The Long shot

The tyres of the Boeing 737 bit into the runway, squealing like dying pigs and sending spurts of dust into the air. The plane taxied towards the terminal building which shimmered in the midday heat. In the First Class cabin the passengers began to unbuckle their seat belts before the plane had come to a halt. A dark-haired stewardess left her seat and went over to the occupant of seat 3B. She bent down and gave him her professional smile. “Mr Ahmed?” she said. The man continued reading as if he hadn’t heard. “Mr Ahmed?” she repeated. He looked up and nodded. He was a typical First Class passenger: middle-aged, overweight and seemingly bored with the whole business of flying. He’d scarcely touched the inflight food and rejected the complimentary headset with an impatient wave of his hand. He’d spent most of the three-hour flight with his nose buried in the Wall Street Journal. “Mr Ahmed, the pilot has requested that you remain behind while the rest of the passengers deplane,” she said.

The passenger didn’t seem the least bit surprised by the request. “What about the people I’m travelling with?” he asked. The woman next to him was down on the manifest as his wife and, like the man, was travelling on a Yemeni diplomatic passport. A grey-haired older woman, apparently his mother, was sitting behind him, and on the other side of the cabin were his two young children. All had Yemeni diplomatic passports.

“I’m sorry, sir, they’re also to stay behind.”

The passenger nodded. “I understand,” he said quietly. “Will you tell my children while I explain to my mother?”

The stewardess went over to explain to the youngsters while Ahmed turned around and spoke to the old woman. Elba Maria Sanchez had grown accustomed to waiting in airliners while immigration officials took advice on whether or not her son should be admitted into their country. The family had been turned away from most of the countries in the Middle East, and previous safe havens including East Germany and Hungary had turned their backs on their old cohorts in their rush to embrace capitalism. Even the Sudanese had betrayed them.

The passengers shuffled off the plane. The stewardess asked Ahmed if he wanted a drink while he waited but he declined. He picked up a copy of Newsweek and idly flicked through it. “It’s always the same,” said his wife bitterly. “They should be ashamed of themselves, these people, they have no loyalty. After all we’ve done for them.”

“Be patient, Magdalena,” said the man, his eyes on the magazine.

“Patient! Ha! I was patient in Tripoli, I was patient in Damascus, I’ve been patient in virtually every airport in the Middle East. Face it, Ilich, no-one wants us any more. We’re an embarrassment.”

“Hush,” he said quietly. “You’ll upset the children.”

She looked like she was about to argue but before she could speak a small, unimposing man in a dark suit appeared at the doorway. He carried a shiny black briefcase and he nervously rubbed his moustache as he approached Ahmed. He introduced himself as Khatami, just the one name, and he didn’t tell the passenger who he represented. There was no need. He suggested that they go back into the Business Class cabin where they could have some privacy and Ahmed followed him along the aisle. Ahmed’s children looked anxiously up at him and he winked at them reassuringly. Khatami stood to the side to allow Ahmed past and then he whisked the blue curtain closed. Ahmed sat down in an aisle seat and Khatami took the seat opposite him, balancing the briefcase on his knees. Khatami seemed uneasy and beads of perspiration dripped down either side of his beakish nose. “Your passport, please,” he said, holding out his hand.

Ahmed took his passport from the inside pocket of his Armani jacket and handed it over. Khatami flicked through the pages of the passport which contained a plethora of visas and immigration stamps. He read the name at the front of the passport: Nagi Abubaker Ahmed. The photograph matched the man sitting in front of him: a receding hairline, a thick moustache over fleshy lips, and jowls around the chin that suggested the man had lived a soft life with too much time spent in expensive restaurants. “You are Ilich Ramirez Sanchez?”

The passenger nodded.

“The woman travelling with you is Magdalena Kopp?”

Another curt nod.

“Mr Sanchez, I’ve been asked to put a number of questions to you before our Government decides whether or not it can accommodate your request for asylum.” Sanchez said nothing. Khatami could see his own reflection in the darkened lenses of Sanchez’s spectacles. It gave him an uneasy feeling and he took a large white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “You have been living in Damascus for some time, is that correct?”

“Yes,” said Sanchez.

“From there you went where?”

“To Libya.”

“The Libyans would not allow you to stay in their country?”

“You are well informed,” said Sanchez.

“And from Libya you went back to Damascus?”

“That was the first plane out of the country, yes.”

Khatami nodded, wiped his forehead again and shoved the handkerchief back into his top pocket. “Your assets are where?”

“Assets? I don’t understand.”

“You have money?”

Sanchez smiled. “Yes, I have money. I was well paid for my work.”

