by Tom Clancy
“All I can say, doc, is this: I don’t know a better man than your husband, and I’ve been around the block a few times. He’s put it on the line more than the times you know about, but there’s people around who don’t like him very much, and those people are trying to get him in a way that he can’t deal with. It’s typical, dirty, underhanded crap, but Jack’s not the kind of guy who can deal with that. He plays by the rules, you see. So it’s eating him up.”
Cathy was weeping now. Clark handed her a handkerchief.
“I figured you should know. If you think it’s necessary, I want you to check it out as much as you think you have to. That’s your decision, and I want you to make the call without worrying about me or Ding or anybody else, okay? I’ll take you to see Carol Zimmer and the kids. If I lose my job—the hell with it. I’ve been in the business too damned long anyway”
“Christmas presents?”
“For the Zimmer kids? Yeah, I helped wrap them. Your husband can’t wrap presents worth a damn, but I suppose you know that. I even delivered some of my own. My two are too grown for fun presents, and they’re great kids, the Zimmers. It’s nice being an uncle,” John added with a genuine smile.
“All a lie?”
“I don’t know about the financial stuff, just the other things. And they tried to get at him through you, judging by what you just said.”
The tears stopped at that moment. Cathy wiped her eyes and looked up. “You’re right. You said you don’t know who’s doing this?”
“I’m planning to find out,” Clark promised her. Her demeanor had changed completely. This was some broad.
“I want you to let me know. And I want to meet the Zimmer family.”
“When do you get off work?”
“I have to make a few phone calls and some notes—say an hour?”
“I can squeeze that in, but I may have to leave early. They have a 7-Eleven about ten miles from your place.”
“I know it’s close, but not exactly where.”
“You can follow me down.”
“Let’s go.” Cathy led them out, or tried to. Chavez beat her out the door, and held the point all the way back to the hospital. He and Clark decided to stay outside and get some air, then spotted two youths sitting on their car.
It was strange, John Clark thought as he crossed the street. At the beginning Caroline Ryan had been the angry one, angry and betrayed. He’d been the voice of understanding. Now she was feeling much better—though worse in another way—but he had absorbed all of her anger. It was a little too much to bear, and there in front of him was an outlet for it.
“Off the car, punk!”
“Christ, John!” Ding said behind him.
“Says who!” the youth said, hardly turning to see the man approaching. He got his head around just in time to see the hand grasp his shoulder. Then the world rotated and the brick wall of a building approached his face very rapidly. Fortunately, his boom-box absorbed most of the impact, which however had a negative effect on the boom-box.
“Motherfucker!” the kid snarled, coming out with a knife. His companion was six feet away, and also had a knife out.
Clark just smiled at them. “Who’s first?”
The thought of avenging his appliance died a quick death. Both youths knew danger when they saw it.
“You lucky I don’t have my gun, man!”
“You can leave the knives, too.”
“You a cop?”
“No, I am not a policeman,” Clark said, walking over with his hand out. Chavez backed him up, his coat opened, as both youths noticed. They dropped their knives and started walking away.
“What the hell is—”
Clark turned to see a policeman approaching, with a large dog. Both were fully alert. John pulled out his CIA pass. “I didn’t like their attitude.”
Chavez handed the knives over. “They dropped these, sir.”
“You really should leave that sort of thing to us.”
“Yes, sir,” Clark agreed. “You’re right. Nice dog you have there.”
The cop pocketed the knives. “Have a good one,” he said, wondering what the hell this had been about.
“You, too, officer.” Clark paused and turned to Chavez. “Goddamn, that felt good.”
“Ready to go to Mexico, John?”
“Yeah. I just hate leaving unfinished business behind, you know?”
“So who’s trying to fuck him over?”
“Not sure.”
“Bull,” Ding observed.
“Won’t be sure until I talk to Holtzman.”
“You say so, man. I like her,” he added. “That’s some lady.”
“Yeah, she is. Just what he needs to set things straight.”
“You think she’ll call that Murray guy?”
“Does it matter?”
“No.” Chavez looked up the street. “A question of honor, Mr. C.”
“I knew you’d understand, Ding.”
Jacqueline Zimmer was a beautiful child, Cathy thought, holding her. She wanted another, must have another. Jack would give her one, maybe another girl if they were lucky.
“We hear so much ’bout you!” Carol said. “You doctor?”
“Yes, I teach doctors, I’m a professor of surgery.”
“My oldes’ son must meet you. He want to be doctor. He student at Georgetown.”
“Maybe I can help him a little. Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Your husband ...”
“Buck? He die. I don’t know all the things, just that he die—on duty, yes? Is secret thing. Very hard for me,” Carol said soberly, but without overt grief. She was over that now. “Buck was a very good man. So your husban’. You be nice to him,” Mrs. Zimmer added.
“Oh, I will,” Cathy promised. “Now, we have to make this a secret?”
“What secret?”
“Jack doesn’t know that I know about you.”
“Oh? I know there are many secret, but—okay, I un‘erstan’. I keep this secret, too.”
“I will talk to Jack about that. I think you should come to our house and meet our children. But for now, we keep the secret?”
