The landing was not one of the airline's finest.
It belonged to the ‘any landing you can walk away from is good’ variety by a slim margin, but Patricio Nicanor was so relieved to be on U.S. soil that he felt like hugging the pilot and then kissing the world-weary face of the Washington National Airport immigration official who queried him.
Patricio's only baggage was a shoulder-slung carry-on one-suiter. He stopped at a kiosk and bought two foldaway nylon shopping bags and a length of strapping, the kind used to bind and identify a suitcase. He then headed for the rest room and entered the stall reserved for the physically disabled.
He needed the extra space to open his suitcase. The two packages inside, each contained in a thick bubble envelope about the size of a paperback book, had aroused the interest of customs. "Mining samples," Patricio had said, and had opened the retaining clip of one of the packages and pulled out a plastic bag containing what looked like concrete chippings.
The customs man had looked at Patricio's profession, which was written into his passport. "Ingeniero de Minas," it said in Spanish. Samples seemed to make sense.
Obtaining the contents of the two packages had been both difficult and dangerous in the extreme. Patricio wanted to keep them as close as possible until he delivered them to his friends in Congress.
Removing his jacket and working swiftly, he constructed a simple harness that hung each package securely under each arm like twin shoulder holsters. Both strapping and bags were of strong black nylon.
He replaced his jacket. He would look somewhat bulkier, but nothing could be seen. It would be safer to have the items actually on his person.
He reshouldered the carry-on case, made a brief phone call to Cochrane, and found a cab.
They had a funny charging system, he remembered. Zones instead of a meter. What you might call a game of chance if you were a tourist.
Warner started to emit electronic chirping sounds as they left the elevator on the floor where the subcommittee offices were located. He made a gesture of apology at Fitzduane and reached under his T-shirt for the compact mobile phone that was clipped there.
"You got the Irishman?" said Cochrane cryptically.
"Yo!" said Warner. "We've just got out of the elevator and we are down the hall. I can shout if this thing breaks down."
"Shit!" said Cochrane. "Wiseass!" he added.
"Maury?" said Warner.
"Yeah," said Cochrane. "We've still got a few things to settle, and Patricio's not here yet. Give me fifteen. Maybe prep Fitzduane a little."
"Lee's schedule is running late," said Warner. "I'll buy you a cup of coffee."
The cafeteria was nearly empty. Warner picked a quiet corner.
"The Task Force," said Warner. "Lee asked me to prep you. What do you know about us, Hugo?"
Fitzduane smiled. "I've read your reports and traded information with you. I figured you were worth visiting. Beyond that, I know little."
Warner nodded. "The Task Force was started by Lee. He made a bargain with Congressman Wayne Sanders. Lee would get Sanders elected if Sanders would back the setting up of a subcommittee on terrorism. Lee had come out of Vietnam feeling the U.S. was selling itself short and no one in power seemed to be paying any serious attention to dealing with the threats that were popping up all over the globe."
"Why didn't Lee run himself?" asked Fitzduane.
Warner laughed. "Lee Cochrane suffers from a bad case of integrity. In short, he is no politician, but he is bright and committed and knows his strengths and his weaknesses, so he found another way. He would piggyback right in as close to the center of power as he could get. He might prefer to work in the White House or the Senate, but he's a realist."
"What got Lee focused on terrorism?" said Fitzduane. "It's an abstract to most people. Normally, it is only when you are touched personally that you start to take notice. Then you realize that the world is a vastly more dangerous place than most people like to believe."
Warner nodded. "Lee had a commanding officer in Vietnam he much admired. The guy went on to work for the CIA, got kidnapped by fundamentalists in Lebanon, was tortured over many months and then hanged. That incident set him off. He also believed various agencies of the United States government did little about it."
"So how do you guys really operate?" said Fitzduane. "Congress is there to legislate, not go hunting down bad guys. The media would have a field day if a bunch of armed staffers started invading sovereign nations and taking out terrorists. Look at Ollie North, and he didn't shoot anyone. Well, not that I know of, anyway."
Warner laughed. "Ollie's heart and head don't always synchronize too well," he said, "but he's not the worst. Look at the Achille Lauro affair. The guys who killed the hostage in the wheelchair cut a deal with the Egyptians and were going to get away.
"Ollie got their aircraft forced down. Was he right? I think he was. The United States of America should not sit idly by when its citizens are killed."
