Hostile Intent

Chapter One

The morning school bell was clattering in the distance as Hope Gardner sandwiched her Volvo station wagon between Mrs. Moscone’s Escalade and Janey Eagleton’s Prius. She only nicked the Prius’s bumper, or rather the plastic piece of junk that passed for a bumper these days, and the gentle thump went unnoticed by her two children in the backseat of her car. She wished she had the guts to ding the Escalade a little, just to make it fair, but the Cadillac belonged to Mrs. Moscone, and nobody wanted Mrs. Moscone mad at them. Her husband was from The Hill in St. Louis, the kind of neighborhood where The Sopranos was considered a documentary.

She wondered briefly whether she should leave a note, but that notion flew out of her head as the back door rocketed open.

“Bye, Mom!” shouted Emma, her twelve-year-old. Emma was blond, green-eyed, and filling out with a rapidity that surprised Hope, even though she had gone through the same transformation herself when she was her daughter’s age. One moment a skinny kid, the next…And if she noticed, how much more quickly the boys noticed too.

More than anything, Emma wanted to grow up to be Gwyneth Paltrow, win an Oscar, and marry a rock star, more or less in that order. Hope didn’t have the heart to tell her that the odds were several million to one against any of those things happening. But childhood was for dreaming; Emma would learn about the harsh realities of life soon enough.

Emma was halfway across the schoolyard as Hope turned to Rory. Rory was different. Small for his age, he was skittish, unsure, easily alarmed, especially for a ten-year-old. And right now his nose was running too. “Come on, honey,” said Hope, wiping his face with a clean handkerchief and pulling his zipper up tight. “You don’t want to be late.”

The first snarl of winter had come early to southern Illinois, and there was a stiff, chill breeze blowing into Edwardsville from the Mississippi, just a few miles to the west. Edwardsville was an exurb of St. Louis, but the big city across the river might as well be in a different country, not just another state. Edwardsville still had an old-fashioned, midwestern small-town feel to it, and that’s the way folks liked it.

Nothing ever happened in Edwardsville.

Rory snuffled again and wiped his nose on his sleeve; she could never get him to stop doing that. In the distance, they could both hear the school bell ringing, this time longer and louder.

Hope got out of the car and held out her arms to her son. “Okay, big guy,” she said. “Time to go.”

“I don’t want to go, Mama,” Rory said plaintively, not budging.

At times like this, Hope wondered if her son needed some kind of special-ed program. She had talked about it with her husband, Jack, but Jack was a no-nonsense, no-excuses kind of guy, dead set against it. His tech-consulting business did a lot of work with the military all over the Midwest, some of it highly classified, and as far as he was concerned, special-ed programs were for sissies and slackers, and his son was neither. The same went for “conditions” like attention deficit disorder and “diseases” with no physiological symptoms. “Nothing that can’t be cured by self-control or a good whack on the ass,” Jack would say.

Hope wasn’t sure she agreed with him, but there it was. And so Rory sat through class after class, his mind wandering, his grades mediocre, his teachers frustrated.

Oh well, not much could be done about that at the moment. And anyway, Jack was supposed to leave on a business trip to Minneapolis today, so further discussion would have to wait until he got back.

Hope reached in and took her son’s hand. It was cold to the touch, clammy, sweaty despite the weather.

Reluctantly, Rory let himself be hoisted up and out of the car. “Can’t I stay home today, Mom?” he asked.

In the distance, by the schoolhouse door, Hope could see a man waving at them, telling them to hurry. Later, she would recall that the man was unfamiliar, someone she had never seen before. Ever since Columbine and the other shootings, schools had become much more concerned with security, and strange adults were not allowed to roam the halls. But this man — white, blond, strongly built — was well turned-out in a coat and tie.

Must be a new teacher, Hope thought. Strange, in the middle of the term. She herself was a substitute teacher at the school, and she thought she knew everybody. In fact, she had a class to teach at noon; well, she’d ask the principal when she saw him.

The bell rang sharply, one last time. No other kids in sight — everyone was in the building. Except Rory, who was still holding on to her hand.

Before she could answer, his hand slipped from hers and he suddenly broke away. “It’s okay,” he said. “I can handle it.”

Hope watched him dash across the dead grass and the new teacher waved him home, like an airplane coming in for a landing. She waved once at Rory’s back, but he didn’t see her, ducking under the man’s arm and through the door just as the bell struck 8:00 A.M.

A brisk gust of wind blew through her, giving her the chills, and it was starting to snow a little. She shook herself to get warm, then walked back toward the car. She made a short detour around the Prius, to see if its bumper was perhaps worse than she’d thought and was surprised to see that it wasn’t Janey Eagleton’s all, but one with Missouri plates. Now she didn’t feel so guilty.

It was not until she was halfway home that she remembered thinking it was odd they were lowering the iron bars on the school windows just as instruction was starting.

Chapter Two

Mrs. Braverman’s fourth grade arithmetic class opened each school day with a moment of silence. It wasn’t exactly a prayer, which the children all knew would be illegal, but neither was it a chance to sneak in a few more winks of sleep before the day began in earnest. Mrs. Braverman saw to that as she patrolled the aisles between the desks.

Rory offered up some quick thoughts in favor of his parents, his dad going away on business, his mom always rushing around in the Volvo, which she treated more like a ferryboat than a car, locked in an eternal game of Cannibals and Missionaries.

Which was, in fact, one of Rory’s favorite pastimes: trying to figure out how to get various odd numbers of cannibals and missionaries across a river without ever leaving more man-eaters than men of the cloth on either side. It was a frequent subject of his doodles, but on this morning he tried very hard to visualize the scene: scary dark men with bones in their noses looking hungrily upon pale-faced creatures wearing what seemed to him to be full-length black dresses. You didn’t see many holy men around Edwardsville these days, and even though the Gardners were more or less Lutherans, their minister usually wore jeans.

Rory had gotten several moves into his game of mental gymnastics when Mrs. Braverman’s midwestern caw brought him out of his reverie and back to attention. He glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that, as usual, only two minutes had passed. Rory didn’t like math, and of course wasn’t very good at it, but he already had a firm grip on Einstein’s theory of relativity: the forty-five minutes between 8:05 and 8:50 A.M. were the Methuselahs of minutes.

Rory knew the drill, and so he flipped his book open to the homework page even before Mrs. Braverman got the words out of her mouth. Except that, on this morning, the words never came out of her mouth. Most of the other kids had done the same thing, but Mrs. Braverman had left her desk and gone over to the classroom door, a wooden one with a large pane of glass in it, the better for the principal, Mr. Nasir-Nassaad, to be able to glance in and give the class one of those looks he was famous for. Which is why, behind his back, the kids all called him Mr. Nasty-Nosy.

Some said Mr. Nasir-Nassaad was from Lebanon, others that he was really from Cleveland, and still others whispered ominously that they knew for a fact that he was a long-lost brother of Osama bin Laden. The funny part was that Mr. Nasir-Nassaad was actually pretty nice, even if he did remind Rory of one of his imaginary cannibals. It was always a disappointment when he opened his mouth and sounded like everybody else in Edwardsville: normal.

It wasn’t the principal at the door, however. Rory didn’t have a very good view of the door, but from the look on Mrs. Braverman’s face, the visitor was somebody she didn’t recognize. He could tell, because whenever she was unexpectedly interrupted, unless it was by Nasty-Nosy, she got this how-dare-you look, because as far as Mrs. Braverman was concerned, teaching was the most important thing in the world, and not to be lightly distracted.

She opened the door a crack and stuck her face in the opening. Rory could see only the back of her head. She spoke lowly, inaudibly, then took two steps back and opened the door wide.

A man came in — a man Rory recognized at once. It was the same man who had ushered him through the door as he scooted in. The blond man.

“Children,” said Mrs. Braverman. “This is Mr. — what was your name again?”

“Charles,” the man replied. He had an accent. He didn’t sound like he was normal, or like he was from Edwardsville.

“Charles. He’s one of our new substitute teachers, and he’s going to be helping out in class today. So let’s all give him a big Mississippi River welcome on his first day with us.”

The children applauded politely. “I’m just going to run down to the principal’s office for a moment,” said Mrs. Braverman. “Won’t be a minute.”

Mrs. Braverman took a step or two out the door, then staggered back inside the classroom as if profoundly puzzled by something that had just happened. There was an extraordinary look on her face as she turned to the class, and then she fell to the floor — sat down, heavily, as if bearing an intolerably heavy burden. She tried to say something, but no sound came out. Instead, blood suddenly poured from her mouth, her head rolled back, and her skull hit the floor with an egg-cracking report that Rory would never forget.

The new teacher, Charles, jumped into action. He leaped over Mrs. Braverman and slammed the door, locking it. Then he turned to the children.

“Everybody down,” he said. “Get under your desks and don’t look up, no matter what.”

Everybody did what he or she was told. Everybody was too shocked to scream. Everybody was real scared.

From under his desk, Rory could hear Mrs. Braverman’s labored breathing, growing slower. He knew she’d been shot, but had no idea who shot her. He wondered whether Charles knew first aid or CPR and, if so, when he was going to start helping her.

From outside the door came the sound of screaming and gunfire. Of running feet and the thud of bodies falling. It went on for only a couple of minutes, but childhood minutes are long, and these minutes were as close as youth gets to eternity.

Mrs. Braverman had stopped breathing. From his spot near the back, on the floor, Rory could see a widening puddle of red that had stained her pantsuit and was now spreading across the floor, toward where Annie Applegate and Ehud Aaronson were crouching. He wondered how long it would take for the blood puddle to move through the Bs and Cs and get to the Gs, and whether there would be time for him to find out.

Now it was quiet. Charles’s feet moved across the room, stepped over Mrs. Braverman, and stopped in front of the door. The rest of Charles was obviously listening.

“Boys and girls,” said Charles after a few long moments. His voice was calm. Rory thought that was cool — that Charles kept it together despite what had just happened. Rory’s own heart was pounding like mad. He hoped that when he grew up, he could be cool, like Charles.

“I want you all to stand up, leave your things behind and — very quietly — follow me. Everything is going to be all right. Okay?”

Nobody moved.

“You have to trust me. Stand up, keep silent, and we’ll all get out of here.”

This time, everybody moved and nobody made a sound. All that fire drill practice was finally paying off. As the children began Indian-filing out of the classroom, Rory noticed that none of the girls looked at Mrs. Braverman’s body through their tears, but the boys each sneaked a peek as they shuffled by. Nobody spoke a word.

“There’s a good girl…good lad,” murmured the man. As Rory approached, the man’s free hand reached out and stopped him. “Hold it.”

The line stopped; the children froze. It crossed Rory’s mind that the man was somehow going to blame him for what happened to Mrs. Braverman. “You were almost late for school,” the man said. “What’s your name?”

“Rory Gardner.”

“Was that your mother dropping you off?”

“Yes, sir.” He was close enough to Mrs. Braverman’s body that he could have touched her with his foot. He closed his eyes in prayer. He didn’t care whether it was illegal. He didn’t care if they came to arrest him later. He had a good excuse.

When he opened his eyes, Charles was still looking at him. “It’s good to have you on the team, Rory.” Charles held out his hand to Rory. “You know what our team’s motto is?”

“No, sir.”

“Who Dares, Wins.”

Chapter Three

KXQQ billed itself as “the St. Louis Metro Area’s Number One Source for News,” but everyone knew that was bullshit. Most of the reporters were fresh out of Penney-Missouri or BU, young kids in their first jobs, ambitious but lazy, fluent in contemporary psychobabble and absolute masters of the jailhouse-jive hand gestures now de rigueur for all TV reporters, but otherwise illiterate, innumerate, and ahistorical. Deep down inside, they really wanted to be cable news anchors or Hollywood screenwriters. By the time any reporters at KXQQ found out about a story, the story was usually over.

Rhonda Gaines-Solomon stared dully at CNN with one ear cocked at the police scanner and the new issue of Entertainment Weekly in her hand. She was twenty-four years old, from San Bernardino, California. She hated the Midwest, hated the widebodies who inhabited this part of the country, hated the awful weather, and pretended she was really from Los Angeles, if anybody asked.

“What’s hot today, Ms. Solomon?” Mr. Dunkirk always said that, especially when it was she who was hot, which was most days. Like all female on-air talent these days, Rhonda Gaines-Solomon was good looking in that tramp-next-door sort of way that everyone seemed to want lately, and she did the best she could with what God, her parents, and a discreet visit to a plastic surgeon had given her.

Still, she thought, one day she could bust Mr. Dunkirk for sexual harassment if she really set her mind to it. She noticed the way he looked her, had seen his fat wife, and figured him for a possible play if the going got tough, or she wasn’t out of this burg in six months, or both.

“All quiet on the midwestern front, chief,” she replied, checking out the photo spread on Brad Pitt. It was her standard answer. Nine o’clock in the morning was far too early for St. Louis’s usual repertoire of shootings, stabbings, and miscellaneous mayhem to have gotten underway yet. The perps were all still sleeping off their depredations from the previous night.

Casting a quick glance at the bank of TV screens on the newsroom wall, Mr. Dunkirk tacked toward her. “I want something juicy for the four o’clock today,” he said, checking out her legs as discreetly as possible.

“I’ll see what I can do, chief.”

He hated it when she called him “chief.” “Who else’ve we got in the field today?”

“John and Sandy.”

That would be Mr. Kelleher and Ms. Gomez. Mr. Dunkirk started to say something, but held his tongue. Young people these days were on a first-name basis with the whole world, as if last names didn’t matter, or didn’t exist at all. That’s why he insisted upon the use of the honorific for himself, and called all his young charges by their last names, just to remind them that they had one.

“See if one of you can get me something better than a weather story, will you?” said Mr. Dunkirk. He looked around the shabby newsroom — the only part of it that shone was the plastic set — and sighed. This was not where he had envisioned himself twenty-five years ago, when he got his first job at a small television station in upstate New York, with dreams of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite dancing in his head.

And yet here he was, stuck in the dead-end job of news director at the lowest-rated local station in one of the worst television markets in the country. Nothing good was ever going to happen to him again. His life was over.

He wondered if he should make a play for Solomon at some point, just to see what would happen, then decided to table the notion and start thinking about Christmas shopping for his wife.

“How about a cat up a tree? A homeless guy in a cardboard box?” Rhonda shouted after him as he disappeared into his office and closed the door. Every now and then she almost felt sorry for him, if it was possible to feel sorry for somebody that old and hopeless. She would never turn out that way, she promised herself; she’d kill herself long before things came to that.

A crackle on the police scanner seemed promising for a moment but it turned out to be only a hit-and-run with no fatalities.

Then the phone rang. “Newsroom.”

A pause, then a voice. Low, modulated, cultivated: a grownup’s voice.

“To whom am I speaking?” There was a hint of an English accent, although truth to tell Rhonda probably couldn’t distinguish among English, Australian, New Zealand, or South African if she had a gun at her head. Foreign, in any case.

“Rhonda Gaines-Solomon.”

“You will do.” A pause. “Do you know what’s going on at the school?”

This might be promising. She grabbed a pen, knocked some junk on her desk out of the way, and found a scrap of paper. “What school?”

“Edwardsville Middle School. Jefferson. Do you know what’s going on there?”

She glanced at the monitors to see if any of their rivals had anything about Edwardsville: nothing. A glance at the local AP wire on her laptop screen: nothing. “Far as I know, there’s nothing going on at the Jefferson Middle School.”

A short pause, then a challenge—“What do you know?”

Suddenly, she realized that she’d misunderstood the question. The tipster wasn’t asking her for information. He was giving her information. Rhonda’s mind kicked into high gear as the import of what he was saying sank in. Frantically, she waved at Mr. Dunkirk behind the glass, but he was sipping his coffee and reading the paper.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice rising “A school shooting? What is it you’re telling me?”

“How fast can you get over here?”

She was out the door so fast that Mr. Dunkirk never even saw her leave. One moment she was there—

And the next moment she was gone.

Chapter Four

The hallway was silent. Unless you looked carefully, you couldn’t really tell there was anything wrong, except that the lights were out.

Charles led the children as noiselessly as possible. Rory thought they’d be heading for the front door, but when he pointed in its direction, Charles just shook his head and gestured toward the gym. Rory understood immediately — the gym lay at the rear of the main hallway, and behind it was the loading dock. They’d be able to sneak out that way.

They were about halfway down when a man stepped out of one of the classrooms. He was carrying a gun. Rory didn’t know exactly what kind of gun, but it was one of those that you gripped with both hands and shot tons of bullets really fast.

Charles went right after him. They struggled for a bit, but then the man hit Charles with the butt — at least, that’s what it looked like — and Charles went down hard.

This man was quite different. He was funny looking and foreign looking and he was wearing mostly black clothes, like he was some kind of ninja without the sashes and pointed stars. He looked at the children, still standing dutifully in line, and said, “Okay, we go now.”

As they walked toward the gym, several other men came out of the shadows. These men were also semi-ninjas, except their faces were covered by ski masks. The man with the rifle barked at them in some strange language — Rory could tell he was the Top Dog, because his face was uncovered and he was holding a cell phone in one hand, and had a pistol stuffed down the front of his pants — and they picked up Charles by the armpits and dragged him along.

The first person Rory spotted upon entering the gym, because he was looking for her, was his sister. Emma was with the other eighth graders, sitting on the bottom bench of the stands. There were tears running down her face. But she was all right; she was alive.

Mr. Nasir-Nassaad was not all right. He was hogtied, lying in the middle of the basketball court, right on the school logo. He was bleeding from his nose and one of his legs was bent back at an impossible angle. He was trying to scream, but there was a dirty, bloody rag stuffed in his mouth.

Rory’s eyes drifted from the prone figure of the principal to the nets at either side of the gym. There was something weird hanging from each of them, something heavy and ominous with wires running out of it.

He followed the wires and saw that they ran to one man, another stranger, who was off to the side, near the double fire doors. The wires ran into a doohickey connected to a laptop that was balancing on one of the footstools the cheerleaders used to practice with.

It looked like the whole school was in the gym. Teachers, students, the custodial staff, even Mr. Hebert, the cook, whose family had been in the St. Louis area since it was a French Jesuit trading post and once had owned most of Creve Coeur, or so the story went.

And then there were the strangers, about a dozen, all men, wearing ski masks, all of them armed.

The teachers had already been tied up; the only teacher who wasn’t tied up was Charles, but he was still knocked out, and so he lay on one of the benches, unconscious.

But that wasn’t the worst part. Several teachers had shotguns wired to their hands, which were bound in front of them, and both their index fingers taped to the triggers. Rory didn’t know much about physics yet, but he knew enough to realize that they had to hold their elbows up, the guns pointing directly at their faces. If they got tired, and the guns slipped a bit, the pressure on the triggers would blow their heads off.

Nurse Haskell, he noticed, was having an especially hard time holding her gun up.

Rory submitted without a fuss as one of the bad men — he had already begun to think of them as “cannibals”—roughly bound his hands behind his back with some of that white wire stuff the cops were using now instead of handcuffs and shoved him toward one of the rigged nets.

The Top Dog stepped forward. “Listen to me!” he shouted. He also had a funny accent, but this one was more like what Mr. Nasir-Nassaad should have had but didn’t, weird and guttural and scary. “You are all prisoners of war.”

Rory expected one of the teachers, maybe Mr. Treadway, who was widely regarded as the meanest man in the school, to say something back. Mr. Treadway was always going on about how America was the worst country in history, which made most people in Edwardsville plenty mad, and how the white man was the worst man in history, but since he taught social studies it was more or less okay. Indeed, Rory had wanted to go find some black people to apologize to, but there weren’t all that many of them in Edwardsville, and his parents wouldn’t let him go to East St. Louis, where apparently they were pretty easy to find.

With a shotgun taped beneath his chin, though, Mr. Treadway wasn’t quite as brave as his reputation.

Rory tried to catch his sister’s eye, but as he turned to look her way a blow to the side of his head got his full attention. When the stars stopped shooting, he could see that it was the Top Dog, who had just hit him a glancing blow with the butt of his rifle.

“You don’t move! You don’t move unless I say so! You hear me?”—he was addressing his remarks to the assembly now. “None of you sons of bitches moves unless I say so. Eyes straight ahead! Eyes straight ahead! Or else!”

Everybody froze. The Top Dog turned away from Rory.

Now an unusual emotion began to well up inside him. Practically from birth, Rory had been taught to hide his emotions, to conceal them, suppress them, be afraid of them. It wasn’t nice to feel bad things, and it was even less nice to express them. Boys, his teachers told him, were different now: they didn’t yell, they didn’t fight, even when they wanted to, they got along, even when they didn’t want to. Not to conform was to risk a trip to Mr. Nasty-Nosy’s office or, worse, to the Infirmary, where Nurse Haskell gave you a couple of those pills that supposedly settled you down.

Be nice, they told you. But he didn’t want to be nice any more. He didn’t want to be afraid any more. He wanted to fight, the way Charles had fought.

“Please, please.” It was Nurse Haskell. She was crying, which was making it difficult for her to keep her arms in the right position.

The Top Dog saw her struggles, heard her entreaties. He came over. He took her by the arm and led her toward the center of the gym floor, where Mr. Nasir-Nassaad was lying. He slipped his arms around her waist, propping up her elbows, and waltzed her around a bit.

Then he laughed in her face and released her.

Unsupported, her elbows dropped. She twisted her head just in time — so instead of blowing off the top of her skull, the force of the blast took off the lower half of Nurse Haskell’s jaw, sending her teeth showering over those unlucky enough to be close by.

She fell across Mr. Nasir-Nassaad, writhing. Several of the female teachers screamed. But the children were stock-still, as they had been ordered.

The terrorists just laughed. And nobody laughed louder or longer than the Top Dog.

“Okay, okay,” he shouted. “Now you see. You see what happens when you fuck with me. Nothing good. But, still — I can be merciful.”

Nurse Haskell was still alive, trying to move, trying to moan, even without a mouth. It was hideous. The Top Dog watched her agony for a few moments, then shot her in what remained of her head.

Rory looked across the gym at Emma, who was staring back at him with fear in her eyes. He wanted to rush to her, to protect her. He couldn’t do that. But he did know one thing: there was no fear in the glance he shot back at her. Just anger.

The Top Dog put away his gun and looked at his watch. “Okay, something to do now,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

Chapter Five

“Mr. President, I think you’d better look at this.”

Augie Willson, the head of President Jeb Tyler’s Secret Service detail, was standing in the doorway of the command section with a concerned look on his face. Even at the best of times, Augie had a concerned look on his face, but this look was different. It was even more concerned.

“What is it, Augie?” Tyler and a few other men in suits were sitting around a table, obviously in the middle of an unpleasant conference. “Senator Hartley is trying to explain to me how I could lose the next election, and I’m telling them that’s just not going to be possible. You know what a popular guy I am.”

President John Edward Bilodeau Tyler smiled that dazzling smile of his, the one that had narrowly won him the presidency the last time out over an older and more experienced opponent, the sitting vice president. A fabulously wealthy trial lawyer, Tyler’s political genius was to maintain his image as the champion of the little guy by putting doctors out of business in his home state of Louisiana. Women, especially prochoice women, loved him for his ready wit, his fabulous hair, and the way he could look into their eyes and, as he put it, see their souls. Prolife women, on the other hand, did not exactly appreciate the dearth of ob-gyns that had followed in his meteoric wake.

