Liberty

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jake Grafton was standing on top of the Met-Life Building in New York City when the sun peeped through the clouds to the east. He was leaning on a rail, out of the way, holding his cell phone in his right hand. The chilly spring breeze whipped at his light jacket and jeans and made him shiver a little. It had rained during the night, and the air was still cold.

The sun’s appearance was spectacular, with the whole of the city at his feet. He was facing south. In the distance he could see the harbor and the bridges to Brooklyn and the Statue of Liberty. Behind him commuter helicopters came and went. The chopper that Jake had arrived in was parked on the helo pad farthest from the passenger terminal exit.

It was here that he learned from Gil Pascal that Hamid Mabruk had driven home. And it was here that he learned that Mabruk had shot himself when FBI agents attempted to arrest him. “They took him to the hospital in critical condition,” Pascal reported. “He shot himself in the head with a twenty-two about thirty minutes ago. I’m getting this on the other line from Harry Estep in the FBI command center.”

He called Harry. “I asked Zelda to tell you people to follow him, not attempt an arrest.”

“Admiral, I don’t mean to sound disrespectful,” Harry said, “but the FBI doesn’t take orders from you.”

Jake thought about that for a moment. “I suppose someone in the Hoover Building gave the green light for an arrest.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Someone really senior.”

“That’s a good guess.”

“Emerick, I suppose.”

“I can’t confirm that. But I have no doubt that the order to arrest Mabruk came from the top.”

“Terrific. I hope Emerick knows where the other two bombs are and grabs them this morning. That would save all of us a lot of wear and tear on our stomach linings.”

He snapped the phone closed.

He shouldn’t have made that last crack, but … Jesus H. Christ, he felt so goddamn frustrated!

The streets below were dark canyons. The rising sun, reflecting off buildings and acres of window glass, chased away the gloom. As he stood looking, a commuter helicopter came in to land amid a hurricane of noise and rotor wash. Grafton leaned on the rail until the buffeting air subsided.

New York!

When the helo shut down, he used his cell phone to call Sal Molina. He had the number memorized.

“It’s Grafton.”

“Good work you did last night. Where are the other two?”

“That’s what I called to talk about. The FBI just screwed up an attempted arrest of the guy who armed that one last night. He managed to shoot himself in the head. Still alive, but even if he lives, he isn’t going to tell us anything.”

“Okay,” Molina said, sounding as tired and frustrated as Grafton felt.

“I’ve got our one Corrigan unit cruising Washington. Nothing so far. What I want to do is bring the thing to New York. I have a feeling that this is the most likely target for the others.”

“Evidence to support that?”

“None. Just a gut feeling. Atlanta, Washington — they gotta have New York on their list. The Corrigan unit is the only thing that will find one of those warheads if it’s packed in lead.”

“The White House is releasing the news about the warhead you found last night. If you thought the warhead in Atlanta got Congress and the public stirred up, wait until you see what happens today. I’ll talk to the president, but I suspect he will want the Corrigan unit to stay in Washington. This city is the seat of our government. An attack in New York would be devastating, but one here would be catastrophic.”

“Yes, sir,” Jake Grafton said. He had spent his adult life taking orders, even if he didn’t agree with them.

“Could you be available to talk to the press later this morning?”

“Not unless I receive a direct order to make myself available.”

The helo behind him came to life; Jake rammed a finger in his ear to hear Molina’s reply. It sounded like “I’ll get back to you,” but it might have been something else. Jake snapped the telephone shut and leaned on the rail.

After the helo departed Jake called Gil Pascal again. “What is going on with the FBI?”

“Zelda isn’t having much luck. They aren’t putting anything about those terror cells on their computer system. There’s been an interesting development on the wire services about a shooting involving some Arabs at a golf course construction site in south Florida. Two of them are dead. One was run over by a tractor pulling a container off the site. Apparently the container had just been delivered by a local hauler. The driver shot the other one. The rig kept on going.”

“You don’t say?”

“All this happened just after sunrise yesterday morning. The police are trying to get more information on the dead men from INS. They’re probably talking to the FBI, too. Of course, no one got the plate numbers on the truck. The witnesses can’t even agree on the brand of tractor.“

“Uh-huh.”