Fitzduane drank some coffee. He did not dispute the basic thrust of Warner's argument, but he was having a hard time getting a fix on what a small group of motivated staffers could actually do against the reality of physical threat.
"We're a small group with the great advantage of having a simple mission," said Warner, "and that is the identification and destruction of terrorism insofar as it threatens this country. And all of the team identify with that mission. We are not riddled with factions and feuds like the CIA and the FBI, or faced with opposing agendas like State or Treasury. Our rationale is not primarily our own preservation. And we care."
Fitzduane's interest was piqued. He was well familiar with the CIA and State situations, but Treasury was a player he had not encountered much previously. "Treasury?" he asked.
"It's a story that makes a point about how we let them get away with it," said Warner. "When the Shah of Iran was in power, the Iranian government was considered a close ally of the West. Better yet, Iran was a major purchaser of Western goods. The Shah wanted the latest and the best, and because he had oil, he could afford it. Along with the tanks and the aircraft and the missiles, the U.S. supplied him with the latest in printing technology so that he could get his profile just right on the Iranian currency.
"Unfortunately, the equipment he bought was exactly the same as that used by the United States mint. Enter the Ayatollah and a bunch of fundamentalists who do not have the West's best interests at heart and suddenly we have a whole flood of crisp new dollars that are so technically perfect they are almost impossible to tell from the real thing.
"It gets worse. The Syrians see the Iranian playing the game and Uncle Sam sitting idly by doing nothing, and they set up a raft of printing presses in the BekaaValley. Their quality is not as good but, hey, they've got volume on their side and they go after the lower end of the market."
"How much are we talking about here?" said Fitzduane.
"We say in our briefings a billion dollars a month because a higher figure is hard to swallow. Actually, we estimate a multiple of that – year after year for well over a decade. We are getting close to talking real money! The situation has gotten so bad that in parts of the world you have to sign each note and leave your address so that they have a comeback if someone down the line complains. So much for confidence in the dollar. No wonder it's worth less every year."
Fitzduane laughed. "So where does Treasury come into all this?"
"We are talking economic terrorism here," said Warner, "we are talking forgery on a scale so huge that Treasury, who will set the Secret Service on you if you so much as photocopy a dollar bill, do diddly. They are afraid if it gets out the dollar will take a dive, so they say and do nothing. Also, the Secret Service are not rally set up to invade foreign countries. So we are going to end up changing our currency, but the guys we are up against are bright, so they won't just fold their tents and steal away. Goddamn it, they can now certainly afford the latest gear and we have been only too happy to sell them it. The U.S. has a balance-of-trade problem. We need exports. It's a hell of a thing. But the bottom line is that the United States government is nearly its own worst enemy."
Fitzduane's spread hands and the look on his face indicated acknowledgment of the validity of at least some of what was being said, but also a mild impatience that the question he had already asked twice had not been answered.
Warner grinned. "Okay," he said. "Let's focus. You want to know what we do and how we operate. We run an intelligence and analysis group based upon a very large network of contacts. There are many people who think like we do in structures like the CIA and State. The structures may be ossified and gridlocked by policy, but individuals have not lost their desire to do the right thing. We have connections as far afield as Afghanistan and as near as down the hall. We link them together, make sense of the pieces, and analyze the result. Then we feed our reports to the right people. Sometimes we get a result. More often we get filed. It's not easy."
"And you also legislate?" said Fitzduane.
"Sure," said Warner. "We work in Congress and that's what Congress does. And within the legislative process we pursue our own agenda. If we strengthen a program that can stem the terrorist tide, that is what we do. We have some successes. Mostly, it's a whole lot of work for very little return. The Founding Fathers did not set up this place to be efficient. That is understandable, but today's threats did not exist when they were around. Nor were they foreseen."
"It sounds like a great deal of work for a modest return," said Fitzduane carefully. "It also sounds exceedingly frustrating."
"Well, Hugo," said Warner, "now you are getting to the real meat. There are some situations where we cannot just sit on our hands like good citizens. Sometimes the threat is so major and the response so minimal that we have to take some action."
"So how does that work?" said Fitzduane.
"We find the right people and light the blue touch-paper," said Warner. "It is not exactly subcontracting – more a case of facilitating." He looked steadily at Fitzduane. "Like right now we have a situation in Mexico."
"No," said Fitzduane flatly. "And this being a political town, that is not – ‘no’ meaning I'm willing to negotiate." He smiled. "Just so we understand each other."
