Rainbow Six

CHAPTER 13

Popov was still trying to learn more about his employer, but finding nothing to enlighten himself. The combination of the New York Public Library and the Internet had turned up reams of information, but nothing that gave the slightest clue as to why he'd employed the former KGB officer to dig up terrorists and turn them loose upon the world. It was as likely that a child would conspire a murder plot against a loving parent. It wasn't the morality of the event that troubled him. Morality had little place in intelligence operations. As a trainee at the KGB academy outside Moscow, the subject had never come up, except insofar as he and his classmates had always been given to understand that the State Was Never Wrong. "You will occasionally be ordered to do things you may find personally upsetting," Colonel Romanov had said once. "Such things will be done, because the reasons, unknown to you or not, will always be proper ones. You do have the right to question something for tactical reasons-as the officer in the field, how you do the mission will generally be your affair. But to refuse an assignment is not acceptable." And that had been that. Neither Popov nor his classmates had even made notes on the issue. It was understood that orders were orders. And so, once he accepted employment, Popov had done the jobs assigned…

… but as a servant of the Soviet Union he'd always known the overall mission, which was to get vital information to his country, because his country needed the information either for itself or to assist others whose actions would be of real benefit to his country. Even dealing with Il'ych Ramirez Sanchez, Popov had thought at the time, had served some special interest. He knew better now, of course. Terrorists were like wild dogs or rabid wolves that one tossed into someone's back garden just to create a stir, and, yes, perhaps that had been strategically useful-or had been thought so by his masters, in the service of a state now dead and gone. But, no, the missions had not really been useful, had they? And as good as KGB had once been-he still thought them the best espionage agency the world had ever seen-it had ultimately been a failure. The Party for which the Committee for State Security had been the Sword and Shield was no more. The Sword had not slain the Party's enemies, and the Shield had not protected against the West's various weapons. And so, had his superiors really known what they'd needed to do?

Probably not, Popov admitted to himself, and because of that, perhaps every mission he'd been assigned had been to some greater or lesser degree a fool's errand. The realization would have been a bitter one, except that his training and experience were paying off now with a lavish salary, not to mention the two suitcases of cash he'd managed to steal-but for doing what? Getting terrorists killed off by European police forces? He could just as easily, if not so profitably, have fingered them to the police and allowed them to be arrested, tried, and imprisoned like the criminal scum they were, which would actually have been far more satisfying. A tiger in a cage, pacing back and forth behind his bars and waiting for his daily five kilos of chilled horsemeat, was far more entertaining than one stuffed in a museum, and just as helpless. He was some sort of Judas goat, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought, but if so, serving what sort of abattoir?

The money was good. Several more missions like the first two and he could take his money, his false identity papers, and vanish from the face of the earth. He could lie on some beach, drinking tasty beverages and watching pretty girls in skimpy bathing suits or-what? Popov didn't know exactly what sort of retirement he could stomach, but he was certain he could find something. Maybe use his talents to trade in stocks and bonds like a real capitalist, and thus spend his time enriching himself further. Perhaps that, he mused, sipping his morning coffee and staring out the window, looking south toward Wall Street. But he wasn't quite ready for that life yet, and until he was, the fact that he didn't know the nature of his missions' purpose was troublesome. In not knowing, he couldn't evaluate all the dangers to himself. But for all his skill, experience, and professional training, he hadn't a clue as to why his employer wanted him to let the tigers from their cages, out in the open where the hunters were waiting. What a pity, Popov thought, that he couldn't just ask. The answer might even be amusing.

Check-in at the hotel was handled with mechanical precision. The reception desk was huge, and crowded with computers that raced electronically to get the guests checked in, the quicker to get them spending money in the park itself. Juan took his card-key and nodded his thanks at the pretty female clerk, then hoisted his bags and headed off to his room, grateful that there were no metal detectors here. The walk was a short one, and the elevators unusually large, to accommodate people in wheelchairs, he imagined. Five minutes later, he was in his room, unpacking. He'd just about finished when a knock came at the door.