“Yesterday afternoon there was another shooting involving Arabs in north Florida, west of Jacksonville. Place is a piney woods, I take it, on a dirt road off a state highway. Five Arabs dead in that one. No suspects. Again, local police are e-mailing details on the dead men to the INS.”

“What does Zelda think of all this?”

“She thinks the decedents may have been members of the terror cells the FBI was tracking. I thought of calling Harry Estep and asking, but I thought I should mention it to you first.”

“Don’t call Harry. I think he’s got orders from headquarters.”

“He’s probably pretty busy,” Gil said. “The Boston police have two corpses on their hands, Corrigan’s right-hand man, guy named Karl Luck, and his chauffeur. Both stabbed around midnight.”

“In Boston?”

“Yep. They were left in the limo at the train station.”

“How’s Carmellini doing?”

“Called in about an hour ago. Everything is quiet. He wants someone to relieve him, LeRoy, and the driver so they can get some sleep. I’m working on it.”

“That Corrigan unit is gold,” Jake replied. “I want armed guards in an unmarked car following it everywhere it goes. No more wrecks.”

“I’ll make it happen, Admiral.”

“Where is Sonny Tran?”

“New Jersey. A security camera got him boarding a subway in the Bronx at dawn. He changed trains at Penn Station and rode out to Newark. We lost him there.”

“Cell phone?”

“It’s not radiating. It’s apparently off.”

“Keep me advised.”

Jimmy Doolin had had his truck-driving job for three weeks; if he wasn’t careful, he was going to lose it. He was running late with this load, which should have been delivered yesterday.

Yesterday! Ha! He parked the rig with the load on it so that he and Luellen could sign that contract on the condo. When he got back in the rig, he had a fenderbender with some old lady who wasn’t sure what state she lived in, got a traffic citation — Oh, man! He was going to have to talk really fast to explain that to the boss.

That cigar-chomping fatty would probably fire him on the spot. If the boss canned him, the condo people were going to be all over him like stink on shit. They wouldn’t let him out of the deal. And Luellen — what would she say?

The roads were still slick from the rain last night, and already traffic was loading up. Jimmy Doolin had his mind on things other than driving when he took the expressway off-ramp in the Bronx. The grade was steeper than he thought and the light at the bottom was red. He slammed on the brakes.

The truck chassis behind him fishtailed, the tractor slid through the light. The container on the chassis slid out to the right and wrapped itself around a steel power pole. The walls of the container split like a ripe melon, its contents gushed forth.

One of the things that came squirting out was a nuclear warhead packed in birdshot. The duct tape holding the bags of birdshot in place tore loose. Bags fell off as the warhead — which was really heavy with all that lead wrapped around it — caromed off a parked car and rolled a little ways down the street like an oversize bocci ball.

Jimmy Doolin was wearing his seat belt and wasn’t hurt. He turned off the ignition and got out of the cab, cursing mightily. The container was ruined, the contents spread from hell to breakfast. He had a cell phone in his pocket. He dialed 911 to get the police started this way, then called Luellen to break the news to her. The condo was history.

The army officer in charge of the troops searching New York was Brigadier General Tom Zehner. The helo carrying Jake Grafton landed fifty yards from Zehner’s mobile command post in Battery Park and shut down. Grafton walked across the grass and showed his Pentagon pass to the uniformed guard at the temporary fence that kept the curious away, and was admitted.

Zehner was a medium-sized man who exuded an air of perpetual calm. He knew who Jake Grafton was, even if he was wearing jeans and a ratty light jacket. Three other officers were in the command post conferring with the general.

After the greetings, they got down to it. “What are your orders?” Jake asked Zehner.

“Search every container coming into the city. We’re using Geiger counters. I’m having my men open every third one.”

“You are not searching every trailer and truck?”

“No, sir. There is no way. I’ve got three thousand men. The police are helping direct traffic, but my men are doing the searching. All the traffic crossing onto Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten Island has to cross tunnels, bridges or ferries. We’re working them all. I’ve shut down all ferry traffic to the eastern end of Long Island. The people out there are bitching, but I did it anyway.”

Zehner went to the map on the wall. “I gave up on the Bronx. I don’t have enough troops. We stop the traffic when it crosses into Manhattan.” Zehner looked Grafton in the eyes. “Right now the delay at the checkpoints is three hours. We’re strangling the city. If we searched every vehicle, traffic would essentially cease to flow. The city would be isolated. Kept up long enough, the people in the city would starve.”