“The money is where?”

“Switzerland, mainly. I also have one million dollars in my diplomatic baggage. I can assure you I will not be a burden.”

Khatami smiled nervously. “Good, good. That’s good.” He looked down at his briefcase and noticed that he was gripping it so tightly that his nails were biting into the leather. He took his hands away and Sanchez saw two wet palm prints where they had been. “My Government is particularly concerned about your past, Mr Sanchez. Your, how shall I call them?. . exploits. . have been well documented, and have attracted a great deal of publicity. They want to know whether or not you have rescinded your terrorist past.”

Sanchez sighed. “I am looking only for a place where my family and I can live in safety. My past is my past.”

Khatami nodded, keeping his eyes down so that he wouldn’t have to look at his own reflection. “Then you no longer consider yourself a terrorist?”

“That is correct,” said Sanchez.

“Ah,” said Khatami. “That is a great pity. A great pity.” He lifted his head and there was a look of hawkish intensity in his eyes. “It could well be in the future that we would have need of someone with your talents.”

“I see,” said Sanchez. He took off his spectacles, revealing brown eyes that were surprisingly soft and amused. “I would not have a problem with that. I think that whoever offers me sanctuary would have the right to expect me to perform a service for them.”

Khatami grinned and nodded. He had expected the discussion with Ilich Ramirez Sanchez to be much more stressful. The man the world knew as Carlos the Jackal was proving surprisingly easy to deal with.

Jim Mitchell scanned the clear blue skies through the cockpit of his Cessna 172. It was a glorious day for flying. There were a few wisps of feathery clouds but they were way up high, much higher than the single-engine Cessna could ever hope to fly. To the north-west, about eight miles away, he saw the runway, almost perpendicular to the nose of the Cessna. The plane was perfectly trimmed and there was next to no turbulence so he needed only the barest pressure on the wheel to maintain his course. He turned his head to the right and caught his wife’s eye. She smiled and winked at him and he grinned back. “Sandra, do you want to call them?”

“Sure,” she said. She tuned the radio to the control tower. Mitchell watched her as she contacted the air-traffic controller, reported their position and told him that they were inbound for landing. She asked for a runway advisory and, through his headset, Mitchell heard the controller tell her that the wind was blowing right down the runway at about six knots. Perfect. At forty-five years old, Jim Mitchell was a decade and a half older than his wife and he never tired of looking at her. She smiled as she spoke into the microphone and she waved for him to keep his eyes on the outside of the plane. He glanced down at the sectional chart clipped to his leg. Their approach was taking them through a Military Operations Area, marked on the chart with a magenta border. Flying was permitted in the MOA, but it still made him slightly nervous. He peered through the windshield, scanning the sky in segments, looking for military traffic.

He felt a small hand on his shoulder. “Dad, Dad, turn around.”

Mitchell twisted around to see his son Jamie holding their camcorder. The red light was on showing that Jamie was filming. Mitchell grinned and gave his son a thumbs-up. “Jim Mitchell, the fearless pilot,” he laughed and Jamie giggled. The boy panned to the right. “Mom,” he said, and Sandra looked over her shoulder.

“Don’t use all the tape,” she chided. “Save it till we get closer to Vegas.”

“Oh Mom, don’t say stuff like that, it gets recorded,” Jamie moaned. He switched the camcorder off. “Now I’ll have to rewind it.” He sighed in the way that only a child can sigh and pouted. “I bet Scorsese never had this trouble,” he said.

Sandra leaned back and ruffled his hair. He jerked away, refusing to be mollified. At eight years old he was getting to the “I don’t want to be touched” stage, Sandra realised with a twinge of regret.

“I see the wind-sock,” said Sandra, and Mitchell squinted, looking for the orange sock which would give him an accurate indication of the ground-level wind direction. He couldn’t see it. His wife’s eyesight was much better than Mitchell’s, who was no longer allowed to fly without his correcting lenses. Another sign of old age creeping up on him, he thought ruefully. Mitchell reduced power and took the Cessna down to one thousand feet above the ground and joined the traffic pattern at the single runway. They were the only plane in the area and they were soon on the ground, taxiing up to a refuelling station.

Jamie filmed the plane being refuelled and then wandered off to get a canned drink from a vending machine. Mitchell put his hands on his hips and surveyed the sky overhead.

Jamie returned with his Coke. He took the camcorder out of the Cessna. “Okay, I want a shot of the two of you together at the front of the plane,” said the boy, and he showed his parents where he wanted them to stand.

“Our son, the movie director,” said Mitchell.