Men assumed he got laid a lot; there hadn’t been a bachelor in the White House since James Buchanan.

Tyler shot a glance at Hartley to see how he was taking the gibe. Despite their many differences, over the years they had bonded over a shared fondness for Maker’s Mark bourbon, the novels of John Gregory Dunne and James Ellroy, and the paramount importance of absolute discretion in their personal lives. Often, they got drunk together, swapped stories together, confided in each other. They had few secrets from each other; Bob Hartley was the only man Jeb Tyler could really trust. Even if, given the nature of his office, he couldn’t really trust him.

Hartley returned the glance. “I’m just trying to help, Mr. President,” he said, but his tone let Tyler know the barb stung a little. “If you don’t want to continue to occupy the Oval Office after the next election, there are plenty of people in Washington who would happily take over for you.”

Tyler gave Hartley a shot of the famous teeth. “Starting with you, Bob, I imagine,” he said, then turned to Augie Willson. Willson didn’t much like Hartley, and even with a Secret Service poker face, he was somehow always able to let his personal disdain for the man shine through. “Go ahead, Augie,” he said.

“It all started a few minutes ago,” the Secret Service man explained, switching on the video screen. The big type at the bottom of the screen was all too familiar:

Senator Robert Hartley glanced briefly at the screen, then returned his attention to notes. He was trying to explain to Tyler that his poll numbers were dropping precisely because he was seen as a weak leader by a majority of Americans. The liberal social agenda he had campaigned on — universal health care, hate-crimes legislation, state-sponsored day care for all working mothers — had been largely enacted, and so a fickle country had become restless, which is why it was so difficult to be a two-term president these days: the country craved change, even when it didn’t need it. America was an entire nation suffering from attention deficit disorder.

As far as Hartley was concerned, President Tyler was the one who really needed a change: a change of attitude, a change of image. Tyler needed to “rebrand” himself, as the ad men said, as a strong, masculine leader; even the women who had voted him into office and supported his social programs had tired of his metrosexual persona, and were craving something more along the lines of a lumberjack, a biker, or a serial killer.

Truth to tell, Hartley found his own emotions mixed. If Tyler’s popularity sank any further, his bid for reelection was going to be in serious trouble, and that left Hartley with both a problem and an opportunity. For President Tyler and Senator Hartley were members of opposite parties, thrown together in an unholy but productive marriage of convenience thanks to Hartley’s overweening ambition and Tyler’s fetish for bipartisanship. Hartley was intensely disliked within his own party, widely viewed as a weasel who would sell out anybody at any time, and he knew it. Not that it bothered him.

But as Tyler’s popularity sank, the chances that Hartley’s party had a real shot at the White House increased in lockstep. Like every other senator who looked in the mirror in the morning, Hartley saw a potential president staring back, and as the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he made sure he was in front of the cameras as often as possible. Indeed, he was so cozy with the media, so happy to leak certain things if it could help his career, that he was known as “Senator Sieve.”

So Hartley at first ignored the television. Hostage situations usually played themselves out fairly quickly — half a dozen or so people dead and then the gunman ate his own weapon and that was that. There followed the inevitable suicide note, the video game type revenge You Tube fantasy, the grief counselors, the calls for more gun control, the national navel-gazing about the root causes of violence, etc., etc. Just another day in the USA, especially in the yahoo rural heartland. He was about to urge the president to concentrate on the poll numbers when Tyler turned to Augie Willson and said, “Turn it up, Augie.”

Even though the station was a national cable network, the correspondent in front of the locked-down school building was local talent: “Rhonda Gaines-Solomon/KXQQ/St. Louis.”

“She’s hot,” someone said as Willson cranked up the volume:

“…happened between eight and nine o’clock this morning, when KXQQ exclusively learned that several armed men, perhaps as many as a dozen, took over the school and have barricaded themselves inside.”

The reporter looked both earnest and slightly scared. She kept glancing back over her shoulder, as if expecting someone to emerge from the building at any moment. Overhead, helicopters whirred and there were police cars with flashing lights everywhere. Some of the cops had formed a line, holding back anxious parents from rushing the school.

“The cops can handle this, Jeb,” said Hartley. “You’ve got to look at these polls.”

“Shut up, Bob,” said the president, irritably. “You know, sometimes you’re a real asshole.”

“Sometimes?” somebody said.

Hartley looked down at the sheaf of papers he was holding in his hand. If the president wasn’t going to pay attention to him at a time like this, then when was he? The election was less than a year away, the Iowa caucuses weren’t far off, New Hampshire was looming, and Hartley didn’t like the looks of his party’s guys, not one bit. Even a blow-dried pretty boy like Tyler could lose if he set his mind to it.

“Where are all the other reporters?” asked the man sitting at the president’s right hand. He was Lieutenant General Armond “Army” Seelye, the director of the National Security Agency. Hartley despised him, and he knew the feeling was mutual. By law, the DIRNSA had to be at least a three-star flag officer, and although Hartley and others in his party had argued passionately that the nation’s most sensitive electronic eavesdropping and communications should not be in the hands of the military, even Tyler had not had the courage to propose any changes in the law. Besides, Hartley suspected, the president probably got a kick out of bossing around the fruit salad.

“What do you mean, Army?” asked Tyler

Seelye shook his head: something was wrong. “Usually there’s half a dozen parasites on the scene by now. Local, national. Why just her?”

On the screen, Rhonda answered the question: “…have given strict instruction that they will only deal with one representative of the media. Otherwise, they threaten to start killing the hostages, including the children.” Rhonda gave a little smile that she hoped came off as concerned, but this was her moment and she was going to milk it for all it was worth. She’d have an offer from a national network before the day was out.

The camera swept the scene — there were plenty of reporters, along with anxious parents, all held back by police SWAT teams and other officials. In the background, an FBI team was moving into place, but nobody dared to approach the school too closely.

At that moment, Senator Hartley had a sudden inspiration: this thing could be just what the doctor ordered if they could spin it to their advantage. He was formulating a new strategy when something small got tossed out of one of the school windows. It hit the ground, bounced a couple of times. And, at that moment, Rhonda’s cell phone rang.

The cameraman retrained his focus on Rhonda, who nodded, then walked over, picked up the object, and held it up. Still on her cell phone, she beckoned to the cameraman. As he gingerly moved toward her, everyone could see what she was holding in her hand: a flash drive.

“I’ve just been instructed by the kidnappers”—she tilted her head in the direction of the building, just as she’d been taught in J-school—“to broadcast this video immediately.”

The screen went black for a moment, then the video began.

“Oh, my God,” exclaimed the president as he realized what they were looking at. “It’s Beslan all over again.”

Inside the school gym, where hundreds of kids were gathered, they were yoked together by rope or chain, lying on the floor. Several teachers were bound, with shotguns jammed under their chins. Worse yet were the bombs, wired to the basketball backboards, over the locked and chained doors.

Beslan was the horrific Russian school massacre in 2004, in which hundreds of children and adults had been killed by Chechen separatists and the ineptitude of the Russian security forces. It was the nightmare textbook case of how not to handle a hostage situation.

Inside Air Force One, all hell broke loose. General Seelye grabbed a secure phone to NSA headquarters in Ft. Meade, Maryland, barked some orders, then rang the secretary of education and told him to order all American public schools into full lockdown mode, and to recommend the same course of action for all private schools. Senator Hartley punched in the number of his party’s national committee and told them to stand by to see how this thing played out. The White House press secretary, Pam Dobson, opened her laptop and immediately started pounding out two statements ready for the president to read, depending on what happened.

“How far are we from Washington?” barked President Tyler.

“Half an hour from Andrews,” said Augie Willson. “You’ll be in the Oval Office in under an hour.” As if to underscore, the plane began its descent into the secure air space.

The president turned toward Dobson and shot her a look: double-time. If this thing went south, he was going to need her best efforts.

“Something’s happening,” said General Seelye. Everyone stared at the screen. Even Hartley had finally shut up.

The door to the school was opening.

Barely visible, in the doorway, was the figure of a man wearing a ski cap pulled down low over his forehead. Still his features were visible. “One of the hostage takers is coming out,” whispered Rhonda Gaines-Solomon into her microphone, as if she were covering a golf match. “He’s walking toward me now…it looks like he wants to talk. Let’s get a little closer.”

Rhonda moved to meet the man, but instead of responding he raised his right hand and pointed something at her.

She froze. “I think he’s got — oh my God. He’s got a gun.” Not since Jack Ruby had lunged out of the crowd in the Dallas Police garage, brandishing a handgun, and shot Lee Harvey Oswald live on national television, had anyone seen anything like this.

Rhonda stood her ground, scared but professional. She didn’t like guns, couldn’t understand why some people, mostly right-wing nuts, insisted on having them. The country would be better off without them, she believed, and saw no reason to change her mind now.

As the man drew nigh, she could clearly see the gun in his hand. She couldn’t tell what kind it was — some reporters could do that on sight, but she wasn’t one of them — but she had to assume it was loaded. And, to keep her sanity and her wits about her, she had to assume he didn’t intend to use it on her. After all, why would he? She was his conduit to the outside world, and he needed her.

“Sir”—she began, extending her microphone toward him—“can you tell us—”

There was the sound of a gunshot, and Rhonda Gaines-Solomon screamed and dropped to the ground.

“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed President Tyler, watching the scene unfold at 24,000 feet.

Rhonda couldn’t believe he shot her. He knew she was a reporter, neutral, there to hear his side, and to take it if necessary. But one of her legs hurt like hell.

Without even breaking stride, the man in the ski cap picked up her microphone, looked at her cameraman, and said, “I speak now to the president of the United States. Listen very carefully, everybody, and nobody get hurt no more…”

Chapter Six

“Eddie Bartlett” was out with his eight-year-old daughter, Jade, when his secure cell phone buzzed urgently in his jacket pocket. It was a lovely day in southern California, warm and dry and smog-free. Fire season was just about over and the winter rains hadn’t arrived yet. They were hiking together in Griffith Park near the Observatory, high above the city.

“Dad,” Jade was saying. “Why do people live in Chicago? Or New York? When they could live here?”

Eddie laughed. It was the kind of question he was used to from Jade: one that came out of the blue. “It sure would be awfully crowded, pumpkin,” he replied. From here you see the sweep of the city, from downtown, past the greensward of Hancock Park, to the towers of Century City and all the way to Santa Monica. “Where would we put everybody? Isn’t LA traffic bad enough?”

“That’s not what I mean,” she said, somewhat exasperated with his obtuseness.

“What do you mean, then?”

“I mean…” she said, choosing her words with great care, “I mean, why would anybody live someplace where the weather is always terrible and the people are always angry?”

The phone buzzed again, and he knew he couldn’t ignore it, much as he wanted to. Say what you would about what kind of man Eddie Bartlett was, nobody could say he wasn’t a good father. Given the confidential and often clandestine nature of his business, his wife and daughter were everything to him, and he jealously protected his time with them. He even used his real name with them.

“Just a sec’, baby,” he said. He pulled out the phone and turned away from his little girl as he spoke. Or rather, as he listened. He already knew who it was. Because only one person ever called him on this line.

“It’s Tom Powers. Are you watching this?” As usual, the voice was soft, low, scrambled for security.

“No. I’m in the park with my kid.”

“Then grab Jade’s iPhone and I’ll stream it to you.”

The phone was a gift from the man who was on the other end of the line. A man whom he’d never met face to face. “Tom Powers” was what he was calling himself today. “Jade — can I borrow your phone?”

Jade looked up from the cactus she was inspecting. “You’ve already got one, Daddy.”

“I need yours, baby. Just for a minute.”

Jade fished in her backpack and pulled it out. “How’s the reception up here?” Eddie asked her.

“Loud and clear, sir,” she replied, handing it to him.

He started the streaming video, and it took only a nanosecond thereafter to realize the purpose of the call. “Is this a go situation?” he asked as, on the screen, a man with heavy Slavic accent rolled off a list of demands: “…Abandonment of the Zionist entity. Withdrawal of all forces from the ummah…”

“Albanian Kosovar, maybe Azerbaijani,” said Eddie softly.

“…The abolition of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization…Finally, and most important…” With the whole world watching, the camera came in for a tight close-up. Randomly, Eddie Bartlett thought of the last scene of The Blair Witch Project, except that movie wasn’t scary. “We call upon President Tyler to publicly embrace and accept Islam on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial no more than twenty-four hours from…now.”

The camera pulled back. The man’s features were very clear: eastern European, unsmiling. His eyes were not the eyes of a fanatic, but rather of a man whose purpose was clear and deadly serious.

“This guy looks familiar. Running face-recognition scan now,” said Powers. “The demands are bullshit, of course. What do they really want?”

The terrorist spoke again: “Until then, we demand the removal of all your police forces from this area. No helicopters, no sharpshooters. Turn off all your klieg lights, infrared scopes, electronic surveillance devices. The air space over the school must be kept clear. And we insist that your spies and operatives lay down their arms and identify themselves.

“My comrades and I are not afraid to die. Neither are we afraid to kill all your children. For we have many children each. And you — weak, decadent, intent on your own pleasure — have only one or two. To you, death is an unutterable tragedy. To us, it is the meaning of life.” He looked down at the reporter at his feet.

“Got him. Suleyman Drusovic, forty-two, born Kosovo, currently Canadian citizen, resident Montreal.”

Rhonda gave him her most pleading look, the kind that would find a target in any man’s heart. Her leg hurt like hell but there wasn’t much blood; thank God his shot missed the artery. If she could just get out of here, everything was going to be all right.

To her immense relief and astonishment, the man extended his hand to her. As she reached for it, she heard him say, “In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most compassionate”—as he fired a single shot into her head.

The terrorist leader looked directly into the camera. “No one is to approach the school. Only news crews will be allowed within the perimeter—”

“You got that, Eddie?” said Powers.

“I got it,” replied Eddie.

Drusovic continued, “We wish the widest possible international audience. You will deeply regret any violation of these conditions.”

“Get ready to hop,” said the man on the other line of the line. “Both of you.” Abruptly, the connection broke off.

Eddie Bartlett was still staring at the tiny video screen when he heard the helicopter touching down a few hundred yards away. That was for him. A black limo was pulling up near the Observatory. That was for Jade. Tom Powers had already located them and sent their rides.

“Jade, honey,” he said. “We have to go now.”

Chapter Seven

“Tom Powers” shut down the secure GRID connection to Eddie Bartlett’s phone. In sequence, the call had been routed through multiple fake IP/Skype addresses, an Israeli officer’s satellite phone, a defunct al-Qaeda cutout in Treviso, and a soon-to-be-deceased Columbian drug dealer’s private line in Bogota. It would take Eddie and his team three hours to get to the Xe airfield southeast of St. Louis. They weren’t mission operable yet, but there was no point in wasting any time in case the situation went full Branch 4.

The GRID itself was the next-generation Internet, a network of more than 100,000 supercomputers powered by the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Not only was it infinitely faster than the Internet, it could also benignly hijack the computing power of unused personal computers on the network, setting them to work while their owners slept, watched porn, or played video games.

Tom Powers wasn’t his real name, of course, any more than Eddie Bartlett was the other man’s real name. For this mission, he was using James Cagney characters as rotating aliases; at random intervals, the CSS computers would instruct all Branch 4 ops to re-code and then, by running the Level Six double-blind ciphers through IMDB-Pro, they’d generate a whole new set of operational monikers. And by the time anybody might have the remotest chance in hell of making them, the names would be gone, blown away on the cyber-wind, never to be used again. Tom Powers and Eddie Bartlett would be just as dead as Cagney in The Public Enemy and The Roaring Twenties.

“Powers” looked at the banks of computers and firearms that lined three of the four walls of his panic room. That’s what he called it, even though it wasn’t really a panic room. Sure, it could be nearly instantaneously sealed off with halon gas, followed by a lethal jolt of electricity to anyone who touched the descending front wall, but such defensive measures were directed at any unauthorized persons who had managed to get past him and his other defenses first. Which meant, of course, that he was already dead. In which case there was nothing to panic about. The only way around the security settings was to know them.

On his desk, at the exact spot from which he controlled everything, there was a secure telephone. Not a videophone: an old-fashioned black telephone. It looked like the kind of instrument people used in the 1970s, except there were no buttons or dials on it. You couldn’t call out with it, and if anyone other than him answered it, the person would hear nothing. Only his voice could activate it through advanced voice-recognition software, but the security didn’t stop there. The receiver was a fingerprint reader, so his hand had to be on it for it to function. Finally, he had to look directly into the receiver, which activated a discreet retinal scan. If any of the three elements were not sequenced within five seconds, the phone would self-destruct in a fireball of shrapnel, killing any unauthorized person unlucky enough to have picked it up.

Only three people could reach him via that line: the head of the National Security Agency, the secretary of defense, and the president of the United States. The only three people who were even authorized to know of his existence. Of those three, two knew his permanent operational name, and only one knew his real name.

It was a name he barely remembered, a name from so long ago that it belonged to another person, a boy who’d once had everything a boy should have and then suddenly lost everything. A boy that had been very much like him, until he was gone. All that was left of that boy were a few memories and one indelible moment, a moment he could never get out of his head no matter how much therapy, aversion training, hypnosis, and other, less savory forms of persuasion he underwent.

Idly, his eyes traveled to a photograph that he kept on his desk. It was a picture of him and his parents taken in Rome shortly before Christmas 1985. It was one of the few things he had to remember them by, this fading old Polaroid of two beautiful people and a kid wearing an A. S. Roma football club cap, and carrying a couple of books his father had once given him…

One of them was about old movies — his father was a great film buff — and the other was a beginner’s guide to ciphers and puzzles and games of logic for the child to read and stretch his brain. “Take these,” he said to the boy before going off to meet his colleague on that fateful day. “You’ll get a kick out of them someday.”

He shook off his reverie and glanced at the phone, which stared back at him silently.

Under normal circumstances, there would be no question of his getting involved. Hostage situations were almost always best left to the local police, or the FBI, unless the hostages were high-value targets. To Powers, hostage situations were just a step up from domestic-violence calls, the kind cops hated most, because there was very little upside, while the downside potential was huge. In the end, there was always a dead husband, a dead wife, or a dead cop. But this was different: these were kids. And he used to be a kid, once.

Tom Powers rippled his fingers across multiple keyboards, calling up everything in the NSA/CSS arsenal: Echelon video feeds, RSS chatter sorters, real-time simultaneous translations of Internet café activity in China, India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, key-word trigger-coded for instant relay. All conversations could be heard live or as downloaded audio, and read as saved transcriptions in both the original language and in English.

He sampled a few, dipping in and out. He’d lost track of how many languages he spoke fluently, because when you started toting up you had to factor in dialects, subdialects, and even random bastardizations like Hawaiian pidgin and Marshallese. Nothing about what was happening in Edwardsville. Plenty of the usual stuff — angry but idle threats against the Great Satan, obscure religious and cultural diatribes, boastful European white supremacist rants, obscure American-sourced swagger — but nothing that stood out. No trip wires. And trip wires were his business.

Nearly a decade after September 11, the American security apparatus had come a long way. Plenty of attacks had been foiled, some — especially early on, when al-Qaeda had the tactical advantage — particularly horrific. There was the Arab cell that had come down from Canada, trying to pass themselves off as American Indians on one of the upstate New York reservations while they waited for the activation codes on a low-yield nuclear device they had smuggled from the former Soviet Union to Halifax, financing the operation by bootlegging cigarettes from the reservation to the outside world and pocketing a fortune in tax avoidance.

The good guys had lucked out on that one: an alert cop in Watertown had noticed the ink on the phony tax stamp rubbing off on his hand, and grabbed the “Indian,” who had led him to the other cell members. The cop was shot and killed during the rendezvous, but he had been smart enough to order backup and so the group was rounded up and sent to some especially nasty rendition prisons in Egypt and Slovakia. The cop’s widow got a handsome payout from the feds; he got buried at Arlington and the public was never the wiser.

The phone stayed stubbornly silent. Just as well, probably.

Tom Powers stood up and stepped out of the secure room. The rest of his house on North West Street was equally secure, although less dramatically, so he didn’t seal the room as he did when he left home.

To enter the front door, for example, he inserted the key into the lock, but rather than aligning a series of tumblers, the key’s real work was done by his fresh thumbprint on the head of the key, which was read by the scanner in the door to allow entry.

Once inside, he would glance at the mirror/retinal scanner, which flashed his eyeballs. Anyone who somehow had gained unauthorized entry via the front door — an intruder who forced him to open the door at gunpoint, for example — would miss that beat, with the result that a security gate would descend from the ceiling and trap him in the antechamber, where he could easily be neutralized or dispatched. Video cameras connected directly by dedicated fiber-optic cable to NSA/CSS headquarters in Maryland could be called up on any video screen in the house, and the giant wall-mounted flat screen in the den doubled as a backup, fail-safe control module in a worst-case scenario. Even an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) blast couldn’t knock out his communications.

He looked out the window, into his backyard, at one of his favorite sights. From the street, the house was just another postwar brick two-story structure, indistinguishable from thousands of others in this part of northern Virginia. But what almost nobody knew was that, at the edge of the backyard, a small marker, buried in the brush, once marked the southern tip of the District of Columbia. Originally laid out on land ceded by Maryland and Virginia, the District was conceived as a diamond, bisected by the Potomac. Virginia got its land back when the federal district stopped at the river. But there the marker was — a signpost to what might have been — surveyed, the local legend had it, by none other than George Washington himself.

He looked through the doorway at the black phone and wondered again whether he really wanted to hear it ring.

Chapter Eight

Marine One had barely hit the South Lawn when President Tyler bounded out. Pam Dobson, Senator Hartley, General Seelye, and Augie Willson bounded behind him in his wake. He really was very fit.

The media jackals were shouting at him — he thought he caught something about “saving kids” and “will you convert to Islam for the children?”—but he ripped a page out of Reagan’s playbook and feigned a sudden, inexplicable attack of deafness. Hand cupped behind his ear, pearly whites flashing, Jeb Tyler was the very image of a modern American president: deaf, dumb, and blind to everything he didn’t wish to register.

“What’s our readiness status?” he snapped at Colonel Al Grizzard, his principal military attaché and the man who controlled the football. Jeb Tyler mistrusted the military and tried to keep “Grizzy” as far away from him as possible and as close to the vice president, Norman Snowden, as constitutionally permissible. Snowden had been a brigadier general in his earlier life, with just enough combat action to make him seems a plausible running mate for a man whose military credentials were, charitably, nonexistent. As far as Tyler was concerned, all military men were trigger-happy maniacs until proven otherwise. He certainly never let the Veep sit in on important affairs of state.

“FBI’s in place, sir, and we have special ops airborne now. Delta, Rangers, SEALS, Xe—”

“No Xe,” barked the president. “We can’t take the hit if this thing goes tits over teacups.”

“No Xe,” repeated Grizzy, barking into his cell phone.

“And get the FBI and everybody else the hell away. You heard the man.”

This time, Colonel Grizzard didn’t bark into his cell phone. He couldn’t believe his ears: the president of the United States adhering to a terrorist’s demand? “Sir?” he said softly.