"Bonjour. " It was Rene. The Frenchman came in and sat on the bed, stretching as he did so. "Are you ready, my friend?" he asked in Spanish.

"Si, " the Basque replied. He didn't look especially Spanish. His hair was on the red side of strawberry blond, his features handsome, and his beard neatly trimmed. Never arrested by the Spanish police, he was bright, careful, but thoroughly dedicated, with two car-bombings and a separate murder to his credit. This, Rene knew, would be Juan's boldest mission, but he looked ready enough, tense, a little edgy perhaps, but coiled like a spring and prepared to play his role. Rene, too, had done this sort of thing before, most often murders right on crowded streets; he'd walk right up to his target, fire a suppressed pistol, and just walk on normally, which was the best way to do it, since you were almost never identified-people never saw the pistol, and rarely noticed a person walking normally down the Champs-Elysees. And so, you just changed your clothes and switched on the television to see the press coverage of your work. Action Directe had been largely, but not quite completely, broken up by the French police. The captured men had kept faith with their at-large comrades, hadn't fingered or betrayed them, despite all the pressure and the promises of their uniformed countrymen - and perhaps some of them would be released as a result of this mission, though the main objective was to release their comrade Carlos. It would not be easy to get him out of Le Sante, Rene thought, rising to look out the window at the train station used by people going to the park, but-he saw the children there, waiting for their ride in-there were some things that no government, however brutal, could overlook.

Two buildings away, Jean-Paul was looking out at the same scene and contemplating much the same thoughts. He'd never married and had rarely even enjoyed a proper love affair. He knew now, at forty-three, that this had created a hole in his life and his character, an abnormality that he'd tried to fill with political ideology, with his beliefs in principles and his vision of a radiant socialist future for his country and for Europe and ultimately for the whole world. But a niggling part of his character told him that his dreams were mere illusions, and that reality was before him, three floors down and a hundred meters west, in the distant faces of children waiting to board the steam train to the park, and - but, no, such thoughts were aberrations. Jean-Paul and his friends knew the rightness of their cause and their beliefs. They'd discussed them at the greatest length over the years and concluded that their path was the right one. They'd shared their frustration that few understood - but someday they would understand, someday they would see the path of justice that socialism offered the entire world, would understand that the road to the radiant future had to be paved by the revolutionary elite who understood the meaning and force of history… and they wouldn't make the mistakes the Russians had made, those backward peasants in that over-large, foolish nation. And so he was able to look down on the assembled people, as they tightened up at the platform while the steam whistle announced the coming of the train, and see… things. Even the children were not people, really, but political statements to be made by others, people like himself who understood how the world actually worked, or how it should work. Would work, he promised himself. Someday.

Mike Dennis always took his lunch outside, a habit he'd formed in Florida. One thing he liked about Worldpark was that you could have a drink here, in his case a nice red Spanish wine, which he sipped from a plastic cup as he watched how people circulated, and looked for goofs of one kind or another. He found no obvious ones. The walkways had been laid out after careful and thorough planning, using computer simulations.

The rides here were the things that drew people most of all, and so the walkways had been planned to lead people to the more spectacular of them. The big expensive ones were pretty spectacular. His own kids loved to ride them, especially the Dive Bomber, atop-hanging coaster that looked fit to make a fighter pilot lose his lunch, next to which was the Time Machine, a virtual reality ride that accommodated ninety-six guests per seven-minute cycle any longer and some patrons could get violently ill, tests had shown. Out of that and it was time for some ice cream or a drink, and there were concessions planted right there to answer the cravings. Farther away was Pepe's, an excellent sit-down restaurant specializing in Catalonian cuisine-you didn't put restaurants too close to the rides. Such attractions were not complementary, since watching the Dive Bomber didn't exactly heighten the appetite, and for adults, neither did riding it. There was a science and an art to setting up and operating theme parks like this one, and Mike Dennis was one of the handful of people in the world who knew how it was done, which explained his enormous salary and the quiet smile that went with his sips of wine, as he watched his guests enjoy the place. If this was work, then it was the best job in the world. Even the astronauts who rode the space shuttle didn't have this sort of satisfaction. He got to play with his toy every day. They were lucky to fly twice in a year. His lunch completed, Dennis rose and walked back toward his office on Strada Espana, the Spanish Main Street, the central spoke on the partial wheel. It was another fine day at Worldpark, the weather clear, the temperature twenty-one Celsius, the air dry and pure. The rain in Spain did not, in his experience, stay mainly in the plain. The local climate was much like California's, which, he reflected, went just fine with the Spanish language of the majority of his employees. On the way, he passed one of the park security people. Andre, the name tag said, and the language tag on the other shirt pocket said he spoke Spanish, French, and English. Good, Dennis thought. They didn't have enough people like that.

