by Tom Clancy
“I’ve heard a few things about the investigation, but that’s not my territory. It’s being looked at. Personally, I think they did it themselves. Why risk a connection with somebody else?”
“Yeah,” the Major agreed reluctantly. The van had already been checked out by state and federal forensic experts. Not a single fingerprint had been found. The vehicle had been thoroughly cleaned, down to the knobs on the window handles. The technicians found nothing that could lead them to the criminals. Now the dirt and fabric fibers vacuumed from the van’s carpet were being analyzed in Washington, but this was the sort of clue that worked reliably only on TV. If the people had been smart enough to clean out the van, they were almost certainly smart enough to burn the clothing they’d worn. Everything was being checked out anyway, because even the smartest people did make mistakes.
“You heard anything on the ballistics yet?” the Major asked, turning the car onto Rowe Boulevard.
“Oughta be waiting for us.” They’d found almost twenty nine-millimeter cartridge cases to go along with the two usable bullets recovered from the Porsche, and the one that had gone through Trooper Fontana’s chest and lodged in the back seat of his wrecked car. These had gone directly to the FBI laboratory in Washington for analysis. The evidence would tell them that the weapon was a submachine gun, which they already knew, but might give them a type, which they didn’t yet know. The cartridge cases were Belgian-made, from the Fabrique Nationale at Liège. They might be able to identify the lot number, but FN made so many millions of such rounds per year, which were shipped and reshipped all over the world, that the lead was a slim one. Very often such shipments simply disappeared, mainly from sloppy—or creative—bookkeeping.
“How many black groups are known to have contact with these ULA characters?”
“None,” Capitano replied. “That’s something we are going to have to establish.”
“Great.”
Ryan arrived home to find an unmarked car and a liveried State Police cruiser in his driveway. Jack’s own FBI interview wasn’t a long one. It hadn’t taken long to confirm the fact that he quite simply knew nothing about the attempt on his family or himself.
“Any idea where they are?” he asked finally.
“We’re checking airports,” the agent answered. “If these guys are as smart as they look, they’re long gone.”
“They’re smart, all right,” Ryan noted sourly. “What about the one you caught?”
“He’s doing one hell of a good imitation of a clam. He has a lawyer now, of course, and the lawyer is telling him to keep his mouth shut. You can depend on lawyers for that.”
“Where’d the lawyer come from?”
“Public defender’s office. It’s a rule, remember. You hold a suspect for any length of time, he has to have a lawyer. I don’t think it matters. He probably isn’t talking to the lawyer either. We have him on a state weapons violation and federal immigration laws. He goes back to the U.K. as soon as the paperwork gets done. Maybe two weeks or so, depending on if the attorney contests things.” The agent closed his notebook. “You never know, maybe he’ll start talking, but don’t count on it. The word we get from the Brits is that he’s not real bright anyway. He’s the Irish version of a street hood, very good with weapons but a little slow upstairs.”
“So if he’s dumb, how come—”
“How come he’s good at what he does? How smart do you have to be to kill somebody? Clark’s a sociopathic personality. He has very little in the way of feelings. Some people are like that. They don’t relate to the people around them as being real people. They see them as objects, and since they’re only objects, whatever happens to them is not important. Once I met a hit man who killed four peopte—just the ones we know about—and didn’t bat an eye, far as I could tell; but he cried like a baby when we told him his cat died. People like that don’t even understand why they get sent to prison; they really don’t understand,” he concluded. “Those are the scary ones.”
“No,” Ryan said. “The scary ones are the ones with brains, the ones who believe in it.”
“I haven’t met one of those yet,” he admitted.
“I have.” Jack walked him to the door and watched him pull away. The house was an empty, quiet place without Sally running around, without the TV on, without Cathy talking about her friends at Hopkins. For several minutes Jack wandered around aimlessly, as though expecting to find someone. He didn’t want to sit down, because that would somehow be an admission that he was all alone. He walked into the kitchen and started to fix a drink, but before he was finished, he dumped it all down the sink. He didn’t want to get drunk. It was better to keep his mind unimpaired. Finally he lifted the phone and dialed.
“Yes,” a voice answered.
“Admiral, Jack Ryan.”
“I understand that your girl’s going to be all right,” James Greer said. “I’m glad to hear that, son.”
“Thank you, sir. Is the Agency involved in this?”
“This is an unsecure line, Jack,” the Admiral replied.
“I want in,” Ryan said.
“Be here tomorrow morning.”
Ryan hung up and went looking for his briefcase. He opened it and took out the Browning automatic pistol. After setting it on the kitchen table, he got out his shotgun and cleaning kit. He spent the next hour cleaning and oiling first the pistol, then the shotgun. When he was satisfied, he loaded both.
He left for Langley at five the next morning. Ryan had managed to get four more hours of sleep before rising and going through the usual morning ritual of coffee and breakfast. His early departure allowed him to miss the worst of the traffic, though the George Washington Parkway was never really free of the government workers heading to and from the agencies that were always more or less awake. After getting into the CIA building, he reflected that he had never called here and found Admiral Greer absent. Well, he told himself, that’s one thing in this world that I can depend on. A security officer escorted him to the seventh floor.