“You heard me, Colonel. Until we can get a handle on this thing, I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to let these bastards harm a single hair on any child’s head.”

“Special ops, stand down,” said Grizzard into his phone. “All cops, FBI, get well away from the perimeter.” Then back to the president, “What now, sir?” His mien and tone of voice both bordered on insubordination.

President Tyler turned to Dobson and held out his hand for his statements as he surveyed the press corps. A sea of anxious faces, mostly female, some with tears already in their eyes. Tears! And nothing bad had really happened yet, if you didn’t count that poor reporter. Well, tough luck; he hated the press anyway.

General Seelye spoke up. “Sir, if I may…”

The president paid no attention to him. Instead he looked at the two statements she had prepared on the plane, read them both over, then handed one back to her. “This one,” he said, crumpling the other up in a ball and letting it fall at his feet.

Pam hopped to, rushing the statement off to key it into the teleprompter. “We’ll be live in five, Mr. President,” she said.

President Tyler moved smoothly and easily toward the Oval Office, hair and makeup people trailing in his wake.

“Live in two,” Mr. President,” said Pam Dobson.

“I’m going to reassure the country that everything is under control,” Tyler said, as much to himself as to the press secretary.

“Counting down,” said Pam Dobson. “Four, three, two — we’re live.”

The camera light blinked red and the president was on.

“My fellow Americans,” he said. “This morning, shortly before nine o’clock Central Standard Time, a group of armed men commandeered a middle school in Edwardsville, Illinois. As soon as I learned of this, I immediately ordered all public schools in the country to be locked down. So far there have been no reports of any other incidents. Mothers and fathers of America, your children are safe.”

General Seelye rolled his eyes, but said nothing as the president continued. “As you know, the terrorists — and make no mistake about it, these people, whatever their real or imaginary grievances, are terrorists — have murdered a reporter and announced a series of demands. I won’t dignify them by repeating them here, but suffice it to say that under no circumstances does the United States government negotiate with terrorists. This has long been the established policy of our country, and it will not be changed on my watch.”

The president took a deep breath and smiled. “That said, however—”

“Oh, Jesus,” sighed General Seelye to himself. “Here we go…”

“We will do everything in our power to ensure the safe release of the some two hundred fifty pupils and teachers at the school.”

General Seelye shook his head as inconspicuously as possible.

“I have ordered all our embassies and consulates around the world to be put on the highest alert until this crisis is resolved. The safety of Americans everywhere always has been, and will continue to be, my administration’s highest priority.”

He misted up for a moment, then regained his composure. It was all an act, but it played well on TV. “One thing I can assure you all — we will bring these men to justice. Thank you, and may God bless America.”

The cameras switched off. President Tyler stood up and looked around the Oval Office. His face grew visibly redder, and then he exploded, “God fucking damn it, how the fuck did something like this fucking happen?”

Chapter Nine

Paul Pilier switched off the president of the United States, then laid the remote gently upon the polished-crystal table, next to the vase of white roses, careful not to muss the surface in the slightest. “Sir?” he asked.

The man to whom the question was addressed didn’t so much as look up from the banks of laptops purring in front of him. They were neatly arrayed on his teak desk, each one tracking a different international financial market in which he had an interest — which was to say, all of them. As was his habitual wont, he was sipping a glass of Russian tea, the red-hot glass protectively surrounded by a burnished silver holder that was probably worth five thousand American dollars all by itself.

Emanuel Skorzeny was past seventy, but he had the physical vigor of a man half his age and the intellectual firepower of two of them combined. His longstanding talent for multitasking had not deserted him, and so it was that he could listen to the president’s speech, monitor its effect on the Nikei, the Dow, the Dax, and the Bourse, make trades, and play a game of simultaneous chess (anonymously, of course) against twelve other players from around the world and still find time to polish his nails. He was very vain about his appearance. “What other news?”

Pilier looked at him from across the room. “May I approach?”

“You may.”

The aide placed a sheaf of papers on the desk, printouts of e-mail communications with one of Skorzeny’s most trusted lieutenants, being careful not to so much as brush the wood with his fingers or the vase of white roses that adorned the boss’s desk as well. Skorzeny had an abhorrence of body oils, and anyone who left so much a trace of his DNA on anything he owned was summarily fired.

Skorzeny glanced through the papers — he was a speed-reader, and could memorize anything on sight. He nodded and then said, “Shred them.”

“Yes sir,” said Pilier, immediately feeding the documents into an NSA-strength security shredder that sat concealed within a sideboard. He had been with Skorzeny for nearly three years, and was the only one who didn’t have to wear gloves at all times. This was a very great sign of trust indeed.

“Have the board members arrived?”

Instinctively, Pilier took three respectful steps backward. “Yes, sir, in the antechamber.”

“Show them in, please.”

As he awaited his board members, Skorzeny roamed around the room, making sure everything was in its exact place. The furniture, the rugs, and, most important of all, his peerless collection of the art of William Blake that adorned the walls — the finest collection in private hands in the world. Unlike many men of his wealth and taste, Skorzeny was not an indiscriminate buyer; he knew what he liked and what he wanted and he was prepared to pay whatever it took to get it.

Take, for example, the work of Blake’s that caught his eye now, his favorite. The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. Not the one made famous from that sensational novel in which the psychopath ate it. That painting was still hanging in the Brooklyn Museum: The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun. Different title, different work.

True, his painting was only on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. And the number of chits he had had to call in to get it was almost higher than he was willing to pay. But when it came to Blake, there was almost no such thing as almost. Because Blake understood, as no one else did until Emanuel Skorzeny came along, the misery and mystery of man. That was why his temporary acquisition of it had made headlines around the world. It also reminded people how rich and powerful he was.

Regretfully, his gaze traveled from Blake’s masterpiece, out the window and over the mountain-ringed city. Skorzeny International occupied the top three floors of the Tiefen-thaler building, which Skorzeny himself owned via one of his many subsidiary companies, and boasted a spectacular view of the Alps in every direction. The boardroom was on the penultimate floor, a state-of-the-art conference chamber from which Skorzeny could rule his vast multinational financial and philanthropic empire. Below were the staff offices. Skorzeny’s personal chambers were on the top floor, the penthouse, where only he and a few selected guests were ever allowed entré.

Skorzeny moved the short distance from his desk to the chairman’s seat, at the head of the mahogany table, which also boasted a crystal vase of white roses — refilled daily, like all the others — as its centerpiece. The table had been a gift from the Sultan of Brunei, in gratitude for some particularly astute investment advice Skorzeny had given him. The rest of the gifts, including the women, Skorzeny had parceled out among his lieutenants: his appetites generally ran to less earthy pleasures.

The board members trooped in and took their seats. No one said a word.

Skorzeny let the silence speak for him. It was, he knew, a subtle but telling way to exercise and display power. No one could speak until he spoke; no one could speak unless spoken to; and every conversation began and ended with Emanuel Skorzeny.

“Gentlemen, thank you for coming. As you know, there’s been an incident in America that I believe will affect all of us. It will certainly affect the Skorzeny Foundation, as the New York Stock Exchange is quite sensitive to these sorts of dislocations, especially these days. Monsieur Pilier?”

Pilier snapped on the huge flat-screen television, which instantly divided into multiple quadrants, broadcasting news networks from around the world: CNN, Fox, SKY, BBC1, ARD, ZDF, and others.

“A representative sample,” noted Skorzeny who, from time to time glanced at a laptop and tapped a few keys. “Pick one, please.”

Pilier turned up the volume on CNN, where the female reporter was busy interviewing some of the parents of the children. Worried, anxious, well-fed midwestern faces filled the screen, their braying American accents falling harshly upon the ears of the sophisticated Europeans watching from thousands of miles away.

Skorzeny gestured to Pilier. The sound was muted.

Skorzeny spoke, “This is the United States of America, Anno Domini 2009. Excuse me, Common Era, 2009. The Lord is not much in our minds these days.” A flicker of a smile crossed his lips, signaling to the others that they were permitted a brief display of inaudible mirth. “Not the fearsome warrior it once was. Instead, a country ruled by women and eunuchs. Some call what is happening in Illinois a tragedy. We, however, here at Skorzeny International, call it something else. And what is it that we call it, gentlemen?”

As one: “An opportunity.”

“Precisely. An opportunity. After the first Gulf War, the first President Bush proclaimed the dawn of a New World Order. Even though he was ahead of his time, how right he was. By dint of careful, selected and…targeted…investments, we have been able to treble our operating capital. For you see, gentlemen, it is not true that the race belongs to the swift, or that the future belongs to the strong. Indeed not. The future belongs to the rich and the rich belong to the future. It is a symbiotic relationship, and one that will serve us all very handsomely in the coming days and weeks.”

Skorzeny indicated the slender manila folders in front of each board member. On his signal, each man opened his folder, read the contents of the single sheet enclosed therein, then dropped it into the shredder slot next to each seat.

Skorzeny watched them all intently as they digested his action plan. There was one among them who clearly demurred. “Signor Tignanello has a problem,” said Skorzeny.

Tignanello was not the man’s real name, of course, but was rather his favorite kind of Italian wine. No one but Skorzeny used his real name here; such was the volume of entreaties for foundation support that the board members would never know a moment’s peace should their true identities be revealed.

And, of course, Skorzeny’s name was not really “Skorzeny,” either, but no one needed to know that.

Tignanello looked around the room, trying to avoid Skorzeny’s basilisk glare. All eyes turned to him.

“Monsieur Skorzeny,” he began, “I have nothing against making money. None of us here does. We are, after all, all rich men.” He emitted a brief chuckle, hoping to bring his fellow board members around to his side via a small dollop of humor. In this he was immediately disappointed. “Still, what you are proposing here…I cannot, in good conscience…”

Skorzeny let Tignanello’s words trail off, “conscience” hanging in midair and gradually fading away into silence. It was not a word heard often in this boardroom, and it seemed to foul the air.

“So it’s not unanimous then?” asked Skorzeny, although it wasn’t a question. “I am disappointed. As you all know, we make no decisions here without complete and utter unanimity.”

A glance from Skorzeny to Pilier, and the secretary took up a position just behind the Italian.

“Far be it from me to…” Tignanello’s head was wrestling with his heart, and his heart was starting to lose when Pilier put his hands on Tignanello’s upper trapezius shoulder muscles, the one on either side of the neck, and started massaging them.

“Perhaps you’d like to relax and reconsider,” suggested Skorzeny as Pilier’s hands moved up the sides of Tignanello’s neck. Both his index fingers found the indentation below the Adam’s apple and began to press, softly at first, then with increasing pressure.

It was like slow-boiling a frog. Unable to breathe, unable to resist, Tignanello turned the color of his favorite wine. As he lost consciousness, Pilier gently rested the man’s head on the table.

“So it is unanimous after all,” smiled Skorzeny. “Let the record show that Monsieur Tignanello was unable to vote due to ill health. Thank you, gentlemen. Monsieur Pilier, please inform our supplier in France that we are happy to accept his generous offer. I suggest you contact the HARBOR and the BOREALIS programs to obtain the sort of high-tolerance delivery equipment we need.” He turned back to the table. “And now, gentlemen — thank you for your support in this matter. Please calibrate your investments accordingly, and let us plan to rendezvous here in a week’s time.”

An hour later, the room was cleared, the shredders emptied; it was as if no one had ever been there. At this late hour in central Europe, most of the feeds had been switched to other programming, but CNN International remained focused on the hostage crisis in Illinois.

“Are you thinking about having children with one of your lady friends, Monsieur Pilier?” asked Skorzeny, suddenly. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. Better for all to go gently into that good night.”

One of Skorzeny’s few disconcerting habits was that, while he abhorred being touched, his sense of personal space was almost nil. If he wanted to say something to you directly, something he thought important, he stood so close that you could smell his breath. Pilier chalked it up to Skorzeny’s childhood in a special Nazi camp; not a lot of personal space there.

“Children need stability. Security. The knowledge that, in the main, tomorrow is going to be pretty much like today. They’re revolutionaries in their minds, but conservatives in their souls. The human condition, writ small.” Pilier was on the verge of taking an involuntary step backward when Skorzeny observed, “The situation is ongoing, I see.”

Pilier took a silent deep breath. “Yes, sir. The teachers and the pupils are still being held hostage. The authorities have made no moves—”

“Good. The world needs no more Beslans.” He reached for and sipped from a small glass of Saint-Geron, as a prophylactic against anemia. It was one of his strictures that his quarters always be outfitted with the distinctive long-necked Alberto Bali — designed bottles, and M. Pilier was diligent in his discharge of that duty. “And yet, given the course of action upon which we have just embarked, this could be a helpful development.”

“Helpful, sir?”

“In our business, chaos and uncertainty, while deplorable, can be our friends. Do you disagree?”

Pilier shook his head. “No, sir. Of course not. The vote today was clear, and obviously it’s in the best interests of our company. After all—”

“After all,” interrupted Skorzeny, “it’s the business we’re in. Making money. So that the Foundation can tend to the needs of the world’s poor. The hungry. The oppressed. The needy. Doing good by doing well. The bedrock of philanthropy is selfishness — greed, if you will. One of life’s petty little oxy-morons, but there you are…Contact all our sources in America and place our trades accordingly. I want everything in order when the markets open tomorrow morning. We are on a holy crusade.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And see that my jet is fueled and ready for Paris. We leave immediately.”

Chapter Ten

Pam Dobson looked at her watch. She had long, blond hair, which she wore as if she were still twenty-eight, which she wasn’t. “We’ve only got a few hours to get this over with, Mr. President — unless, that is, you want to accept Allah while standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial tomorrow morning.”

“Have we got a bead on the guy who shot the reporter?” asked Tyler. They were in his private study off the Oval Office, all but Colonel Grizzard, who had been dismissed. The president wanted as few military men in his face as possible, and Seelye was more than enough.

“No sir, no yet,” she replied.

“That’s not quite right, Mr. President,” said Seelye. He pulled out a secure, upgraded version of the civilian BlackBerry and consulted it. “The man has been positively identified as Suleyman Drusovic, a Kosovar Muslim currently resident in Montreal.”

“So he’s Canadian?” wondered the president. “What would a Canadian have against an American school?”

“With all due respect, Mr. President,” said Seelye, trying to conceal his frustration, “he’s an ethnic Albanian, a Muslim, who just so happens to hold a Canadian passport at this time. He’s no more ‘Canadian’ than you are.” To Seelye, “Canadians” were hockey players and moose hunters, Scottish Presbyterians with names like Maitland and MacGregor, not Balkan Muslims. But what did he know? The world he knew was fast receding, and whatever would replace it fast approaching.

The intercom buzzed. “Secretary Rubin is here, sir,” came a female voice. That was Millie Dhouri, a Lebanese Christian from Detroit, who had been with Tyler since the day after September 11, when he suddenly realized his personal staff needed to be more inclusive. The door opened and in walked Howard Rubin, the secretary of defense.

The president addressed him as if he’d been part of the conversation all along. “What else do we know, Howard?”

The SecDef was a mild-mannered intellectual, who had come to government service from the Ivy League. He believed all problems were inherently solvable with enough wit and will; under him, the military had suffered fairly draconian cutbacks. To say he was not particularly popular with the brass would be an understatement. He and Seelye cordially loathed each other, even as they were yoked together in the service of their country.

“Our forces around the world are on high alert, Mr. President,” Rubin said. “Keyhole birds report no significant adverse activity in NoKo, Iran, or the breakaway ’stans. We’re still watching the Columbia-Venezuela-Bolivia axis, though.”

“What about the film the terrorists showed us? What can we tell from that?”

That was Seelye’s department. “Being analyzed right now, sir. Results shortly.”

The president thought for a moment. “So…do we raise the threat level? Get the other agencies involved?”

As far as Seelye was concerned, the second question answered itself. This thing was too urgent to fuck around with the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, or even the director of National Intelligence. “Not at this time, Mr. President. No sense letting them know they’re in our shorts before we get into theirs. As to your second question”—he looked at Rubin, whose face betrayed nothing—“my advice is that we keep this as compartmentalized as possible until we figure out what’s going on.”

No one dissented. Seelye’s BlackBerry buzzed. He hooked it up to a video port and switched on the screen. “NSA has run the tape through advanced face-recog software against all known terrorists in multiple databases, including CIA and FBI. Apologies for the quality, but it’s a gen2 beta system that we’re still testing.”

Everyone watched, fascinated. “As you can see, all of the commandos except Drusovic have some parts of their features obscured, which ordinarily wouldn’t be a problem for our equipment, since we can use almost any feature or distinguishing characteristic to—”

“Spare us the details of your wondrous toys, General,” ordered Tyler. “What you’re saying is, it is a problem.”

“In a sense,” replied Seelye. “But in an interesting sense. We’re drawing a blank on every single one of the commandos. Which means they’re all new recruits, fresh blood — or fresh meat — recruited for this specific occasion.”

“In other words, you don’t have the slightest idea who we’re dealing with.”

“In other words, we’re dealing with rookies,” replied Seelye.

Tyler frowned. “Why would this Drusovick—”

“It’s pronounced ‘Dru-so-vich,’ sir—”

“This ‘Drusovic’ want to show his face?”

Rubin got it in one. “Because whoever’s behind him wants us to see it.”

The president still didn’t get it.

“He’s not running the operation,” said Seelye. “He’s just a patsy, a pawn. A very expendable front man with dreams of martyrdom glory. He—” Seelye looked down at a modified descendant PDA, a special, limited-access, NSA-issued prototype that allowed him full access to just about everything. “Oh, shit.”

On the screen now was live coverage from Edwardsville: HOSTAGES SHOT read the graphic.

There were two bodies, lying in front of the main entrance to the school, where they had been dumped. A man and a woman. The woman had half her face blown away, but as soon as the live feed picked her up, it disappeared from the screen. Some details were too gory for the delicate sensibilities of the American public.

“Did I see what I think I just saw?” asked the president. “Why the hell aren’t they showing us what happened? Why did they cut away?”

“The networks don’t want to inflame public sentiment,” said Secretary Rubin. “And I must say, I don’t blame them. All we need now are some gun-toting nuts to jump in their pickup trucks and—”

“And what, Howard?” asked Seelye. “Defend their children?”

“Shut up,” barked the president. “He’s talking again.”

It was Drusovic, sneeringly stepping aside to make sure the bodies would stay in the shot with him.

“These are for you, Mr. President,” the man shouted. “And they will keep coming until we get your answer. And when we finish with the teachers…we start on the children.”

He grinned maliciously. “We want the world to see what you have done, Mr. President. What happens here tonight will make history and we want the world to witness it. Every newspaper, every channel, worldwide. They are welcome. But anybody tries anything and — everybody dies.”

Pam Dobson started to cry. The ashen look on the president’s face spoke to their common humanity. Tyler may be a fool, thought Seelye, but no one doubted his capacity for empathy or his ability to touch the heart of the average man. It was the quality that had made him such a formidable lawyer and politician.

“Pam, he said, “we’re all going to have to be strong now. Strong for each other, strong for the country. So why don’t you go back to your office and pull yourself together. I’m going to need your best work.”

Dobson rose. “Yes, sir,” she said. “Thank you, sir.”

Seelye took the opening. “Sir, there’s something Secretary Rubin and I need to discuss with you. As you may recall from your briefing—”

Millie’s voice wafted over the intercom again: “Senator Hartley is still waiting, Mr. President.”

Tyler thought for a moment, then said, “Send him in.”

Seelye objected immediately: “Mr. President, I really must object to Senator Hartley’s presence in this meeting. He is not authorized to—”

“He’s the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, General,” replied the president. “Whatever we decide to do, however this plays out, both parties are going to have to be involved.”

Seelye glanced over at Rubin, who took the hint. “Sir,” he said, “we’re not questioning Bob’s loyalty or his committee’s legitimate legislative oversight. But what we’re about to discuss is SCI.” Sensitive Compartmented Information, essentially, was above Top Secret.

Tyler shook his head. “I don’t care. As the president, I am authorized to release any information to anybody any time I want to, and this is one of those times. I need political backup on this and I also need plausible deniability. Bob Hartley is my friend, even if he is from the other party. So let’s get on with it. Hello, Bob…take a seat.”

Seelye and Rubin nodded in acknowledgment as Hartley entered the room. That was about all the courtesy they were prepared to show him at this moment.

Seelye pretended Hartley wasn’t there; not for nothing was “civilian” the dirtiest word in his vocabulary, even if Hartley was a senator. “Under the authority of National Security Decision Memorandum 5100.20, signed by President Nixon on December 23, 1971, and amended by President G. H. W. Bush on June 24, 1991,” said General Seelye, “the Sec Def and I believe that you should provisionally authorize a Central Security Service operation to terminate the ongoing incident in Edwardsville.”

“Terminate, how?” asked Hartley.

“Shut the fuck up, Bob,” said Tyler. “You’re here to observe, not talk.” Hartley bristled a little. Tyler noticed and didn’t care; they had been friends for too long for Hartley to take it personally. “Terminate, how, General?”

“With extreme, exemplary prejudice, sir,” replied Seelye.

President Tyler vaguely remembered the CSS, a special division of the National Security Agency that not one American in a million had even heard of, much less understood its function. The CSS had been created originally under the Nixon administration as the “fourth branch” of the armed services, to complement the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy/Marines in the burgeoning field of electronic intelligence and combat. But the traditional-minded put up the predictable bureaucratic fuss, and the CSS was quietly folded in the NSA, authorized to work with each of the individual service branches in capturing and decoding enemy SIGINT. So when, for example, a Navy submarine tapped an undersea Soviet communications cable, or one of the Air Force’s many electronic surveillance overflights picked up hostile transmissions, they were relayed to the CSS for evaluation and, if necessary, action.

But the CSS chafed at being a bystander and, using the “No Such Agency” cloak of anonymity, quickly moved into the void, coordinating covert strikes on Soviet assets with the utmost plausible deniability—“accidents” were amazingly common — and establishing its own presence as a service to be reckoned with. Still, resistance from the uniformed services kept it in the shadows of its birth, where it lurked now — the incognito, but highly effective, muscle arm of the NSA.

“Specifically, Section 6.1.21,” added Rubin.

“What’s that?” interjected Hartley.

“Shut the fuck up, Bob,” barked Tyler. “Remind me again what that is,” he asked Rubin.

“It’s the section of the NSDM that says that the CSS may ‘perform such other functions as the Secretary of Defense assigns.’”

“We’re talking about a Branch 4 operation, sir,” said Seelye. “It’s that simple.”

“Remind me again what Branch 4 is?”

Seelye ignored the question. “Sir, Branch 4 was established precisely to deal with situations like these, so unless you’re prepared to see kiddie corpses start flying out those windows, we strongly advise you to let us get this operation up and running ASAP.”

The president’s gaze drifted from face to face to the TV set on the other side of the Oval Office, to Edwardsville and the two dead teachers. Finally, it alighted on Rubin. “And your advice is, Howard? Branch 4 or…?”

“Or surrender before anybody else gets killed and run the risk of impeachment from Senator Hartley’s party for dereliction of duty. It’s that simple.”

The president glanced over at Hartley, who silently nodded his assent. “General?”

