Teeth of the Tiger

CHAPTER 20 THE SOUND OF HUNTING

Munich at 14:26 in the afternoon translated into 8:26 A.M. Eastern Standard Time at The Campus. Sam Granger was in his office early, wondering if he'd see an e-mail. The twins were working fast. Not recklessly so, but they were certainly making use of the technology with which they'd been provided, and they were not wasting The Campus's time or money along the way. He'd already set up Subject No. 3, of course, encrypted and ready to go out on the 'Net. Unlike with Sali in London, he could not expect any "official" notice about the death from the German intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, which had taken scant notice of Anas Ali Atef. It would be, if anything, a matter for the city police in Munich, but more likely a case for the local coroner's office — just one more fatal heart attack for a country in which too many citizens smoked and ate fatty foods.

The e-mail arrived at 8:43 from Dominic's computer, reporting the successful hit in considerable detail, almost like an official investigative report to the FBI. The fact that Atef had had a friend close by was probably a bonus. That an enemy had witnessed the killing probably meant that no suspicion would be attached to the subject's demise. The Campus would do its best to get the official report on Atef's departure, however, just to make sure, though that would have its elements of difficulty.

Downstairs, Ryan and Wills did not know anything about it, of course. Jack was going through his routine tasks of scanning message traffic within the American intelligence services — which took over an hour — and after that, a scan of Internet traffic to and from known or suspected terrorist addresses. The overwhelming majority of it was so routine it was like e-mails between a husband and wife over what to pick up at the Safeway on the way home from work. Some of those e-mails could easily be coded messages of significant import, but there was no telling that without a program or crib sheet. At least one terrorist had used "hot weather" to mean heavy security at a location of interest to his colleagues, but the message had been sent in July, when the weather was, indeed, warmer than was comfortable. And that message had been copied down by the FBI, and the Bureau hadn't taken particular notice of it at first. But one new message positively leaped off the screen at him this morning.

"Hey, Tony, you want to look at this one, buddy."

The addressee was their old friend 56MoHa@euro-com. net, and the content reconfirmed his identity as a nexus for bad-guy message traffic:

ATEF IS DEAD. HE DIED RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES HERE IN MUNICH. AN AMBULANCE WAS SUMMONED AND THEY TREATED HIM ON THE SIDEWALK BUT HE DIED IN THE HOSPITAL OF A HEART ATTACK. REQUIRE INSTRUCTIONS. FA'AD. And his address was Honeybear@ostercom.net, which was new to Jack's computer index.

"Honeybear?" Wills observed with a chuckle. "This guy must surf for women on the 'Net."

"So, he does cybersex, fine. Tony, if we just whacked a guy named Atef over in Germany, here's confirmation of the event, plus a new target for us to track." Ryan turned back to his workstation and used his mouse to check sources. "Here, NSA picked up on it, too. Maybe they think he's a possible player."

"You sure like making leaps of imagination," Wills observed tersely.

"My ass!" Jack was actually angry for once. He was beginning to understand why his father had often been so pissed off at intelligence information that arrived in the Oval Office. "God damn it, Tony, how much clearer do things have to be?"

Wills took a deep breath and spoke as calmly as usual. "Settle down, Jack. This is single-source, a single report on something that might or might not have taken place. You don't throw your hat over the barn about something until it's confirmed by a known source. This Honeybear identity could be a lot of things, few of which we can certify as a good guy or a bad guy."

For his part, Jack Jr. wondered if he was being tested — again! — by his training officer. "Okay, let's walk through it. MoHa Fifty-six is a source that we're highly confident is a player, probably an operations officer for the bad guys. We've been sweeping the 'Net for him since I've been here, okay? So, we sweep the ether and this letter turns up in his mailbox at the same time we believe we — us — have a kill team in the field. Unless you're going to tell me that Uda bin Sali really did have a myocardial infarction while he was daydreaming about his favorite whore in downtown London. And that the Brit Security Service found the event highly interesting only because it's not every day that a suspected terrorist banker drops dead on the street. Have I missed anything?"