The meeting place was prearranged. The Dive Bomber ride used as its symbol the German Ju-87 Stuka, complete to the Iron Cross insignia on the wings and fuselage, though the swastika on the tail had been thoughtfully deleted. It ought to have greatly offended Spanish sensibilities, Andre thought. Did no one remember Guernica, that first serious expression of Nazi Grausarnkeit, when thousands of Spanishcitizens had been massacred? Was historical appreciation that shallow here? Evidently it was. The children and adults in line frequently reached out to touch the half-scale model of the Nazi aircraft that had dived on both soldiers and civilians with its "Trumpet of Jericho" siren. The siren was replicated as part of the ride itself, though on the hundred-fifty-meter first hill, the screams of the riders as often as not drowned it out, followed by the compressed-air explosion and fountain of water at the bottom when the cars pulled out through simulated flak bursts for the climbing loop into the second hill after dropping a bomb on a simulated ship. Was he the only person in Europe who found the symbology here horrid and bestial?

Evidently so. People raced off the ride to rejoin the line to ride it again, except for those who bumbled off to recover their equilibrium, sometimes sweating, and twice, he'd seen, to vomit. A cleanup man with a mop and bucket stood by for that - not the choicest job in Worldpark. The medical-aid post was a few meters farther away, for those who needed it. Andre shook his head. It served the bastards right to feel ill after choosing to ride that hated symbol of fascism.

Jean-Paul, Rene, and Juan appeared almost together close to the entrance of the Time Machine, all sipping soft drinks. They and the five others were marked by the hats they'd bought at the entrance kiosk. Andre nodded to them, rubbing his nose as planned. Rene came over to him.

"Where is the men's room?" he asked in English.

"Follow the signs," Andre pointed. "I get off at eighteen hours. Dinner as planned?"

"Yes."

"All are ready?"

"Entirely ready, my friend."

"Then I will see you at dinner." Andre nodded and walked off, continuing his patrol as he was paid to do, while his comrades walked about, some taking the time to enjoy the rides, he imagined. The park would be even busier tomorrow, he'd been told at the morning briefing session. Another nine-thousand-plus would be checking into the hotels tonight or tomorrow morning in preparation for the bank-holiday weekend in this part of Europe, for Good Friday. The park was set up for mobs of people, and his fellow security personnel had told him all manner of amusing stories about the things that happened here. Four months earlier, a woman had delivered twins in the medical post twenty minutes after riding the Dive Bomber, much to her husband's surprise and the delight of Dr. Weiler - the children had been awarded lifetime passes to Worldpark on the spot, which had made the local TV news, part of the park's genius for public relations. Maybe she'd named the boy Troll, Andre snorted, as he spotted one ahead. The Trolls were shortleg/massive-head costumes worn by petite females, he'd learned on coming to work. You could tell by the skinny legs that fit in to the huge feet-shoes they wore. There was even a water supply in the costume to make the monstrous lips drool… and over there was a Roman legionnaire dueling comically with a Germanic barbarian. One of them would alternately run from the other, usually to the applause of the people sitting down to watch the spectacle.