“Railroads?”

Zehner showed him on the map.

“Airports?”

“No, sir. They have their own security.”

Jake parked his butt on a desk. Most of the chairs were stacked with office supplies. “How long you been doing this?”

“Two days, sir.”

“The warhead the FBI snagged in Atlanta was packed in lead shot and blown lead pellets. It’s enough to fool a Geiger counter.”

Zehner threw up his hands.

“What if a nuke is already in the city?” Jake pressed.

“Admiral, I only have so many troops. They must eat and sleep. Unloading every truck coming into the city to inspect it would be the equivalent of putting up roadblocks and denying all access.”

“How would you use more people if you had them?”

Ten minutes later Jake’s cell phone rang. Sal Molina was on the line. “The president wants you here for another meeting.”

“Yes, sir,” Jake said. “I’m on my way.” He turned to a major who was standing against the wall. “Tell the chopper crew to start the engines. I’ll be out in three minutes.”

The White House meeting was crowded with senior military officers and the heads of federal agencies. Butch Lanham, the national security adviser, was the chair. Sal Molina sat in the corner cleaning his fingernails. Emerick belligerently acknowledged giving the order to arrest Mabruk. He insisted the Florida terrorist cells might still lead the FBI to the bombs, although that possibility became less likely with every passing hour.

The politicians in Congress were reacting to the army’s stranglehold on traffic going in and out of New York, and that had to be dealt with.

Everyone wanted more Corrigan detection units, which weren’t forthcoming. Corrigan Engineering was doing its level best, but another operational unit was at least two weeks away.

They were arguing about using troops to search tractortrailers and about the Coast Guard’s prohibition of pleasure boat traffic along the East Coast when someone came in to inform them that a warhead had been discovered at a truck crash in the Bronx. A sigh of relief swept the room.

“That’s three,” Molina said fervently.

“One explosion would be more than enough,” General Alt snapped in reply.

Jake knew how Molina felt. He, too, felt a huge sense of relief, as if a great weight had been lifted from his back. Finding one was a labor for Hercules — finding two out of the question.

When the meeting broke up, Alt buttonholed Grafton. Sal Molina appeared at Jake’s elbow. “Good work last night,” the chairman said.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Where’s the other warhead?”

“God only knows. I’d bet a paycheck, if anyone wants to bet, that it’s in New York or on the way there.”

“This crowd hasn’t a clue,” Alt said sourly. “How are you going to find it?”

“We can’t search the whole country,” Sal Molina said while Jake considered his answer. “Atlanta surprised me. It could be anywhere, Chicago, L.A., San Fran, Dallas …”

“Do you have a plan?” Alt snapped at Grafton. He was in a snapping mood.

“Keep doing what I’m doing, General, which is looking for the bad guys and trying to anticipate their targets. And praying we get a break. Last night was pure luck. If we had gotten there seventeen minutes later than we did, we’d be having this discussion in hell.”

“There’s one still out there,” Alt said heavily.

Jake spoke slowly, feeling his way along. “We didn’t find these warheads when they came into the country because they were packed in lead. They’re here now. Let’s stop searching the ships and redeploy our people.”

“I agree that searching ships now is futile,” Molina said. “I’ll talk to the president about shuffling the troops.”

Jake continued, “We’ve got to stop searching trucks going into New York — we’re strangling the city. We’ll search them in the city with roadblocks at random places. I want to use everybody we can lay hands on to search Washington and New York, and every other big city in the country.”

“You’re looking for a needle in a haystack. We’ll never find it that way.”

“Probably not, but we’ll show the public we’re looking, and we’ll show the terrorists, too. Whatever plans they had for that last weapon are going to be reconsidered.” He gestured with his hands. “We need to make them do what we want them to do, then be ready when they do it.”

Alt looked around. The three men were the only ones left in the room. “Let’s hear what you think.”

“Fleet Week. If I were a terrorist, I’d find a way to detonate that warhead in New York Harbor during Fleet Week, which starts eight days from now. Ships from navies all over the world will start arriving any day. If there is a nuclear explosion in the harbor during Fleet Week, half the people on earth will assume that a U.S. Navy weapon detonated. The other half will assume the terrorists did it. Either way they win.”