“I’ve been involved in counterterrorism since the 1980s,” said Seelye, “and if this isn’t a job for Branch 4, then nothing is. We need to get in there, take them out, and disappear.”

The president was confused but convinced. “So how do we do it?”

“Get ‘Devlin.’ Now.”

“Who’s Devlin?” asked Hartley.

“Shut the fuck up, Bob,” ordered the president.

“Mr. President, sir,” objected Hartley, “you invited me here and—”

Tyler ignored him. “Who’s Devlin?” he asked.

“‘Devlin’ is the code name for Branch 4’s most trusted and highly skilled operative,” explained Seelye, with uncontrolled pride. “He’s an expert in cryptology, in electronic surveillance, in marksmanship, and in hand-to-hand combat. In fact, he’s the best we’ve got.”

The president’s incredulous look begged Seelye to continue. “Nobody knows his real name. If it exists on record at all, it’s buried deep in the NSA files. Operationally, however, he used a rotating series of other pseudonyms, never the same one twice. Not even we know what they are when he goes into action.”

President Tyler was incredulous. “You mean to tell me that the United States government has an anonymous operative we can’t really control?”

“No, sir,” replied Seelye. “Not the United States government. We do. The three of us in this room.” Seelye caught himself, looked over at Hartley. “And one member of congressional oversight.”

If Tyler regretted his decision to let Hartley sit in on the meeting, his face didn’t betray him. “Go on,” he ordered, glancing over at Hartley with an unspoken warning: shut the fuck up, Bob.

“Imagine a platoon of high-tech exterminators, who do the job other American agents can’t or won’t do,” explained Rubin. “Each agent has an unbreakable alias or cover. They operate completely off the shelf and under the radar; and they work under pain of death.”

“What do you mean, ‘pain of death’?” asked the president.

“Operational security is not only everything, it’s the only thing,” offered Seelye. “The identity of each Branch 4 agent is unknown even to another Branch 4 agent. They put together their own teams, the members of which are unaware for whom they’re really working. And should their identities ever become known even to a fellow member of the unit…” His voice trailed off, his meaning clear.

“Are you telling me that the United States government employs professional assassins?”

“I wouldn’t use that word, Mr. President,” replied General Seelye. “More like the business end of our forward defenses. The tip of the tip of the spear.”

“Branch 4 is a unit whose very existence — until this moment — is authorized to be known to only three governmental officials: POTUS, the SecDef, and DIRNSA,” continued Rubin, turning his attention to Hartley, trying to impress on him the importance of keeping his mouth shut. “Notice I did not use our names. Branch 4 existed before we assumed our offices and it will continue to exist after we leave. No matter who is sitting in our chairs…”

The president did a slow burn. “Why is this the first time I’m hearing about it?”

“It’s not, sir,” said Seelye, quietly. “It’s just that you’ve made domestic considerations the top priority of your administration thus far.”

President Tyler was in a box. He hated being in a box. He hated Rubin and Seelye for putting him in a box. When this was over, especially if it ended badly, he was going to have both their heads on pikes, to be displayed in the Rose Garden until the next election. “This Branch 4, this Devlin…sounds like God.”

“The next best thing,” said Seelye. “Plus, Branch 4, you get your prayers answered one hundred percent of the time. Devlin never fails.”

The president thought for a moment. “Does this mean I won’t have to convert to Islam?” he asked. “I don’t think that would go over very well with the folks back home in Lafayette.”

“That’s exactly what it means,” said Seelye.

That seemed to please Jeb Tyler. “Get Devlin,” said the president of the United States.

Chapter Eleven

The man known as “Devlin” was born on December 27, 1985, in Rome, Italy. At the time, he was eight years old.

Survivors of shootings almost always say that, at first, they thought the gunshots were something else. A car backfiring. A man chipping ice off a windshield on a freezing winter’s day. Birthday balloons popping. The mind attempts to process what it already knows, and instinctively blocks that which it doesn’t wish to recognize. Such things are called “memories.”

“Mama, can I have one?” One what? He could only remember the want, not the object. Some trifle for sale in one of the kiosks.

“No,” she said.

Far better to remember her, his mother, as she was, young and beautiful, young to him, beautiful to him and at least two others — but that he only found out about later, when he was older, not young.

He and she both knew she didn’t mean it. But it was what she had to say. Because her husband, his father, would instantly overrule her had she said yes, that whatever it was he’d wanted would be dismissed as trivial, transient, of no moment. Unworthy. His father always said no.

The boy who would die that day loved his mother. All his childhood memories were of her, because she was the one fixed constant in his life. For as long as he could remember, through all the moves, all the travel, all the strange cities and foreign languages and new friends, there was always his mother there to comfort him, buck him up, and send him back into the fray that he already knew was life.

Civilians always ask service kids whether growing up without a hometown, without old friends, is hard. Absent the familiar anchors, the life that the boy and thousands of others like him lived seemed difficult, intimidating. Better to stay in one place. Better to have a hometown. Nothing ever happens in a hometown.

Harder to grow up without a father or, worse, with an absent father. Devlin’s father’s business was entirely his own. Later, Devlin understood the nature of that business, perforce embraced it, and took it to lengths his father never could have dreamed. Ironic that he hated his father, hated the business that kept his father away from him, hated the thing that took both his father and his mother away from him, and yet here he was. In it, deeper and darker than dear old Dad ever could have hoped to be. Not by choice, of course.

Until it ended the way it ended, that trip was the happiest memory of his life. Corfu, Biarritz, Palma de Majorca, and finally the Eternal City, where they’d stayed at the Villa Hassler atop the Spanish Steps. How beautiful his mother looked in her bathing suit on the Mediterranean beaches, in her evening dress when they went to the opera performances, in her slacks and blouse, sweater thrown casually over her shoulders, when they threw the petty coins into the Fontana di Trevi, when they stuck their hands in the Bocca della Verita and hoped the Thing inside the Mouth of Truth wouldn’t bite them off.

And the best part was, they didn’t even have to travel that far. Not one of those long trips that his father took, not one of those overnight airplane flights, the daylong train trips. They were living in Munich, where his father was working at Radio Free Europe, although some of the German kids in his Grundschule liked to tease him that RFE really meant CIA. When Devlin would ask his mother where his father was, she would always reply that he was trying to stop some very bad men who were trying to hurt people. Americans, like them.

One night, lying in bed, he managed to overhear a scrap of his parents’ conversation. There was somebody else in the room. They were talking in low voices with someone else, switching languages from English to German to Italian to Spanish to Russian to a couple of other tongues that Devlin did not have, practically in midsentence, as they often did.

He was too young to follow everything they spoke about, but he could still catch scraps. At eight, Devlin not only spoke fluent German, but Bavarian as well. From listening to ORF, he had also picked a very fashionable, if slightly goofy, Austrian accent, and could differentiate among Tyrolean, Viennese, and the Italian-inflected Südtirolisch of Merano and the Alto Adige; his mother loved to ski. Languages were something he didn’t even have to think about. They were like listening to music, or working out long division in that particularly German way that so mystified his American-born parents. No “carry-the-anything.” Keep the whole thing in your head and just do it.

One of the things they were talking about — no, arguing about — was some kind of animal: a hyena, a dingo, something like that. Devlin had read about beasts like these, opportunistic scavengers that ripped the living flesh from wounded animals, and he wondered why three grown-ups would be discussing creatures from the veldt in the middle of the night.

A burst of Russian followed, and he picked out the word, “Ilyich,” and he was proud that he already knew who he was: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. His father spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union; not that he ever admitted it to Devlin, directly, of course, but from time to time Devlin would find a few unused rubles in the coin cup on his father’s dresser and, once in a while, a tin of caviar in the refrigerator. He liked it when his father went to Russia.

Now they were talking about Hungary and Syria and Radio Free Europe. The talk grew louder, more agitated. Somebody yelled something about somebody named Sanchez. Finally, his mother asked for quiet, and the conversation fell back into low murmurs. He listened as long as he could until he drifted off to sleep…

Bang. He was in Rome now. In the airport.

No, not bang. Crack. That was the sound: crack. The sound of the world splintering.

It was a sound he had since made his friend over the intervening years, a sound that at once announced the truth — la Bocca della Verita. Once his enemy, no matter that it became the enemy he loved, the enemy he relied upon, the enemy he could not do without. The friend he could never quite trust.

CRACK.

His father knew that friend immediately.

His mother had been in denial—“No,” she was in midsentence — when Dad suddenly shoved her to the ground, knocking her on top of Devlin.

It wasn’t the first time his father had pushed his mother, not the first time he’d hit her, struck her, really, a hard blow that sent her to the floor, but it may have been the first and only time such a blow had been delivered out of love instead of anger or jealousy. Devlin himself had been on the receiving end of many such blows, but this was the first and only one that saved his life.

Memories.

Imagine a string of the loudest cherry bombs you ever heard going off. Imagine the branches of every tree in your neighborhood suddenly and simultaneously stripped from their trunks, as if by some sudden ice storm, and sent crashing to the ground. Really fast.

But it wasn’t cherry bombs. It wasn’t tree branches. It was automatic gunfire, raking the terminal. The sound of bullets chipping marble and plaster, ricocheting off wood and bone. The flash and thunder of hand grenades.

Chunks of flesh, pieces of skull. An arm, severed from its body. A head, rolling. Feet without legs. The dismemberment made more gruesome by the nails, shrapnel, lug nuts, washers, and screws embedded in the ordnance. So many ordinary household objects, so much extraordinary damage. The banality of evil, indeed.

Mother, toppling, catching whatever portion of the ordnance that was meant for him.

They were lying as flat, flattened, her body over his, shielding him. “Stay down, Mama,” he begged her, but she was a brave woman, defending her young, and so she raised her head, just a little trying to see the source of danger, trying to make a plan of safety, trying to see if there was any escape from this man-made hell on earth, when something caught in the side of her head and that was that.

It is thankfully not given to many sons to see their mothers die before their eyes, but it was given to Devlin. And at that moment, Devlin learned something extraordinary about himself:

He didn’t care.

In retrospect, of course, he did. No boy ever grieved more for this mother than he. But that was later. Not now. Not now, when the bullets and bombs were flying. At that moment — in this moment — Devlin had only one thought:

Self-preservation. He burrowed beneath her still-warm body, waiting for Death to stop.

And he had lived with her death, as the organizing moral principle of his life, ever since. It was what animated him, fueled, propelled him. He was alive because she had died, she who had already given him life once before, and if nothing else he owed it to her to live and keep on living, to kill and keep on killing, until the madness that had engulfed his family either was put to rest, or he was.

The death of his father he witnessed with more equanimity. He had always known his father was a hero, that his father had accomplished great deeds, which he could never hope to match or equal. For as long as Devlin could remember, he had been aware that his father had sought precisely this life, which meant that he had also sought precisely this death.

Up to this moment, the only grenades Devlin had ever seen were in war movies. German television was full of war movies, in which the good Americans killed the beastly Germans or the even beastlier Japs. For some reasons, Germans enjoyed being the bad guys, and for all Devlin knew maybe they still did, but every movie had a scene in which the Germans tossed one of those funny long skinny grenades, so unlike our grenades, and then their grenades would roll around our trenches until either they exploded, killing at least one of the secondary characters in the movie, or one of our guys picked it up and threw it back at the Germans — we played baseball, so they got it right between their beady little blue eyes — or, best of all, one of our guys fell on the grenade, muffled the explosion with his belly and saved the lives of everybody else in the trench. Even though he died.

Of course, it wasn’t like that in real life. Memories:

Father, pulling his service pistol, trying to return fire. His father was a good shot and Devlin thinks he remembers dad knocking down one of the Arabs with a single shot. True or not, he wants to remember it that way. Otherwise, his father’s death was as meaningless as his mother’s, and as everyone else’s who died that day.

Devlin’s last view of him came as he dove onto a rolling grenade. There wasn’t much left of him to bury next to his wife, just a bloody trunk and the severed fingers of one hand.

When it was over, when the Israelis guarding the El Al terminal that was the target of the attack had killed three of the four Arabs, eighty people were wounded, and sixteen of them died. A nearly simultaneous attack on Vienna’s Schwechat Airport took two more lives, and wounded sixty more, all at the behest of Abu Nidal. The same Abu Nidal who, years later, had turned up mysteriously dead in Baghdad as a guest of Saddam Hussein.

The only surviving Palestinian gunman, Ibrahim Mohammed Khaled — twenty years old at the time of the attack — was given a reduced sentence of thirty years in prison. The defense lawyers had argued for leniency on the grounds of Khaled’s youth, his cooperation with the authorities, and the “trauma” of his childhood in a refugee camp. A refugee from Israel, those Nazis…

Meanwhile, “Devlin” was one of the survivors who was rushed to the hospital. There, his father’s friend, the man in the Munich apartment, told the doctors to stop. He told them the boy was dead. And then he ordered them back to work, saving the lives of those who could be saved.

And so that boy, whatever his name once had been, was no more.

He was adopted into that officer’s own family — unofficially, of course — and he changed his name like he changed his socks. At each overseas duty station, and they were all overseas duty stations, he got a new name, a new identity, a new history, a new school transcript, a new life.

Along the way, the boy learned. Blessed with his father’s facility for deception and his mother’s unerring ear for melody, he learned languages the way other kids learned sports or ate Cracker Jacks. He didn’t just learn them, he snacked on them until he had mastered at least as many tongues and dialects as his idol, the great nineteenth-century British explorer and adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton, including all the major European languages, the Slavic tongues, Hindi, Arabic, Pashtun, Urdu, Japanese, and several dialects of Chinese, including Mandarin and Cantonese. Years later, when a woman asked him how he knew Italian, he replied, “One afternoon it was raining, so I learned Italian.” There was no point in exaggerating.

Instead of formal schooling, he studied at the feet of his new father. Boxing and martial arts. Weapons training. He could fight equally well left-handed and right-handed; he could fire two different caliber handguns, one in each hand, and put the bullets in the same spot in the target, whether it was made of paper or, later, flesh and blood. The boy had a head for puzzles, a body for fighting, and a soul for solitude. Not for nothing was his favorite author the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and he consulted the Meditations regularly, always finding inner strength in the pensées of the second-century Roman monarch and philosopher.

I do that which it is my duty to do. Nothing else distracts me; for it will be either something that is inanimate and irrational, or somebody who is misled and ignorant of the way.

Other than Marcus, his only boon companion was the movies, which his stepfather took him to as often as possible.

And all of this because his parents had decided to take a Roman holiday. To create the finest intelligence officer in the service of the United States of America. The “Branch 4” prototype. Creation by expiation of a man without a name, without a country, without a native language, without so much as a social security number. A man who, in short, did not officially exist.

The fellow officer’s name was Armond Seelye.

The boy’s name is Devlin.

Chapter Twelve

At last, the phone rang.

Not the black phone. A nonexistent phone, in fact, one that registered in his consciousness as the sound of chimes, gently clanking in the wind. Except, of course, it wasn’t chimes at all, but a distinguishing ring tone that was signaled to him in one of his many compartmentalized capacities and incarnations. He spoke into a Blu-Ray mouthpiece as he answered:

“Mr. Grant’s office,” he said. Whenever he took a call on this line, his voice was altered to sound like a British woman’s — the status symbol of executive assistants in Los Angeles.

Another woman was on the line. “Hello, Helen,” she said, “it’s Marjorie Takei, just calling to remind Mr. Grant that he’s due to speak at RAND the day after tomorrow.”

He pretended to consult something on the computer. Click-clack, click-clack. “Yes,” he replied, “I have the appointment in the book. ‘Assessing the Threat: The Legal, Practical, and Moral Challenges.’ He’s very much looking forward to it.”

“Good,” replied the caller. Her tone changed. “It’s terrible, what’s going on in St. Louis, isn’t it?” “Helen” was silent. “Well, I suppose that makes Mr. Grant’s remarks all the more topical, doesn’t it?”

“There’s a silver lining in everything, I suppose,” said Helen, ringing off. British secretaries were nothing if not curt, and nobody, especially in LA, thought them rude.

“Archibald Grant” was one of his favorite identities, yet probably his most dangerous. He was not just an off-the-shelf disposable cover, but an ongoing creation with his own richly imagined life, invented past and borrowed memories. Unlike Devlin’s other shades and apparitions, Grant had a continuing existence as one of the RAND Corporation’s most important consultants, whose expert exigeses on international terrorism and counterterrorism were delivered at the highest levels of the Santa Monica — based think tank, and under the strictest security guidelines. Not just “Chatham House” rules of nonattribution, but practically pain of death. In fact, over the years he’d had to eliminate one or two loose lips; there was nothing like a watermarked top-security briefing to flush out the traitors. Which, come to think of it, was how he met her.

An old-fashioned “ring,” just like real phones used to ring before they started playing snatches of 5 °Cent, took him out of his reverie and back to reality. The black phone.

His hand picked up the receiver. Fingerprints scanned, the line was uplinked via satphone to one of the NSA’s birds, scrambled with level three remodulation logarithms. A stealth-encryption field descended, so that even the most adept or malicious hacker would be left trying to apprehend emptiness.

Now “Tom Powers” looked into the receiver. His iris scan was digitalized, encoded, and flashed over the separate T-3 line to Fort Meade for confirmation.

“Devlin,” he said.

He knew who it was right away. “This is DIRNSA,” said Seelye. “You’re on with POTUS and the SecDef. You’re fully up to speed on the sit in Edwardsville.” A statement, not a question. Typical Seelye.

“Who else is there with you?” His voice had an otherworldly quality as it crackled over the hidden speakers.

Seelye looked at Hartley, then to the president, who shook his head. “Nobody,” he lied.

“Wrong answer.”

“We don’t have time for games.”

“Neither do I. I’ll speak to you, the secretary, and the president. That’s the way it is, and it’s non-negotiable. You’ve got ten seconds to get whoever I hear breathing in there the hell out.”

Rubin saw that Tyler had that look on his face that he got whenever he was about to blow his stack. He shot him a warning look: don’t do it. The president controlled his temper. Hartley got the message and slipped out the door.

“This is President Tyler. I’m—”

Devlin didn’t care that he was talking to the president of the United States. He interrupted him anyway. “Not recommending direct Branch 4 involvement at this time.”

“Why not?” barked Tyler.

“Because something about this stinks, Mr. President.”

President Tyler’s eyes flashed. “Are you saying we should just sit back and do nothing?”

“No, I’m saying we need to observe.”

“Those kids need to be rescued.”

“Yes, sir, they do. We know it — and the terrorists know it. But I don’t think this is really about the kids.”

The president was irritated at this display of independence. Who was commander in chief around here? “Then what do you think it is?”

“Not sure yet. Some kind of feint, or probe, to see how we react.”

“You’re talking about children’s lives,” Tyler said.

“If I’m right, sir — and that’s what you pay me to be — then we’re talking about much more than children’s lives. Getting me involved now could potentially make things more difficult for all of us in the end.”

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take,” said the president. “Where are you now?”

“That’s classified, sir. And even your authorization doesn’t reach that high.”

Tyler exploded, “Goddamnit, I’m the fucking president of the United States!”

Even with the electronic scrambling, Devlin’s voice came across low and clear and confident. “Yes, sir,” he said, “you are. At least until the next election.”

Inwardly, General Seelye smiled. Rubin kept a poker face, badly. Devlin paused for a moment, then continued, “I’ve got your feed on my screen, General. Run the reporter’s tape again. I’ll show you what I’m talking about.”

“Cueing it up now,” said Seelye. Once again the tape: the kids, the bombs, the teachers, the shotguns—.

“Hold it. Right there,” said Devlin. “See it?” Seelye paused the feed. What was Devlin talking about? “The guy on the bench there, at click 4,156.07.” A blond man in a sport coat and tie, lying on the bench with the tied-up teachers, his face only partially visible.

“One of the teachers, obviously,” said the president.

“Why, obviously? Look at the way he’s dressed. Look at that sport coat — it’s an Armani, costs two thousand bucks. Middle school teachers don’t wear things like that. General, run an NSA physio scan on this guy. Complete reconstruction—” They could hear the sound of typing. “And match it up with this.”

Tapping into the school’s internal video feeds, Devlin brought up a shot from inside the school: the main hall, looking toward the front doors. A man in the doorway, holding open the door as a boy rushes in, late.

Zoom. The man up close, from behind. Grainy, but visible.

“Full reconstruction — strip him naked and build him back up again.” It wasn’t protocol to give orders to the president, but this was no time to stand on ceremony.

Everyone could see, but just barely make out, the man under discussion. Tallish, powerfully built, with his back to the camera. But the back of his head was clearly visible, including one ear. “That ear will be especially helpful,” said Devlin.

“We’ll get him,” said Seelye. “Mag it up — see his hair?” Closer: light hair, maybe blond.

“Not a lot of blond Muslims, Mr. President,” observed Rubin.

“Which is why he could be anybody,” said General Seelye. “A merc, a Russian spesh-op, a white South African glory hunter.”

“Or a teacher,” said the president, stubbornly.

“This guy’s no teacher,” said Devlin. “He’s the ringleader. He just doesn’t want us to know it. Once we find out who he is, we’ll have some sense of how to handle this thing. Match him with up all NSA motion captures of known terrorists, unrestricted by race, religion, or ethnicity. I don’t want any PC bullshit here. Any tics, any gestures. Run video hair-and-fiber infrared analysis, see what you come up with. Got that, General?”

Tyler bristled at Devlin’s tone. “Listen, Devlin, I don’t think I like your—”

“On it,” said Seelye, intervening.

“Overfly ASAP, let’s get a radioactivity read, just in case. We don’t want any surprises in the basement or the girls’ bathroom.”

“On that, too…”

“And I’ll need our best guesstimates of their weaponry, worst-case. Then, I’ll call you back.”

The president look confused. Was this “Devlin” on the job or not? He wished that America were a kinder, gentler nation, one that didn’t need hard, rough men like Devlin to keep the women and children safe from people with legitimate grievances and misunderstood motives. He swallowed his pride. “Are you in or are you out, Devlin?”

“I’m not sure yet. What about chatter?”

“Nothing specific or credible,” replied Seelye.

“September eleventh was neither specific nor credible until the first plane hit the World Trade Center,” said Devlin.

“So what action do you recommend?” asked Tyler.

“That we await developments. I’ll put a team in place. But things might have to get worse, before I can make them better. As in the level of causalities. It’s a risk-reward situation, especially for me, and under the terms of my employment, not even you get to make that call, sir.”

“That is unacceptable.” Devlin could hear the steam escaping from Tyler’s ears. “I will not sacrifice another innocent person.”

“Then, with all due respect, sir, let the FBI handle it. Just make sure you have enough body bags when they fuck up and the shit hits the fan. In the meantime, you might want to start learning Arabic.”

President Tyler looked over at Seelye and Rubin, absorbing the confident audacity of the man at the other end of the line. A Branch 4 op had every right to refuse a presidential request. With their lives on the line every time, they were the arbiters of their own fate. No choice but to play it his way. “Okay,” said Tyler.

“Also, this really is it for me. If we go red zone and score, I’m out. Last job. I disappear, you never hear from me again, and you damn sure never contact me. Yes or no, General?”

The only thing to do was lie. “Agreed,” said Seelye. “But—”

“One last thing. If I so much as smell a fart wafting from Langley’s direction, I’m gone.” And then he really was gone.