Wills smiled. "Not a bad presentation. A little thin on the evidence, but your proposition was well organized. So, you think I should walk it upstairs?"

"No, Tony, I think you should run it upstairs," Ryan said, easing back on the obvious anger. Take a deep breath and count to ten.

"Then I guess I'll do it."

Five minutes later, Wills walked into Rick Bell's office. He handed over two sheets of paper.

"Rick, do we have a team at work in Germany?" Wills asked. The response was not the least bit surprising.

"Why do you ask?" Bell had a poker face that would have impressed a marble statue.

"Read," Wills suggested.

"Damn," the chief of analysis reacted. "Who pulled this fish out of the electronic ocean?"

"Take a guess," Tony suggested.

"Not bad, for the kid." Bell looked very closely at his guest. "How much does he suspect?"

"At Langley, he'd sure as hell be getting people nervous."

"Like you are?"

"You might say that," Wills replied. "He makes good leaps of imagination, Rick."

Bell made a face this time. "Well, it's not exactly the Olympic long-jump competition, is it?"

"Rick, Jack puts two and two together about as fast as a computer tells the difference between one and zero. He's right, isn't he?"

Bell took a second or two before replying. "What do you think?"

"I think they got that Sali character for sure, and this is probably mission number two. How are they doing it?"

"You really do not want to know. It's not as clean as it looks," Bell answered. "This Atef guy was a recruiter. He sent at least one guy to Des Moines."

"That's a good enough reason," Wills judged.

"Sam feels the same way. I'll turn this over to him. Follow-up?"

"This MoHa guy needs a closer look. Maybe we can track him down," Wills said.

"Any idea where he is?"

"Italy, looks like, but a lot of people live on the boot. Lots of big cities with lots of ratholes. But Italy is a good place for him. Centrally located. Air service everywhere. And the terrorists have let Italy alone lately, and so nobody's hunting down the dog that isn't barking."

"Same in Germany, France, and the rest of Central Europe?"

Wills nodded. "Looks that way. They're next, but I don't think they fully appreciate it. Heads in the sand-like, Rick."

"True," Bell agreed. "So, what do we do with your student?"

"Ryan? Good question. Sure as hell, he's a quick learner. He's particularly good at connecting things," Wills thought out loud. "He makes big leaps of imagination, sometimes too far, but, still, it's not a bad quality for an analyst to have."

"Grade to this point?"

"B-plus, maybe a low A, and that's only because he's new. He's not as good as I am, but I've been in the business since before he was born. He's a comer, Rick. He'll go far."

"That good?" Bell asked. Tony Wills was known as a careful conservative analyst, and one of the best Langley had ever turned out, despite the green eyeshade and the garters on the sleeves.

Wills nodded. "That good." He was also scrupulously honest. It was his natural character, but he could also afford to be. The Campus paid far better than any government agency. His kids were all grown — the last one was in his final year at the University of Maryland in physics, and, after that, he and Betty could think about the next big step in life, though Wills liked it here and had no immediate plans to leave. "But don't tell him I said so."

"Big head?"

"No, that wouldn't be fair. But I don't want him to start thinking he knows it all yet."

"Nobody with half a brain thinks that way," Bell said.

"Yeah." Wills stood. "But why take the chance?"

Wills headed out, but Bell still didn't know what to do with the Ryan kid. Well, something to talk with the Senator about.

"Next stop, Vienna," Dominic informed his brother. "We got another subject."

"You wonder how steady this job will be?" Brian wondered aloud.

His brother laughed. "Man, there's enough mutts in America to keep us busy for the rest of our lives."

"Yeah, save money, fire all the judges and juries."

"My name ain't Dirty Harry Callahan, you jarhead."

"And I'm not Chesty Puller, either. How do we get there? Fly, train — maybe drive?"

"Driving might be fun," Dominic said. "I wonder if we can rent a Porsche…?"