Jake ran his fingers through his hair. “If I were a terrorist and I had one bomb left, that’s what I’d do with it.” It sounded lame, and in truth it was.

“We could cancel Fleet Week,” Molina pointed out.

Alt looked askance at Grafton. “You still feel lucky?”

“This is our best shot, General.”

“General Alt?” Molina asked the chairman.

“Don’t cancel it.”

“I am never going to play poker with you two,” Molina said. “You’d bet the ranch without even a pair in your hand.”

Jake Grafton was so tired his eyes burned, yet there was something he had to do before he went home. When he arrived at his office in Langley, he called Gil and Zelda into his office and closed the door. As they brought him up to date on the weapon that had been discovered that morning in New York and filled in more details about the bodies in the limo in Boston, Jake rummaged through the stacks of files on the floor behind his desk.

He pulled one out and opened it on his desk. He hunted for the paragraph he wanted. “Ah-ha! I thought I remembered seeing this.” He motioned to Zelda and Gil to come around the desk. They read over his shoulder.

“Sonny Tran had a brother, Nguyen Duc Tran. Trouble with the law as a youngster, fighting, drinking, dropped out of school at the age of sixteen. Diagnosed as a passive-aggressive personality. Got a GED when he was twenty. Is now a long-distance truck driver.”

Zelda took a step back. “That incident yesterday at the golf course could have been a hijacking,” she mused. “Did I tell you? — Corrigan Engineering is the contractor building the course — the container was addressed to them.”

Jake Grafton smiled. It was his first smile in weeks, and it felt good. “I think I see a light at the end of this tunnel. It’s a mighty small glow, but it’s there.”

He closed the file and carefully inserted it in his desk.

“Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone,” he said. “I want the fourth warhead, not suspects in jail.”

They nodded.

“Corrigan,” he said to Zelda. “Cell and landline telephone conversations, e-mail, everything you can get on him.”

She nodded her understanding.

“Now if you good people will excuse me, I’ve been up for nearly thirty hours; I’ve got to go home and get some sleep. See you this evening before you go home.”

With that Jake Grafton walked out of the office, whistling softly.

The Corrigan van dropped Tommy Carmellini in front of the Graftons’ apartment building. He rode the elevator up and knocked on the door. Callie opened it. “Come in, Tommy,” she said, and pulled the door wide.

He looked around for Anna.

“Jake isn’t home yet,” Callie said. “Anna left an hour ago with two U.S. marshals. The FBI is putting her in the witness protection program.”

“She coming back?”

“I don’t think so.”

“She leave a phone number or anything?”

“No. Just this note.” Callie handed him an envelope, then went to the kitchen to give him some privacy while he read it.

Carmellini sat down on the couch and carefully tore the envelope. Inside was a piece of notepaper, folded once. She had written in ink, “Tommy, I’ll be back someday. I love you, Anna.” That was it.

He crushed the note in his hand, wadded it into a tiny ball.

He sat frozen, breathing in and out, in and out, listening to the thudding of his heart. After several minutes he opened his hand, looked at the wadded-up piece of paper, and carefully smoothed it out. He read the words again, then folded the paper until it would fit in his wallet. He stowed it behind his driver’s license.

Callie Grafton came out of the kitchen carrying Carmellini’s pistol and shoulder holster and two glasses of water. Tommy accepted a glass and sipped at it.

She sat down. “Jake called a while ago,” she said. “He said you two found the warhead in the Convention Center last night.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It was a long night.”

“I heard on the news that one was found at a truck crash in the Bronx this morning.”

“I heard that, too. Good news, huh?”

He finished the water and put on the shoulder holster. “Thanks for the water.”

“Come by and see us, Tommy.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

Jake was in a good mood when he arrived home less than a half hour after Carmellini departed. He kissed his wife, gave her a huge hug, then said, “I’m hungry.”

“We’ve got some leftover chicken.”

“Terrific. How about a chicken sandwich?”

While he ate she told him about Anna Modin’s departure and Carmellini’s visit. “He’s in love with her, Jake.”

“Renews your faith in humanity, doesn’t it?” her husband said with his mouth full. “Here we are on the brink of Armageddon and people are still falling in love. Maybe the species will survive after all.”