“Good morning, sir,” Jack said on entering the room.
“You look better than I expected,” the DDI observed.
“It’s an illusion mostly, but I can’t solve my problem by hiding in a corner, can I? Can we talk about what’s going on?”
“Your Irish friends have gotten a lot of attention. The President himself wants action on this. We’ve never had international terrorists play games in our country—at least, not things that ever made the press,” Greer said cryptically. “It is now a high-priority case. It’s getting a lot of resources.”
“I want to be one of them,” Ryan said simply.
“If you think that you can be part of an operation—”
“I know better than that, Admiral.”
Greer smiled at the younger man. “That’s good to see, son. I thought you were smart. So what do you want to do for us?”
“We both know that the bad guys are part of the network. The data you let me look at was pretty limited. Obviously you’re going to be trying to collate data on all the groups, searching for leads on the ULA. Maybe I can help.”
“What about your teaching?”
“I can be here when I’m not teaching. There isn’t much to hold me at home at the moment, sir.”
“It isn’t good practice to use people who are personally involved in the investigation,” Greer pointed out.
“This isn’t the FBI, sir. I’m not going out into the field. You just told me that. I know you want me back here on a permanent basis, Admiral. If you really want me, let me start off doing something that’s important to both of us.” Jack paused, searching for another point. “If I’m good enough, let’s find out now.”
“Some people aren’t going to like it.”
“There’s things happening to me that I don’t like very much, sir, and I have to live with it. If I can’t fight back somehow, I might as well stay at home. You’re the only chance I have to do something to protect my family, sir.”
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Greer turned to refill his coffee cup from the drip machine behind his desk. He’d liked Jack almost from the first moment he’d met him. This was a young man accustomed to having his way, though he was not arrogant about it. That was a point in his favor: Ryan knew what he wanted, but wasn’t overly pushy. He wasn’t a person driven by ambition, another point in his favor. Finally, he had a lot of raw talent to be shaped and trained and directed. Greer was always looking for talent. The Admiral turned back.
“Okay, you’re on the team. Marty’s coordinating the information. You’ll work directly with him. I hope you don’t talk in your sleep, son, because you’re going to see stuff that you’re not even allowed to dream about.”
“Sir, there’s only one thing that I’m going to dream about.”
It had been a very busy month for Dennis Cooley. The death of an earl in East Anglia had forced his heirs to sell off a massive collection of books to pay the death duties, and Cooley had used up nearly all of his available capital to secure no less than twenty-one items for his shop. But it was worth it: among them was a rare first-folio of Marlowe’s plays. Better still, the dead earl had been assiduous in protecting his treasures. The books had been deep-frozen several times to kill off the insects that desecrated these priceless relics of the past. The Marlowe was in remarkably good shape, despite the waterstained cover that had put off a number of less perceptive buyers. Cooley was stooped over his desk, reading the first act of The Jew of Malta, when the bell rang.
“Is that the one I heard about?” his visitor asked at once.
“Indeed.” Cooley smiled to cover his surprise. He hadn’t seen this particular visitor for some time, and was somewhat disturbed that he’d come back so soon. “Printed in 1633, forty years after Marlowe’s death. Some parts of the text are suspect, of course, but this is one of the few surviving copies of the first printed edition.”
“It’s quite authentic?”
“Of course,” Cooley replied, slightly put off at the question. “In addition to my own humble expertise, it has authentication papers from Sir Edmund Grey of the British Museum.”
“One cannot argue with that,” the customer agreed.
“I’m afraid I have not yet decided upon a price for it.” Why are you here?
“Price is not an object. I understand that you may wish to enjoy it for yourself, but I must have it.” This told Cooley why he was here. He leaned to look over Cooley’s shoulder at the book. “Magnificent,” he said, placing a small envelope in the book dealer’s pocket.
“Perhaps we can work something out,” Cooley allowed. “In a few weeks, perhaps.” He looked out the window. A man was window-shopping at the jewelry store on the opposite side of the arcade. After a moment he straightened up and walked away.
“Sooner than that, please,” the man insisted.
Cooley sighed. “Come see me next week and we may be able to discuss it. I do have other customers, you know.”
“But none more important, I hope.”
Cooley blinked twice. “Very well.”
Geoffrey Watkins continued to browse the store for another few minutes. He selected a Keats that had also come from the dead earl’s estate and paid six hundred pounds for it before leaving. On leaving the arcade he failed to notice a young lady at the newsstand outside and could not have known that another was waiting at the arcade’s other end. The one who followed him was dressed in a manner guaranteed to garner attention, including orange hair that would have fluoresced if the sun had been out. She followed him west for two blocks and kept going in that direction when he crossed the street. Another police officer was on the walk down Green Park.