"Oh, great," Brian grunted. "Okay, log off so I can download the file, will ya?"

"Sure. I'll see what the concierge can set up for us." And he headed out of the room.

"This is the only confirmation we have?" Hendley asked.

"Correct." Granger nodded. "But it tallies exactly with what our guys on the ground told us."

"They're going too fast. What if the other side thinks, 'Two heart attacks in less than a week'…? Then what?"

"Gerry, the nature of this mission is recon-by-fire, remember? We halfway want the other side to get a little nervous, but soon their arrogance will set in and they'll write it off as random chance. If this were TV or the movies, they'd think CIA was playing hardball, but it isn't the movies, and they know that CIA doesn't play that kind of game. The Mossad, maybe, but they're already wary of the Israelis. Hey" — a lightbulb went off in Granger's brain—"what if they're the guys who offed the Mossad officer in Rome?"

"I don't pay you to speculate, Sam."

"It's a possibility," Granger persisted.

"It's also possible that the Mafia hit the poor bastard because they mistook him for a fellow mafioso who owed money to the mob. But I wouldn't bet the ranch on it."

"Yes, sir." Granger walked back to his office.

Mohammed Hassan al-Din was in Rome at the moment, at the Hotel Excelsior, drinking his coffee and working on his computer. It was bad news about Atef. He was — he'd been — a good recruiter, with just the right mix of intelligence, plausibility, and commitment to persuade others to join the cause. He'd wanted to enter the field himself, to take lives and be a Holy Martyr, but though he might have been good at it, a man who could recruit was more valuable than a man willing to throw away his own life. It was simple arithmetic, something a graduate engineer like Atef should have understood. What was it with him? A brother, wasn't it, killed by the Israelis back in 1973? A long time to hold a grudge, even for men in his organization, but not without precedent. Atef was with his brother now, though, in Paradise. That was good fortune for him, but bad fortune for the organization. So it was written, Mohammed comforted himself, and so it would be, and so the struggle would go on until the last of their enemies were dead.

He had a pair of cloned phones on his bed, phones he could use without fear of interception. Should he call the Emir about this? It was worth thinking about. Anas Ali Atef was the second heart attack in less than a week, and in both cases they'd been young men, and that was odd, statistically very unusual. Fa'ad had been standing right next to Anas Ali at the time, though, and so he hadn't been shot or poisoned by an Israeli intelligence officer — a Jew would probably have killed both of them, Mohammed thought — and so with an eyewitness right there, there seemed little cause to suspect foul play. For the other, well, Uda had liked the life of a whoremonger, and he would hardly have been the first man to die of that weakness of the flesh. So, it just seemed like an unlikely coincidence and thus unworthy of an urgent call to the Emir himself. He made a note of the dual incidents on his computer, however, encrypted the file, and shut down. He felt like a walk. It was a pleasant day in Rome. Hot by most European standards, but the very breath of home for him. Just up the street was a pleasant sidewalk restaurant whose Italian food was only average, but the average here was better than in many fine restaurants across the world. You'd think that all Italian women would be obese, but, no, they suffered from the Western female disease of thinness, like West African children, some of them. Like young boys instead of mature, experienced women. So sad. But instead of eating, he crossed the Via Veneto to get a thousand Euros from the cash machine. The Euro had made European travel so much more convenient, praise Allah. It was not yet the equal of the American dollar in terms of stability, but, with luck, it might soon become so, which would ease his travel convenience even more.