“So there is one warhead still out there?”

“Yeah.”

“Where is it?”

“I think it was hijacked. That’s good and bad. The terrorist cells in Florida were made up of suicidal warriors — they would have popped the thing pretty quick. Mabruk didn’t want to die in the explosion — he set the weapon to blow after he cleared town, which was damned lucky for us, by the way. We arrived seventeen minutes before it exploded.” He snorted. “Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket today. I’m shot with luck.”

He drank some milk, then said, “The hijackers have something planned. I don’t think they’ll blow it the minute they lay hands on it.”

“How could anyone hijack a bomb? How would they know where it is to steal it?”

“They knew the plan. Someone who knew it had to tell them.”

“So who are the hijackers?”

“I’ve got an idea, but I tell you, Callie, the evidence is thin enough to read a newspaper through. Still …” He took another bite and munched slowly, savoring the food. When he swallowed he said, “Corrigan probably put up the money to buy the weapons, figured on double-crossing them, making sure we found them. The terrorists double-crossed him. Yet someone in the terrorist organization knew where the weapons were to be shipped, and that person sold or gave away the information. My guess is it was someone involved in the transportation of the weapons. Could have been any one of the people who knew — doesn’t matter who — the point is the hijackers learned where the weapons were being delivered. Maybe they had one delivered to a destination they picked, maybe they were there to meet it at the terrorists’ destination. What is indisputable is that we have seven dead terrorists and a missing weapon.”

He finished the sandwich and stood. “I feel better.”

“Toad’s coming home today,” she said. “Rita called from Boston.”

“Shouldn’t have had Toad and Bennett riding around with that asshole,” Jake grumped. “Should have known better.”

Callie was going to ask him to explain that remark, but Jake headed for the shower. Fifteen minutes later he collapsed in bed.

The news that Karl Luck had been murdered shook Thayer Michael Corrigan badly. He had been watching the continuous news coverage of the discovery of the warheads on television when the police arrived to give him the news, and to ask questions. Who had Luck met, when, where, why? Corrigan didn’t know any of the answers. The fact that he didn’t know was the thing that shook him, not Luck’s death.

After the police left he sat trying to figure out what in the hell was going on. He hadn’t a clue, and he knew it.

Who killed him? Not muggers or thieves — the police said both Luck and the chauffeur still had their wallets on them. A prostitute? Corrigan didn’t think Luck went in for that sort of thing, and if he did, he certainly wouldn’t want the chauffeur along as a witness. And then there were the wallets.

Sonny Tran? That was a possibility.

Or Arab terrorists?

One of the two, surely.

A knife. Not a gun, but a knife. Corrigan thought about that, too. He had never killed anyone, but if he were going to, he would use a pistol. Perhaps poison. A knife was too personal, too messy; you had to get so close, and you had to have a lot of strength. The police said Luck was stabbed through the heart and the knife was jammed to the hilt in the chauffeur’s back. There was something … brutal … about the knife.

Was the killer after him, too?

Ah, that was really the issue, wasn’t it? Being stalked by an assassin was one thing, but one who got so close he could ram a knife into your heart and watch your face as you died — that was a man to be feared.

Although it was only two hours after breakfast, the sun was shining outside, and the room was pleasantly warm, Corrigan felt a chill. He opened his desk and found the automatic he kept there. He took it out, looked at it. Rust spots in several places. He hadn’t had it out of this drawer in years.

He checked to make sure it was loaded and the safety was on, then slipped it into his jacket pocket. The weight of it pulling on his tailored wool suit jacket made him feel silly.

A popgun like that wouldn’t stop a suicidal assassin on a mission from God. Holy damn, those people used submachine guns and car bombs in Egypt. And knives. Hacking up tourists was one of their tactics.

He sat down before the computer on his desk and turned it on. While it was booting up, he opened his safe and removed a small leather-bound address book. He had used a code — it took him several minutes to decode the computer address he wanted and the public key.

He spent ten minutes composing the e-mail message, correcting it several times before he was satisfied. Then he encoded it on the RPS software and hit the send button.

Zelda Hudson had Corrigan’s encrypted e-mail within minutes after he had sent it. Unfortunately, she couldn’t decode it — she had neither Corrigan’s public key nor the recipient’s private key. She printed it out and put it on Jake Grafton’s desk. When he came in that afternoon, he found it there and went to the techno-wizards’ basement computer center.

