. If this had come from anyone except Dan, I wouldn’t even be here, but Dan’s a very experienced agent, and he’s a little bit concerned that maybe you should be made aware of his—it’s not even enough to be a suspicion, Doctor Ryan. Call it insurance, like checking the tires on your car before a long drive.”
“Then what the hell are you telling me?” Ryan said testily.
“The ULA has dropped out of sight—that’s not saying much, of course. I guess it’s the way they dropped out of sight. They pulled a pretty bold operation, and”—he snapped his fingers—“disappeared back under their rock.”
“Intel,” Jack muttered.
“What’s that?” Shaw asked.
“It happened again. The thing in London that I got in the way of, it resulted from very good intelligence information. This did, too, didn’t it? They were mo
ving Miller secretly, but the bad guys penetrated Brit security, didn’t they?”
“I honestly don’t know the specifics, but I’d say you probably had that one figured out pretty well,” Shaw conceded.
Jack picked up a pencil in his left hand and started twirling it. “Do we know anything about what we’re up against here?”
“They’re professionals. That’s bad news for the Brits and the RUC, of course, but it’s good news for you.”
“How’s that?” Robby asked.
“Their disagreement with Doctor Ryan here is more or less a ‘personal’ matter. To take action against him would be unprofessional. ”
“In other words,” the pilot said, “when you tell Jack that there’s nothing for him to really worry about, you’re betting on the ‘professional’ conduct of terrorists.”
“That’s one way to put it, Commander. Another way is to say that we have long experience dealing with this type of person.”
“Uh-huh.” Robby stabbed out his cigar. “In mathematics that’s called inductive reasoning. It’s a conclusion inferred, rather than deduced from specific evidence. In engineering we call it a WAG.”
“Wag?” Shaw shook his head.
“A Wild-Ass Guess.” Jackson turned to stare into the FBI man’s eyes. “Like most operational intelligence reports—you can’t tell the good ones from the bad ones until it’s too damned late. Excuse me, Mr. Shaw, I’m afraid that we operators aren’t always impressed with the stuff we get from the intelligence community. ”
“I knew it was a mistake to come here,” Shaw observed. “Look, Dan told me over the phone that he doesn’t have a single piece of evidence to suggest that there is any chance something unusual will happen. I’ve spent the last couple of days going over what we have on this outfit, and there just isn’t any real evidence. He’s responding to instinct. When you’re a cop, you learn to do that.”
Robby nodded at that one. Pilots trust their instinct, too. Now, his were telling him something.
“So,” Jack leaned back. “What should I do?”