“It’ll be a great loss to the real estate industry that he doesn’t follow in his father’s footsteps,” said Sandra, smiling to show that she was joking. Real estate had given them an enviable lifestyle, even if Mitchell had to admit that it wasn’t the most exciting of careers and that people tended to avoid him at parties. She stood close to him and he slipped his arm around her waist. Mitchell held his head high to conceal his growing bald spot and double chin from the camcorder, and sucked in his stomach.

Jamie panned across from the fuel pumps until his parents were in the centre of the viewfinder. They waved and grinned. He switched the camcorder off and climbed into the back seat of the Cessna while his father walked around the plane and checked the fuel tanks. Sandra told her son to put on a pullover. The weather in Phoenix had been unseasonably warm but the forecast had been for cold winds to the north.

Mitchell soon had the small plane up in the air. He headed west, his VOR tuned to the Needles beacon in Havasu Lake National Wildlife Refuge from where he planned to fly up to Vegas. There was little in the way of landmarks to navigate by once he’d flown over Highway 93, so he had to rely on his VOR. He would have preferred to fly at a slightly higher altitude, but Jamie kept insisting that they fly low so that he could look at the scenery, even if it was just sand, rocks and the many-armed cacti which stood like guardsmen on parade.

“Hey, Dad, what’s that down there?” Jamie pointed down to the left.

Mitchell turned to look where his son was pointing but couldn’t see anything. “What is it, Jamie?” he asked.

“There’s someone down there. Cars in the desert, and some other stuff. Can we look?”

Mitchell squinted behind his sunglasses. The darkened lenses were prescription but lately he was finding they weren’t as good at correcting his long-distance vision as they used to be. He checked his fuel gauges and saw that he had plenty to spare. With the VOR equipment there was no chance of getting lost, and it was supposed to be a vacation. “I guess so, son,” he said, and put the Cessna into a slow, turning descent.

“Is this a good idea?” Sandra asked through his headset.

“We’ve plenty of time,” said Mitchell. “And we’re on a VFR flight plan, we can play around if we want.”

“There!” Jamie shouted. “I think they’re making a movie.” He switched his camcorder on and began filming out of the side window.

“What is it?” asked Sandra. She was sitting on the right-hand side of the plane and her husband was blocking her view.

“I can’t see,” said Mitchell, putting the Cessna into a steep turn so that the ground whirled underneath him. The altimeter span as he took the plane down to two thousand feet.

“There are two towers down there, the sort they put cameras on,” said Jamie excitedly. “I can’t see what they’re doing, though. I bet they’re making a movie. This is cool. I wonder who the director is?”

Mitchell peered out of the cockpit. Far below he could see a wood and metal structure, about fifty feet high. It looked like scaffolding, and he could make out a figure on top of it. Chains or ropes tethered the structure to the ground. About half a mile away were a group of men standing on the ground in a line. Mitchell frowned. The figures were standing too still, and there was something awkward about the way they held their arms. They weren’t cacti, but they weren’t human, either. He levelled the plane off and pointed out the figures to his wife.

“They look like robots,” she said.

“Or dummies,” he agreed.

“There are real people over there, see?” She pointed to another group of figures standing several hundred feet away.

“I see them,” said Mitchell.

“Let’s go down lower, Dad,” said Jamie, still filming. “It might be someone famous.”

“That might not be a good idea, Jamie,” said his mother, twisting around in her seat. “They might not want a plane buzzing overhead.”

“Just one pass, Mom,” implored Jamie. “Please.”

“Jim, what do you think?” she asked her husband.

“One quick look wouldn’t hurt,” said Mitchell. “I must admit I’m a bit curious myself. They’re miles from anywhere.”

“Looks like I’m outvoted then,” said Sandra.

Mitchell circled slowly as he lost height and levelled off at five hundred feet above the ground, several miles away from the two towers. Jamie trained the camcorder on the desert below. They flew around an isolated butte which rose majestically from the ground as if it had been pushed up from below. Jamie took the viewfinder away from his face and peered at the rocky outcrop. “There’s someone on top of the hill,” he said. He put the camcorder back to his eye and zoomed in on the butte. “He’s lying down. . I think he’s got a gun, Dad.”

“Are you sure?”

The Cessna had flown by the hill and Jamie couldn’t see the man any more. “I don’t know, I think so.”

“There wouldn’t be hunters out here, surely,” said Sandra, the concern obvious in her voice.