“What’s this?” he asked Zelda.

“Corrigan sent it to someone.”

“Can you decode it?”

“No.”

“NSA?” NSA was the National Security Agency, the government’s cryptographers.

“Nope. It’s an RPS code — there is no known way to decode it without one of the two keys.”

“Terrific,” he said, and went back upstairs to his office.

Toad Tarkington and Rita Moravia were waiting when he got there. They had just flown in from Boston.

“You look like you were run over by a garbage truck,” Jake said.

“That’s supposed to be funny,” Toad said to Rita, who didn’t grin.

“Sorry,” Jake said. “Bad joke. I owe you an apology, Toad. I shouldn’t have let Sonny Tran wander around with you and Bennett. He probably maneuvered that van into the path of the garbage truck on purpose.” He passed the police report of the accident to Toad. “The driver of the garbage truck said the van accelerated to get in front of him. There was no way to stop. The police didn’t cite either driver because they had two conflicting stories.”

“You think he wanted to destroy the Corrigan detector?”

“It’s junk. And Sonny has disappeared. He didn’t go home, and he isn’t answering his cell phone. In fact, Zelda tells me he doesn’t have it on. She can’t track it through the cell network.”

“Wow,” Rita said. “If that crash was intentional, that was a gutsy move. He could have been killed, too.”

“Sonny Tran is one cool customer,” Jake acknowledged. “I — well, hell, I screwed up. I apologize.”

Toad waved it away. “Forget it, CAG. We’re all doing the best we can.”

Jake looked at Rita. “I need your help. I want to know everything there is to know about Fleet Week in New York. I’ll call your boss in the morning and get you transferred over here.”

An hour later, when Toad and Rita were on the way home, Rita remarked, “He looked a little more upbeat than he has the last few times I saw him.”

Toad agreed. “That garbage truck crack was the first funny he’s tried in a month. He thinks he’s on to something.”

“Amen to that,” Rita said fervently.

The following afternoon Zelda intercepted an encrypted e-mail to Corrigan. It was from a sender in France. She printed it out and was studying it when her computer began flashing. She had an e-mail! Someone had sent her one at the CIA! Sarah.Houston was the addressee.

Who in the world?

She called it up. This one was from the same person in France who had e-mailed Corrigan. She studied it, then realized she was looking at an encryption key. Actually, two keys.

Fifteen minutes later she had Corrigan’s outgoing and incoming e-mail decoded. She printed them out and carried them upstairs to Jake Grafton’s office. The admiral was in conference with Rita Moravia. The secretary took the e-mails in and handed them to Jake Grafton.

Sixty seconds later he was in the outer office. “How’d you get these?”

“Someone sent us the keys.” She handed him the message she had received. He dropped into a chair, glanced at the keys, then carefully read the decoded messages.

“Zelda, I thank you. Your country thanks you.” He popped out of the chair and kissed her on the cheek, then scrambled back into his office with the messages in his hand. He slammed the door closed behind him.

Zelda Hudson, rubbing her cheek, stood in front of an amazed secretary. “But I didn’t do anything,” she protested, then wandered off to get a soda pop.

In midafternoon the tractor-trailer rig pulled into a small warehouse facility in Newark. Nguyen Duc Tran backed the trailer up to a loading dock, killed the engine, got out of the cab, and stretched.

He looked around casually, then climbed the stairs to the loading dock and went in the large open door.

His brother, Sonny, was sitting at a desk against a sidewall. He was the only man in the place. Nguyen pulled the nearby folding chair around and sat in it. He lit a cigarette, took a puff, and grinned.

“I’ve been wondering where you were,” Sonny said.

“I had an adventure. The Arabs did not part with their toy willingly.”

“There have been some articles in the newspaper about dead Arabs scattered around Florida.”

“It was fun,” Nguyen said expansively. “I truly enjoyed it.” He jerked a thumb toward the rig at the dock, and laughed.

“You are a nihilist, I think,” Sonny said thoughtfully.

“And you aren’t?” Nguyen waved the hand that held the cigarette in a large sweeping gesture—“Smashing those bastards was … perfect. Just perfect! Damn, I feel good.”