At last, Tyler broke the silence. “You’re sure nobody else knows about this Branch 4?”

Seelye and Rubin looked at each other. Seelye spoke first, “No one except the three of us and, now, your friend, Senator Hartley.”

The president felt the sting. Maybe he had been rash in insisting on political cover. But what was he supposed to do? He was a politician. “But he doesn’t know the details. The specifics.”

“He knows everything he needs to know to blow Branch 4 sky-high,” said Rubin. “And, given his track record, “Senator Sieve’ is just about the last person I’d want entrusted with the combination to my high school locker, much less the national security apparatus of the United States.”

“So you’re telling me I made a mistake?” The question answered itself. “What do we do about it then?”

“We make it work for us,” said Seelye.

The president got up and started pacing around the room. What had he done? “How?” he asked.

Seelye took over. “You heard Devlin himself tell you how, sir,” he said. “He smells a rat here. And he’s right to do so. Here’s why.” Seelye opened his laptop, and as it awoke from standby he placed it on the president’s desk. The White House wi-fi was as encrypted and as safe as the best minds as the NSA could make it, which didn’t preclude an Israeli or Bulgarian teenager from hacking in occasionally. But it was a chance that, for a brief moment, they were going to have to take.

He tapped a couple of keys and an animated dossier sprang onto the screen. Tyler pondered what he was looking at, trying hard to absorb it all, then nodded. Seelye tapped another key sequence and suddenly the electronic version of the dossier was atomized — scattered to the four winds of cyberspace

“The evidence is all circumstantial, but that’s not surprising. These forces have been coming together for quite a while, like a perfect storm. But if our suspicions are correct…”

The president got it. “If your suspicions are correct, then you’ve asked me to send our most valuable operative into a situation that might be — no, is—a trap.”

As Seelye nodded dispassionately, Rubin observed, “A very special kind of trap, sir.”

“And you’re willing to run that risk?”

“Absolutely we are, yes, Mr. President,” said Rubin.

“But why?”

“So we can run the same trap on them.”

“Won’t they be expecting that?”

“Of course they will, sir,” replied Seelye. “Which is why we have to play the hand out. First guy that blinks, loses.”

As a candidate, Tyler campaigned against the “wilderness of mirrors” that was the playing field for America’s intelligence agencies. He had promised the electorate a new transparency. And yet now here he was, in the fun house with no way out.

“People think intelligence work is complicated, and it is,” explained Seelye. “But what it’s not, is complex. It’s actually very simple. What counts is not what’s true, it’s what you can make the other guy believe is true. So we play these elaborate games of she-loves-me, she-loves-me-not — or perhaps a two-hand version of musical chairs would be a more apt analogy — and the last man standing wins the pot. To mix a whole bunch of metaphors.”

Rubin chimed in. “So they’re going to give us a patsy. That’s who this Drusovic is. A guy meant to deflect attention from the real bad guys. A poisoned pawn, as it were.”

Seelye said: “Which means we have to give them one in return.”

“Who?” Tyler was confused. This was the sort of thing that gave him a headache. He had to think…and he kept thinking until he realized that neither Seelye nor Rubin had answered his question. “You’re not talking about this ‘Devlin’ character, are you?” he asked.

Seelye shrugged. “Why don’t you let us worry about that, sir?” he said.

“But what if we fail? What if they get Devlin? What if…?”

Seelye smiled a weary smile. “I think you’re finally beginning to get the hang of the intel business, sir.”

Chapter Thirteen

Rhonda Gaines-Solomon lay where she fell. So did the bodies of the dead teachers. Bodies, beyond indignity, and yet undignified, in impossible postures, with impossible expressions frozen on their faces, terrible and pathetic at the same time. Three people, chosen by death at random, as old as they were ever going to get, lying there, reproachful to the living, for all the world to see. Because all the world was watching.

And now a sense of helplessness began to wash over the country, given voice by the talking heads. How long was this going to go on? Where was the FBI, the National Guard, the Army, Air Force, and Marines? Where was the president of the United States? The head terrorist had spoken directly to him, given him an ultimatum — why wasn’t he negotiating? The lives of children were at stake, for God’s sake.

Hope Gardner learned all this listening to the radio. As soon as the news broke, she had rushed back to the school and found chaos. The main parking lot was blockaded, so she’d pulled around behind the school, on the far side of the athletic field.

At that moment, her cell phone rang. It was Jack. “Hope, what the heck’s happening?” His tone was anxious, urgent.

“I don’t know, Jack. I’m at the school now. The place is crawling with cops. Where are you?” She could hear crowd noises in the background, and the sound of Wolf Blitzer’s voice yipping like a small puppy in his excitement over a big story.

“At the airport. They’ve got CNN on here, full blast. Are Rory and Emma okay? Are you okay?” He tried hard not to lose it. “Some nut, screaming at the president about Allah…”

As Hope sat there, as close as the police would allow any of the parents to get, cell phone to her ear, her children inside a building that had suddenly turned hostile, she found herself surprised by how unhysterical she was. Until something this terrible happened to them, most people in the therapeutic society naturally assumed that they wouldn’t be able to handle it — that they would break down almost immediately. But Hope was learning something about herself she never would have suspected:

She wasn’t breaking down. She was getting stronger by the minute.

“Listen, I’m bailing on the meeting. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

“Hurry, Jack. Hurry. And be careful.” She didn’t know why she said that, but it seemed like the right thing to say. There was nothing to do except wait. And pray.

In the interstices between prayers, she thought of her children — of Emma, rushing off, into the arms of danger, and little Rory, hanging back. If only she had heeded him.

She spotted Janey Eagleton and jumped out of her car. They fell into each other’s arms. All around them, chaos, uncertainty, fear. “What are we going to do, Hope,” cried Janey. “What do they want?”

“Nothing,” whispered Hope.

“What do you mean? They must want something — something reasonable.”

“They already have what they want, Janey.”

Janey recoiled, as if the thought had never actually occurred to her.

“No. They must want something. Something more. Something we can give them.”

Until this moment, Hope had never articulated what she was now feeling. She’d been a good American, taught from birth never to resist a mugger, never to defend herself, never to fight back — possessions were just things, after all, and while things were replaceable, your life was not — never to assert herself. She’d been taught from birth never to complain, never to raise a ruckus, to accept everything that fate threw her way without complaint. The government will handle it. The police will take care of it. As a midwesterner, too, she was disinclined by nature to outward displays of negative emotion.

And suddenly, in this moment of horror, she knew all that was a lie.

Her children weren’t things. Her children weren’t replaceable. They were hers. And she’d be goddamned if she was going to give them up without a fight. Because, as she thought back, she hadn’t liked the way that man in the door had looked at her. She began to recall his features, willing herself to conjure up his face, just in case she needed to be able to identify him later, just in case the worst happened.

Now something began to well up inside her — not fear, not horror, not trauma, but an emotion even stronger: hatred. Hatred for the men who could do this to children. Whatever happened, and however long it took, she would see that they would pay, if it took her the rest of her life. The thought of Emma with their filthy hands on her and of Rory tied up beneath a live bomb unleashed a wellspring of visceral emotion she didn’t know she possessed.

She didn’t want to be defenseless any more; she didn’t want to be weak and passive in the name of “understanding” or “tolerance.” She didn’t care about their bullshit grievances, or the “root causes” of their behavior. She wanted this to be over, quickly and, if necessarily, lethally.

She wanted them dead.

“Yes, Janey,” she said. “There is something we can give them. We can give them hell.”

Her cell phone. Jack again. She hugged Janey and got back in the car. “I’m in the taxi, on the way to the school,” he said. “Where are you now?”

“Past the sports field.”

“Go home. There’s nothing you can do there. Go home. Promise.”

“Promise,” she said.

“I love you, Jack,” she said. She flipped her Motorola phone shut and stepped on the accelerator.

The Jefferson Middle School was fairly new, built a little east of town. It was still partly surrounded by farmland, but everybody knew it was just a matter of time before the cornfields turned into subdivisions. Everything was a suburb now — not just of Edwardsville, or St. Louis, but of Washington, New York, and the world.

Still, the old Gondolf farm stood in the cornfields, just beyond to the east. She could park there, hidden from view. It would be dark soon enough, and then she could walk over and see what was happening.

She left the motor running and radio on. Some disembodied voice on NPR was trying to put what was happening in Edwardsville in “context,” blathering on about Israel and the Middle East and the Iraq War and the CIA’s overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in the 1950s and—

Suddenly she found herself screaming at the radio, pounding the steering wheel and shouting, “Shut up! We are not the bad guys! Shut the fuck up!”

A rap at the window got her attention. A cop. That’s when she realized she’d been pounding the horn in her anger and frustration. It was Ernie Dahl, whom she’d known for years, ever since he’d tried to paw her at the junior prom and she’d slapped his face. Just last week he gave her a ticket for ten miles over the posted limit when she had been doing a good twenty-five, rushing to take Rory to hockey practice. He was still feeling guilty about trying to feel her up way back when.

She rolled down the window. “Hi Ernie,” she smiled.

“Hope, I think you’d better go home,” he said. He took off his police cap and scratched his thinning hair. “There’s nothing you can do here right now. So why don’t you let us handle this? I’m sure everything’s going to be fine.”

Hope looked through her open window at Ernie, at the out-of-shape local cop, the hopeless look in his eyes, and knew there was no way this thing was going to have a happy ending.

“My kids are in there.”

Visibly, Ernie struggled for words. He never was very good at English. “Hope,” he said, “everybody’s kids are in there. But don’t worry — the FBI is here.” Like that was supposed to make her feel better. “So go on home now.”

Suddenly, a plan occurred to her. It was insane, but it was the only plan she could come up with. “Maybe you’re right, Ernie,” she lied, in a tone she hoped would pass for sheepish compliance. She put the car in gear and began to back away.

“That’s it, Hope,” nodded Ernie. “Go along now. I’ll make sure nothing happens to Rory or Emma.”

Hope could see him in her rearview mirror as she pulled around the corner and away from the school. He was waving good-bye.

Chapter Fourteen

For operational security, Devlin almost always flew commercial. And that was not all. Unless he was dealing directly through Seelye’s office, he paid for everything in cash, including road tolls, and never used a publicly available Web browser. He had no land line that any phone company knew about.

Although he was physically fit, Devlin dressed the part of an average American schlub, in T-shirts and jeans and a baseball cap. To look at him, you would see exactly what he wanted you to see — nothing.

He was the man who wasn’t there.

Devlin had long ago learned that hiding in plain sight was the only way to hide. Afflicted with perceptual blindness, people don’t notice what they see every day — they only notice its absence or its alteration. You could live on the same street for twenty years and not be able to accurately describe the sequence of houses, but you would notice, briefly, that one of them had been torn down. And once its replacement had stood for six months or so, you would likely never remember what had been there before.

Devlin had to laugh when he read spy novels or went to movie thrillers: the heroes were too chiseled, too toothy, and just too damn conspicuous. Operational security was one thing, but showboating secrecy was entirely another; Jason Bourne might be the closest fictional equivalent to the men and women — were there any women? Even Devlin didn’t know — of Branch 4, but Bourne, when you got right down to it, was little more than a homicidal midget with memory troubles. Still, Bourne was lucky — he couldn’t remember who he was. Devlin remembered all to well, and it was the toughest thing he did every morning to forget it for one more day.

He let his eyes wander around the interior of the fuselage. Early twenty-first-century Boobus Americanus at his finest. Worse dressed than they would have been twenty years ago, stupider, maybe, or at least more ignorant. Forget about getting the Mexicans to speak proper English these days; it was a stroke of pure luck to encounter a twenty-year-old woman who could wrap her lips and tongue around the syllables of the language and pronounce them properly in any place other than her nose.

As the plane descended, he visualized the school plans once more in his mind. It was a fairly standard layout, a typical concrete block standing amid acres of striped parking spaces. He almost wished the terrorists had taken over the other middle school, an older building located in town; infiltration there would have been much easier.

Still, American special ops had gone to school on Beslan, and knew how to avoid most of the mistakes the Russians had made. For one thing, they weren’t going to run out of patience and come charging in, shooting indiscriminately. Devlin and his Xe team would invest the battlefield but remain invisible. They would take out the terrorists, not one by one, but all at once. And when they finished, the bad guys would be lying dead — no, not just dead but spectacularly, object-lesson dead — and the team would be gone, a wraith in the night. KRV — kill, rescue, vanish. And no one the wiser. The FBI would take all the credit. As for the media, the press was more lapdog than watchdog. For Devlin understood one big thing about reporters: they might be alcoholic malcontents, frustrated screenwriters, snarky Harvard boys afraid of inanimate objects, and hallucinating politicians-in-waiting, but there was one thing they never wanted to be, and that was reporters. They were always playing another angle.

Wheels down brought Devlin out of his reverie. The flight attendant gave them the obligatory, insincere welcome to St. Louis, where the local time was whatever. He gathered his sports satchel from the overhead compartment, which contained everything he needed for an operation like this, and slung it over his shoulder.

There was a full rank of taxis outside, but he passed them by and headed straight to the parking garage. Devlin favored large black SUVs, since their owners should know better than to put such an ungainly, unwieldy, and unpatriotic vehicle on the road. Besides, the owner would get the insurance money, the plates would disappear from every police registry in the country, and everybody would be happy.

The Escalade was ridiculously easy to jack. The Arch gleamed as he swung over the I-70 bridge. The streets of East St. Louis were dark, dangerous urban prairies. Perfect.

He headed for the intersection of Martin Luther King Drive and North 7th Street. Every American city had a street named after Martin Luther King Jr. North 7th Street was only a few blocks in from the river.

There were six youths standing on the corner, very busy doing nothing. As he approached, he ran a quick scan with the infrared monitor inside his PDA. You never knew who was hiding in the garbage can.

A white man in a cap behind the wheel of an SUV was not exactly an unknown sight in ESL: a transaction was in the offing.

The young men crowded around him as he got out of the jacked wheels. As with every group of young men, there was a Big Dog and a pack. Devlin could always spot the Dawg — the drill sergeant of gangsters, the NCOs of urban crime.

“Yo, check it out,” said the Dawg. “I got smoke, coke, coke, smoke.”

“I’ve got an SUV,” said Devlin. “You want it or don’t you?” Fight or flight, he liked to get it down to basics, to get the bullshit out of the way.

“That piece of shit?”

“Is clean, is worth fifty grand new, twenty grand chopped, its owner doesn’t even know it’s gone yet, so I make that at least thirty K profit to you, give or take your paternity payments, asshat.” Devlin looked ostentatiously at his watch. “I don’t have all day.”

Asshat got in his face. “What if we just take it?” The others, the small dogs, began sniffing around.

“You could try,” said Devlin.

There was a kind of primitive beauty to every confrontation among men, primates reverting to type. No matter what the PC weenies insisted, might always made right in the end.

“You alone,” observed Asshat.

“Sure about that?”

“I don’t see nobody else.” Not quite as sure now.

“That’s different. Would I be dumb enough to come here in a fifty thousand dollar car if somebody didn’t have my back?” As Asshat considered this—

“On the other hand, I know you have five homies here and two watching us from that building, plus a lookout kid over there behind the trash pile. I know you’re carrying an old .38 that hasn’t been cleaned in a year and if you try to fire it you’ll blow your balls off. I know that the two guys in the window have machine pistols but from the way they’re handling them they probably couldn’t hit an elephant in the head if he was standing in front of them. I know your life sucks, and that you think there probably should be more to it than getting high and getting laid, but you don’t know what it is. And I know that you could use the money, so let’s just make our little transaction now and everybody stays alive.”

“You crazy.”

“That’s the chance you have to take.”

Asshat thought for a moment. “What it gonna cost me?”

“That.” Devlin pointed to an old Chevy Malibu. “Do we have a deal?”

Chapter Fifteen

The Gulfstream was clean and comfortable. On the tarmac at Van Nuys Airport it looked like any of the other corporate jets that allowed the winners of life’s lottery to avoid the LAX nightmare. Whether you were flying down to Rio for a climate-change powwow, spending the weekend at your ranch in Montana, or just hopping over to Nevada for some stays-in-Vegas fun, the private jet was God’s way of telling a sizable number of people in the LA area that they were making just about the right amount of money.

Inside, however, the jet that was ferrying Eddie Bartlett and his friends to Scott Air Force Base near Belleville, Illinois, about twenty miles east of St. Louis, was a little different than, say, the Paramount jet. For one thing, it was a state-of-the-art arsenal, with everything from nonlethal ordnance to armor-penetrating RPGs. Concussion grenades, cluster bombs. Small arms of every description, including the AA-12 automatic shotgun that Xe developed at its training grounds in Moyock, North Carolina. All hidden behind rotating panels that answered only to the team leader’s palm prints, retinal scan, and voice register.

The jet was carrying two dozen men, each one of them identified only by a name tag. When he first came to Xe — it was called Blackwater then — the system had been to use only numbers, so as to inhibit the formation of personal relationships and the exchange of confidences. But numbers proved to be too impersonal for the unit’s own good; some cohesion was found to be necessary, and so he’d hit upon a rotating, mission-specific structure of common first names — Jim, Fred, Bob, Jose — that could easily be remembered and, later, forgotten. The name tags were worn only during mission prep and needed to be memorized; once in combat they were discarded.

The men — there were no women — were all handpicked for their résumés and their code of silence. Except for the very odd occasion when he needed a woman for camouflage or misdirection, Eddie Bartlett worked exclusively with men. He was old school that way. No sexual jealousy, not protective empathy. Not that Eddie didn’t have plenty of the latter — as a husband and father, he was a puddle of protective empathy. But when it came to taking care of business, he was all business.

So his team consisted of Delta, SEALs from Team 6, Green Berets, Rangers, 10th Mountaineers, Specials Operations Command personnel, some retired, some moonlighting, and some just freelancing. Officially, of course, none of them was there.

Once, men like these really were “special ops.” The Navy ferried the Marines, the Marines landed, the Army bore the brunt of the fighting and the mopping-up, and special ops were used sparingly, for intel and dirty work. Today, in the wake of the second Iraq War, special ops were the point of the spear — the first resort, not the last — with the regular Army acting in a support capacity. There was a lot of grumbling about it, but this was the brave new world of warfare.

Eddie Bartlett himself cut his teeth with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), 2nd Battalion, at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, better known as the Night Stalkers. Fast in, faster out, wholly lethal, the Night Stalkers were a special helicopter unit, trained to plan and execute the mission and extract everybody in one piece. All of them could fly a chopper between a nun’s legs and she’d never even feel the breeze.

Ironically, the unit originated with the failure of Operation Eagle Claw in the desert of Iran, after which President Carter had belatedly ordered up an outfit that could actually have accomplished Desert One. So the Army got its best fliers from the Screaming Eagles and elsewhere, put together the 160th SOAR, and had been doing some serious damage ever since.

One of his three secure, direct-access lines buzzed softly and Bartlett picked it right up. The man on the other end of the line didn’t have to identify himself and spoke, as he always did, without preamble or pleasantries:

“Be ready to bubble down the cell phone service for a ten-mile radius, except for our secure network.” In tech parlance, “bubbling down” meant to shut down cell towers within a given range. “I also want real-time infrared imaging, 3-D coverage.”

“Good idea. The school’s out in the middle of a field, surrounded by nothing. Couple of outbuildings, sheds, whatnots.”

The voice of “Tom Powers” crackled in his ear. “That’s why they picked it. They think they’ll see us coming. But they won’t. KRV. No heroes, no medals.”

Bartlett nodded to himself. He had the right crew for the job. “KRV. Roger that.”

“Got your playbook?”

“Consulting it now,” said Eddie. Actually, what he was looking at that precise moment was a computer playing the You Tube video of Miss Teen South Carolina desperately attempting to answer a simple question about Americans and maps, but he knew that “Powers,” who had sent him the link via a series of untraceable cut-out gmail addresses from a server in Abu Dhabi, had embedded the tactical plan inside the video; a self-extracting file, good for one use only, would call it up. And then the hard-drive would melt.

Bartlett looked up at the countdown clock located on both front bulkheads: just under an hour to touchdown.

“NSDQ,” he said, signing off.

When Miss Teen South Carolina got to her third repetition of “such as,” he clocked on the dummy link.

The download was nearly instantaneous. He had just enough time to hit the print button before the hard drive went into its controlled meltdown. The laptop’s titanium case would contain the electrical fire. He read the page as it spat from the high-speed laser printer:

“Patriots, Red 54–40.” Right. Eddie Bartlett turned to his team. “Lock and load, gentlemen. The zone is hot.”

Chapter Sixteen

Skorzeny’s Boeing 707 was not immodestly luxurious. This was, after all, a businessman’s plane, not a sheik’s whorehouse or a rock star’s pleasure palace. Tastefully appointed, leather seats, a private sleeping compartment in the back for long trips, it was capable of being refueled while in flight, which meant, as a practical matter, that he could stay airborne for days, even weeks at a time. Rarely were there more than two or three persons aboard, not counting the pilots and the staff.

Flying time to Paris was less than ninety minutes, so there would be no napping on this trip. Skorzeny sat, as he always did, at his built-in computer console, from which he controlled the worldwide activities of Skorzeny International; since he did business in nearly every time zone on earth, sleep was an unprofitable activity.

Skorzeny’s plane was equipped with an advanced, satellite-based air-traffic monitoring system, which allowed him to track his corporate fleet, on land, at sea, and in the air. To the naked eye, Skorzeny’s screen was an indecipherable series of blips and letter-number combinations, but he could read it the way a great conductor could read a complex symphonic score. Thanks to deals he had struck with just about every air-traffic control system on the planet, and using a sophisticated transponder triangulation system that he himself had modestly conceived and developed, he could keep track of just about everything that belonged to him.

Additionally, it allowed him to monitor, through GPS, the location of every one of his operatives anyplace in the world. Carrying the modified cell-and sat-phones issued by the company, Skorzeny’s employees could be instantly traced, located, and, if necessary, recalled or rescued. He trusted this information because it was provided by his own comsat, which he had piggybacked into space aboard one of the French Ariane rockets in the nineties. By corporate edict, everyone at a senior or operative level who worked for Skorzeny had to keep his or her GPS device on at all times. The only exception was when you were in duress, in durance, or dead.

“Sir?” Pilier’s voice, over his shoulder. “We’re approaching Paris.”

So engrossed was he that he’d missed the man’s approach. Skorzeny made a mental note to see his doctor soon; if this was a sign his senses had started to slip, he wanted to know about it right away. He preferred to think that his inattention was the residue of the excitement he was feeling, and nothing more.

“You’ve contacted HARBOR and BOREALIS?”

“Yes, sir. Their offices are closed at the moment, due to the lateness of the hour.” Given all of Skorzeny’s high-tech toys, what the old man wanted with this sort of thing was beyond him. Still, one of the ways Skorzeny was able to keep absolute communications security was through a network of microsatellites, which had been launched into geosynchronous orbit from high-altitude airplanes, so weather balloons probably had some practical use that he could not see. In any case, Pilier’s job was to execute, not wonder.

“Thank you.”

He tried not to let his excitement show, tried to control his emotions, even when they were responding to the beginning of the realization of his lifelong dream.