"I think you may change your mind," said Warner cheerfully, "when you have heard a little more. As far as Mexico is concerned, you're already involved. Drafted by circumstances, you might say."
Fitzduane looked at Warner blankly and then shook his head firmly. He had great respect for the subcommittee's counterterrorism reports and he was looking forward to meeting the people who did the work, but that was where it ended.
He could not conceive of any reason why he would want to be involved with Mexico in any way except to visit Acapulco and work on his suntan. That notion did have some appeal given the state of Ireland's weather. Even the snakes had fled because they were sick of the rain.
"No," he repeated, "or as you say over here – "no way!"
Warner grinned. "You didn't say ‘positively,’" he said. His belt began to cheep.
He answered the mobile and then looked at Fitzduane. "Maury has stopped swinging from the chandelier and Patricio has just passed through security. Time to enlighten you, Hugo, about some dirty work south of the border. And then I know you will do the right thing. You may be Irish and your grandmother Spanish, but where it counts you are a true-blue American."
"Lead on, Ollie," said Fitzduane wearily. But his curiosity was aroused, and the Fitzduanes, as a family, were nothing if not curious.
Over the centuries it had killed more than a few of them.
For all the talk of congressional perquisites, the FarnsworthBuilding was a utilitarian structure.
Inside, once you got past the entrance lobbies, it was little more than floor after floor of wide, imposing corridors with rather poky office suites leading off them for individual congressmen. The splendid marbled hallways had been given a higher priority than the humans who worked in the building.
A major corporation would have been embarrassed by the crowded conditions of most of the offices. Typically, a congressman had a three-room suite with a tiny reception lobby and waiting area. One room housed the congressman, the second his chief of staff, and the third as many of his staff as could be squeezed in. If you were a staffer, it helped greatly if you were small and thin. Or even tall and thin. The offices had high ceilings.
"Hugo, the U.S. of A. is run by kids," said Warner as they ambled back to the office. He glanced across at Fitzduane and grinned. "It confuses the shit out of the other side, whoever they are these days. God! Bring back the Cold War. It was so beautifully simple."
Fitzduane raised an eyebrow.
Warner needed no further encouragement. "The workload in this place is ridiculous," he said happily. "The average elected official spends most of his time working on being reelected – on his image – and commuting to and from his constituency. Any surplus time is spent taking his TV makeup off, bogged down in procedure, sitting in meetings, and getting drunk and screwing around because he or she is working so hard. So he hasn't a snowball's chance of actually reading the stuff he votes on, and certainly not in detail.
"Hell, man, consider the numbers and the crazy way this place operates. A single bill can run to thousands of pages. And the House rules are of a scale of complexity that even Machiavelli would admire. And they keep changing."
"So where do the kids come in?" asked Fitzduane obligingly.
"Since the elected have not the time to do the job they were voted in to do, the staffers have to do it. However, there is a twist here too. Members do not like being accused of spending too much money on themselves, so they have voted a peanut budget for staffers.
"That means two things. First, few people with a useful body of experience can afford to stay here. As they get older they acquire family commitments, and this is an expensive town. They leave and become lobbyists or head back to the boonies and live on their war stories. Second, staffs are heavily padded out with teenage interns who work for honor and glory and an entry on their CV. They get paid nothing.
"It's a mighty peculiar system. It means the U.S. legislature, if you get right down to it, is operated by a bunch of teenagers working for free. And since the U.S. is the superpower these days, it explains a lot. God bless America!"
"So what about you and Lee and Maury?" said Fitzduane. "You're not exactly still in diapers."
Warner halted and faced Fitzduane. "Well, Hugo," he said lightly, "I guess we're kind of unusual."
Fitzduane was getting used to Dan Warner's exuberance, but on this point he did not think the deputy chief of staff was joking. Loose cannon or the right stuff? He had some thoughts on the matter, but it was much too early to be sure.
It was fortunate tat the Yaibo team were already in place.
Wakami's unit had not come to Washington specifically for a killing, but they had been reconnoitering the city for future incidents. They had already checked out many of the government facilities.
These had included the FarnsworthBuilding. They had been in and out on several occasions and had even visited offices near those of Congressman Wayne Sanders, where the Task Force on Terrorism was located.