“Nothing to shoot at except lizards,” said Mitchell. “Okay, Jamie, keep your eyes open, we’re only going to do this once. Shout if you see Steven Spielberg, okay?” He cut back on the power and slowed the Cessna’s airspeed until they were at eighty knots. Jamie panned across the activity below, zooming in on the three people on the ground and then tracking across to the two towers. Sandra shaded her eyes with her hands and peered down.

“Jamie, can you see what the men are doing on the towers?” she said. “They’re not cameras they’re holding, are they?”

Jamie concentrated his camcorder on the tower closest to the small plane. It was about half a mile away and seemed to be made of metal scaffolding and planks. “No, Mom,” he said, “they’re guns.”

“Guns?”

“Yeah, like the guy had back on the hill.”

Sandra turned to her husband. “Jim, I don’t like this, let’s go.”

“You think maybe we should report it?” Mitchell asked.

“I don’t know, I just think we should go. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Okay, honey, no problem.” Mitchell pushed the throttle full in and pulled back on the control wheel and aimed the small plane up into the blue sky. He looked at his VOR and saw that he was to the left of his original course so he banked the Cessna to the right as he climbed. The desert scrub seemed to slide below him.

Sandra settled back in her seat, glad to be away from the men with the guns. She closed her eyes and rubbed them with the back of her hands. She heard the crack of splintering glass and she jumped as something wet splattered across her cheek. Her stomach lurched as the nose of the Cessna dipped down and when she looked across at her husband she saw that he’d slumped back in his seat, his head resting against the side window. Her first thought was that he’d had a heart attack or a stroke but then she saw that there was blood on his face and she screamed. His blood was all over her and there were bits of pink tissue and fragments of bone that looked like white wood shavings. She screamed and tugged on his shoulder, hoping that by shaking him she’d wake him up. His head lolled forward and she saw that the top of his skull had been blown away. His feet were drumming against the floor but she could see from the size of the wound that he was already dead, the kicking was just a nervous reaction. Something dripped down her face and she looked up to see thick globules of blood trickling down from the roof of the plane. She opened her mouth to scream again and blood ran between her lips, making her gag. Behind her, Jamie was screaming for his father.

Sandra wiped her hands across her face and felt the blood smear over her skin. Through the cockpit she saw nothing but the desert and she realised with a jolt that the plane was still diving. She reached for the control wheel and pulled back on it, feeling her stomach churn as the plane’s nose came up. She was gasping for breath and her arms were trembling. She looked towards the attitude indicator but her husband’s body obscured it, then suddenly his whole body swung away from the instruments as if he’d only been dozing, but she realised it was the deceleration forcing him back. The shaking in her hands intensified and she forced herself to keep her eyes on the instruments and not on her dead husband. The plane levelled off and she decided to accelerate away from the gunmen below rather than wasting time trying to climb. There was a loud crack from somewhere behind her and then another and she yelled at Jamie to lie down across the rear seats. The rudder pedals abruptly lost their resistance as if the cables had been cut and the Cessna began to slide to the right, with the wind. More bullets thudded into the rear of the plane and she felt the control wheel kick in her hands. “Oh God, the fuel,” she said, remembering the fuel tanks in the wings above her head. She began twisting the control wheel from side to side, jerking the plane around in the air. Mitchell’s body swayed grotesquely, held in place by the seat belt. His blood was dripping everywhere, though thankfully his feet had stopped drumming on the pedals.

Jamie had followed her instructions and was lying across the back seats, sobbing into his hands.

“It’s okay, honey, it’s going to be okay,” Sandra said, though there was no conviction in her trembling voice. Her mind was racing and she couldn’t remember what the emergency procedures were. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to picture the emergency transponder code. Seven Seven Zero Zero. She took her left hand off the control wheel and fumbled with the dials on the transponder, turning them to the four figures which would set alarms ringing at all radar facilities within range. The wheel jerked in her hand and pulled forward as the plane began to dive again. The engine started to splutter and the whole plane bucked and reared like a runaway stallion. Her hands shook as she keyed in the emergency frequency on the radio: 121.50 MHz. The control wheel began to shudder, making her shoulders vibrate.

“Mom, what’s happening?” screamed her son.

“It’s okay, honey. Stay where you are.” The engine was coughing and the propeller blades became visible as a grey disc as they slowed. Black smoke was pouring from the left side of the engine cowling. According to the altimeter they were a little over a thousand feet above the ground and the vertical speed indicator showed they were dropping at five hundred feet a minute. She clicked on the radio microphone. “Mayday, mayday,” she said. “This is Five Nine Four, position unknown, crash landing.” She couldn’t remember what other information she was supposed to give in a distress call.