Ambition in a child is fueled by many things — parental expectation, want, force majeure, disaster — but Emanuel Skorzeny’s ambition was born of Sippenhaft: collective responsibility for actions of a family member. In the wake of the failed attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life on July 20, 1944, not only the conspirators suffered, so did their families. Some were executed, most were separated and sent to special camps, where the mothers died but where their children’s identities were expunged, where all memories of the sins of their fathers were extirpated, where they were allowed to live, albeit with new names and new souls. Emanuel Skorzeny was one of those children.

Skorzeny’s father died twisting at the end of some piano wire, but he himself was spared and sent by reason of Sippenhaft to purdah or, in his case, a camp near Dresden. On February 13, 1945, the jewel of the Elbe was liberated by “Bomber” Harris of the RAF, with American support, and the camp was demolished. He was in, of all places, the outhouse at the time of the attack and thus survived when the barracks took a direct hit.

There were those who whispered that he was the illegitimate son of Otto Skorzeny himself, the great Standarten-führer who had rescued Mussolini from the partisans. He let them think that: it made the story of his life so much more…redemptive.

Pilier strapped himself into his seat as the plane went into a steep descent. “Sir?” he reminded.

“In a moment, Monsieur Pilier.” Skorzeny’s fingers flew; for an old man, thought Pilier, he could handle himself around technology like a teenager. As Pilier watched, Skorzeny put on a headset to eliminate the noise of the plane’s engines and began to speak softly. Pilier couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he knew whom he was talking to: Amanda Harrington, who should be waiting for them in Paris.

Skorzeny finished his conversation and shut down the system. One of the conditions he was forced to accept when he bribed the French minister of the interior was to switch it off in French airspace. No matter how well shielded it was, it would not do to be discovered, and not wishing to annoy a duly appointed official of his host country, especially given his special needs within that host country, Skorzeny had reluctantly agreed. He prided himself on keeping his word.

“Do you read the Bible, Monsieur Pilier?”

Where that question came from, Pilier didn’t want to know. He braced himself for a new and strange line of inquiry. “You know I don’t, sir,” said Pilier. He was a good French Catholic, which meant that he never attended mass.

“What about the Apocrypha? The Gnostic Gospels? Surely, Revelation?”

Where was the crazy old coot going with this? “No, sir.”

“The vision of St. John, a masterpiece of speculative superstition that some mistake for dogma. A book of visions, signs, terror, and wonders. Of the End Times. ‘And there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.’ Chapter Twelve, Verse One.”

Now Pilier understood. It had something to do with Skorzeny’s Blake obsession.

“The woman clothed with the sun. The point is, the cartoon versions of reality and history that we see on our so-called ‘news’ channels are grossly distorted and lacking in specificity. But that, I suppose, is what comes from a century-long assault on western civilization. Don’t false dichotomies enrage you? Left, right, communism, national socialism, capitalism?”

Pilier had no idea what Skorzeny was talking about, and wondered whether the old man did, either.

The wheels barely bumped as they landed, which was the way Skorzeny liked it. They were still rolling to a stop when he rose from his seat and let Pilier throw his topcoat around his shoulders. He ran a comb through his hair.

He was first out the door, walking briskly toward the car. Pilier was trailing behind him, carrying their effects. Even though it was dark, he could see her silhouette in the backseat of the Citroën.

Chapter Seventeen

Emma caught Rory’s glance, but tried not to let on. She didn’t want any of the bad men to realize they knew each other. She didn’t want any harm to come to her brother. If anything happened to him…

She wasn’t sure how she knew, but at some point before they had dragged his body away she had realized that Mr. Nasir-Nassaad was dead. She had never seen a dead person before, not even in a funeral home, and all of a sudden there had been two of them right in front of her. All four of her grandparents were not only still alive, they were thriving in North Carolina and Florida. Everybody lived forever these days. Except, of course, for Nurse Haskell and Mr. Nasir-Nassaad.

She’d wondered what it felt like to be dead. Wondered if it hurt, the way it hurt when you cut yourself really bad, and whether it kept on hurting even after you were dead. Or if your soul just jumped out of your body and went its merry way up to heaven or wherever, or whether you got to stick around for a while, to see what was happening.

These weren’t pleasant thoughts, but under the circumstances, they were the most pleasant thoughts she could muster.

And then doors opened and the man with the funny accent was back again.

He was talking to a few of the other men, like he was the captain of the basketball team calling up a play or something. They broke and the other men went away, out of the gym, carrying their guns. After they’d gone, he started yelling again. “Okay, okay, we don’t want no heroes now. Nobody going to get hurt. Everything going to be fine, but now we see if your mother, father love you or not.”

Emma had no idea what he meant by that — she was certain that her parents loved her and Rory — but it seemed to amuse him, because he started laughing again, and already she had seen enough of what happened when he started to laugh.

She closed her eyes.

What a difference. It was a world of stillness. But the tranquility had a trade-off: the silence in the gym was not really silence at all, but a mixture of deep breathing, small whimpers and groans, the muttering of bad men.

And the smells. You didn’t notice them so much when your eyes were open, but now they jumped right out at you. Many of the children had soiled themselves, and that pungent odor wafted everywhere. Emma hoped she would be able to control her bladder when the time came because she didn’t want to embarrass herself and she sure didn’t want to ruin her new Citizens of Humanity jeans, which had cost her dad more than a hundred dollars.

A sudden, stinging slap across her face brought her wide awake back to brute reality.

It was him, leering into her face. “No sleeping missy. You wouldn’t want to have bad dreams now, would you?”

The smell of his breath made her want to retch, and she fought down the rising bile. He was brown-eyed, with a stubble of scraggly beard and a hawk nose, and he made her even sicker just looking at him. Especially the way he was smiling at her, with his rotten teeth and stinking breath.

“OK pretty missy, brave girl, big hero, huh? When time comes, I think you will be nice date.”

He reached out and grabbed one of her breasts and squeezed it—

She said nothing.

He fondled her other breast and then leaned forward and licked the inside of her left ear.

Emma couldn’t catch Rory’s eye, which she knew was a good thing. The last thing she wanted to do now was to set this animal on her brother. She would just have to take it.

She’d heard some of her older girlfriends talk about kissing and licking and what it felt like when a boy licked your ear, how hot it was, but there was nothing hot about this at all. It was disgusting, and she vowed to herself at this moment that she’d never let another boy do this to her again as long as she lived.

Then he started to laugh again. And lick again.

Nobody said anything. Nobody did anything.

Suddenly, Emma was jerked to her feet, her hands still bound behind her. As she opened her eyes, all she could see was a very large, very sharp knife, which he was holding in front of her face.

“Okay, pretty missy, we go now.” And suddenly she was being pulled along by the man, out of the gym, toward the double doors that led into the main hallway and to the front entrance of the school.

Emma could feel her brother’s eyes upon her, but there was nothing that either one of them could do. She shot him a quick, discreet, “don’t worry” glance. Everything was as it had been before, except — and she only realized this later — the blond teacher who had been lying on one of the benches was gone.

“What do you want?” she said as they passed through the doors. The hallways was dead silent. No lockers slamming, no bells ringing, no voices shrieking, laughing, crying. She couldn’t believe she was brave enough to say something, but she did.

The man still had her by the hand. “Nothing much,” he said.

Emma couldn’t understand what was happening. Edwardsville wasn’t one of those faraway places where the houses were made out of dirt, where the soldiers were fighting. This was a place of regular homes and regular families. “Then why are you here?” she asked.

The man stopped abruptly. The knife he’d used to cut her bonds was sticking in his belt. “We do what we are told. Just like you.” He smiled. She was afraid he was going to start laughing again, but he didn’t. Instead he pulled out a cell phone and pressed the Talk key, redialing the last number he called.

“Ready?” he asked, then nodded. “When? Few minutes? Good.”

As scared as she was, Emma couldn’t control her curiosity. “What’s happening? What do you want?”

He gave her a look, the kind of look she didn’t want to see. There was nobody else in the hallway. At this moment, there was nobody else in the world.

“You, pretty missy.”

She screamed as he reached for her and dragged her into the closet.

Chapter Eighteen

Thwack thwack thwack…

Hope was watching from her hiding place on the Gondolf farm as the helicopter landed on the roof of the school. Her heart leapt — at last, somebody was going to do something about the standoff. She waited for what seemed like ages before she realized that nobody was either leaving it or entering it. It just sat there, its rotors gradually slowing, then stopping. The escape vehicle, she finally realized.

Maybe that was a good sign, she told herself. They couldn’t possibly take all the children on board, which meant they were going to leave them behind. Then she thought some more, and decided maybe this was not such a good sign after all.

She thought of her children, waiting for someone to come and rescue them. She knew she had no chance against a group of armed and ruthless men. She knew that she was supposed to let the professionals handle it — the hostage negotiators, the SWAT teams.

But what if they failed? Then the other teams would come, the grief counselors, the ministers, the insurance adjustors, the reporters, the lawyers. If she could only get inside, maybe she could do something, maybe she could help in some small way, get them out maybe, but if not then offer herself as a hostage in her children’s place, to let them take her instead of them. Because, in the end, she would far rather take her chances with the hard men with knives, bombs, and guns than to see the heralds of the Grief Society show up on her doorstep.

She would, literally, rather be dead.

But how? Ever since the hostage situation had begun, the place had been cordoned off, ringed with cops and emergency services vehicles. The feds were there, too, wearing those silly jackets with “FBI” emblazoned across the back, so they wouldn’t shoot each other by mistake.

She slipped out of her car on the passenger’s side and closed the door as quietly as she could. She had thought ahead and killed the dome light, and so she didn’t need to close it all the way, just enough to make it look normal.

Up ahead, ringed by the lights of the media and the emergency services, the school building had been plunged into complete darkness. There was no chance she’d be able to cross the parking lot without being spotted.

Then she remembered the storage shed.

The storage shed was exactly the kind of place you never noticed. It just stood there, crammed with old tools, cleaning stuff, junk, entered once in a very blue moon when the custodial staff couldn’t find something in the main building. She’s been in it a couple of times. Even in the dead of winter. Because the shed was connected to the school by an underground tunnel that linked it to the loading dock in the basement.

The shed wasn’t that far away. If she ducked and crawled, keeping the shed between her and the main building as much as possible, she could make it. Her teacher’s master key would open the door. And the tunnel would get her into the school.

She knew it was crazy, but she didn’t care.

She slithered on her hands and knees, across the athletic field and onto the cold blacktop. Thank God she’d worn jeans. The palms of her hands picked up dirt, stray pebbles, squished into something she didn’t want to know what. It would wash off later. Or not.

She crept on.

Damn! Her cell phone was ringing. Loudly, of course. Vibrating, too. Hope always kept the ring tone at seven, in case she was singing along to ABBA in the car when Jack or Emma or her mother called.

No way to answer. She thought about stopping to turn it off, but decided instead to keep moving; the sooner she reached the relative safety of the shed, the better. She could turn it off then.

She caught a quick glimpse of the school as she opened the lock and slipped inside the shed. The helicopter was still squatting on the roof, like a giant grasshopper.

Even though the shed was made of corrugated steel, she didn’t dare turn the light on. Instead, she felt her way through the darkness to the back, where the tunnel door was. She pushed it open.

Pitch black, but that didn’t matter. She fished her cell phone out of her pocket and flipped it open. The dim light was plenty bright enough for her to see by.

The missed call was from Jack. For an instant she thought about calling him back, to let him know she was all right when she realized that she was very far from all right and was even less likely to be all right in a few minutes than she was now.

There — just up ahead: the hydraulic platform where shipments came in. For the first time in her life, Hope Gardner blessed the systemic corruption of the Illinois political system, which siphoned money out of the taxpayers’ pocket with the promise of a better tomorrow and passed along the cash to the relatives in the contracting business. Only one problem: the hydraulics made a not so joyful noise as they shuddered to life.

She breathed a short prayer that no one would hear anything as she punched the button on the lift, and ascended toward God only knew what.

Chapter Nineteen

Devlin’s route took him well around the school, which was surrounded by cops, but that suited his purposes just fine. He wasn’t going to the school, anyway. His destination was the Community Christian Church, which lay to the east about a mile away. It was the tallest building in the area, and it was perfect for his needs.

He pulled in the parking lot of what looked more like an insurance office building than a church and doused his car’s lights. Long ago, somebody had loved this vehicle and babied it, but the car thieves had stripped it of most of its optional accessories, so now it was down to a standard state: a perfectly innocuous American car. Which was just fine with him, because all he needed was a working cigarette lighter.

His field kit consisted of a NSA-level minilaptop, a secure, enhanced BlackBerry, and a micro U3 8-gig smart drive complete with its own security protocols and defense systems; if he had to, he could travel the world with just the drive, and be up and fully operational ten minutes after buying, begging, borrowing, or stealing a laptop. In the intel business, redundancy was a wonderful thing. Untraceable redundancy was even better.

He plugged the laptop into the cigarette lighter and booted it up. The battery was good for at least six hours, but Devlin had learned long ago that to waste not was to want not. Indeed, the older and more experienced he got, the more he realized that nearly every one of the old bromides worked just as well in the twenty-first century as in the eighteenth or nineteenth. Folklore, word of mouth, and old wives’ tales, like stereotypes, always contained a generous dollop of truth, especially when it came to human behavior.

As he saw things, the history of the twentieth century — a century that in the name of ideology saw more deaths than all those attributed to religion combined — was a desperate, although often successful attempt to convince otherwise intelligent people that black was white, up was down, inside was outside, right was wrong, and dissent was patriotism. Orwell basically had it right.

Which is why he never felt the slightest twinge of conscience whenever he killed any enemy, foreign or domestic. Unlike most of the recent presidents, Devlin took his oath of office seriously: to protect and defend. He had a job — not a job he might have chosen, a job that had chosen him, but a job that he nevertheless took as seriously as he took his own life — and he had discharged his oath as completely and efficaciously as he could.

To be a CSS officer was an honor vouchsafed to only a few. To be a member of Branch 4, even fewer. He had no regrets about anything he had ever done. No victims stared him in the face as he was falling asleep. Remorse was for the weak, for the shrink-addled and psychologist-oppressed. That a Viennese snake-oil salesman named Freud had been able to convince so many that their imaginations were more powerful in their lives than reality, that their parents had injured them to the point that they were unable to function, that if only lawyers could sue the dead they would be made whole, was a wonder he could never quite grasp. Analysis was for sissies.

Devlin was, to say the least, therapy-adverse. He didn’t need counselors, or bartenders, or rabbis, or ministers, or priests. He lived a life without liability, without drugs, without memories. He wanted out for mundane reasons — he wanted to live. And a man in his business who wanted to live had better get out before he got killed.

This was a new emotion to Devlin. Since that terrible day in Rome, there was nothing he cared less for than life. True, the instinct for self-preservation in him was as strong or stronger as it was in every man, but the tribal taboo against death had long ago lost its shamanistic power against him. He’d seen it too many times not to have made it his friend.

And that’s why he was quitting. Because he wasn’t a real American any more, if indeed he ever was. He was a beau ideal from another generation, a throwback, an avatar — not simply the Man Who Wasn’t There, but the Man Who Was No Longer Necessary.

Many was the time he’d thought about quitting, about walking away, the way his mom and dad never could have, because they had taken the bullets that might have found him. Which meant that he must now carry on their work, to take the fight to the enemy for them — to bring them back to life. Which so far, he had failed to do.

Which failure had brought him to this pass.

In a field east of Edwardsville, Illinois. In a stolen Chevrolet, with his laptop plugged into an enemy of the people cigarette lighter, using state-of-the-art technology authorized, however unknowingly, by faceless bureaucrats in Washington who not only had he never met but never would meet, not if they were both doing their jobs. About to share an operation with someone to whom he had only ever spoken on the telephone, a man whom he counted among his friends, but a man whom he would have to kill immediately should “Tom Powers” ever be made as “Devlin.”

One of his secure cell phones buzzed. Without preamble Eddie said, “You used to be a tough guy.”

The voice analyzed kosher—“You used to be a big shot.”

A pause, as the security check on Eddie’s side went through. Then—

“Find package at 38–36–52–11 by 89–55–36–37.” That would be the Dumpster in the church parking lot. “On six.”

Six beats later — not seconds, but randomly calibrated intervals, visible on their screens — both men rang off simultaneously. It was one last level of security — any audio eavesdropping would be flagged, caught, triangulated, located, and eliminated. So far, the system had worked perfectly. It ought to: Devlin himself had designed it. He retrieved the package.

The church building was deserted.

He counted on two things. First, the innate decency of people in the Midwest, their trusting nature. In Edwardsville, a lock wasn’t meant to keep people out, it was to let them know that nobody was home and that you should call again another time. A third-rate burglar from the Bronx could have busted into any of the homes, but this wasn’t the Bronx. It was a nice, decent community that had no idea of the contempt in which coastal America held it.

Still, there were the security cameras. Every place had them these days, if only for insurance purposes; another thing to thank the lawyers for. Not that anybody actually live-monitored them, or even bothered to look at them, unless something happened. And, until today, nothing ever happened in Edwardsville.

Which is why he always carried optical camouflage.

It sounded like something out of science fiction: a kind of raincoat that he could don and, essentially, be rendered invisible, especially to the cheap CCTV cameras. But it was real. First developed by the Tachi Lab at Todai, the University of Tokyo, “crystal vision” or, they rendered it, “X’tal vision,” it gave the appearance of transparency by using retro-reflective materials and a head-mounted projector. It was a kind of magic trick, but NSA/CSS had quickly taken the technology and improved it. The CCTV feed, which was largely static, he had hacked via Echelon and digitalized on the way over, so it was a simple matter to project it onto his coat as the cameras made their desultory scans. All he needed was screen shots of the hallways and he was in like Flynn. Which he now was. If anybody ever reviewed the tapes, he would see nothing.

A minute later Devlin was on the roof.

Through the scope, he could easily see the school. Washington had allowed the helicopter to land on the roof, just as he’d advised. It was one more indication that the whole “terrorist attack” scenario was crap. Terrorists were ready to die. Somebody in there wanted to live, and get away fast. Still, it made for good theater for the journalists, giving them the impression that, were their demands only satisfied, the bad guys would simply vanish into thin air.

So whose ride was the chopper? Faster almost than the thought was the deed, and he had Seelye on the scrambled cell line. “What about the blond guy video? The teacher?”

“Sent it to you ages ago. Must not have gone through.” Even NSA had glitches.

“Resend ASAP.”

This time it came through in an instant. Devlin muffled a choice curse under his breath: billions and billions spent on intelligence and here we were, just as susceptible to snafus as the remotest Fourth World shithole.

He brought up a picture of a man’s ear. The man he’d spotted immediately, the one he’d made for the guy running the operation. Not Drusovic, but the only guy who planned on getting out of there alive. Devlin punched the ear into the database, and went audio with a Fort Meade tech. “Match me, Sidney.”

That was the signal to match the ear to the man, and while the man’s face wasn’t visible it didn’t matter, since no two ear shapes are precisely alike. Using a sophisticated form of the AFIS system that police departments all over the country employed, CSS was able to match the ear to the face of anyone in its vast database, which included not only known hostiles, but all friendlies as well, and a great many — the number at this point ran into the millions — of ordinary civilians, blissfully unaware they had made the National Security Agency’s home movies. What that guy did in Gorky Park, CSS could do in less than a minute. It was a civil libertarian’s nightmare, but an agent’s dream.

“Back at ya,” said the disembodied voice in his ear as it evaporated.

They were both obeying the first rule of the CSS — that everyone is always listening to you, including your nosy aunt Hilda. The transmitted information that followed was a stream of gibberish to anyone listening in, routed through two other secure cell phones, then decoded and recoded in sequence until finally a single name popped up on Devlin’s screen:

Milverton.

Devlin felt a rush of bile. He knew this day was going to have to come, had known it for years, had wondered what took him so long.

Milverton. “The worst man in London.” It was his little joke.

For Sherlock Holmes, Charles Augustus Milverton was a blackmailer of society women and all-around dirt bag. For the CSS, he was the most dangerous rogue agent on earth. Former Special Air Services, discharged under murky circumstances. Where Doyle’s Milverton was fiftyish, plump, and hairless, this Milverton was blond, blue-eyed, physically fit, and ruthless—200 pounds of lethal weapon happily married to killer instinct.

Devlin decided that, for the moment, he’d keep the ID to himself. Milverton and he had a history, and he didn’t want anyone thinking this was personal. But his suspicions had been right from the start: Devlin was in mortal danger. Whether Fort Meade or Washington knew that too, and sent him anyway, was a question he didn’t even have to ask. Not one pawn in play now, but two. Both poisoned.

Devlin felt his fury rising. This couldn’t just be a coincidence. In his line of work, there were no such things as coincidences.

In the eternal game of cross and double-cross that was intelligence work, you had less to worry about from your enemies than your friends. Because while your enemies could always be relied upon for their hostile intent, you could never really trust your friends. In this case, however, both friend and foe had the exact same mission: they wanted Milverton to find him.

Devlin took a deep breath, not wishing to confront the implications. His whole purpose in life was to dwell in the shadows, work in the shadows, live in the shadows, and, eventually, die in the shadows. Branch 4 rules were clear: his existence was to stay unknown.

And now Milverton had come looking for him. The past, which for Devlin didn’t exist, was about to catch up to him. And however this situation in Edwardsville ended, there would be hell to pay back in Washington.

Very well, then. Time to get it on.

Devlin buzzed Bartlett. Two beeps, followed by a short and a long: “Go on signal.” Syllables in reverse. It wasn’t a suggestion. No answer was necessary

Devlin called up a three-dimensional map of the school and the surrounding area. Not one of those Google Earth civilian applications, but the latest word in imaging. Every time a certain type of government plane overflew any given ten-square-acre quadrant of the United States of America, a bank of cameras photographed every inch of the target. Those photos were scrambled, encoded, uplinked to a satellite no one had ever heard of, re-encoded, rescrambled and then downlinked to Fort Meade via a series of cutouts in Christchurch, New Zealand; Barrow, Alaska; and Tupelo, Mississippi, the last because a previous administration had been big Elvis fans. Not to mention the new NSA Regional Operations Security Center that had recently come on line in Wahiawa, Oahu.

He flash-memorized the layout, every detail, then rose, ready to act…

What was that?

Out on the school grounds, somebody’s cell phone was getting a call. Which meant it was punching back GPS coordinates. A parent. An idiot. A hero?

No time to lose. The cell-phone bubble would be in place soon. And then all communications would be cut off, to give Devlin and his men complete communications command of the battlefield.

Most civilians didn’t realize this, but their cell phones were the government’s best friends. Without any coercion whatsoever, nearly the entire American population had been persuaded to carry around a locating device. You didn’t even have to be using your cell phone for someone to track you; it just had to be switched on, sending out those little locating beeps that futzed with your radio if you left it on your bedside table at night, beep-beeping your location to anyone who cared to notice. Might as well wear an ankle bracelet, then paint a bull’s eye on your ass.

Devlin fed in the cell phone’s information, uplinked, and got back the name of the subscriber: Mrs. Hope Gardner.