“Yes, okay. We surprise him?”
“Right.” Cathy smiled as she handed the child back. “I will see you again, soon.”
“Feel better, doc?” Clark asked her out in the parking lot.
“Thank you ...”
“Call me John.”
“Thanks, John.” It was the warmest smile since his kids’ at Christmas.
“Anytime.”
Clark drove west on Route 50. Cathy turned east for home. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel of her car. The anger was back now. For the most part she was angry at herself. How could she have thought that of Jack? She’d been very foolish, very small, and so disgustingly selfish. But it wasn’t really her fault. Someone else had invaded their household, she decided as she pulled into the garage. She was on the phone almost immediately. She had to do one more thing. She had to be completely certain.
“Hi, Dan.”
“Cathy! How’s the eye business, kid?” Murray asked.
“Got a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
She’d already decided how to do it. “There’s a problem with Jack....”
Murray’s voice became guarded. “What is it?”
“He’s having nightmares,” Cathy said. It wasn’t a lie, but what followed was. “Something about a helicopter, and Buck somebody ... I can’t ask him about it, but—”
Murray cut her off. “Cathy, I can’t talk about it over the phone. That’s a business matter, kid.”
“Really?”
“Really, Cathy. It’s something I know about, but I cannot discuss it with you. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be. It’s business.”
Cathy went on with a touch of alarm in her voice. “It’s not something that’s happening now—I mean—”
“It’s way in the p
ast, Cathy. That’s all I can say. If you think Jack needs professional help, then I can make a few calls and—”
“No, I don’t think so. It was really bad a few months ago, but it does seem to be getting better. I was just worried that it might be something at the office....”
“All behind him, Cathy. Honest.”
“You sure, Dan?”
“Positive. I would not kid around on something like this.”
And that, Cathy knew, was that. Dan was every bit as honest as Jack was. “Thanks, Dan. Thanks a lot,” she said in her best medical voice, the one that revealed nothing at all.
“Anytime, Cathy.” By the time he hung up, Murray wondered if he’d just been had in some way. No, he decided, there was no way she could have found out about that.
Had he seen the other end of the disconnected phone line, he would have been surprised to discover how wrong he was. Cathy sat alone in the kitchen, crying one last time. She’d had to check, there had not been a choice to purge all the emotions from her soul, but now she was completely certain that Clark had spoken the truth; that someone was trying to hurt her husband, that whoever it was was willing to use his wife and his family against him. Who could ever hate a man so much that they would try that? she wondered.
Whoever it was was her enemy. Whoever it was had attacked her and her family just as coldly as those terrorists had done, but much more cravenly.
Whoever it was would pay for that.
“Where have you been?”
“Sorry, doc. I had some errands to run.” Clark had come back through the S&T office. “Here.”
“What’s this?” Ryan took the bottle. It was an expensive container of Chivas Regal in a ceramic bottle. The sort you couldn’t see through.
“That’s our transceiver. They made up four of them. Nice job, isn’t it? Here’s the pickup.” Clark handed over a green stick, almost the thickness of a cocktail straw, but not quite. “It’ll look like a plastic doodad to hold the flowers in place. We decided to use three of them. The techies say they can multiplex the outbound transmissions, and for some reason or other they can crunch the computer time down to one-to-one. They also say that if we had another few months to play with the comm links, we could almost real-time the whole thing.”
“What we have is enough,” Jack said. Here and now “almost” was better than perfect too late. “I’ve funded enough research projects.”
“I agree. What about the test flights?”
“Tomorrow, ten o’clock.”
“Super.” Clark stood. “Hey, doc, how about you call it a day? You look wasted.”
“I think you’re right. Give me another hour and I’m out of here.”
“Fair enough.”
Russell met them at Atlanta. They’d come across through Mexico City, thence through Miami, where the customs people were very interested in drugs, but not particularly interested in Greek businessmen who opened their bags without being asked. Russell, who was now Robert Friend of Roggen, Colorado—with the driver’s license to prove it—shook hands with both of them and helped to collect their baggage.
“Weapons?” Qati asked.
“Not here, man. I have everything you need at home.”
“Any problems?”
“Not one.” Russell was silent for a moment. “Maybe there is one.”
“What?” Ghosn asked with concealed alarm. Being on foreign soil always made him nervous, and this was his first trip to America.
“Cold as hell where we’re going, guys. You might want to get some decent coats.”
“That can wait,” the Commander decided. He was feeling very bad now. The latest batch of chemotherapy had denied him food for nearly two days, and as much as he craved nourishment, his stomach rebelled at the mere sight of it in one of the airport fast-food stands. “What about our flight?”
“Hour and a half. How about you get some sweaters, okay? Follow me. I’m not foolin’ about the weather. It’s like zero where we’re going.”
“Zero? That is not so—” Ghosn stopped. “You mean below zero, centigrade?”
Russell stopped for a second. “Oh. Yeah, that’s right. Zero here means something different. Zero’s cold, guys, okay?”
“As you say,” Qati agreed. Half an hour later they had thick woolen sweaters to go under their thin raincoats. The mostly empty Delta flight to Denver left on time. Three hours later they walked off their last jetway for a while. Ghosn had never seen so much snow in his life.