The headset crackled but there was no reply. The altimeter was spinning and they were probably too low for anyone to pick up their signal. “Mayday, mayday,” she repeated, then took her thumb off the microphone switch and concentrated on the emergency procedures. She pulled back hard on the control wheel to try to keep the nose up but it suddenly went slack and she knew she’d lost control of the elevators. The dive steepened and the airspeed indicator went above the red line. The plane was diving at its maximum speed but there was surprisingly little sense of movement. Sandra Mitchell became quite detached about her own imminent death. She kept pulling back on the control wheel, knowing that it was quite useless but wanting to do something. She took deep breaths. “It’s all right, honey,” she called to her son. “It’s all right.”

The ground seemed to get no closer until the last hundred feet and then it suddenly rushed up to meet her.

Cole Howard took the pack of cards out of his pocket and slid off the elastic band he’d used to keep them together. He scanned the first one. “Who was Barnum’s partner in The Greatest Show on Earth?” he read. He thought for a while before turning the card over. The answer was J. A. Bailey. Howard sighed. The next question was “What is known as The Englishman’s Wine?” Howard smiled. “Port,” he said to himself. He turned the card over and his smile widened as he saw that he was correct. The telephone on his desk rang, a single burble that let him know it was an internal call. He picked it up as he continued to read the Trivial Pursuit card. “Howard,” he said.

“Good morning, Cole. You busy?”

It was Jake Sheldon, Cole’s immediate superior in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s office in Phoenix. “Nothing pressing, Jake,” said Howard.

“Can you come up and see me when you’ve got a moment?”

“Sure thing. Now okay?”

“Now would be just fine, Cole. Thanks.”

Howard knew that Jake Sheldon always relayed his orders as requests, often in a manner so abstruse as to cause confusion. A polite suggestion that an agent “come up and see me sometime” was as urgent a call as he’d ever make, even if his office was on fire. Agents new to the office had to be taken to one side and briefed on Sheldon’s management techniques lest they confuse his deferential manner with laziness or complacency. Howard studied one of his cards as he waited for the elevator. “How many notes are there in two adjacent octaves?” Howard frowned, decided the answer was sixteen and turned the card over. “Fifteen,” he read. He showed no annoyance at his mistake, he merely memorised the answer and went on to the next question.

Sheldon’s office was as neat and formal as the man himself, his desk uncluttered, his college degree and legal qualifications lined up on the wall behind him in identical rosewood frames, the blinds across his window as straight as razors. He was wearing a dark blue suit and crisp white shirt, a uniform which he never varied. Sheldon was rumoured to have more than a dozen suits, each exactly the same in colour and style, which he rotated religiously. He looked as if he’d just stepped out of a clothing catalogue, and even though he was sitting behind his desk he still had the jacket on. He had the look of an elder statesman, a senator perhaps, with white hair, a soft voice and fleshy jowls. He closed a file on his desk when Howard entered his office and asked him to sit. “So, Cole, how’s your lovely wife?”

“Fine, sir. Just fine.”

“And her parents?”

“Great. Just great.”

Sheldon nodded. “Give my regards to Mr Clayton when you see him.”

“I’ll do that, sir.”

The pleasantries over, Sheldon handed Howard a videocassette and the file he’d been reading. “I want you to look into this for me, Cole. It’s a strange one, a triple homicide, but there’s more to it than that. A family were flying about sixty miles south of Kingman when their plane was shot down. Normally we wouldn’t get involved in an incident of this nature, but it’s what they saw before they were shot down that involves us. Put that into the VCR, will you?”

Howard took the cassette over to the VCR in the corner of the office, slotted it home and pressed the ‘play’ button. He stood to the side and folded his arms across his chest. A woman’s face appeared on the screen, distorted because she was so close to the lens. She was laughing and Howard could hear a small boy shouting: “Go on, Mom, make a face.”

“Sandra Mitchell, a thirty-year-old homemaker. Her husband, Jim, is flying the plane. They were en route from Phoenix to Las Vegas.”

The camera moved jerkily so that the back of the pilot’s head was in frame. “Dad, Dad!” The pilot turned and gave the boy a thumbs-up.

“They were flying at about three thousand five hundred feet here, there’s a map in the file which will show you their exact position. The local police are conducting a search of the area now, but it’s going to take several days.”

The camcorder panned across the cockpit windows giving them a view of the desert far below. Sandra’s voice called out above the noise of the engine: “Don’t use all the tape.” There was a flicker showing that the video had been turned off and then there were two adults in the frame, the man and the woman standing proudly in front of their plane. It was a small Cessna, with one propeller. The man was holding in his stomach and his young wife patted him as if telling him there was no need.