Rome was a difficult city not to love. Conveniently located, international in character, awash with foreigners, and full of hospitable people who bowed and scraped for cash money like the peasants they all were. A good city for women, with shopping such as Riyadh could scarcely offer. His English mother had liked Rome, and the reasons were obvious. Good food and wine and a fine historical atmosphere that antedated even the Prophet himself, blessing and peace be upon him. Many had died here at the hands of the Caesars, butchered for public enjoyment in the Flavian Amphitheater, or killed because they had displeased the emperor in one way or another. The streets had probably been very peaceful here during the empire period. What better way to ensure it than to enforce the laws ruthlessly? Even the weak could recognize the price for bad behavior. So it was in his homeland, and so, he hoped, it would remain after the Royal Family had been done away with — either killed or chased abroad, perhaps to the safety of England or Switzerland, where people with money and noble status were treated well enough to live out their lives in indolent comfort. Either alternative would suit Mohammed and his colleagues. Just so that they would no longer rule his country, filled with corruption, kowtowing to the infidels and selling them oil for money, ruling the people as though they were the sons of Mohammed himself. That would come to an end. His distaste for America quailed before his hatred for the rulers of his own country. But America was his primary target because of its power, whether held to its own use or parceled out for others to use in America's own imperial interests. America threatened everything he held dear. America was an infidel country, patron and protector of the Jews. America had invaded his own country and stationed troops and weapons there, undoubtedly with the ultimate objective of subordinating all of Islam, and thus ruling a billion of the Faithful for its own narrow and parochial interests. Stinging America had become his obsession. Even the Israelis were not as attractive as targets. Vicious though they might be, the Jews were merely America's cat's-paws, vassals who did America's bidding in return for money and weapons, without even knowing how cynically they were being used. The Iranian Shiites had been correct. America was the Great Satan, Iblis himself, so great in power that it was hard to strike decisively at it, but still vulnerable in its evil before the righteous forces of Allah and the Faithful.

The concierge at the Hotel Bayerischer had outdone himself, Dominic thought, securing a Porsche 911 whose forward-mounted trunk barely held their bags, and that only with a little squeezing. But it was enough, and better even than a rented small-engine Mercedes. The 911 had balls. Brian would get to fumble with the maps as they went southeast through the Alps to Vienna. That they were going south to kill someone was beside the point for the moment. They were serving their country, which was about as big as loyalty got.

"Do I need a crash helmet?" Brian asked, getting in, which in the case of this car almost meant sitting on the pavement.

"Not with me driving, Aldo. Come on, bro. It's time to rock and roll."

The car was a horrible shade of blue, but the tank was filled, and the six-cylinder engine was properly tuned. The Germans did like things in Ordnung. Brian navigated them out of Munich and onto the autobahn southeast to Vienna, and from there Enzo decided to see how fast this Porsche could really go.

"Do you think maybe they need some backup?" Hendley asked Granger, whom he'd just called into his office.

"What do you mean?" Sam responded. "They" had to be the Caruso brothers, of course.

"I mean they do not have much in the way of intelligence support," the former Senator pointed out.

"Well, we've never really thought about that, have we?"

"Exactly." Hendley leaned back in his chair. "In a sense, they're operating naked. Neither one has much in the way of intelligence experience. What if they hit the wrong guy? Okay, they probably won't get bagged doing it, but it won't help their morale, either. I remember a Mafia guy, in the Atlanta Federal Pen, I think. He killed some poor bastard he thought was trying to kill him, but it was the wrong guy, and he came unglued as a result. Sang like a canary. That's how we got our first big break on the Mafia and how it was organized, remember?"

"Oh, yeah, it was a Mafia soldier named Joe Valachi, yeah, but he was a criminal, remember?"

"And Brian and Dominic are good guys. So, guilt could hit them worse. Maybe some intel backup is a good idea."

Granger was surprised at the suggestion. "I can see the need for better intelligence evaluation, and this 'virtual office' stuff has its limitations, I admit. They can't ask questions, like, but if they have one, they can still e-mail us for advice—"

"Which they haven't done," Hendley pointed out.

"Gerry, they're only two steps into the mission. It's not time to panic yet, y'know? These are two very bright and very capable young officers. That's why we picked them. They know how to think on their own, and that's precisely what we want in our operations people."

"We're not just making assumptions, we're launching assumptions into the future. You think that's a good idea?" Hendley had learned how to pursue ideas on Capitol Hill, and he was deadly effective at it.