“I can hardly breathe,” Qati said.
“It’ll take you a day to get used to the altitude. You guys go get the luggage. I’ll get the car and warm it up for you.”
“If he’s betrayed us,” Qati said as Russell walked away, “we’ll know it in the next few minutes.”
“He has not,” Ghosn replied. “He is a strange man, but a faithful one.”
“He is an infidel, a pagan.”
“That is true, but he also listened to an imam in my presence. At least he was polite. I tell you, he is faithful.”
“We will see,” Qati said, walking tiredly and breathlessly to the baggage-claim level. Both men looked around as they moved, searching for eyes. That was always the giveaway, the eyes that fixed on you. It was hard even for the most professional of men to keep from looking at their targets.
They collected their luggage without incident, and Marvin was waiting. He could not stop the blast of air from hitting them, and thin as the air was, it was also colder than either had ever experienced. The heat of the car was welcome indeed.
“How go the preparations?”
“Everything is on schedule, Commander,” Russell said. He drove off. The Arabs were quietly impressed by the vast open space, the broad interstate highway—they found the speed-limit signs very strange—and the obvious wealth in the area. They were also impressed with Russell, who had manifestly done quite well. Both men rested easier that he had not betrayed them. It was not that Qati had actually expected it, rather that he knew that his vulnerability increased as they got closer to the final part of the plan. That, he knew, was normal.
The farm was of a good size. Russell had thoughtfully overheated it somewhat, but what Qati noted most of all was its obvious defensibility, with a clear field of fire in all directions. He got them inside and carried the bags for them.
“You guys have to be pretty tired,” Marvin observed. “Why don’t you just bed down? You’re safe here, okay?” Qati took the advice. Ghosn did not. He and Russell went to the kitchen. Ibrahim was happy to learn that Marvin was a skilled cook.
“What is this meat?”
“Venison—deer meat. I know you can’t eat pork, but you got any problems with deer?” the American asked.
Ghosn shook his head. “No, but I have never had it.”
“It’s okay, I promise. I found this at a local store this morning. Native-American soul food, man. This is good mule deer. There’s a game-rancher around here who grows them commercially. I can try you out on beefalo, too.”
“What the devil is that?” “Beefalo? Another thing you can only get around here. It’s a cross between beef cattle and buffalo. Buffalo is what my people used to eat, man, biggest damned cow you’re ever gonna see!” Russell grinned. “Good lean meat, healthy and everything. But venison’s the best, Ibrahim.”
“You must not call me that,” Ghosn said tiredly. It had been a twenty-seven-hour day for him, counting the time zones.
“I got the IDs for you and the Commander.” Russell pulled the envelopes from a drawer and tossed them on the table. “Names are exactly what you wanted, see? We just have to do the photos and put them on the cards. I have the equipment to do it.”
“Was this hard to get?”
Marvin laughed. “Naw, it’s standard commercial stuff. I used my own license form as a master, ginned up the copies, then I got the hardware to do first-class dupes. Lots of companies use photo-passes, and the equipment is standardized. Three hours’ work. I figure we have all day t
omorrow and day after to go over everything.”
“Excellent, Marvin.”
“You want a drink?”
“Alcohol, you mean?”
“Hey, man, I saw you have a beer with that German guy—
what was his name?”
“Herr Fromm, you mean.”
“Come on, it’s not as bad as eatin’ pork, is it?”
“Thank you, but I will pass on that—is that how you say it?”
“‘Pass on the drink’?—yeah, that’s fine, man. How’s that Fromm guy doing?” Marvin asked casually, looking at the meat. It was almost done.
“Doing well,” Ghosn answered just as casually. “He went off to see his wife.”
“Exactly what were you guys working on, anyway?” Russell poured himself a shot of Jack Daniel’s.
“He helped us with the explosives, some special tricks, you see. He’s an expert in the field.”
“Great.”
It was the first hopeful sign in a few days, maybe a few weeks, Ryan thought. Dinner was fine, all the better to make it home in time to have it with the kids. Cathy had evidently gotten home from work at a reasonable hour and had taken the time to fix a good one. Best of all, they’d talked over dinner, not about very much, but they’d talked. Afterwards Jack had helped her clean up. Finally the kids went off to bed, and they were alone.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” Cathy said.
“It’s okay, I guess I deserved it.” Ryan was willing to say almost anything to calm things down.
“No, I was wrong, Jack. I was feeling bitchy, and I had cramps, and my back hurt. What’s wrong with you is that you’re working too hard and drinking too much.” She came over to kiss him. “Smoking, Jack?”
He was amazed. He hadn’t expected to be kissed. More than that, he expected an explosion if she discovered that he’d smoked. “Sorry, babe. Bad day at the office. I wimped.”
Cathy held his hands. “Jack, I want you to cut back on the drinking, and get your rest. That’s your problem, that and the stress. We’ll worry about the smoking later, just so you don’t smoke around the kids. I haven’t been very sympathetic, and I’ve been a little wrong myself, but you have to clean up your act. What you’ve been doing is bad for you, and bad for us.”