They had been able to survey nearly the length and breadth of the capital without hindrance, because they presented themselves not as tourists but as a lobbying group. Since the Japanese were particularly energetic at using the U.S. lobbying system to advance and protect Japanese interests – even when they were quite contrary to American interests – three more Japanese lobbyists attracted no attention at all.
Wakami had even had business cards printed identifying them as ‘The Osaka Industries United States Friendship Group,’ and these brought general access.
Senators, congressmen, and their staffers were permanently on the lookout for money, influence, and votes in roughly that order. Everyone knew that Japanese businessmen had money, rice sacks full of it, and that bought influence.
It all added up to a warm welcome for Wakami- san and his people. Wakami, who spoke adequate English, had become quite good at making long speeches about mutual friendship in Japanese and having Endo translate in halting English while politicians, their eyes glazed over, stood smiling. Photographs of such events were expected, even encouraged. Lining up a target assassination list, complete with full-color illustrations, had never been easier.
Armed with his copy of The World Almanac of U.S. Politics, bought in Sidney Kramer's Bookstore, and The United States House of Representatives Telephone Directory, given to him by a friendly staffer who fancied switching to a better-paid job as a lobbyist for Japan, Wakami had Endo line up an appointment with Lee Cochrane's office.
Cochrane- san might be running the counterterrorism Task Force with minimal staff, but he also had a demanding political role as chief of staff for his congressman. Wearing his political hat, he would see Wakami and his team or at least have him received – if only by an intern not yet old enough to drink legally.
The important thing was that Wakami now had access into the subcommittee's offices, and if a guard at the entrance called up – through that was most unlikely – their credibility would be already established.
He and his people could wait in the subcommittee's reception until his target came into sight. He would delay any meeting until a mythical missing member of their group would turn up. With a bit of luck they would even be given tea. He was not worried about being recognized later.
All three members of Osaka Industries United States Friendship Group quite deliberately had identical haircuts, horn-rimmed glasses, and clothing. To Americans, they would be like peas in a 120-million-population pod.
In Wakami's opinion, it all said a great deal about how the United States regarded terrorism, not that he was complaining. Well, they would learn the hard way. He decided they would go in the main entrance. There was more traffic that way, so the guards would be busier.
That left him with the decision as to how the actual killing of the target should be carried out. Their instructions emphasized that he must be killed and they must be sure he was dead. A dying man could still talk.
To get through the metal detector and scanner, the killing would have to be carried out without either firearms or event the traditional blade. Yet death must be certain and immediate.
There was really only one absolutely foolproof way Wakami could think of.
Finally, Wakami thought about how the members of the team might escape. ‘Escape,’ of course, was a relative term.
The liquid explosives came in as double-walled ampoules of insulin.
The guard at the main entrance had spotted the two containers and the hypodermic on the scanner through the sides of the briefcase, but his voice was sympathetic as he routinely checked the items.
The word ‘insulin’ was printed on both labels, together with the name of the prescribing doctor and the pharmacy. In that context, the hypodermic required no explanation.
If he had been able to check the ampoules, it would have made no difference unless he had spotted and opened the sealed double wall. There was genuine insulin at the core. It was a useful poison for some situations. Injecting a large dose into a normal healthy person was lethal and hard to detect. The body naturally dispenses insulin into the bloodstream when unduly stressed, and imminent death comes into that category.
The outer wall of the ampoule contained enough explosive to equal the force of a hand grenade.
The guard did not query the other items.
The killing weapon came in as an extension cable for the camera. The cable normally consisted of an outer flexible core and a thin inner wire. Pushing a release at one end pushed a plunger out the other and activated the shutter release. In this case, the ends constituted no more than decorations. The substance was the razor-sharp serrated inner wire.
The other weapons were short ‘punch daggers’ – ultrathin needle blades with a crosspiece making a T, which were clenched in the fist and punched in when stabbing. They were built into each man's briefcase looking like part of the reinforcing frame, with the crosspiece being the designer handle. Each man had one. The blades had no cutting edge but were strong enough when stabbing to pierce even most body armor.
Fitzduane's eyes caught Maury's briefly as he entered the room. Maury smiled very slightly and gently, as if it were entirely normal to greet someone while half-concealed behind a drape.
"Hugo, a pleasure," said Cochrane.
Unlike Warner and the other staffers, the marine-trim chief of staff was formally dressed, his shirt white and crisp and his tie regimental. The style was that of a military man in civilian clothes, but the eyes were not just those of a direct man of action. There was a look of introspection here. They were the guarded eyes of a very intelligent man who had seen much to disappoint him but still believed. Fitzduane was mildly irritated at himself for being surprised. He had expected surface polish and competence. He was faced with someone who was more substantial and decidedly more complex.