He turned to walk over to the German Strasse, and was greeted by the oom-pah music of a marching band - why didn't they play the Horst Wessel Lied? Andre wondered. It would have gone well with the damned green Stuka. Why not dress the band in SS black, maybe have compulsory shower baths for some of the guests wasn't that part of European history, too? Damn this place! Andre thought. The symbology was designed to incur the rage of anyone with the most rudimentary political awareness. But, no, the masses had no memory, no more than they had any understanding of political and economic history. He was glad they'd chosen this place to make their political statement. Maybe this would get the idiots to think, just a little bit, perhaps, about the shape of the world. The mis-shape, Andre corrected himself, allowing himself a very un-Worldpark frown at the sunny day and smiling crowds.

There, he told himself. That was the spot. The children loved it. There was a crowd of them there even now, dragging, pulling the hands of their parents, dressed in their shorts and sneakers, many wearing hats, with helium-filled balloons tied to their little wrists. And there was a special one, a little girl in a wheelchair, wearing the Special Wish button that told every ride attendant to allow her on without the need to stand in line. A sick one, Dutch from the style of her parents' dress, Andre thought, probably dying from cancer, sent here by some charity or other modeled on the American Make-A-Wish Foundation, which paid for the parents to bring their dying whelp here for one first and last chance to see the Trolls and other cartoon characters, their rights licensed to Worldpark for sale and other exploitation. How brightly their sick little eyes shone here, Andre saw, on their quick road to the grave, and how solicitous the staff was to them, as though that mattered to anyone, this bourgeois sentimentality upon which the entire park was founded. Well. They'd see about all that, wouldn't they? If there were ever a place to make a political statement, to bring the attention of all Europe and all the world to what really mattered, this was it.

Ding finished his first pint of beer. He'd have only one more. It was a rule that no one had written down and that no one had actually enforced, but by common agreement nobody on the teams had more than two at a time while the teams were on-call, as they almost always were-and besides, two pints of Brit beer were quite a lot, really. Anyway, all the members of Team-2 were home having dinner with their families. Rainbow was an unusual outfit in that sense. Every soldier was married, with a wife and at least one kid. The marriages even appeared to be stable. John didn't know if that was a mark of special operations troopers, but these two legged tigers who worked for him were pussycats at home, and the dichotomy was both amazing and amusing to him.

Sandy served the main course, a fine roast beef. John rose to get the carving knife so that he could do his duty. Patsy looked at the huge hunk of dead steer and thought briefly about mad-cow disease, but decided that her mother had cooked the meat thoroughly. Besides, she liked good roast beef, cholesterol and all, and her mom was the world's champ at making gravy.

"How's it going at the hospital?" Sandy asked her physician daughter.

"OB is pretty routine. We haven't had a single hard one in the last couple of weeks. I've kinda hoped for a placenta previa, maybe even a placenta abrupta to see if we have the drill down, but-"

"Don't wish for those, Patsy. I've seen them happen in the ER. Total panic, and the OB better have his act together, or things can go to hell in a New York minute. Dead mother and a dead child."

"Ever see that happen, Mom?"

"No, but I've seen it come close to that twice in Williamsburg. Remember Dr. O'Connor?"

"Tall, skinny guy, right?"

"Yeah." Sandy nodded. "Thank God he was on duty for the second one. The resident came unglued, but Jimmy came in and took over. I was sure we'd lose that one."

"Well, if you know what you're doing- "

"If you know what you're doing, it's still tense. Routine is fine with me. I've done ER duty too long," Sandy Clark went on. "I love a quiet night when I can get caught up on my reading."

"Voice of experience," John Clark observed, serving the meat.

"Makes sense to me," Domingo Chavez agreed, stroking his wife's arm. "How's the little guy?"

"Kicking up a storm right now," Patsy replied, moving her husband's hand to her belly. It never failed, she saw The way his eyes changed when he felt it. Always a warm, passionate boy, Ding just about melted when he felt the movement in her womb.

"Baby," he said quietly.

"Yeah." She smiled.

