by Tom Clancy
“First order of business, of course, was to get the Royals to safety. The police and guardsmen handled that, probably praying by this time that someone would make trouble. They’re still in an evil mood, they tell me, angrier even than from the bandstand bombing incident. Not hard to understand. Anyway, your wife flatly refused to leave your side until you were under doctor’s care here. Quite a forceful woman, they tell me.”
“Cathy’s a surgeon,” Ryan explained. “When she plays doc, she’s used to having her own way. Surgeons are like that.”
“After she was quite satisfied we drove her down to the Yard. Meanwhile we had a merry time identifying you. They called your Legal Attaché at the American Embassy and he ran a check through your FBI, plus a backup check through the Marine Corps.” Ryan stole a cigarette from Wilson’s pack. The policeman lit it with a butane lighter. Jack gagged on the smoke, but he needed it. Cathy would give him hell for it, he knew, but one thing at a time. “Mind you, we never really thought you were one of them. Have to be a maniac to bring the wife and child along on this sort of job. But one must be careful.”
Ryan nodded agreement, briefly dizzy from the smoke. How’d they know to check through the Corps... oh, my Marine Corps Association card....
“In any event we have things pretty well sorted out. Your government are sending us everything we need—probably here by now, actually.” Wilson checked his watch.
“My family’s all right?”
Wilson smiled in rather an odd way. “They are being very well looked after, Doctor Ryan. You have my word on that.”
“The name’s Jack.”
“Fine. I’m known to my friends as Tony.” They finally got around to shaking hands. “And as I said, you’re a bloody hero. Care to see what the press have to say?” He handed Ryan a Daily Mirror and a Times.
“Dear God!”
The tabloid Mirror’s front page was almost entirely a color photograph of himself, sitting unconscious against the Rolls. His chest was a scarlet mass.
ATTEMPT ON HRH—MARINE TO THE RESCUE
A bold attempt to assassinate Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales within sight of Buckingham Palace was thwarted today by the courage of an American tourist.
John Patrick Ryan, an historian and formerly a lieutenant in the United States Marines, dashed barehanded into a pitched battle on The Mall as over a hundred Londoners watched in shocked disbelief. Ryan, 31, of Annapolis, Maryland, successfully disabled one gunman and, taking his weapon, shot another dead. Ryan himself was seriously wounded in the exchange. He was taken by ambulance to St. Thomas’s Hospital, where emergency surgery was successfully performed by Sir Charles Scott.
A third terrorist is reported to have escaped the scene, by running east on The Mall, then turning north on Marlborough Road.
Senior police officials were unanimous in their opinion that, but for Ryan’s courageous intervention, Their Highnesses would certainly have been slain.
Ryan turned the page to see another color photograph of himself in happier circumstances. It was his graduation photo from Quantico, and he had to smile at himself, resplendent, then, in blue high-necked blouse, two shiny gold bars, and the Mamaluke sword. It was one of the few decent photographs ever taken of him.
“Where did they get this?”
“Oh, your Marine chaps were most helpful. In fact, one of your Marine ships—helicopter carrier, or something like that—is at Portsmouth right now. I understand that your former colleagues are getting all the free beer they can swill.”
Ryan laughed at that. Next he picked up the Times, whose headline was marginally less lurid.
The Prince and Princess of Wales escaped certain death this afternoon. Three, possibly four terrorists armed with hand grenades and Kalashnikov assault rifles lay in wait for their Rolls-Royce; only to have their carefully-laid plans foiled by the bold intervention of J. P. Ryan, formerly a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, and now an historian....
Ryan flipped to the editorial page. The lead item, signed by the publisher, screamed for vengeance while praising Ryan, America, and the United States Marine Corps, and thanked Divine Providence with a flourish worthy of a Papal Encyclical.
“Reading about yourself?” Ryan looked up. Sir Charles Scott was standing at the foot of his bed with an aluminum chart.
“First time I ever made the papers.” Ryan set them down.