Fitzduane had read the reports put out by the Task Force on Terrorism. Those who originated them knew – really understood – how their special world worked. And Maury, from what he had heard and read, would not work with a fool. Fitzduane smiled to himself. He trusted he would prove up to the mark.
Maury stayed behind his curtain and said nothing. The situation would have been unusual enough, but the chief of staff's office was comparatively small. Maury was not some discreet watcher from a distance but stood only a few feet away, as if sheer willpower and his very still composure would make him invisible. There was room just for a desk and two scuffed leather sofas with a small table in the middle.
This was a functional place for meeting and talking, not designed to impress. The one exception was a small case containing medals and a photograph of two men in fatigues.
Vietnam, Fitzduane looked at the mementos with mixed emotions. He had been young then, too, and in some ways it had been the best of times. But too many friends had died there.
Cochrane saw Fitzduane's glance. "Not mine," he said. "They belong to the man who inspired all this. His widow wanted me to have them."
"I'm sure you have your own, Lee," said Fitzduane.
Cochrane nodded somewhat stiffly. "The military give them out by the shitload. They're not what counts. It's what you stand for and what you do. All I did was show up."
Fitzduane nodded. More than many, he reflected.
Standing to one side of Fitzduane, Warner was suddenly struck by the fanciful notion that he was watching the meeting of two knights from the Middle Ages.
Both had warrior stamped all over them. Both were being friendly enough on the face of it, and on the face of it had similar values, but there was still an unspoken competitive element between them. On second thought, the competitive factor probably emanated from Lee. Hugo Fitzduane had actually done the kind of things that Lee merely aspired to do. Of course, Lee had certainly served his time, but that was many years ago. Fitzduane had also been in Vietnam but had had major encounters with terrorism twice -the latter as recently as a year ago.
Lee, the paper pusher, was encountering the adventurer. The chief of staff was competitive from gullet to zatch. It could not be easy for him. Worse, he had to behave himself.
He wanted to enlist the Irishman's help, and Colonel Hugo Fitzduane did not look someone you could lead by the nose. Warner was silently amused. This was going to be fun.
Of course, what two gallant knights like Cochrane and Fitzduane were doing within the confines of Congress was another matter entirely. The Hill was not about daring deeds and gallantry. It was about politics, and that was a cold, reality-based world.
"Lee?" Tanya, one of the full-time receptionists, put her head around the door. "Before you get comfortable… There is that Japanese delegation, and Patricio has just arrived."
Cochrane gestured at Fitzduane. "Take a seat, Hugo, and I'll be back in a moment. Dan can introduce you to our friend from Mexico while I exchange pleasantries with our Japanese friends. I gather it is just a courtesy call."
He looked back at Tanya. "Show Patricio in here. I'll see our Japanese visitors in the congressman's office. Have they had tea?"
Tanya nodded. Cochrane grinned. Tanya knew the drill.
"So let's do it," he said. The receptionist backed away and Lee headed toward the door, then waited inside to give Patricio a quick greeting before temporarily ducking out. There were always too many people to see, never enough time, and certainly not enough space. Juggling all the elements was like playing with a Rubik's Cube.
There was no warning.
"What are you… Aaagh! My God! My God! They're killing us. They're kill-"
The shouts and short piercing screams were truncated before their full dreadful meaning was understood.
The sounds of people dying belonged to other worlds, not to the paper and verbal wars on the Hill.
They looked at each other uncertainly. There were TV sets everywhere, monitoring Congress on C-Span. Someone had switched into a drama and turned the volume up too loud. It was not real.
The door crashed wide open, forcing Cochrane backward and he tripped over the small table in the confined space and then collapsed onto the floor with it upended in front of him.
Warner stood up to help and Fitzduane was blocked.
"Huh-huh-huh-huh-haaaaa…"
The sound of dying.
Patricio Nicanor stood in the open doorway, the expression on his face compounded of shock and horror and fear and pain and something much worse.
It was the look of a fellow human animal knowing he was losing his life – and that was elemental and singularly disturbing to behold.
Even as they watched, and that brief moment seemed to take an eternity, his eyes bulged and his throat gaped open in a wet crimson smile.