"Well, no nasty surprises when the time comes, okay?" Chavez said next. "I want everything to go routinely. This is exciting enough. Don't want to faint or anything."

"Right!" Patsy laughed. "You? Faint? My commando?"

"You never know, honey," her father observed, taking his seat. "I've seen tough guys fold before."

"Not this one, Mr. C," Domingo noted with a raised eyebrow.

"More like a fireman," Sandy said from her seat. "The way you guys just hang around 'til something happens."

"That's true," Domingo agreed. "And if the fire never starts, it's okay with us."

"You really mean that?" Patsy asked.

"Yes, honey," her husband told her. "Going out isn't fun. We've been lucky so far. We haven't lost a hostage."

"But that'll change," Rainbow Six told his subordinate.

"Not if I have anything to say about it, John."

"Ding," Patsy said, looking up from her food. "Have you I mean… I mean, have you actually-"

The look answered the question, though the words were "Let's not talk about that."

"We don't carve notches in our guns, Pats," John told his daughter. "Bad form, you see."

"Noonan came over today," Chavez went on. "Says he's got a new toy to look at."

"What's it cost?" John asked first of all.

"Not much, he says, not much at all. Delta just started looking at it."

"What's it do?"

"It finds people."

"Huh? Is this classified?"

"Commercial product, and, no, it's not classified at all. But it finds people."

"How?"

"Tracks the human heart up to five hundred meters away."

"What?" Patsy asked. "How's it do that?"

"Not sure, but Noonan says the guys at Fort Bragg are going nuts-I mean, real enthusiastic about it. It's called 'Lifeguard' or something like that. Anyway, he asked the headquarters snake people to send us a demo team."

"We'll see," John said, buttering his roll. "Great bread, Sandy."

"It's that little bakery on Millstone Road. Isn't the bread wonderful over here?"

"And everybody knocks Brit food," John agreed. "The Idiots. Just what I was raised with."

"All this red meat," Patsy worried aloud. "My cholesterol is under one-seventy, honey," Ding reminded her. "Lower than yours. I guess it's all that good exercise. "

"Wait until you get older," John groused. He was nudging two hundred for the first time in his life, exercise and all.

"No hurry here." Ding chuckled. "Sandy, you are still one of the best cooks around."

"Thanks, Ding."

"Just so our brains don't rot from eating this English cow." A Spanish grin. "Well, this is safer than zip-lining out of the Night Hawk. George and Sam are still hurtin'. Maybe we ought to try different gloves."

"Same ones the SAS uses. I checked."

"Yeah, I know. I talked it over with Eddie, day 'fore yesterday. He says we have to expect training accidents, and Homer says that Delta loses a guy a year, dead, in training accidents."

"What?" Alarm from Patsy.

"And Noonan says the FBI lost a guy once, zipping down from a Huey. Hand just slipped. Oops." Team-2 Lead shrugged.

"Only security against that is more training," John agreed.

"Well, my guys are right at the proper edge. Now I have to figure a way to keep them right there without breaking it."

"That's the hard part, Domingo."

"I s'pose." Chavez finished his plate.

"What do you mean, the edge?" Patsy asked.

"Honey, I mean Team-2 is lean and mean. We always were, but I don't see us getting any better than we are now. Same with Peter's bunch. Except for the two injuries, there isn't room for any improvement I can see - 'specially with Malloy on the team now. Damn, he knows how to drive a chopper."

"Ready to kill people?…" Patsy asked dubiously. It was hard for her to be a physician, dedicated to saving life, and yet be married to a man whose purpose often seemed to be the taking of it-and Ding had killed someone, else he wouldn't have suggested that she not think about it. How could he do that, and still turn to mush when he felt the baby inside her? It was a lot for her to understand, much as she loved her diminutive husband with the olive skin and flashing white smile.

"No, honey, ready to rescue people," he corrected her. "That's the job."

"But how sure can we be that they will let them out?" Esteban asked. "What choice will they have?" Jean-Paul replied. He poured the carafe of wine into the empty glasses.