He flipped open what looked like a hooded BlackBerry but was in actuality a motion-capture videophone that worked like a TiVo; he could “rewind” to any point in the past hour to see whatever the naked eye had missed: using the field of coverage provided by the school’s hidden motion detectors — all newly built schools had them since Beslan, although the public knew nothing about them — he could observe the entire perimeter. He went visual. There:

He could barely make out the blur, but he knew at once it was a human figure, female. Around the back, near the electrical shed. On her hands and knees, disappearing from view just as the chopper settled on the roof. Unfortunately, the video was not real time. The United States had not yet fully descended into Big Brother country, where everything you did was on a live feed, but it was only a matter of time.

He checked the time: four minutes ago. Wherever that woman was, she wasn’t there any more.

“Leave your cell phone on, lady,” Devlin breathed to himself. “And don’t do anything stupid.”

He knew that was probably a forlorn hope.

Chapter Twenty

Charles Augustus Milverton was sleeping. No, not sleeping — half asleep, almost dreaming. In that special state between wakefulness and slumber, when the mind races, leaps, and makes unique connections between different and disparate people, places, and things. The gym bench was hard, but somehow he managed.

Children. That was the key. Childhood. Think back.

The north of England. Geordie country, Tyneside. The Borders, with the heathen Scots just a stone’s throw away. And him a vicar’s son. The only son, the eldest child, with one sister, so beautiful, so weak, so helpless in the face of Fate.

Anglo-Catholic. The worst kind. Higher than C of E, lower than the Whore of Rome. All the strictures of the Church of England, but without divorce. No way out. One sin, unconfessed and unrequited, and you were damned to Hell for all eternity. It focused the mind even as it corroded the soul.

The sermons. The lectures, unending. The history lessons, that went on forever. What did he care about history? About England? He had better and bigger places to go. England was nothing to him, a place, a climate, a series of vaguely related accents, a semishared history of conquest and kings. Although sometimes, standing here, near Hadrian’s Wall, he could feel himself as one with the Romans and their Anglo-Saxon successors, nervously eyeing the Picts to the north, spears and shields at the ready.

Who dares, wins. That was his motto. Perhaps history had a useful lesson or two after all. That was what his father had tried to impress upon him, anyway. One of the few times in the vicar’s life that he had not been cowed by ritual and superstition.

Under normal circumstances, he never would have let that raghead hit him. A savage from the outer limits of Europe, a country so weak it has been easily conquered by Islam and, worse, had stayed conquered. Not like France, under Charles Martel. Not like Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, who had chucked out the Muslims and the Jews, for good measure, and then had sent Columbus packing across the Atlantic Ocean, pretty much in a single inning. Not like Austria, with Sobieski defending the gates of Vienna.

That Europe was gone now. Even England no longer had to worry about the Picts and the Scots and Irish. There were mosques in Newcastle, and in Leeds, and in York, and in Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, and London. England was finished.

And without a fight. That was the bit that still surprised him. When Rhodesia went, he could understand it; Cecil Rhodes was Colonel Blimp, and Ian Smith was a giant pantomime horse for the Fleet Street johnnies of their day, riding high atop their moral dudgeon. He could have sworn South Africa would put up a fight, especially given their nuclear alliance with Israel, but at the end of the day, Johannesburg folded quietly, leaving the Boers and the Huguenots to fend for themselves in the brave new world of Nelson and Winnie Mandela.

He was too young for Rhodesia, but he had fought in South Africa and elsewhere, as a mercenary on the Dark Continent, trying desperately to reclaim not the White Man’s Burden but the White Man’s Gold; half a century after the end of colonialism, Africa was sliding back into savagery, its infrastructure failing, its farms collapsing, its education and political systems in tatters. And now it, and Britain’s former colonies in the Middle East and “Asia”—India and Pakistan — were taking their well-deserved revenge on the Mother Country, exporting their charming native pathologies back to Birmingham and Sheffield and Manchester and Newcastle: female circumcision, “honour killings,” stoning homosexuals, subway bombings, the lot.

He hated them all. He hated them for what they had done to his childhood views of Empire, but most of all he hated them for the lie they had given to what his father had taught him.

And yet he also admired them. Admired them for their audacity to challenge civilization and dare it to defend itself and its so-called “superiority.” Theirs was the rule of the AK-47, not of Article 3, Section 1; the rule of the id, not of the superego. Theirs was the will to power, whether they knew Schopenhauer or not.

And that was the flaw in his father’s belief: that he could stand there, watching the oncoming blue-painted Picts and Celts, bones in their noses and the flesh of their enemies between their teeth, with equanimity, and see souls to be saved. Even when his sister had died, screaming in pain from a ruptured appendix, begging for help that had never come because their father had had to attend to his superstition, minister to his flock, while she writhed and bled and died, the lesson had not changed. It was God’s will…and there yet remained souls to be saved.

Whereas Milverton saw not souls but enemies to be slaughtered before they breached the Wall. His father’s church was an imaginary refuge, a false castle, a hive of fairy tales about Jesus, the Apostles, the Crusades, Urban II, Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Malachy and his prophecies, St. Louis. The Middle Ages was a nightmare, the Renaissance but a dream, a brief respite before Europe too succumbed and slid back into that endless night that had followed the fall of Rome.

That was why he had joined SAS, the 22s, as soon as he was legally able, that was why he had pushed himself, that was why he had passed all the tests, risen through the ranks, punished England’s enemies both at home and abroad, taken the fight to the IRA in Belfast and Gibraltar; and after that operation had gone tits up thanks to the gutter press, had moved into the private sector, working across Europe, Africa, and Asia and now in America. It was hard work but it was good work and it paid very well. In fact, it paid top dollar, as well it should: pound for pound, he was best fighter on the planet.

It was the sound of a female voice that woke him from his reverie. The sound of a little girl screaming. The one sound in the world he could not abide.

Milverton shot off the bench. If he had to break character, if he was no longer “Charles” the teacher, so be it.

Upright now, he tensed for trouble. This hadn’t been part of the plan, and he had no idea how the men in the balaclavas were going to react, especially with Drusovic out of the gym.

He walked slowly, unthreateningly, through the ranks of the captive kids and teachers. With the example of Nurse Haskell fresh in everyone’s mind, no one dared move his or her head to follow him as he went. Still, Milverton could feel the eyes of the boy, Rory, on him. He felt sorry for the spunky little bugger, but in for a penny, in for a pound.

“Charles,” whispered Rory as he walked by him. “He took my sister. He took Emma.”

He kept his voice low. “Don’t worry, Rory,” he said, a thought occurring to him. “I’ll make sure she’s safe.”

Rory managed a very small smile. “Who dares, wins, right?” the kid asked.

“Absolutely.”

Now he noticed the smell. Fear had a stench all its own, and the bodily function by-products were just that, manifestations of the state of mind. He’d had plenty of men beg for their lives before he neutralized them, but this was different. These were children. Not that he cared one way or the other about their fate, but he knew that America was a sentimental country, especially about its kids, and if anything happened to any of them — or worse, a lot of them — the response would be more than they’d bargained for at this point in the operation. The kids were supposed to be very potent and photogenic hostages, nothing more.

That’s why he was angry at Drusovic. It was time to sort the bloody fucker out.

And then he heard the girl, Emma, scream again.

The lift shuddered to a stop. Even with no light, Hope more or less knew where she was. Moving carefully so as not to knock anything over, bark her shins, or skin her knees any worse than they already were, she felt her way down the long, rectangular supply room, past the copy machines and the boxes of paper, past the supplies, her eyes and ears straining into the darkness and the silence.

Her heart was pounding. She’d always thought that expression was literary license, but now that it was happening to her, rocketing, sending shock waves soaring throughout the building, she knew it was for real. Breath short, sweat glands fully engaged. But hearing preternatural. Sight, even in this Stygian darkness, supernatural. With her children in danger, Hope Gardner was Superwoman.

A door was just up ahead. In her excitement and confusion, Hope wasn’t exactly sure where it led to, but she didn’t care. Gingerly, she opened it onto a storage room, which she knew led out into a secondary hallway near the back of the school, one that made a T-intersection with the main hall. The gym was nearby.

She reached for the hallway door, praying that it wouldn’t make a sound, that there would be nobody on the other side, that…

Then she heard the screams. And she knew, in an instant, the way mothers always do, that it was the voice of her daughter.

The hell with what was on the other side.

The hallway was dark and empty. Only the soft glow of the emergency lights kept it from being completely pitch black. In the distance, at the other end of the long central hallway, she could hear the sound of running footsteps.

Hope hugged the wall as she crept forward. She wanted to run, she wanted to cry out, to tell Emma that Mommy was coming for her, that everything was going to be all right, but she knew a single word from her would probably mean both their deaths.

There were voices, shouting loudly, somewhere beyond the gym. That must be where Emma was.

Hope dropped to her hands and knees, creeping through the darkness. The lights were on in the gym, casting a small patch of light on the hallway floor via the windows. She would have to go right past it.

In the distance, the sound of violence, a body falling. She moved faster, nearing the gym now.

She knew she shouldn’t look, shouldn’t risk it, but she had to look. Swiftly, she crossed the hall, sidling up to the gym doors, straightening her legs, rising.

She glanced, catching only a glimpse. But what she saw almost made her throw up.

Children, bound; teachers, with guns trained on them. And explosives everywhere. If the cops or the FBI or whoever tried to rush the school, everyone would die. And Rory was in there, somewhere.

She ducked back down and kept moving.

It didn’t take long for Milverton to find Drusovic and Emma. Under any rational circumstance, he’d never take a bollocks crew like this one into battle, but that was the whole point of the exercise: they were all chattel, born to die and, as far he was now concerned, the sooner the better. Well, he could help move the timetable along.

He ripped open the door. Drusovic was where he had expected to find him, on top of the girl. Milverton’s left hand shot out, grabbing the Albanian by the scruff of his neck and yanking him backward. As Drusovic fell, Milverton delivered a punch to the man’s right cheekbone; a little higher, on the temple, and it would have killed him, but Milverton needed to keep him alive for the moment. A kick to the groin put Drusovic on the floor.

Milverton turned to Emma. Luckily, the savage hadn’t tried to undress her; quickly, he restored some semblance of order to her disheveled clothing and looked into her eyes to see if she was all right. The girl was speechless, her eyes wide and her mouth trying to move, but no sound emerging. Milverton swept her up in his arms, carrying her effortlessly under one arm.

With his free hand, he hoisted Drusovic back to his feet. “You sodding arsehole,” he said, “I ought to rip your fucking balls off and feed them to the nearest pig. And then you can explain to Allah why you won’t be shagging any more virgins.” Since he was, in fact, holding Drusovic’s balls in his hand, this was not an idle threat. “Now pull your pants up and let’s get on with it.”

Milverton carried the girl into the darkened hallway. She had fainted, which was good. He opened the door to one of the classrooms and laid her down on a bench. There was a quilt nearby, so he threw it over her. Then he stepped back into the hallway.

Hope saw the door at the far end of the hall open, and she almost screamed when she saw a man emerge with a girl under his arm. Her girl. Her Emma. Unconscious, or…

Don’t think about it. Calm down. The man carrying Emma was wearing a suit. He wasn’t one of them. As she watched, they disappeared into a classroom.

She had to get closer. She rose to her feet—

And then the same door opened again and another man tottered out. From the way he was moving, she thought he might be drunk. There was a small alcove with a couple of public telephones in it; she ducked into it, sliding down and beneath the phones. Nobody used them any more — everybody had cell phones now — but no one had gotten around to removing them yet. Thank God.

The man staggered past her, oblivious. She thought she could hear him muttering something, but it was a language she couldn’t remotely understand. Hope watched him as he went back into the gym.

Now!

Hope had no idea what she was going to do. She had trusted in God and luck, and so far neither of them had let her down.

She was at the door now, her ear pressed up against it, desperately trying to catch some sort of sound that might tell her that her daughter was still alive, was okay. Nothing. She pressed a little closer, a little harder, straining…straining…

The door opened so fast she almost fell over.

Hope cursed herself for a fool who thought she could somehow make a difference. She should have listened to her inner voices of reason, the ones who were always telling her that violence never solved anything, that all we had to do to get along was to just give up. It was that simple.

Instead, she had listened to just one inner voice. The voice of Emma and Rory’s mother. The voice that understood innately that, no, it was not just that simple.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m a teacher.”

“So am I,” a man said. The voice wasn’t familiar. She peered through the darkness, but couldn’t make out his features. Then it hit her — it was the man she’d seen that morning. The “substitute.”

“Oh, thank God,” she started to say and then his hand was over her mouth and he was lifting her up as if she were made of balsa wood.

“They’re my children,” she said.

“I know they are,” he said.

“What about Emma?”

“She’ll be just fine, I promise.”

That was when she noticed that he had a gun.

Hope supposed — but not being a firearms expert, didn’t really know — that she’d catch the flash of the bullet’s charge a nanosecond before it blew through her skull. She wondered whether her last vision would be of her life, or of her children’s unlived lives. And suddenly, passionately, she wanted to know. Whatever was going to happen, she wanted to witness it. Life or death, win or lose, she wanted to be there, with her children, when it happened.

He pushed her back toward the gym, whose doors she could discern ahead of her in the dim illumination of the emergency lights. From the gym doors, it was a straight shot to the front doors of the building, the doors she had seen this morning and eons ago close behind her two children.

The gym doors opening…the noise.

It took her several seconds before she realized it was herself making all the noise. Screaming.

A blow at the back of her head sent her sprawling toward the center of the gym floor. She skidded across something wet and sticky, then realized it was blood. Still viscous and nasty, it clung to her hands and, when she involuntarily wiped her face, to her cheeks. She felt a trickle of something liquid at the base of her skull and didn’t have to touch it to know what it was.

She rolled over on her back, uncaring about the blood that was mingling with whatever was on the floor. Almost immediately, her maternal radar located her son. Rory was bound, eyes wide in horror.

“Charles,” he shouted, “that’s my mom.”

“I know,” said Milverton. Then he turned to the staggering man, the one Hope had seen coming out of the closet. “It’s showtime.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Up on the roof of the Community Christian Church, Devlin assembled the gift that Bartlett had planted for him. It was a bolt-action, single shot Barrett Model 99, chambering a round that flew from the aluminum alloy barrel at 3,250 feet per second. If your enemy was nicely lined up in a row, you could put a single round through twenty skulls seriatim, which is what Devlin called firing for effect.

You could take out a given target from the distance of more than a mile, and put the bullet right on his nose. Even at that distance, the target’s head would atomize, which was exactly the point. Better yet, it could punch through a concrete wall three feet thick and kill whoever or whatever was on the other side.

Something was happening at the school. Movement at the front doors. In their heedless lust to cover the story, no matter the consequences, the news crews jostled forward, lights blazing. What did they care if their pressure resulted in more deaths? It all made great video. At least for once they were making themselves useful, because with that much light between him and his targets, there was zero chance he’d be spotted.

Bartlett’s men, he knew, would be disguised among them at this point, fanning out, surrounding the building, applying their explosives. As the Israelis had learned at Entebbe and the Germans at Mogadishu, surprise was the attacker’s best friend, which meant that in less than ten seconds they would have to blow out the walls and lay down a withering enfilade as the other Xe ops came in with concussion grenades and small arms. Sure, some kids’ ear drums would pop, but if all else went well that would be the extent of the injuries. Because, by now, using wall-penetrating radar and the real-time imaging from NSA overflights at 40,000 feet, they would know where every terrorist was.

The bombs didn’t worry him much. The Russians had made the mistake of panicking, then charging, giving the Chechens plenty of warning. With nothing to lose, they had popped the bombs and shot the children as they tried to flee. It was a clusterfuck that didn’t have to happen; you could take the Russian Federation out of the Soviet Union, but you couldn’t take the Soviet mind-set out of the Russian. What had worked for Zhukov in Berlin — raw, brutal power — didn’t work in asymmetric warfare.

It was funny, he mused as he took up his firing position: two hundred-plus years after the American Revolution, we were back to square one as far as tactics were concerned. True, the Redcoats didn’t come marching down the middle of the field in serried ranks any more, but in many ways the terrorists were their functional equivalent; what they considered hostages, Devlin and his men thought of as anchors that destroyed their mobility and distracted their attention. You couldn’t shoot a hostage and defend yourself at the same time, assuming you even had the time to choose.

Terrorists never really changed their methods. By keeping their hostages down, immobilized, they thought they could prevent communication and mutiny. What they were really doing, however, was protecting their captives, keeping them alive during the only moments that mattered, the moments of rescue and revenge.

It was all about the OODA Loop. Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. Rinse, and repeat, until the other guy was dead. About getting inside your opponent’s decision loop, staying at least one beat ahead of him, as if you were inside his head. Which is where one or more of Devlin’s bullets soon would be. The Barrett fired both the.416 and the .50-caliber round, but he preferred the 400-grain.416 round; wherever he put his shot, the man was going to be very, spectacularly dead.

He checked the computer, streaming the coverage. With GPS coordinates superimposed over the grid, he hardly needed a scope, since he could train on what he was seeing on the screen and calibrate accordingly. But even at this distance, it was more sporting to shoot a man while looking at him.

Via the infrared scans and rad sensors, he’d also located the bomb control — a laptop computer that would sequence the bomb explosions. Like a cell phone, a computer announces its presence through mild radiation and wireless signaling. Taking it out would be a tougher shot, because his second round would have to follow the first by less than a second and he had to hope like hell nobody would touch the machine in the meantime. But, if everything went right, from the same angle he could take out Drusovic and then punch a round through the computer before the terrorists could react. And by then, they’d all be dead.

What about the Gardner woman? He’d almost forgotten about her.

Suddenly the news crews’ lights grew brighter. Devlin glanced down at the screen. Someone was coming out, Drusovic probably, to make another statement. Terrorists loved a stage. No time to worry about the woman now.

There were dozens of reporters on the scene. Their trucks kept their distance, but the standup artists were primping and the print johnnies were inching forward, notepads in hand. As he watched, a taxi pulled up on the perimeter, and a man got out. Another civilian, most likely a parent. Just what he needed, another wild card. He lost sight of the man as he was swallowed up by the crowd of cops, firemen, EMS workers, and FBI agents.

Devlin’s videophone leapt to life. His heart sank. He was inside the Oval Office, looking at Army Seelye and Secretary Rubin. This was such a breach of security protocol that he wanted to shoot Army on the spot. “Listen up,” said his boss. “The president’s about to make a statement.”

Tyler was sitting behind his desk. “I speak now to Suleyman Drusovic. Yes, we know who you are. And know this as well — we will not let you harm our children.”

Devlin closed his eyes so as to skip the look of satisfaction he knew would be on the president’s face. He opened them again as Tyler continued. “In our pluralistic society, there is room for all religions — and, indeed, for no religion at all. Therefore, in the name of Allah, the most compassionate, the most merciful—”

Devlin couldn’t believe his ears. Couldn’t believe the president was actually mouthing these words. Couldn’t believe that Seelye and Rubin would stand there, letting him say the Muslim incantation.

“Let it be known that, as president of the United States, I would welcome the visit of an Imam of your choice, here, in Washington, to discuss our differences and hopefully find a way to bridge them. But you must release the innocent hostages at Jefferson School immediately, board your helicopter, and be on your way. You have five minutes.”

That’s really telling him, thought Devlin. He put down the videophone, picked up the rifle, and looked through the sight.

Drusovic was emerging from the school, with a smirk of triumph on his face. He had heard, and he knew what he had heard: the president of the United States starting to heed the call to Islam. The Infidel-in-Chief of the Great Satan.

Drusovic surveyed the assembled media horde, his satisfaction obvious. Then he clapped his hands. The school doors opened and there was Hope Gardner, a bomb strapped to her body. Drusovic was holding the detonator in the firing position; if he took him out now, the bomb would explode the instant it slipped from his dead hand.

“In the name of Allah and the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, I welcome the president’s statement. Nevertheless, this unclean woman is an intolerable provocation.”

Hope stood there, blinking in the lights. She knew what was happening, and had lost all fear for her own life. But what she had witnessed in the gym cried out to be made public. She could not speak, and she could not move, but she knew inside that she had to warn the president, the country, the world, before anything else happened.

“This spy”—Drusovic shook Hope roughly—“is a pawn in the service of the United States government. She cannot be acting alone. Therefore, she will meet the fate of all spies under international law and the Geneva Convention. She will be executed.”

With a single squeeze of his right index finger, Devlin could blow the man’s head off. But Hope had injected a note of instability into his perfect closed system; rather than being inside the terrorists’ OODA loop, she had forced him out of his.

And where the hell was Milverton?

Bartlett’s voice was soft in his earpiece: “You got him?”

Devlin’s reply was a purr. “She’s wired. He’ll blow her away.”

A puzzled pause. “So what? We’re good to go.”

“Hold off a sec’. Something’s happening.”

The doors were opening again. At first no one appeared, and then a boy was thrust forward so hard he went sprawling, picked himself up and rushed toward the woman. It was Rory.

Hope turned, instinctively. Rory tried to throw his arms around his mother, but Drusovic shoved him roughly away.

“Come on, Tom.” Bartlett’s voice.

“She’ll take the kid with her.”

“But the rest live. I make that trade any day.”

The memories were raging in his head. Of a little boy having to watch his mother die. “Let’s hope you never have to.”

Drusovic was in the middle of a rant now, working himself up into a photogenic lather. “For too long we have watched our brothers die under the yoke of the Zionist entity. For too long, we have tolerated the intolerable. Let the world know henceforth our tolerance of tolerance is at an end.”

“Hurry the fuck up…”

“Wait—” said Devlin. Little Rory, dusting himself off, was doing something remarkable.

He was attacking the terrorist.

Rory hit Drusovic from behind, punching, scratching, clawing, and kicking. With the detonator in one hand and Rhonda Gaines-Solomon’s mic in the other, Drusovic tried to kick Rory away, but the little kid wouldn’t stop even when one of the kicks landed square in his belly.

“Son of a bitch,” whispered Eddie. “That kid’s got balls.”

Devlin saw his play. “Sure your guys can take ’em all?”

“Locked on with penetrating radar. They’ll be dead before they can fart.”

“How close can you get to Drusovic?”

“Up his ass close enough?”

“It’ll have to do. Stand by.”

Devlin tapped some coded instructions into the laptop. If NSA was on the ball, and it had better be, in less than ten seconds the news crews’ audio would go dead. And then the rest would unfold just like they’d drawn it up on the blackboard.

Another kick from Drusovic and Rory went down hard. Giving Hope an opening. She snatched the mic away—

“It’s a trap!” she cried.

Time to act. “I am the Angel of Death,” he muttered, and fired.

A.416 round moving at 3,250 feet per second can travel a mile in less than a second and a half. Devlin was nowhere near a mile away.

Drusovic’s head evaporated, live, on international television.

As it did, the nearest newsman grabbed the standing corpse’s right hand and kept its finger clamped on the trigger. At the same instant, the man drew a Kukri knife and severed Drusovic’s right forearm, hand still on the detonator. Hope caught a glimpse of a tattoo, winged centaur holding a sword, and the name DANNY BOY on her savior’s arm as he sprinted away, still clutching the severed arm by its hand.

“Good job, Eddie,” Devlin thought to himself.

The round, meanwhile, continued on its path of retributive destruction, killing two men standing behind Drusovic.