There was a loud cry of triumph and effort from behind him, and then blood spurted from his torso and his head toppled from his body and rolled toward them.
Patricio's headless body was still erect, his heart still pumping blood, crimson spewing from the bloody stump. Then the corpse was released and slid to the ground.
The killer was suddenly revealed. He stood there for an infinitesimal moment with the bloody steel garrote in his hands and a look of triumph on his face.
Shouts came from the general office, and Fitzduane saw the terrorist begin to turn while letting one end of the garrote fall from his right hand and then reaching into the side pocket of his jacket.
There was the whumph of an explosion closely followed by screams of pain that were all the more disturbing for being muted.
Fitzduane's brain fought to process competing messages.
Logic dictated that what he was seeing could not be happening. He was in a safeguarded environment.
Instinct, brutally reinforced by the odors of death, told him that if he did not do something quickly he would be joining Patricio Nicanor.
Survival more than logic was the dominant force on this occasion.
Desperately, he looked around Cochrane's office for a weapon – anything, even a paper knife or an unloaded war souvenir.
There was nothing except an embossed coffee mug.
Anything can be a weapon!
He seized the mug by its base, leaped over the temporarily sprawled figures of Cochrane and Warner, and punched the Japanese full force in the face with the open rim as the terrorist was turning back to Cochrane's office after throwing the grenade.
Fitzduane put everything he had behind the blow. The shock of the vicious impact ran up his arm and jarred his shoulder, and he grunted with the pain and effort.
The mug shattered, virtually exploding.
Shards penetrated the assassin's face. The impact broke Wakami's nose and cheekbone, temporarily stunning him.
Edged metal slammed into the door frame beside Fitzduane as he ducked in reflex. He realized he would have been stabbed if the first killer's dazed body had not impeded his attacker.
He pivoted, smashed his elbow into his assailant's stomach, and jabbed with the broken remains of the coffee mug at the back of the hand holding the weapon.
The hand was caught between the blow and the door frame, and Fitzduane was fighting with the force of true desperation.
The man gave a shriek of agony as the bones in his hand were shattered and he lost his grip on the punch dagger.
Fitzduane grabbed the man's arm, the bloody hand dangling uselessly from it, dropped to one knee, and threw the terrorist over his shoulder into Cochrane's office.
Fitzduane then wrenched the strange-looking weapon from the wood. If felt like a woodworker's tool in his hand; the general shape was like a gimlet, but the blade was like a short, thin stiletto.
His movements flowing one into the other, he raised the slumped head of his original attacker with a hard palm blow under the chin.
As his head came up, Fitzduane hooked his right arm around and stabbed the needlelike blade into the man's ear.
The terrorist jerked upright in a horrified spasm as the punch dagger cut into him and his mouth opened as if to scream, but the point had entered his brain before the pain message could be implemented.
He collapsed lifeless like an abandoned puppet.
Fitzduane looked back into Cochrane's office.
The terrorist he had thrown there had fallen on the edge of the table that had been lying on its side since Cochrane had tripped over it. The impact had driven the air out of his lungs, and while he lay there gasping, Cochrane had taken his own belt off, made a sliding noose with the belt buckle, and looped it around the fallen man's neck.
The terrorist kicked desperately as the noose tightened, and his one good hand flailed as he tried to loosen the unrelenting grip.
Warner tried to pinion his legs. The terrorist writhed, his strength formidable in his desperation. His legs kicked clear. Cochrane suddenly jerked the noose at an angle with all his strength.
Fitzduane could hear the sound of the man's neck snapping.
Cochrane, his tie askew and his hair rumpled but ever the chief of staff, looked up at Fitzduane. "We're okay, Hugo. Check outside. There may be others."
It was a point that Fitzduane had considered. Reacting to immediate threat had been a matter of instinct. Now he left the shelter of the door frame with some caution.
There were going to be a bunch of trigger-happy Capitol police here any moment, and that thought did not fill him with a sense of well-being. Also, there could be other terrorists. There had been only two waiting in the reception area, but that did not mean that there were not more waiting nearby.
Space was so limited in the offices that his short journey from the door frame of Cochrane's office was through a corridor of filing cabinets. The distance was only about six feet until the space widened, but it represented temporary safety and Fitzduane was not enthusiastic about stepping into the unknown.