"I agree," Andre said. "What choice will they have? We can disgrace them before the world. And they are cowards, are they not, with their bourgeois sentimentality? They have no strength, not as we do."

"Others have made the mistake of believing that," Esteban said, not so much playing devil's advocate as voicing worries that they all had to have, to one extent or another. And Esteban had always been a worrier.

"There has never been a situation like this. The Guardia Civil is effective, but not trained for a situation like this one. Policemen," Andre snorted. "That is all. I do not think they will arrest any of us, will they?" That remark earned him a few smirks. It was true. They were mere policemen, accustomed to dealing with petty thieves, not dedicated political soldiers, men with the proper arms and training and dedication. "Did you change your mind?"

Esteban bristled. "Of course not, comrade. I simply counsel objectivity when we evaluate the mission. A soldier of the revolution must not allow himself to be carried away by mere enthusiasm." Which was a good cover for his fears, the others thought. They all had them, the proof of which was their denial of that fact.

"We'll get Il'ych out," Rene announced. "Unless Paris is willing to bury a hundred children. That they will not do. And some children will get to fly to Lebanon and back as a result. On that we are agreed, are we not?" He looked around the table and saw all nine heads nod. "Bien. Only the children need foul their underpants for this, my friends. Not us." That turned the nods into smiles, and two discreet laughs, as the waiters circulated around the restaurant. Rene waved for some more wine. The selection was good here, better than he could expect in an Islamic country for the next few years, as he dodged DGSE's field intelligence officers, hopefully with more success than Carlos had enjoyed. Well, their identities would never be known. Carlos had taught the world of terrorism an important lesson. It did not pay to advertise. He scratched his beard. It itched, but in that itching was his personal safety for the next few years. "So, Andre, who comes tomorrow?"

"Thompson CSF is sending six hundred employees and their families here, a company outing for one of their departments. It could not be better," the security guard told them. Thompson was a major French arms manufacturer. Some of the workers, and therefore their children, would be known and important to the French government. French, and politically important-no, it could not get much better than that. "They will be moving about as a group. I have their itinerary. They come to the castle at noon for lunch and a show. That is our moment, my friends." Plus one other little addition Andre had decided on earlier in the day. They were always around somewhere, especially at the shows.

"D'accord?" Rene asked the people around the table, and again he got his nods. Their eyes were stronger now. Doubts would be set aside. The mission lay before them. The decision to undertake it was far behind. The waiter arrived with two new carafes, and the wine was poured around. The ten men savored their drinks, knowing they might be the last for a very long time, and in the alcohol they found their resolve.

"Don't you just love it?" Chavez asked. "Only Hollywood. They hold their weapons like they're knives or something, and then they hit a squirrel in the left nut at twenty yards. Damn, I wish I could do that!"

"Practice, Domingo," John suggested with a chuckle. On the TV screen, the bad guy flew about four yards backward, as though he'd been hit with an anti-lank rocket instead of a mere 9-mm pistol round. "I wonder where you buy those."

"We can't afford them, O great accounting expert!"

John almost spilled his remaining beer at that one. The movie ended a few minutes later. The hero got the girl. The bad guys were all dead. The hero left his parent agency in disgust at their corruption and stupidity and walked off into the sunset, content at his unemployment. Yeah, Clark thought, that was Hollywood. With that comfortable thought, the evening broke up. Ding and Patsy went home to sleep, while John and Sandy did the same.

It was all a big movie set, Andre told himself, walking into the park an hour before it opened to the guests already piling up at the main gate. How very American, despite all the effort that had gone into building the place as a European park. The whole idea behind it, of course, was American, that fool Walt Disney with his talking mice and children's tales that had stolen so much money from the masses. Religion was no longer the opiate of the people. No, today it was escapism, to depart from the dull day-to-day reality they all lived and all hated, but which they couldn't see for what it was, the bourgeois fools. Who led them here? Their children with their shrill little demands to see the Trolls and the other characters from Japanese cartoons, or to ride the hated Nazi Stuka. Even Russians, those who'd gotten enough money out of their shattered economy to throw it away here, even Russians rode the Stuka! Andre shook his head in amazement. Perhaps the children didn't have the education or memory to appreciate the obscenity, but surely their parents did! But they came here anyway.