The picture flickered and then there was another view out of the window. There was no way of knowing how long it had been switched off. A sandstone butte filled the screen. There was a figure lying on the top, with what looked like a rifle in his hands. The camcorder wavered as the lens zoomed in and focused on a close-up. Then the camera angled down and far below amid the cacti and brush Howard could see some sort of a tower which had been built of metal scaffolding and wooden planks.

“At about two o’clock in the afternoon they saw this structure, and another just like it, and went down to take a closer look.”

The picture swung from side to side as the boy struggled to keep the structure in sight. There was a man on the top and Howard saw that he was holding a rifle. The plane levelled off again and in the distance Howard could make out a group of figures.

The little boy played with the focus control, zooming the lens in and out on the figures standing below in the desert. It wasn’t a pleasant effect and Howard averted his eyes for a moment.

There was a sudden cracking sound and then the woman began screaming. The camcorder swung round and Howard could see there was blood all over the front of the cockpit. The top of the pilot’s head had been blown away. “My God,” whispered Howard.

The boy began screaming and the picture lurched as if the camcorder had been thrown to the side and all Howard could see was the blood-spattered material of the seat cover.

“Mrs Mitchell also had a private pilot’s licence and she took over the controls. Within thirty seconds after the first shot, eight more hit the plane.”

Howard heard the small explosions as the bullets struck home, then he heard the engine splutter and cough.

“The engine went at about the same time, and we think the plane was between a thousand and fifteen hundred feet high at that point.”

Howard heard the woman make a disjointed Mayday call, but there was no reply.

“She put out a distress call on the emergency frequency and set her transponder to the emergency code: that’s how the local Flight Service Station got her position.” Sheldon’s voice was clinical and detached.

The engine noise died and the camcorder must have moved again because Howard could see the ground rushing up.

Howard listened as the boy began to scream and his mother tried in vain to calm him down. The last thing she said was “Please God, no. .” and then there was a sickening crash, and the sound of metal grating and what sounded like the wind.

“At this point the plane is down and the occupants are dead. The camcorder continued to record for a further twenty minutes until it came to the end of the tape. You might as well switch it off now.”

Howard leaned forward and pressed the ‘stop’ button. Just before he did he thought he heard the boy call out for his father but it could have been the desert wind.

“Luckily they didn’t hit the fuel tanks. When the local sheriff got there the camcorder was intact. What you’ve got there is a copy we made. The original is in one of our labs in Washington.” Howard sat down and toyed with the cassette as he listened to Sheldon. “The towers you saw in the video had been pulled down and set on fire by the time the sheriff got there. All the vehicles had gone. There’s no sign of it in the video, but we suspect they also had a helicopter. The investigation you’ll be leading is unusual in that we’re not actually concerned about the victims in the case. All the signs are that they were merely innocent bystanders, in the wrong place at the wrong time. What we want to know is who those people were in the desert, and what they were doing.”

“So it’s not a homicide investigation?” asked Howard. He couldn’t get the woman’s voice out of his head. Trying to reassure her son as the plane plunged to the ground. He shivered.

“Those men weren’t shooting duck out there,” said Sheldon. “They’d spent a lot of time and money setting up those towers, they were obviously rehearsing something. It was a practice run for an assassination. And only an assassination of the first rank would merit such a rehearsal.”

Howard nodded. “The President?”

“Possibly. Or a visiting head of state. Someone with protection, someone they can’t get close to. It wouldn’t be a gangland hit, they prefer to get in close with a shotgun or a handgun to the back of the neck. It has to be political. And it has to be soon. Your job, Cole, is to find out who the hit is, and to stop it. Do that and you’ll hopefully also catch the men who killed the Mitchell family. But that’s secondary, you understand? Your first priority is to put a stop to the assassination.”

“I understand. Do we have any idea who the men are?”

Sheldon shook his head. “The tape is being examined by our experts now. The camcorder is one of those new models with a high-powered zoom lens, which has very high resolution. Our lab will do the initial work on the tape, but I gather that they don’t have the capability for the sort of analysis we might require. That’s one of the reasons I want you handling the investigation.”

“My father-in-law?”

Sheldon nodded. “Theodore Clayton’s electronics company is one of the few at the forefront of this technology which isn’t based in Japan. His help would be invaluable, and the request might be better coming from a family member, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure it would,” Howard agreed. He knew exactly how much Theodore Clayton would appreciate a call for help from his son-in-law.

“I want you to act as FBI liaison with the local investigators, and to organise the analysis of the tape. Any questions?”

“You said it has to be soon. Why do you think that?”