"Assumptions are always a bad thing. I know that, Gerry. But so are complications. How do we know we're sending the right guy? What if it just adds a level of uncertainty? Do we want to do that?" Hendley, thought Granger, was suffering from the deadliest congressional disease. It was too easy to oversight something to death.

"What I'm saying is that it's a good idea to have somebody out there who thinks a little different, who takes a different kind of approach to the data that goes out there. The Caruso boys are pretty good. I know that. But they are inexperienced. The important thing is to have a different brain out there to take a different view of the facts and the situation."

Granger felt himself being backed into a corner. "Okay, look, I can see the logic of that, but it's a level of complication that we don't need."

"Okay, so look at it this way — what if they see something for which they are not prepared? In that case, they need a second — whatever you call it — opinion of the data at hand. That will make them less likely to make a mistake in the field. The one thing that bothers me is that they make a mistake, and it's a fatal mistake for some poor schlub, and that the error affects the way they carry out their missions in the future. Guilt, remorse, and maybe then they start talking about it, okay? Can we completely discount that?"

"No, maybe not entirely, but it also means that we just add an additional element to the equation that can say no when a yes is the right way to go. Saying no is something anybody can do. It isn't necessarily right. You can take caution too far."

"I don't think so."

"Fine. So, who do you want to send?" Granger asked.

"Let's think about it. Ought to be—has to be somebody they know and trust…" His voice trailed off.

Hendley had made his operations chief nervous. He had an idea fixed in his head, and Hendley knew all too well that he was the head of The Campus, and that within this building his word was law, and there was nobody to appeal it to. So, if Granger was to select a name for this notional job, it had to be somebody who would not screw everything up.

The autobahn was superbly, even brilliantly, engineered. Dominic found himself wondering who'd set it up. Then he thought that the road looked as though it had been there for a long time. And it linked Germany and Austria… maybe Hitler himself had ordered this road built? Wasn't that a hoot? In any case, there was no speed limit here, and the Porsche's six-cylinder engine was purring like a stalking tiger on the scent of some warm meat. And the German drivers were amazingly polite. All you had to do was flash your lights, and they hustled out of your way as though having received a divine edict. Definitely unlike America, where some little old lady in her overage Pinto was in the far-left lane because she was left-handed and liked holding up the maniacs in their Corvettes. The Bonneville Salt Flats could scarcely have been more fun.

For his part, Brian was doing his best not to cringe. He closed his eyes occasionally, thinking back to nap-of-the-earth flying in the Recon Marines through mountain passes in the Sierra Nevada, often enough in CH-46 helicopters older than he was. They hadn't killed him. This probably wouldn't either, and, as a Marine officer, he wasn't allowed to show fear or weakness. And it was exciting. Rather like riding in a roller coaster without the safety bar across the seat. But he saw that Enzo was having the time of his life, and he consoled himself with the fact that his seat belt was attached, and that this little German car was probably engineered by the same design crew that had done the Tiger tank. Getting through the mountains was the scariest part, and when they entered farm country, the land got flatter and the road straighter, thanks be to God.

"The hills are alive with the sound of myoosikkkk," Dominic sang, horribly.

"If you sing like that in church, God'll strike your ass dead," Brian warned, pulling out the city maps for the approach to Wien, as Vienna was known to its citizens.

And the city streets were a rat warren. The capital of Austria — Osterreich — predated the Roman legions, with no street straight for a longer distance than would be needed by a legion to parade past its tribunus militaris on the emperor's birthday. The map showed inner and outer ring roads, which probably marked the former site of medieval walls — the Turks had come here more than once hoping to add Austria to their empire, but that trinket of military history had not been part of the official Marine Corps reading list. A largely Catholic country, because the ruling House of Hapsburg had been so, it had not kept the Austrians from exterminating its prominent and prosperous Jewish minority after Hitler had subsumed Osterreich into the Greater German Reich. That had been after the Anschluss plebiscite of 1938. Hitler had been born here, not in Germany as widely believed, and the Austrians had repaid that loyalty with some of their own, becoming more Nazified than Hitler himself, or so objective history reported, not necessarily the Austrians' now. It was the one country in the world where The Sound of Music had fallen flat at the box office, maybe because the movie had been uncomplimentary toward the Nazi party.