"Andre?"

The park policeman turned to see Mike Dennis, the chief executive officer of Worldpark, looking at him.

"Yes, Monsieur Dennis?"

"The name's Mike, remember?" The executive tapped his plastic name tag. And, yes, it was a park rule that everyone called everyone else by his Christian name - something else doubtless learned from the Americans.

"Yes, Mike, excuse me."

"You okay, Andre? You looked a little upset about something."

"I did? No… Mike, no, I am fine. Just a long night for me."

"Okay." Dennis patted him on the shoulder. "Busy day planned. How long you been with us?"

"Two weeks."

"Like it here?"

"It is a unique place to work."

"That's the idea, Andre. Have a good one."

"Yes, Mike." He watched the American boss walk quickly away, toward the castle and his office. Damned Americans, they expected everyone to be happy all the time, else something must be wrong, and if something went wrong, it had to be fixed. Well, Andre told himself, something was wrong, and it would be fixed this very day. But Mike wouldn't like that very much, would he?

One kilometer away, Jean-Paul transferred his weapons from his suitcase to his backpack. He'd ordered room service to bring breakfast in, a big American breakfast, he'd decided, since it might have to stand him in good stead for most of this day, and probably part of another. Elsewhere in this hotel and other hotels in the same complex, the others would be doing the same. His Uzi submachine gun had a total of ten loaded magazines, with six more spares for his 9-mm pistol, and three fragmentation hand grenades in addition to his radio. It made for a heavy backpack, but he wouldn't be carrying it all day. Jean-Paul checked his watch and took one final look at his room. All the toiletries were recently bought. He'd wiped all of them with a damp cloth to make sure he left no fingerprints behind, then the table and desktops, and finally his breakfast dishes and silverware. He didn't know if the French police might have his prints on file somewhere, but if so, he didn't want to give them another set, and if not, why make it easy for them to start a file? He wore long khaki trousers and a short-sleeve shirt, plus the stupid white hat he'd bought the previous day. It would mark him as just one more guest in this absurd place, totally harmless. With all that done, he picked up his backpack and walked out the door, taking a final pause to wipe the doorknob both inside and outside before walking to the elevator bank. He pressed the Dowry button with a knuckle instead of a fingertip, and in a few seconds was on his way out the hotel door and walking casually to the train station, where his room key-card was his passport to the Worldpark Transportation System. He took off the backpack to sit down and found himself joined in the compartment by a German, also carrying a backpack, with his wife and two children. The backpack bumped loudly when the man set it on the seat next to him.

"My Minicam," the man explained, in English, oddly enough.

"I, also. Heavy things to carry about, aren't they?"

"Ah, yes, but this way we will have much to remember from our day in the park."

"Yes, you will," Jean-Paul said in reply. The whistle blew, and the train lurched forward. The Frenchman checked his pocket for his park ticket. He actually had three more days of paid entry into the theme park. Not that he'd need it. In fact, nobody in the area would.

"What the hell?" John mumbled, reading the fax on the top of his pile. "Scholarship fund?" And who had violated security? George Winston, Secretary of the Treasury? What the hell? "Alice?" he called.

"Yes, Mr. Clark," Mrs. Foorgate said on coming into his office. "I rather thought that would cause a stir. It seems that Mr. Ostermann feels it necessary to reward the team for rescuing him."

"What's the law on this?" John asked next.

"I haven't a clue, sir."

"How do we find out?"

"A solicitor, I imagine."

"Do we have a lawyer on retainer?"

"Not to my knowledge. And you will probably need one, a Briton and an American as well."

"Super," Rainbow Six observed. "Could you ask Alistair to come in?"

"Yes, sir."