“We won’t survive this adventure,” Sonny said, his eye on his brother.

“Hey, everyone has to die. When it’s over there’s nothing, nothing at all. No paradise and no hell. All you get is the juice you make before you go.” Nguyen dropped the half-smoked cigarette and stepped on it. “You want to look at it? It’s a helluva piece of work.”

“In a minute. There’s no hurry. A helicopter will take it to the job site Monday morning.”

“I wondered how you were going to get it by the troops. I heard on the radio that they’re searching every truck going into the city.”

“Helicopter. We’ll go over them.”

Nguyen Duc Tran laughed raucously. He leaned back in the chair and shouted his glee at the heavens. Despite himself, Sonny Tran laughed, too.

Yes, smashing this rotten, misbegotten society and the bastards who built it was indeed sublime.

At midnight Jake Grafton boarded an executive jet at Andrews Air Force Base. He was the only passenger.

He settled into a window seat on the left side and reclined it as soon as the pilot lifted the landing gear. The plane took off to the south and banked into a climbing left turn. Soon the lights of Washington were visible stretching to the horizon. Traffic delineated the Beltway, he could see the Washington Monument and the Capitol … a sea of lights, millions of people.

He tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable as the lights of Baltimore passed off the left wing. There was a cloud deck over the ocean, so he didn’t see New York, which was almost a hundred miles northwest of the plane’s course. Boston went under the nose a while later. He drifted off to sleep with the jet on course for the North Atlantic.

Paris was as it always was, a magic city, a city of youth and dreams, today under a high, clear, pale May sky. Jake Grafton was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and his ratty windbreaker as he sat on a bench in front of Notre-Dame. Above him the gargoyles watched the human parade as they had for centuries.

He bought a bag of seed for the pigeons and dribbled it out parsimoniously until he tired of it, then he threw them the last handful and emptied the bag. They ate it at his feet.

He was early, of course. He would be early at his own funeral, or so Callie had said many times through the years when he urged her to hurry up. Maybe it was the navy, all those years of being at the appointed place before the appointed time, just in case.

He saw the limo pull up and Thayer Michael Corrigan get out. The limo got under way and disappeared in traffic. Corrigan was well dressed in a dark suit. He looked around, didn’t see who he was looking for, so he took a bench across the plaza from Jake, facing the street, with a young tree behind him. Jake watched his profile. Corrigan ignored the birds and tourists and lovers, glanced at his watch, then crossed his legs.

Corrigan had been sitting there for five minutes when Janos Ilin came walking along the sidewalk that led from the bridge across the Seine to the Left Bank. Jake Grafton saw him first. Ilin glanced his way but gave no sign he recognized him. The Russian walked over to the bench where Corrigan was and sat down beside him.

After they had been talking a moment or two, Jake rose to his feet and walked toward them. There was an empty bench at right angles behind Corrigan and Ilin, so he made for that and seated himself.

“ … I need some help from you,” Corrigan was saying. “We’ve done a lot of business in the past, and I know you are a trustworthy man of utmost discretion.”

“How may I be of service?” Ilin asked in nearly flawless English.

“There are some men in Cairo who must be eliminated. I am willing to pay, of course, a reasonable fee and all expenses. It must be done soon. They killed one of my colleagues, and I am worried that they will try to murder me.”

“What have you done to them?”

“It was a business deal. I can say no more than that. We live in difficult times.”

“Indeed,” said Ilin. “Of course, I would have to know more. Names, addresses if you have them. And it will take some time. These things cannot be arranged overnight.”

“I understand, but there is a time constraint. As I said, they killed my colleague the night before last in Boston.” He forgot to mention the chauffeur, Grafton noted. Corrigan wasn’t a man who paid much attention to chauffeurs.

Ilin remarked, “They sound quite determined, and several jumps ahead of you. You may well be too late. I suggest you go to some remote island, hire good men as bodyguards, stay there. Live quietly and they may not find you. Even if they do, you will have fair warning when they come and can defend yourself. Your money will buy you that, which is more than most men get.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Corrigan said derisively. “I thought you were a man of the world who could make things happen.”

“Things, yes, but not miracles.”

“For Christ’s sake, you have the resources of the SVR at your beck and call. Surely you—”

“Mr. Corrigan, you have been misinformed. I am here as a private citizen. I represent no one but myself.”