“Whoever is behind this already has his assassins in place, and obviously has a specific venue in mind. The longer they wait, the greater the risk of the whole operation falling apart. I doubt if they’re planning more than a few months ahead. It may be only a matter of weeks or days.”

“What about targets? Do we issue a warning to the President’s security people?”

Sheldon sat back in his leather chair, his palms face down on his desk like a pianist about to begin a concerto. “I’m sending a memo to the Secret Service’s Intelligence Division in Washington, of course, but at this stage I don’t want to go overboard. As yet we don’t know for certain who the target is, and I don’t want to be caught crying wolf. As soon as we know for sure who the target is we’ll throw a cordon around him, but not until then. And there’s no point in issuing a general warning — that would scare too many people needlessly and we’d run the risk of the snipers going to ground. No, Cole, you tell me for sure that it’s the President and we’ll sound the alarm.”

Sheldon paused for a few seconds as if he was having second thoughts. He tapped his fingers on the desktop. “But I think it would be a good idea if you got hold of the President’s itinerary and see if there are any situations where snipers could get at him.”

Howard left Sheldon’s office with the tape and file. He wasn’t looking forward to asking his father-in-law for help.

Mike Cramer looked at his watch, pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk and put his hand on the bottle of Famous Grouse he kept there. He took it out and weighed it in his hand. It was a powerful hand, the fingers strong and the nails neatly clipped. There was scar tissue over the first two knuckles and the skin looked as if it had been out in all weathers. It was the hand of a sailor, a hand used to doing manual work. It was shaking as it held the bottle and the whisky slopped against the glass. Cramer tightened his grip but that just intensified the trembling. He stood the bottle on the desk and looked at the label as he used his foot to close the drawer.

He looked at his watch again. Nine-fifteen. He’d only bought the bottle the previous evening in the off-licence down the road but already it was half empty. Cramer smiled to himself. There had been a time when he might have taken a more positive view and thought that the bottle was half full, but those days were long gone. He unscrewed the cap and lifted the neck of the bottle to his nose. He sniffed gently, the way a dog might test the night air, then he took a mouthful, swallowing almost immediately. Cramer wasn’t drinking for the flavour, he was drinking to stop the shakes. He took another mouthful, then another, and then recapped the bottle and put it back into his desk drawer. He had an open pack of Wrigley’s gum on his desk and he unwrapped a piece and popped it in his mouth.

The office was small and windowless. It took up a corner of a large warehouse and was little more than a plywood box with space for two desks, a photocopier, a filing cabinet, a small fridge and five steel lockers. On the wall above the filing cabinet was a chart and Cramer went over to look at it. Two groups were due to start at nine-thirty so he went to check the battle arena.

The warehouse had been built as a place to store goods before they were loaded on to ships on the Thames, back in the days when the east of London was a thriving docks and not just an offshoot of the City’s financial district. As the shipping companies switched over to containers and the river traffic died off, the best of the warehouses were transformed into Yuppie flats and glitzy winebars, but this one was too run down to be remodelled and it had been left to decay. The two young Greek Cypriot businessmen Cramer worked for had bought the warehouse for a song at a time when property prices were falling, and they had turned it into a successful paintball venue where executives could work off their aggression by pretending to blow each other away with paint pellets instead of bullets. There were five floors in the building, linked by a staircase at each end. The new owners had installed fireman’s poles and ladders then had added wooden walls, chain-link fences and other obstacles to make a battlefield which they illuminated with a computer-controlled light and laser system. The top four floors were used for combat, and on the ground floor was the office, along with a changing room and shower facilities, a shop selling paintballs, equipment and clothing, and a large practice area where the players could fire their guns at targets. Cramer went into the shop and turned on the lights. There were no windows anywhere in the warehouse other than in the roof so everywhere had to be illuminated. Racks of sweatshirts and nylon protective clothing were against one wall with a display of goggles and facemasks lined up above them. In a case by the cash register there was a selection of the latest paintguns and cleaning kits. Cramer checked that there was change in the cash register, then went to turn the lights on in the practice area. As he walked across the concrete floor he heard the main door swing open and turned to see Charlie Preston walk out of the sunlight.

“Yo, Mike, sorry I’m late,” shouted Preston. He was a teenager who’d started working at the arena on a Government-sponsored work experience programme but had stayed on as a full-time employee, more because he loved the sport than because of the money. Preston had once spent four weeks travelling across America in Greyhound buses and during the trip he’d acquired a collection of sweatshirts and an accent which he kept in shape by watching American movies. As he closed the door behind him, Cramer could see that he was wearing his Washington Redskins shirt and knee length Miami Dolphins shorts and had on a blue New York Yankees baseball cap. Cramer smiled. It was barely above freezing outside. The boy had style, all right. “No sweat, Charlie,” he answered. “You see anyone out there?”