“You’ve earned it, and it would seem that the sleep did you some good. How do you feel?”
“Not bad, considering. How am I?” Ryan asked.
“Pulse and temperature normal—almost normal. Your color isn’t bad at all. With luck we might even avoid a postoperative infection, though I should not wish to give odds on that,” the doctor said. “How badly does it hurt?”
“It’s there, but I can live with it,” Ryan answered cautiously.
“It is only two hours since your last medication. I trust you are not one of those thickheaded fools who do not want pain medications?”
“Yes, I am,” Ryan said. He went on slowly. “Doctor, I’ve been through this twice before. The first time, they gave me too much of the stuff, and coming off was—I’d just as soon not go through that again, if you know what I mean.”
Ryan’s career in the Marine Corps had ended after a mere three months with a helicopter crash on the shores of Crete during a NATO exercise. The resulting back injury had sent Ryan to Bethesda Naval Medical Center, outside Washington, where the doctors had been a little too generous with their pain medications, and Ryan had taken two weeks to get over them. It was not an experience he wanted to repeat.
Sir Charles nodded thoughtfully. “I think so. Well, it’s your arm.” The nurse came back in as he made some notations on the chart. “Rotate the bed a bit.”
Ryan hadn’t noticed that the rack from which his arm hung was actually circular. As the head of the bed came up, his arm dropped to a more comfortable angle. The doctor looked over his glasses at Ryan’s fingers.
“Would you wiggle them, please?” Ryan did so. “Good, that’s very good. I didn’t think there’d be any nerve damage. Doctor Ryan, I am going to prescribe something mild, just enough to keep the edge off it. I will require that you take the medications which I prescribe.” Scott’s head came around to face Ryan directly. “I’ve never yet got a patient addicted to narcotics, and I do not propose to start with you. Don’t be pigheaded: pain, discomfort will retard your recovery—unless, that is, you want to remain in hospital for several months?”
“Message received, Sir Charles.”
“Right.” The surgeon smiled. “If you should feel the need for something stronger, I shall be here all day. Just ring nurse Miss Kittiwake here.” The girl beamed in anticipation.
“How about something to eat?”
“You think you can keep something down?”
If not, Kittiwake will probably love to help me throw up. “Doc, in the last thirty-six hours I’ve had a continental breakfast and a light lunch.”
“Very well. We’ll try some soft foods.” He made another notation on the chart and flashed a look to Kittiwake: Keep an eye on him. She nodded.
“Your charming wife told me that you are quite obstinate. We’ll see about that. Still and all you are doing rather nicely. You can thank your physical condition for that—and my outstanding surgical skill, of course.” Scott chuckled to himself. “After breakfast an orderly will help you freshen up for your more, ah, official visitors. Oh, don’t expect to see your family soon. They were quite exhausted last night. I gave your wife something to help her sleep; I hope she took it. Your darling little daughter was all done in.” Scott gave Ryan a serious look. “I was not misleading you earlier. Discomfort will slow your recovery. Do what I tell you and we’ll have you out of that bed in a week, and discharged in two—perhaps. But you must do exactly as I say.”
“Understood, sir. And thanks. Cathy said you did a good job on the arm.”
Scott trie
d to shrug it off. The smile showed only a little. “One must take proper care of one’s guests. I’ll be back late this afternoon to see how you are progressing.” He left, mumbling instructions to the nurse.
The police arrived in force at 8:30. By this time Ryan had been able to eat his hospital breakfast and wash up. Breakfast had been a huge disappointment, with Wilson collapsing in laughter at Ryan’s comment on its appearance—but Kittiwake had been so downcast from this that Ryan had felt constrained to eat all of it, even the stewed prunes that he’d loathed since childhood. Only after finishing had he realized that her demeanor had probably been a sham, a device to get him to eat all the slop. Nurses, he reminded himself, are tricky. At eight the orderly had arrived to help him clean up. Ryan shaved himself, with the orderly holding the mirror and clucking every time he nicked himself. Four nicks—Ryan customarily used an electric shaver, and hadn’t faced a bare blade in years. By 8:30 Ryan felt and looked human again. Kittiwake had brought in a second cup of coffee. It wasn’t very good, but it was still coffee.