For all that, Vienna looked like what it was, a former imperial city with wide, tree-lined boulevards and classical architecture, and remarkably well-turned-out citizens. Brian navigated them to the Hotel Imperial on Kartner Ring, a building that looked to be an adjunct to the well-known Schonbrunn Palace.

"You have to admit they put us up in nice places, Aldo," Dominic observed.

It was even more impressive inside, with gilt plaster and lacquered woodwork, every segment of which appeared to have been installed by master craftsmen imported from Renaissance Florence. The lobby was not spacious, but the reception desk was impossible to miss, manned as it was by people wearing clothing that marked them as hotel staff as surely as a Marine in dress blues.

"Good day," the concierge said in greeting. "Your name is Caruso?"

"Correct," Dominic said, surprised at the concierge's ESP. "You should have a reservation for my brother and myself?"

"Yes, sir," the concierge replied with enthusiastic subordination. His English might have been learned at Harvard. "Two connecting rooms overlooking the street."

"Excellent." Dominic fished out his American Express black card and handed it across.

"Thank you."

"Any messages for us?" Dominic asked.

"No, sir," the concierge assured him.

"Can you have the valet attend to our car? It's rented. We're not sure if we'll be keeping it or not."

"Of course, sir."

"Thank you. Can we see our rooms?"

"Yes. You are on the first floor — excuse me, the second floor, as you say in America. Franz," he called.

The bellman's English was just as good. "This way, if you please, gentlemen." No elevator, but rather a walk up a flight of red-carpeted steps directly toward a full-length portrait of somebody who looked very important indeed, in his white military uniform and beautifully combed-out chin whiskers.

"Who might that be?" Dominic asked the bellman.

"The Emperor Franz Josef, sir. He visited the hotel upon its opening in the nineteenth century."

"Ah." It explained the attitude of the staff here, but you couldn't knock the style of this place. Not by a long shot.

In another five minutes, they were settled into their accommodations. Brian came wandering into his brother's room. "God damn, the Residence Level at the White House isn't this good."

"Think so?" Dominic asked.

"Dude, I know so. Been there, done that. Uncle Jack had me up after I got my commission — no, actually it was after I came through the Basic School. Shit, this place is something. I wonder what it costs?"

"What the hell, it's on my card, and our friend is nearby at the Bristol. Kinda interesting to hunt rich bastards, isn't it?" That brought them back to business. Dominic pulled his laptop out of his bag. The Imperial was used to guests with computers, and the setup for it was very efficient indeed. For the moment, he opened the most recent file. He'd only scanned it before. Now he took his time with every single word.

Granger was thinking it through. Gerry wanted somebody to baby-sit the twins, and it seemed as though his mind was fixed on it. There were a lot of good people in the intelligence department under Rick Bell, but as former intelligence officers at CIA and elsewhere, they were all too old to be proper companions for the twins, young as the Caruso kids were. It wouldn't look right to have people in their late twenties chumming around Europe with somebody in his middle fifties. So, better somebody younger. There weren't many of those, but there was one…

He picked up his phone.

Fa'ad was only two blocks away on the third floor of the Bristol Hotel, a famous and very upper-crust accommodation known particularly for its superior dining room and its nearness to the State Opera, which sat just across the street, consecrated to the memory of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who had been the court musician for the House of Hapsburg before dying an early death, right here in Vienna. But Fa'ad wasn't the least bit interested in such history. Current events were his obsession. Watching Anas Ali Atef die right before his eyes had shaken him badly. That had not been the death of infidels, something you could watch on TV and smile quietly about. He'd been standing there, watching the life drain invisibly from his friend's body, watching the German paramedics fight vainly for his life — evidently doing their very best even for a person they must have despised. That was a surprise. And, yes, they were Germans just doing their job, but they'd done that job with obstinate determination, then they'd raced his comrade to the nearest hospital, where the German doctors had probably done the same, only to fail. A doctor had come to him in the waiting room and sadly told him the news, saying unnecessarily that they'd done everything that could have been done, and that it had looked like a massive heart attack, and that further laboratory work would be done to make certain that this indeed had been the cause of death, and finally asking for information on his family, if any, and who would see about the body after they were done picking it apart. Strange thing about the Germans, how precise they always were about everything. Fa'ad had made what arrangements he could, and then boarded a train for Vienna, sitting alone in a first-class seat and trying to come to terms with the dreadful event.