It was immediately followed by Devlin’s second shot, which bisected the terrorist at the computer in the gym, obliterated the machine, punched through the rear wall of the school, demolished the windshield of a parked car, ricocheted, and killed a cow a half-mile away.

Then the gym walls exploded, punched out with Semtex A and RPGs. The terrorists tried to react, but the firing lines coordinated into a killing zone from which no target could escape. Firing on fully automatic, the AA-12 shotguns armed with Frag-12 armor-piercing rounds hit the terrorists at the rate of 120 per minute, and cut them down like God’s own scythes.

From the time Devlin squeezed the trigger to the extinction of the terrorists, less than ten seconds had elapsed.

Devlin had no time to celebrate. The instant he fired his second shot, he set the charge on the computer and grabbed the Barrett and took aim at the helicopter.

So he missed Rory, rushing back into the school to find his sister.

The chopper was rising, its rope ladder dangling. Devlin knew he had to take it down before Milverton could clamber aboard. He took aim—

Fire from an AK-47 kicked up all around him. Instinctively, Devlin dropped. He felt like Cary Grant in North by Northwest: a sitting duck, except not quite so good looking.

He rolled, trying to regain the initiative. But the Barrett was a big gun and not easily swung; by the time he got it righted, the helicopter had gained altitude, still spitting fire at him. The rope ladder was no longer dangling. Damn!

Devlin came out of his roll prone, both elbows on the ground. He elevated the barrel. The helicopter was fast but the Barrett was faster.

His third round missed. His fourth penetrated the skin of the Sikorsky and smashed into the engine block. The bird sputtered, then went into a dive.

Devlin was on his feet now, running. His plan had been to leave the Barrett behind, to let Eddie’s crew clean it but that was impossible now. He stripped it as he ran down the stairs, jamming pieces into his clothing.

He made the Malibu and stashed the pieces of the rifle under its backseat. He started the car and floored it.

There was a dirt road through the cornfields, prepped for a new blacktop that would bisect the farmer’s field. It was rough and potholed, but he didn’t care. The Malibu’s axles had survived worse than this. So had his teeth. He hammered down on the accelerator and roared through the stalks.

He hit the school from the northeast. Cops and ambulances were descending on the scene from all sides. Their attention was on the chopper, now in flames, sputtering one last time and then plunging to earth somewhere near the Mississippi.

Then it hit him. The chopper! What a chump he was.

Devlin didn’t have to see the wreckage. He knew that only one body would be found, that of the hapless pilot.

Milverton wasn’t on that chopper. All he needed was that one brief instant inside Devlin’s OODA loop, one second to regroup, and he’d moved ahead in their chess match.

He’d never intended to get on that chopper.

Which told Devlin everything he needed to know. A brilliant improvisation — a double misdirection.

Redundant systems, just in case.

Devlin, out of the car and sprinting toward the school, just another local Good Samaritan trying to help. He could see Hope, free of the bomb, but Eddie was long gone.

He couldn’t see the boy. But he could see the man, rushing into the school, the civilian who had showed up in the taxi. Rushing straight toward—

Oh, Jesus.

Complete chaos had broken out in the building, with police and FBI collapsing on it from all directions. Devlin blended in immediately, ducked inside the school.

Smoke and dust everywhere. Alarms blaring. The freed children, rushing about, nearly blind, nearly mad.

There, the kid. The one shouting, “Emma, Emma!”

Devlin scooped him up under one arm and ran as fast as he could for the back of the building.

“Emma!” the kid shouted.

“Rory!” came a voice in the distance. The man from the taxi.

“Daddy!” cried the kid.

No time. No time. Tough luck about the dad.

The Dumpster would have to do.

The explosion ripped through the gym.

“Are you a cannibal or a missionary?” the kid asked him as they huddled together in the garbage can, flaming debris raining down around them.

“Neither, kid,” he replied. “I’m an angel.”

The rain of fiery shit finally stopped. The metal interior was hot to the touch. The boy still lay within the protective embrace of Devlin’s arms. “What about my sister?” said the boy, very softly. It was almost as if he knew what must have happened to his father.

“I don’t know,” whispered Devlin. “I’m not that good of an angel.”

“Can’t you find out?” said the boy.

“I’ll try,” said Devlin. He left the boy safely in the Dumpster and slipped away, with a hole in his soul. In Jeb Tyler’s America, one dead kid was one too many.

Somebody had set him up — maybe more than one somebody. But who?

He didn’t know that, either. But he did know one thing: he knew he was made.

And when a Branch 4 op was made, he was as good as dead. Any time Seelye chose, every intel and special ops agent could be after him. Not to mention Milverton and the forces behind him, whoever they were.

Poison pawn or sacrificial lamb? In the end, it didn’t really matter. Friend and foe were the same person.

What was that saying of Bartlett’s? The old 160th motto?

“NSDQ.” Night Stalkers Don’t Quit.

Chapter Twenty-two

There was utter silence for a moment in the Oval Office as the three men watched the school explode. Then Washington exploded.

“GodDAMNit!” exclaimed the president, lunging for the phone. He knew his first thought should be for the people who had just lost their lives, however many of them there were. With any luck, the place was mostly cleared out, but right now he couldn’t take that chance. The political fallout, whatever it was going to be, had to be minimized and it had to be minimized fast. “Millie, get the speaker and the majority leader in here, on the double. I don’t care if you have to roust them out of bars or beds, but get them in here. Senator Hartley too.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ms. Dhouri from the outer office.

Rubin, meanwhile, was on the cell phone with the commanding officer at Scott Air Force Base. If there were going to be any other nasty surprises, the country needed a military presence in Edwardsville pronto. “Make sure you get that wreckage of the helicopter before the cops stomp all over it,” he shouted.

Seelye, for his part, did not use the phone. Instead, he was working through a series of cutouts using the NSA’s in-house communications system, trying to reach Devlin, and getting no response. He was still trying when the president said, “All right, gentlemen. Now, how do we play this?” His face was red and Seelye knew that Tyler’s ultra-political mind was already factoring how this was going to play at the next election.

“The speaker and the leader are on their way, Mr. President,” squawked Millie over the intercom. “I can’t reach the senator.”

“Send them in the minute they get here,” said the president, who then turned to Seelye. “Well, Army, looks like your man Devlin just screwed the pooch.”

Seelye put down his PDA and looked across the room at Tyler. “With all due respect, sir, he did not. From all the available evidence,” he glanced at his PDA in case there was a message, but no light was blinking, “most of the children have been rescued. Under normal circumstances, we would call his mission a brilliant success.”

Tyler snorted, and gestured at the television screen. Smoke was still billowing from the wreckage. “You call that a success? Do you have any idea what’s going to happen to the markets tomorrow morning unless we get out front on this pretty damn quick? I can see the headlines now—‘AMERICAN BESLAN.’ This is just fucking great. I thought you told me this Devlin was the best we’ve got.”

Time to defend the honor of the agency and to protect his turf. “He is sir,” said Seelye. “Take a look at that screen — what do you see?”

“I think the pictures pretty well speak for themselves.”

“Precisely. Yes, part of the building was destroyed, but all of the terrorists were killed. Sure, it was a nasty surprise, but if you don’t think ordinary people all over America weren’t cheering when Drusovic caught one in the brain…then you’re not the politician I thought you were. Sir.”

Tyler considered that for a moment. The expression on his face said you might be right. Seelye pressed forward. The earlier you established the “legend,” the more likely it was that everyone would believe it. “You see where I’m going with this”

Tyler plainly didn’t.

“The point is,” explained Seelye, “the bomb detonated after the operation was over. Devlin accomplished his mission—”

“But we took some casualties.”

“We may have, yes. And, politically, that’s bad. Your predecessors have pretty much established a zero-tolerance level for casualties, and I can certainly understand why you’d want to continue their policies. But look at it this way: You have a bunch of dead terrorists, a bunch of rescued kids, and a bunch of happy families. The grief counselors for the few will only add to the poignancy, not detract from it. Surely we still have some friends in the media.”

Seelye noticed the president was scribbling notes as he listened. He punched the intercom button again. “Millie, I have some notes here and I want them delivered to Pam Dobson right away.” He switched off and addressed Seelye. “What’s your point about the bomb going off after the rescue?”

Seelye couldn’t believe Tyler couldn’t see it. On second thought, yes, he could. “Simple, Mr. President,” he said. “We’re dealing with two separate operations.” He paused to let that sink in. “The first one, the hostages — that was for the cameras. A feint, if you will. The second was a punctuation mark, a way of their letting us know that they got the joke.”

Tyler was completely confused by now. He looked at Rubin for guidance.

“I think what Army is saying, sir, is that the hostage situation was a distraction. Whoever set this up couldn’t have cared less what happened either to the kids or to the terrorists. But, with the bomb blast, he left his signature.”

“Which means…” said Tyler, hoping that someone would fill in the blanks. Their job was to figure this out. His job was to play it politically.

“Which means that this is only the beginning,” supplied Seelye. “Even worse, it means that someone — a very well-financed and ruthless someone — is testing us, probing us, trying to see how we’d react in a moment of national crisis. After all, there hasn’t been a major terrorist incident directed against Americans since September eleventh. Memories fade, emotions jump. What have you done for us lately, you incompetent son of a bitch.” He looked right at Tyler. “You take my point.”

The PDA buzzed in his left hand. The red light flashed. “Excuse me, sir,” Seelye said and called up the message. It was from Devlin:

YOU KNEW, YOU FUCKER, DIDN’T YOU?

The president was nothing if not observant. “What the hell is it, Army?”

YOU SET ME UP, YOU SON OF A BITCH.

The head of the National Security Agency looked at the president of the United States, sitting behind the Resolute desk. “We have a problem.”

“Can you translate that” asked Tyler.

The intercom buzzed. Millie said, “The speaker and the leader are here, sir.”

Tyler caught the warning look in Seelye’s eyes. “Ask them to wait a moment.” He turned back to Seelye. “Okay, genius, you have the floor for the next fifteen seconds.”

“Mr. President,” said Seelye, rising. “What just went down in Edwardsville was no ordinary terrorist incident.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Tyler. “What are you — we — going to do about it?”

“Be prepared for more trouble. This was not a one-off. Whoever planned and executed this was playing a double game with his own people. His stooges, if you will. I have no doubt that he and whoever is either working with him or standing behind him has a lot in store for us.”

The intercom buzzed again. Tyler ignored it. “So what do we do?”

“Give me twenty-four hours. Not even. Let me debrief Devlin — he understands what’s going on. And he’s the perfect man for the job.”

The president looked dubious. “After what just happened…”

Seelye gestured to the door of the Oval Office, beyond which the congressional leaders were cooling their heels. “Remember your public, sir. This was a triumph. The next one, though, will be a tragedy if we don’t stop it.”

The president rose, signaling the end of the meeting. “From your lips to God’s ears,” he said, ushering them out. “Just don’t fuck up.”

Chapter Twenty-three

Pilier switched off the television and turned to Skorzeny, who had already turned his back on the screen and was looking out one of the panoramic display windows. The boss loved to watch the river traffic on the Seine, especially the bateaux mouches as they sailed by, lights blazing.

Not that he had much time for movies, since he didn’t even watch the ones his movie studio made, even though he was the company’s majority silent investor. As far as Skorzeny was concerned, movies were propaganda tools, fairy tales for the masses, and nothing more.

“Horrible,” said the factotum.

“Yes,” agreed Skorzeny, who had been in a bad mood since they had reached the apartment, and all because of her. “How dare she tell me she had to get back to London? Doesn’t she enjoy my company?”

“Of course she does, sir,” replied Pilier. “We all do. But I believe she has some preparation to attend to. You can perhaps forgive her…anticipation.”

Skorzeny kept his gaze focused up the river, toward Notre Dame, defiantly illuminated against the dark European night. From the triplex apartment on the rue Boutarel, you could practically reach out and touch the great cathedral.

“No, it’s wonderful,” said Skorzeny, answering Pilier’s first observation, which meant that the subject of Amanda Harrington was closed for now.

“What dreams they had — dreams that lasted almost a thousand years,” mused Skorzeny, looking at the cathedral. “Dreams, and faith, and a belief in themselves. I envy them their certainty. We’ve lost that today, don’t you think, Monsieur Pilier?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” Pilier replied and instantly regretted it.

“Which?” inquired Skorzeny. “The certainty? The dreams? The faith?”

He’d walked right into that one. “All of them, sir,” replied Pilier quietly. He dreaded it when the boss got into one of his interrogatory moods.

“And why?” Skorzeny turned away from the window and looked his major-domo square in the face. “Without the wherewithal to realize them, dreams are for fools. Certainty rightfully belongs only to the man who can afford it. And as for faith…”

“No one worships at Notre Dame anymore,” ventured Pilier.

Skorzeny displayed a small smile of half pleasure. “Precisely. The great cathedrals of France are mere tourist attractions now. Soon enough, they’ll be nothing but tributes to the nihilistic abyss of infinity. Or mosques.”

Pilier waited for a value judgment, which was not forthcoming. But he could guess.

“Empty monuments in stone to a God who has taken up residence elsewhere. The pinnacles of western civilization, now nothing more than curiosities to the Japanese and an offense to the Arabs. What do you make of it?”

Pilier hazarded a guess. “Of Notre Dame, sir?”

A small sigh of exasperation. “Of Edwardsville.”

“They’re calling it a tragedy.”

“I suppose to the Americans, it is. But of course, it’s not. Not in the classical sense. There is no protagonist, whose own pride or anger or greed or lust sows the seeds of his own destruction. A random criminal act, now matter how bloody or spectacular, cannot be tragic. You need to reread your Aristotle, Monsieur Pilier. Preferably in the original Greek, not one of those vile French translations.”

Pilier issued a small cough of self-deprecation. “My education—”

“Continues with me. Which is why I hired you. You show promise. And at the moment I have no heirs. Only employees. Which is why what happened today—”

Pilier coughed modestly. “Not a tragedy, then?”

“An occurrence.” Skorzeny sat down at his desk and contemplated its clean leather surface.

“There were deaths.”

“There are deaths every day. Even of school children.”

Skorzeny gestured in the direction of Notre Dame. As he did, one of the bateaux mouches floated by, casting its Platonic reflections on the walls of Skorzeny’s elegant cave. The old man’s face danced in and out of the chiaroscuro. “Do you think the God who once resided in that prime piece of Parisian real estate ever murdered a school child? A virgin? A nun? Of course He did. So if what happened today in Edwardsville wasn’t a tragedy, then what was it?”

“As you said, sir — an occurrence.” He realized that Skorzeny liked to take both sides in an argument, but it was getting late. Even Skorzeny had to sleep some time.

Skorzeny began to move toward the interior stairway, toward his private chambers. It was only at moments like that the man showed even a glimmer of his age. There was the hint of a shuffle in the walk, a moue of weariness at the mouth. Both of which would have vanished by morning — which, on Skorzeny’s schedule, was only a few hours away. “Really, Monsieur Pilier, you disappoint me.”

As Skorzeny passed him, Pilier tried once more: “An opportunity?”

“Precisely,” said Skorzeny. “Good night, Monsieur Pilier.”

“Good night, sir.”

Skorzeny stepped into the hallway. He never took reading to bed. When it was time to sleep, that’s what he did. Efficiency above everything. Tonight, however, he had a valedictory. “Do you ever wonder where He went?”

“Who, sir?”

Skorzeny shot him a look. Suddenly, one bony hand shot out, grasping Pilier hard. “Inform our other British member that I expect to receive his report of his American activities at the London board meeting. That is all.”

That was his signal. Pilier nodded and went to retrieve a portable basin of water spiced with lemon juice in which Skorzeny ritually washed his hands before retiring, reflecting his absolute abhorrence of dirt. Mentally, Pilier referred to it as the “Pontius Pilate” bowl.

“Thank you,” Skorzeny said, wiping his hands on the freshly laundered linen towel draped over Pilier’s left forearm, which would go straight to the laundry service in the morning.

Pilier stood motionless as Skorzeny disappeared up the stairs. He had learned from experience not to move until he heard the music — you never knew when Skorzeny would poke his head out one last time with a request or an observation. What would it be tonight? What elegy to accompany Emanuel Skorzeny into slumber?

Sure enough, the voice wafted from above: “Do you remember who St. Bernard was, Monsieur Pilier?”

“Something to do with Clairvaux, sir?” hazarded Pilier, trying not to shout.

“The abbot of the great monastery, to be precise. In the twelfth century, the man who preached the Second Crusade in 1146. Friend to Saint Malachy, he of the apocalyptic prophecy of papal succession in 1139. Of the 111th Pope, Peter the Roman, and the revenge of the dragon.”

Pilier had no idea what he was talking about. When Skorzeny went off on one of these numerological tangents…

“Today, their successors will not even use the word, ‘crusade,’ much less preach one. What do you call that, Monsieur Pilier?”

Pilier thought for a moment. Of course it was a trick question. They were all trick questions. “Prudence, sir?” he replied.

“Cowardice,” said Skorzeny, shutting the door again.

Silence for a moment, and then the music: the opening strains of the Elgar cello concerto, first movement. Skorzeny’s taste was impeccable, as always.

Chapter Twenty-four

Devlin caught the Greyhound bus from St. Louis to Lexington, Kentucky, where he bought an airplane ticket under the name “Matt Nolan,” bound for Reagan International. There, he would pick up a CSS drop car in the long-term parking lot and drive himself home.

Things weren’t as bad as he’d feared in Edwardsville. The explosion had demolished the gym, but ironically the fact that Bartlett’s team had blown holes in the walls during their assault had dispersed the power of the bomb and saved the rest of the school.

The bad news was there was one child still missing — Emma, the daughter of Hope Gardner, the woman who had so bravely and foolishly penetrated the school, the sister of the boy he had pulled to safety into the Dumpster when Milverton’s little going-away present blew. There was no way to tell whether she was alive or dead at this point, but the longer they went without finding her body, the better the chances of finding her were. Unless, of course, she had been blown to bits.

The other bad news was that the hero, the guy he’d seen breaking through the police lines and had gotten himself killed for no reason — that man had been identified as Hope’s husband, Jack. That family had really taken a hit.

One part of Devlin admired him. But the time for civilian heroes was when trouble started, not when it was almost over. A civilian hero was the customer sitting munching his Big Mac with a .45 in his pocket when the punks tried to hold up the McDonald’s, the man who, seeing a couple of thugs breaking into his neighbor’s house, racks up his 12-gauge, blows the perps out of their socks, and then waits for the cops to show up.

Devlin knew all this because had been tracking the aftermath of the school operation via his next-generation iPhone, which after all had been licensed to Apple and AT&T by the NSA in a top-secret agreement that gave the agency discretionary but complete access to all audio and visual files transmitted over the system. Even now, the NSA computers in Fort Meade and the huge data chompers in Poughkeepsie were busily sorting through teenage pranks, the exotic but enervating sexual practices of random couples, and the idle chatter of millions of cell-phone laundry lists and bitch-out sessions.

Still, the panic that had overtaken the New York Times and its fellow travelers when word of the “warrantless wiretapping” program had leaked into print was ridiculous. Nobody, least of all him and the operatives in Branch 4, had the time or the patience to sort through granny’s recipes for apple pan dowdy. The vast majority of the intercepts went straight to the data-sifters, churning bytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, and googlebytes in search of that magic combination of zeros and ones that might signify terrorist buzzwords.

And all thanks to something called the “SKIPJACK” algorithm. First proposed by the Clinton administration as part of something called the “Clipper Chip,” the original 80-bit key, 64-bit block, 32-round, unbalanced Feistel network called Skipjack would have placed a chip inside all new communication devices to allow the encryption of private communications. The catch was that, buried deep in the proposal, was an “escrow” proviso that called for a third party to maintain the “keys” to unlock encrypted communications, which government agents could access with court permission. The whole idea being, essentially, to make private data-encryption impossible, as the classified Presidential Decision Directive No. 5, issued by Clinton in 1993, made clear. In other words, like most congressional laws and state referenda, it meant the exact opposite of what it said.

That “third party,” of course, was the National Security Agency, which had invented the damn thing in the first place. And it was never very difficult to find a sympathetic judge in Washington, no matter which party was in power.

The NSA had invented the chip’s underlying cryptographic algorithm — Skipjack — which the agency promptly classified. When the civil-liberties types started barking, Clinton backed away, leaving the playing field wide open for the NSA to step in and lock the whole thing down. In a fit of false openness, the NSA in 1998 released the Skipjack algorithm to computer security companies wishing to develop off-the-shelf encryption products compatible with federal government communications systems. And so the marriage made in heaven was consummated. Talk about a poisoned pawn: now every American potentially was subject to federal monitoring.

Well, that sure made his job a lot easier. Too bad he didn’t have the heart to tell that to Eddie Bartlett’s daughter, Jade. Tapped into her iPhone, he could keep tabs on his partner’s family, just to be on the safe side.

Devlin’s off-market “iPhone” was something else again. It was part of his deal that he had access to beta-plus-one versions of everything. With a few punches of his game console he could slam through into a teenage girl’s webcam as she Facebooked some fiftyish dirtbag claiming to be a runaway from Alberta and rat him out to the FBI — anonymously, of course. Echelon had nothing on Skipjack.

“Can I get you something else?” said the cocktail waitress in the Lexington airport lounge. Devlin glanced at his watch: plenty of time. “What do you think…Laura?” he replied.

She didn’t move. She was about twenty-six, midwestern, tanned — German background, for sure, since Irish and English girls never darkened in the sun like that — small-breasted, nice legs. His type.

The girl smiled. “Do I know you?” Worked every time.

Devlin shot her one of those apparently honest, searching gazes that women loved. Women were like fish; you had to get them to nibble, then bite, but had to reel them in slowly, playing them out just enough to give them the illusion that they could safely swim away at any time. “I’m sorry…Courtney?” She dipped a little at the knees, moved in closer, an open invitation if you knew how to read body language.

“Amber,” she said. “See?” She pointed to the name tag just above her left breast.

Devlin shook his head. “No, not Amber.” The girl looked momentarily puzzled, which is exactly what he expected. “I’ve met all the girls named Amber and I sure would have remembered you.” He was smiling now. “No, I’m pretty sure your name is Destiny.”

It took her a couple of seconds to get the joke. She gave him one of those quizzical, excuse-me smiles this generation was so adept at. Instinctively, she moved to the next level, something else he was counting on. “I think it was at Marengo?” The mock-shake of the head, the sarcastic furrowing of the eyebrows. “Remember?”

Devlin pretended to think. This was going to be easier than he thought. Marengo was a nice touch, and out of anybody else’s mouth but hers it might have raised a flag or two. “Marengo? Whose side were you on — Napoleon’s, the Austrians’, or the chicken’s?”

She giggled. “You’re smart, aren’t you? I can tell.”

“No one’s ever told me that before.”

That got her laughing again. “I was talking about the club — you know, the one downtown?”

“Right,” he said. “Maybe you could take me there?” He watched her eyes as she was making up her mind. As soon as he saw assent—“What time do you get off?”

“Don’t you have somewhere to go?” she smiled. “I mean, you are here at the airport.”

“My flight just got canceled.”

“Ten o’clock,” she said “What did you say your name was?”

Thank God there was a flight to Washington early the next morning. Sometimes the loneliness was crushing.