There were three police officers, very senior ones, Ryan thought, from the way Wilson snapped to his feet and scurried about to arrange chairs for them before excusing himself out the door.
James Owens appeared to be the most senior, and inquired as to Ryan’s condition—politely enough that he probably meant it. He reminded Ryan of his own father, a craggy, heavyset man, and, judging from his large, gnarled hands, one who had earned his way to commander’s rank after more than a few years of walking the streets and enforcing the law the hard way.
Chief Superintendent William Taylor was about forty, younger than his Anti-Terrorist Branch colleague, and neater. Both senior detectives were well dressed, and both had the red-rimmed eyes that came from an uninterrupted night’s work.
David Ashley was the youngest and best-dressed of the three. About Ryan’s size and weight, perhaps five years older. He described himself as a representative of the Home Office, and he looked a great deal smoother than either of the others.
“You’re quite certain you’re up to this?” Taylor asked.
Ryan shrugged. “No sense waiting.”
Owens took a cassette tape recorder from his portfolio and set it on the bedstand. He plugged in two microphones, one facing Ryan, the other toward the officers. He punched the record button and announced the date, time, and place.
“Doctor Ryan,” Owens asked formally, “do you know that this interview is being recorded?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And do you have any objection to this?”
“No, sir. May I ask a question?”
“Certainly,” Owens answered.
“Am I being charged with anything? If so, I would like to contact my embassy and have an attor—” Ryan was more than a little uneasy to be the focus of so much high-level police attention, but was cut off by the chuckles of Mr. Ashley. He noted that the other police officers deferred to him for the answer.
“Doctor Ryan, you may just have things the wrong way ’round. For the record, sir, we have no intention whatever of charging you with anything. Were we to do so, I dare say we’d be looking for new employment by day’s end.”
Ryan nodded, not showing his relief. He’d not yet been sure of this, sure only that the law doesn’t have to make sense. Owens began reading his questions from a yellow pad.
“Can you give us your name and address, please?”
“John Patrick Ryan. Our mailing address is Annapolis, Maryland. Our home is at Peregrine Cliff, about ten miles south of Annapolis on the Chesapeake Bay.”
“And your occupation?” Owens checked off something on his pad.
“I guess you could say I have a couple of jobs. I’m an instructor in history at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. I lecture occasionally at the Naval War College in Newport, and from time to time I do a little consulting work on the side.”
“That’s all?” Ashley inquired with a friendly smile—or was it friendly? Ryan asked himself. Jack wondered just how much they’d managed to find out about him in the past—what? fifteen hours or so—and exactly what Ashley was hinting at. You’re no cop, Ryan thought. What exactly are you? Regardless, he had to stick to his cover story, that he was a part-time consultant to the Mitre Corporation.
“And the purpose of your visit to this country?” Owens went on.
“Combination vacation and research trip. I’m gathering data for a new book, and Cathy needed some time off. Sally is still a preschooler, so we decided to head over now and miss the tourist season.” Ryan took a cigarette from the pack Wilson had left behind. Ashley lit it from a gold lighter. “In my coat—wherever that is—you’ll find letters of introduction to your Admiralty and the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth.”
“We have the letters,” Owens replied. “Quite illegible, I’m afraid, and I fear your suit is a total loss also. What the blood did not ruin, your wife and our sergeant finished off with a knife. So when did you arrive in Britain?”
“It’s still Thursday, right? Well, we got in Tuesday night from Dulles International outside Washington. Arrived about seven-thirty, got to the hotel about nine-thirty or so, had a snack sent up, and went right to sleep. Flying always messes me up—jet lag, whatever. I conked right out.” That was not exactly true, but Ryan didn’t think they needed to know everything.
Owens nodded. They had already learned why Ryan hated flying. “And yesterday?”