He was making his report to the organization. Mohammed Hassan al-Din was his gateway for that. He was probably in Rome at the moment, though Fa'ad Rahman Yasin was not quite sure. He didn't have to be sure. The Internet was a good enough address, formless as it was. It was just so very sad for a young and vigorous and valuable comrade to fall down dead on the street. If it served any purpose at all, only Allah Himself knew what it might be — but Allah had His Plan for everything, and it was not always something for men to know. Fa'ad took a minibottle of cognac from his minibar and drank it right out of the glass container instead of pouring it into one of the snifters on top of the cabinet. Sinful or not, it helped steady his nerves, and anyway he never did it in public. Damn such bad luck! He took another look at the minibar. Two more cognacs remained, and after that, several miniatures of Scotch whisky, the favorite drink of Saudi Arabia, Shar'ia or not.

"Got your passport?" Granger asked as soon as he'd sat down.

"Well, sure. Why?" Ryan asked.

"You're going to Austria. Plane leaves tonight from Dulles. Here's your ticket." The director of operations tossed the folder across the desk.

"What for?"

"You're booked into the Imperial Hotel. There you will link up with Dominic and Brian Caruso to keep them advised of intelligence developments. You can use your regular e-mail account, and your laptop is equipped with the proper encryption technology."

What the hell? Jack wondered. "Excuse me, Mr. Granger. Can we go back a couple of steps? Exactly what's going on here?"

"Your father asked that question once or twice, I bet." Granger managed a smile that would chill the ice in a highball. "Gerry thinks the twins need backup on the intelligence side. So, you are detailed to provide that backup, kind of a consultant to them while they're in the field. This does not mean that you'll actually be doing anything but keeping an eye on intel developments through the virtual office. You've done some pretty good work on that. You have a good nose for tracking things on the 'Net — damned sight better than Dom and Brian. Getting your eyes in the field might be useful. That's why. You can decline the job, but in your place, I'd take it. Okay?"

"When's the flight?"

"It's on your ticket folder."

Jack looked. "Damn, I'll have to hustle."

"So, hustle. There'll be a car to take you to Dulles. Get going."

"Yes, sir," Jack replied, coming to his feet. Just as well he had a car service heading his way. He didn't like the idea of leaving his Hummer in the Dulles parking lot. Thieves had fallen in love with the things. "Oh, who is cleared to know this?"

"Rick Bell will let Wills know. Aside from that, nobody, I repeat, nobody. Clear?"

"Clear, sir. Okay, I'm out of here." He looked in the ticket folder to find an American Express black card. At least the trip was on the company dime. How many of these things did The Campus have sitting around in its file drawers? he wondered. But for damned sure it was all he needed for this day.

"WHAT'S THIS?" Dominic asked his computer. "Aldo, we've got company coming over tomorrow morning."

"Who?" Brian asked.

"Doesn't say. It says to take no action until he links up with us, though."

"Jesus, who do they think we are, Louis the Fish? It's not our fault the last guy jumped right into our lap. Why fuck around?"

"These are government types. If you get too efficient, they get scared," Dominic thought aloud. "What about dinner, bro?"

"Fine, we can check their version of Vitello Milanese. You suppose they have any decent wines here?"

"Only one way to find out, Aldo." Dominic picked a tie out of his suitcase. The hotel dining room looked about as formal as Uncle Jack's old house.