That night the daily surveillance reports came to Scotland Yard where, as always, they were put on computer. The operation being run was a joint venture between the Metropolitan Police and the Security Service, once known as MI-5. Unlike the American FBI, the people at “Five” did not have the authority to arrest suspects, and had to work through the police to bring a case to a conclusion. The marriage was not entirely a happy one. It meant that James Owens had to work closely with David Ashley. Owens entirely concurred with his FBI colleague’s assessment of the younger man: “a snotty bastard.”
“Patterns, patterns, patterns,” Ashley said, sipping his tea while he looked at the print-out. They had identified a total of thirty-nine people who knew, or might have known, information common to the ambush on The Mall and Miller’s transport to the Isle of Wight. One of them had leaked the information. Every one of them was being watched. Thus far they had discovered a closet homosexual, two men and one woman who were having affairs not of state, and a man who got considerable enjoyment watching pornographic movies in the Soho theaters. Financial records gotten from Inland Revenue showed nothing particularly interesting, nor did living habits. There was the usual spread of hobbies, taste in theatrical plays, and television shows. Several of the people had wide collections of friends. A few had none at all. The investigators were grateful for these sad, lonely people—many of the other people’s friends had to be checked out, too, and this took time and manpower. Owens viewed the entire operation as something necessary but rather distasteful. It was the police equivalent of peering through windows. The tapes of telephone conversations—especially those between lovers—made him squirm on occasion. Owens was a man who appreciated the individual’s need for privacy. No one’s life could survive this sort of scrutiny. He told himself that one person’s life wouldn’t, and that was the point of the exercise.
“I see Mr. Watkins visited a rare book shop this afternoon,” Owens noted, reading over his own print-out.
“Yes. He collects them. So do I,” Ashley said. “I’ve been in that shop once or twice myself. There was an estate sale recently. Perhaps Cooley bought a few things that Geoffrey wants for himself. ” The security officer made a mental note to look at the shop for himself. “He was in there for ten minutes, spoke with Dennis—”
“You know him?” Owens looked up.
“One of the best men in the trade,” Ashley said. He smiled at his own choice of words: the Trade. “I bought a Brontë there for my wife, Christmas two years ago, I think. He’s a fat little poof, but he’s quite knowledgeable. So Geoffrey spoke with him for about ten minutes, made a purchase, and left. I wonder what he bought.” Ashley rubbed his eyes. He’d been on a strict regimen of fourteen-hour days for longer than he cared to remember.
“The first new person Watkins has seen in several weeks,” Owens noted. He thought about it for a moment. There were better leads than this to follow up on, and his manpower was limited.
“So can we deal on this immigration question?” the public defender asked.
“Not a chance,” Bill Shaw said from the other side of the table. You think we’re going to give him political asylum?
“You’re not offering us a thing,” the lawyer observed. “I bet I can beat the weapons charge, and there’s no way you can make the conspiracy stick.”
“That’s fine, counselor. If it will make you any happier we’ll cut him loose and give him a plane ticket, and even an escort, home. ”
“To a maximum-security prison.” The public defender closed his file folder on the case of Eamon Clark. “You’re not giving me anything to deal with.”
“If he cops to the gun charge and conspiracy, and if he helps us, he gets to spend a few years in a much nicer prison. But if you think we’re going to let a convicted murderer just walk, mister, you are kidding yourself. What do you think you have to deal with?”
“You might be surprised,” the attorney said cryptically.
“Oh, yeah? I’m willing to bet that he hasn’t said anything to you either,” the agent challenged the young attorney, and watched closely for his reaction. Bill Shaw, too, had passed the bar exam, though he devoted his legal expertise to the safety of society rather than the freedom of criminals.
“Conversations between attorney and client are privileged.” The lawyer had been practicing f
or exactly two and a half years. His understanding of his job was limited largely to keeping the police away from his charges. At first he’d been gratified that Clark hadn’t said much of anything to the police and FBI, but he was surprised that Clark wouldn’t even talk to him. After all, maybe he could cut a deal, despite what this FBI fellow said. But he had nothing to deal with, as Shaw had just told him. He waited a few moments for a reaction from the agent and got nothing but a blank stare. The public defender admitted defeat to himself. Well, there hadn’t been much of a chance on this.
“That’s what I thought.” Shaw stood. “Tell your client that unless he opens up by the day after tomorrow, he’s flying home to finish out a life sentence. Make sure you tell him that. If he wants to talk after he gets back, we’ll send people to him. They say the beer’s pretty good over there, and I wouldn’t mind flying over myself to find out.” The only thing the Bureau could use over Clark was fear. The mission he’d been part of had hurt the Provos, and young, dumb Ned might not like the reception he got. He’d be safer in a U.S. penitentiary than he would be in a British one, but Shaw doubted that he understood this, or that he’d crack in any case. Maybe after he got back, something might be arranged.
The case was not going well; not that he’d expected otherwise. This sort of thing either cracked open immediately, or took months—or years. The people they were after were too clever to have left an immediate opening to be exploited. What remained to him and his men was the day-by-day grind. But that was the textbook definition of investigative police work. Shaw knew this well enough: he had written one of the standard texts.
18
Lights
Ashley entered the bookshop at four in the afternoon. A true bibliophile, he paused on opening the door to appreciate the aroma.