“I woke up about seven, I guess, had breakfast and a paper sent up, then just kinda lazed around until about eight-thirty. I arranged to meet Cathy and Sally in the park around four, then caught a cab to the Admiralty building—close, as it turned out, I could have walked it. As I said, I had a letter of introduction to see Admiral Sir Alexander Woodson, the man in charge of your naval archives—he’s retired, actually. He took me down to a musty sub-sub-basement. He had the stuff I wanted all ready for me.
“I came over to look at some signal digests. Admiralty signals between London and Admiral Sir James Somerville. He was commander of your Indian Ocean fleet in the early months of 1942, and that’s one of the things I’m writing about. So I spend the next three hours reading over faded carbon copies of naval dispatches and taking notes.”
“On this?” Ashley held up Ryan’s clipboard. Jack snatched it from his hands.
“Thank God!” Ryan exclaimed. “I was sure it got lost.” He opened it and set it up on the bedstand, then typed in some instructions. “Ha! It still works!”
“What exactly is that thing?” Ashley wanted to know. All three got out of their chairs to look at it.
“This is my baby.” Ryan grinned. On opening the clipboard he revealed a typewriter-style keyboard and a yellow Liquid Crystal Diode display. Outwardly it looked like an expensive clipboard, about an inch thick and bound in leather. “It’s a Cambridge Datamaster Model-C Field Computer. A friend of mine makes them. It has an MC-68000 microprocessor, and two megabytes of bubble memory.”
“Care to translate that?” Taylor asked.
“Sorry. It’s a portable computer. The microprocessor is what does the actual work. Two megabytes means that the memory stores up to two million characters—enough for a whole book—and since it uses bubble memory, you don’t lose the information when you switch it off. A guy I went to school with set up a company to make these little darlings. He hit on me for some start-up capital. I use an Apple at home, this one’s just for carrying around. ”
“We knew it was some sort of computer, but our chaps couldn’t make it work,” Ashley said.
“Security device. The first time you use it, you input your user’s code and activate the lockout. Afterward, unless you type in the code, it doesn’t work—period.”
“Indeed?” Ashley observed. “How foolproof?”
“You’d have to ask Fred. Maybe you could read the data right off the bubble chips. I don’t know how computers work. I just use ’em,” Ryan explained. “Anyway, here are my notes.”
“Getti
ng back to your activities of yesterday,” Owens said, giving Ashley a cool look. “We now have you to noon.”
“Okay. I broke for lunch. A guy on the ground floor directed me to a—a pub, I guess, two blocks away. I don’t remember the name of the place. I had a sandwich and a beer while I played with this thing. That took about half an hour. I spent another hour at the Admiralty building before I checked out. Left about quarter of two, I suppose. I thanked Admiral Woodson—very good man. I caught a cab to—don’t remember the address, it was on one of my letters. North of—Regent’s Park, I think. Admiral Sir Roger De-Vere. He served under Somerville. He wasn’t there. His house-keeper said he got called out of town suddenly due to a death in the family. So I left a message that I’d been there and flagged another cab back downtown. I decided to get out a few blocks early and walk the rest of the way.”
“Why?” Taylor asked.
“Mainly I was stiff from all the sitting—in the Admiralty building, the flight, the cab. I needed a stretch. I usually jog every day, and I get restless when I miss it.”
“Where did you get out?” Owens asked.
“I don’t know the name of the street. If you show me a map I can probably point it out.” Owens nodded for him to go on. “Anyway, I nearly got run over by a double-decker bus, and one of your uniformed cops told me not to jaywalk—” Owens looked surprised at that and scribbled some notes. Perhaps they hadn’t learned of that encounter. “I picked up a magazine at a street stand and met Cathy about, oh, three-forty or so. They were early, too. ”
“And how had she spent her day?” Ashley inquired. Ryan was certain that they had this information already.
“Shopping, mainly. Cathy’s been over here a few times, and likes to shop in London. She was last here about three years ago for a surgical convention, but I couldn’t make the trip.”