But some things just had to be done. He had to leave his steel-drawer haven and hope nobody was waiting around the corner with unfriendly thoughts. The image of Patricio Nicanor being decapitated was still emblazoned on his mind, and the unfortunate man's body and severed head lay just behind him.
He moved forward.
There was a cacophony of shouts and cries and moaning noise coming from the general office on the left, but the reception area seemed unnaturally quiet.
He tried to remember the layout.
There had been receptionists working either side behind built-in desks as he came in. One was Tanya. He did not know the others' names. There was a petite brunette in her late twenties. And there had been someone else filing, he seemed to recall. All he had seen was a man's white shirt and the kind of thick hair you have only when you are very young. An intern.
He heard a noise behind him. He had forgotten about Maury during the action. The uncharitable thought came to him that it would have been nice if Maurice had intervened earlier, but then he realized that there really had been neither time nor opportunity.
Only seconds had passed, and the leader had initially been cut off from the action by the sprawled bodies of Cochrane and Warner. So he had kept his head and moved when it was appropriate. Of course, Maury, though he was the antithesis of the man of action in appearance, had actually seen more combat than most. He knew about all this stuff, and in this situation that was reassuring.
Maury raised his fingers to his lips, indicated right and then at himself. He then indicated Fitzduane and left, and there was a question on his face.
Fitzduane nodded in agreement but felt a chill run through him.
He was getting sloppy. Congress was not in session. He had forgotten all about the empty congressman's office. Because maybe it was not empty, and if he had turned left as he had planned his back would have been to the office. He could almost feel the blade being hammered into his kidneys.
Both men were about to move when they were momentarily brought to a halt by a rivulet of crimson that flowed slowly around the last file cabinet.
Fitzduane was sick inside. He looked at Maury and held up three fingers and brought them down one by one. "Three, two, one, GO!" they mouthed silently in unison, and both moved away from the cover of the cabinets into the reception area and to left and right, respectively.
Tanya lay sprawled on the ground, her arms up in front of her face as if to ward off her attacker. The upper half of her dress was saturated with blood and the material was ripped and torn as if she had been struck a series of blows.
The other receptionist had died at her desk.
She was slumped forward over the computer keyboard, and a bloody hole at the base of her neck showed how she had died.
There was a third body in the main doorway, slain while attempting to flee. The white shirt was now crimson but unperforated.
Fitzduane followed the blood line and saw that in this case the punch dagger had been slammed into the back of the skull.
He felt nothing but sadness. The young should not die, and certainly not slain casually like animals in an abattoir.
Fitzduane moved to the general office.
Several forms were sprawled over their desks and nearly every surface was pitted as if a grenade had gone off.
Unhurt figures rose from behind desks as he looked. Several were bleeding from cuts but seemed otherwise unharmed. Certainly, there were enough fit people to take care of the injured. One was already speaking into a phone.
"Stay here for the moment," he said, "while we check a little further. We've got two, but there may be others."
Maury came out of the congressman's office. "It's clear," he said.
Cochrane emerged from his office, his shocked gaze only loosely focused on Fitzduane and Maury. "He's – I think we killed him," he said, his voice shaky. He looked around, and anger hardened his voice. "Hell, where the fuck is Security?"
He stiffened suddenly as he noticed Tanya and the other two dead staffers. He brought up his hands to his face as if to hide the horror of what he was seeing. "Oh, God!" he said. "Oh, God! Oh God!"
He slumped to his knees beside Tanya and took her in his arms, though it was clear it was hopeless.
It came to Fitzduane that these were people the chief of staff worked closely with and felt responsible for, and now he had gotten them killed. These were office staffers and interns. This was not what they had signed up for.
Cochrane was sobbing, guilt etched into his face.
Fitzduane hunkered down beside him. "Lee," he said.
Lee looked at him in agony. "Lee," repeated Fitzduane sharply. "How many were there in the Japanese party?"
Cochrane shook his head, trying to focus. "I-I don't know," he said dully. "Two, I think. Does it matter?"
Fitzduane rose to his feet and looked at Maury. "Maury," he said, "can you get me patched through to Security? Tell them the situation here, identify me, and tell them to bring along spare radios, body armor, and weapons. Do you know the right person to speak to? We need some juice here."
"There is almost certainly one other terrorist loose. There is always a watcher, and sometimes more than one. You know that. You've been there. I think we should lend a hand. These cops won't have the experience."
Maury nodded as he was picking up the phone. There were several brief verbal encounters in English, and then he broke into rapid colloquial French. " D'accord," he said finally, and put down the phone.