Corrigan didn’t understand. “Perhaps we should discuss money. I am willing to pay a large fee. A very large fee. There are three of them, Abdul Abn Saad — he’s a banker, Walney’s Bank in Cairo — a man called Ashruf, and one called Hoq — he’s associated with them, I’m not sure how.”

“I know of these men. They have come to my attention in my professional capacity, you understand — governments share information. They are Islamic extremists, holy warriors … terrorists. Killing them will not be easy.”

“Of course not. That’s why I came to you. Name a price.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself. I have agreed to nothing. Your job would be an expensive undertaking. People would have to be hired, equipped, and put in place, covers created, bribes paid … Are these men in Egypt?”

“Saad is, and Hoq. I have no idea where Ashruf might be found.”

Ilin sighed heavily. “A difficult, laborious, high-risk undertaking, at best. A million American for each of them, at least.”

“Done. Half in advance, half when the job is done.”

“That would be for expenses. The fee would be another million each, if I agree to undertake it.”

Corrigan’s head bobbed up and down several times. “Done. Half in advance, half when the job is finished.”

“How do I know you will be able to pay when the job is finished? Aren’t the Americans investigating these men?”

“Everyone is, I would imagine.”

“Then you see my difficulty. If by some chance some investigating authority established a link between you and these men, you might be … shall we say, detained. Arrested, perhaps. Indicted. Forced to defend yourself. Surely, Mr. Corrigan, you see how difficult it would be for me to collect if you were incarcerated somewhere and refused to pay after I completed my contract.”

“I am not going to be arrested. The authorities know nothing, and I have an impeccable reputation.”

“It is unfortunate that reputations are not bulletproof, is it not? By chance, are you aware of the name of the man that the American president appointed, ad hoc if you will, to find the warheads the group known as the Sword of Islam purchased in Russia and imported into the United States? He may know that the men you named are part of that group.”

“I — no, I might have heard his name, but—”

“Grafton. He’s a rear admiral in the United States Navy. Two stars, rank equivalent to a major general in your army or air force. Sometimes he wears a uniform, sometimes he doesn’t.”

“I’ve heard the name. Never met the man.” He had forgotten meeting Jake at the White House.

“Well, allow me to introduce you.” Ilin half turned and gestured. “Thayer Michael Corrigan, Rear Admiral Jacob Lee Grafton.”

Corrigan turned slowly, looked into the cold gray eyes of Jake Grafton, who was staring at him. Corrigan looked back at Ilin, said bitterly, “I thought you were an honorable man.”

Before Ilin could reply, Corrigan arose from the bench and walked away. He disappeared into the crowd in the direction of the Left Bank.

Jake walked around and sat down beside Ilin. “Thanks for inviting me to your little meeting. It’s not often I get to sit close to a billionaire.”

“They are a rare breed. Did you get enough?”

“To ruin Corrigan? I think so. No doubt he thinks I recorded it.”

“Hmm.”

“We’ve still got one of those goddamn terrorist warheads rolling around loose. Any idea where I might find it?”

“None. I have faith in you, though.”

Grafton snorted. “If you hear a big bang from America, don’t bother sending flowers.”

“How many buried bombs have you found?”

“Three so far. How many are there?”

“I have no idea. The leaders of the SVR are industrious and don’t do things by halves.”

“You could have just told me, you know.”

“No, I couldn’t. Then they would have smelled a leak. Corrigan provided a perfect cover — the money and the terrorists and the warheads Petrov sold them are real. Moscow doesn’t suspect me, and they won’t.”

“I’m not going to thank you until we find the last warhead.”

“I suppose not.”

“In a couple weeks we’re going to start digging up the buried bombs. Any danger of those damn fools in Moscow popping them when we do?”

“I think not. They were assets to fight the political battles in the Kremlin. The ultranationalists took comfort from them. The people responsible were promoted to very high positions. You understand these things.”

“I have a favor to ask of you,” Jake said. “Unlike Corrigan, I can pay nothing.” He told Ilin what it was.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ilin said.

The admiral nodded. “Well, thanks for the e-mails. Now that you have our address, send us a Christmas card.”

Jake Grafton stuck out his hand. Janos Ilin shook it, then got up and walked away, scattering the pigeons.