"Quebecois are like the Irish," he said. "We get around."
"Who is he?" said Fitzduane.
"Number two on the Emergency Response team," said Maury. "But how do we know what we're looking for? There are Japanese tourists all over the place – and the others may not even be Japanese. We could be looking for any race or creed."
Capitol police with drawn guns entered the doorway and looked around uncertainly. Maury's contact had not connected yet.
Fitzduane held up a hand just as one of the policemen was moving forward.
The policeman stopped, though he was far from being sure why he was paying any attention to a bloodstained civilian. Yet the man had a definite command presence.
Fitzduane bent down and picked up two pairs of black horn-rimmed glasses that had been placed neatly on the reception table beside two empty cups.
Maury pursed his lips, went into Cochrane's office, and then came back. "Identical haircuts, suits, shirts, ties, and shoes," he said. "A neat and simple trick if you want to avoid being recognized afterwards."
"But which may work in our favor now," said Fitzduane. "Well, it had better. We don't have much else."
A short, stocky, fit-looking man appeared through the doorway dressed in SWAT fatigues. He and Maury had a quick conversation in French before he turned to Fitzduane.
"This is Henri," said Maury, reverting to English.
"Let's go to it," said Fitzduane.
Henri shook his head. "Colonel Fitzduane, I know how you must feel, but it's more than my job is worth. This thing is going to be investigated every which way by more agencies than there are letters in the alphabet, not to mention hearings on security by both houses. IF it came out that I had armed a couple of civilians and allowed them to go terrorist hunting on the Hill… Well, it does not bear thinking about. I'd be the salami and the system the slicer, and believe me, these people do know how to cut."
Cochrane had now recovered somewhat, though he still looked pale and shocked. He had covered Tanya's upper body with his suit jacket and now stood slumped against a filing cabinet, his clothing soaked in drying blood. He ran one hand wearily through his hair in a gesture of both exhaustion and sadness.
"He's right, Hugo," he said. "This is Washington. Simple direct action is not in fashion around here."
Four office suites down the corridor, the watcher who Fitzduane had known would be somewhere close, was chatting to the attractive young intern he had met in Bullfeathers.
Jin Endo had felt his job done when he had spotted the target going through Security at the main entrance, and had phoned ahead to warn Wakami- san where he waited in the committee's reception. He had a note of where the intern worked and headed up to her office immediately, pausing only to discard hi weapons in a cleaner's cupboard.
The FarnsworthBuilding had been sealed off within two minutes of the killing of Patricio Nicanor and the others, and a further cordon was placed around the complex of buildings that made up the Hill very shortly after that.
Everyone within the inner cordon was identified and questioned.
The process took over six hours. When it was over, Jin Endo and his new girlfriend walked free together. Everyone in her office knew that Endo could not have been involved. The police knew the exact time of the assault and Endo had demonstrably been visiting his friend at that time, which also explained his reason for being in the building. Certainly, he was Japanese, but so were over a hundred other people who had been caught inside the cordon and whose tour of Congress had proved rather more exciting than expected.
That night the young intern, shaken by the gruesome details of the incident, allowed the handsome young lobbyist to comfort her. True, he was Japanese just like the terrorists, but you did not blame all Italians for the misdeeds of the Mafia.
Her lover was young and fit, and someone had tutored him well in the art of pleasing a woman. The intern was even younger, but sex was something you got plenty of inside the Beltway – if you were so inclined – so they were well matched. The sex was intense, dangerous, and endlessly satisfying. There was no denying it. Power was an aphrodisiac, and working in Washington was all about being close to power. The added aphrodisiac was being so close to death. They had both witnessed the aftermath of the carnage.
FBI agents, backtracking through the evidence, made the connection after four days.
It was only one of many leads, but it rang alarm bells when it was discovered that she had not turned up for work. True, quite a few House employees had taken time off to adjust to the shock after the attack, but most had telephoned in. This particular intern had not, and that was unlike her.
The young intern's family was wealthy, and they indulged their only daughter. After her internship she was due to study international relations at GeorgetownUniversity, so she had been comfortably set up in a lavishly equipped condo in Georgetown itself.
The agents had to break into the condo. They found the naked body of the intern, her throat cut, wrapped up in blood- and semen-stained bedsheets in the Deepfreeze.
Of her lover, there was no sign except for a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that turned out to be plain glass.