“Couple of BMWs just drove up. I guess that’s them.”

Cramer hit the light switches and the fluorescent lights above the practice area flickered into life. “Okay, can you check the arena lights program? We’re going to use number six, we were having trouble with the searchlight on number five yesterday so I want to see if it’s the programming or the light that’s not right.”

“Cool,” said Preston. As he walked over to the computerised console which controlled the lighting system, two men arrived carrying nylon holdalls. They were both in their late twenties, well groomed and tanned as if just back from a Mediterranean holiday. One of them dropped his holdall on the floor.

“You in charge?” he called over to Cramer.

“Sure am,” answered Cramer. “Which team are you?”

“We’re the Bayswater Blasters. Is the other side here yet?”

“You’re the first,” said Cramer. “You’re due to start at nine-thirty, right?”

Five more young men arrived, all dressed casually in jeans and sweatshirts. “They here, Simon?” one of them shouted.

“No, you sure they said they’re still on?” the man in glasses replied.

“Sure. I spoke to their captain on Wednesday.”

“Why don’t you get changed while you’re waiting?” Cramer suggested. “Have you guys played here before?”

They all shook their heads so Cramer showed them where the changing room was and gave them photocopied maps of the arena. When they reappeared ten minutes later there was still no sign of their opponents. Cramer watched them as they waited by the main entrance. They were wearing camouflage outfits and military-style boots and carrying futuristic paintball helmets and facemasks. They were all equipped with neck protectors, padded gloves and special vests to hold extra paintballs and had clearly spent a lot of money on their gear. Their weapons were also expensive. Their leader, the one called Simon, was carrying a Tippmann Pneumatics 68 Special semi-automatic which had been fitted with a twenty-ounce carbon dioxide constant-air cylinder and a large capacity bulk loader which would hold up to two hundred rounds. It would pack a punch, Cramer knew, and the TASO red dot sight meant it would be accurate, too, though he also knew from experience that most players who used semi-automatics just kept firing blindly until they hit something, relying on brute force rather than skill. The ‘spray and pray’ method.

Cramer looked at his watch. It was nine-forty. He went over to Simon and asked him if they wanted to start.

“Our opponents still aren’t here,” he said.

“You’ve booked it for the next two hours whether they come or not,” said Cramer.

“Yeah, but there’s no point without someone to fight, is there?”

“You could divide into two teams.”

Simon gave Cramer a withering look. “You can count, right? There are seven of us.”

Cramer raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, okay, I just didn’t want you to waste your money, that’s all.”

Preston walked over, doing his impersonation of a Brooklyn pimp. “They ready?” he asked.

“No, we’re not ready,” snapped Simon.

Cramer explained that the opposition hadn’t turned up.

“Bummer,” said Preston.

Simon looked at his watch, a rugged stainless steel diving model, and made tut-tutting noises. Preston tugged at the peak of his baseball cap. “You could split into two teams,” he suggested. He nodded at Cramer. “Mike here could give you a game, that’d make it four a side.”

Simon narrowed his eyes. “We’re a team,” he said slowly as if addressing an imbecile. “We train together, we have a system, we can’t just divide into two and expect to function. It just won’t work.”

“I’ll take you on,” said Cramer, quietly.

“What do you mean?” said Simon.

“I mean I’ll give you a game. I’ll take you all on.”

Several of the men laughed. Simon looked Cramer up and down. The man in front of him was in his late thirties, a little over six feet and wiry rather than muscled, and looked as if he might be able to handle himself in a fight. But his deep-set eyes were watery and reddened, the cheeks crisscrossed with the broken veins of a heavy drinker and there was a strong smell of whisky about him that wasn’t masked by the mint-flavoured gum he was chewing. Simon shook his head. “What? You against the seven of us? I don’t think so,” he said.

“Come on, Simon, give the guy a chance,” shouted one of his team-mates.

“I tell you what,” said Cramer, “I’ll show you a new game. No enemy flags to capture, no teams. You go where you want to go, I’ll come in and get you. I call it Hide and Kill.”

“You against the seven of us?” Simon repeated.

“What, you don’t think that’s fair?” said Cramer. “How about if I tie one arm behind my back?”

Several of the team began laughing and Simon’s cheeks reddened. “Okay, you’re on,” he said. “I tell you what, why don’t we make it a bit more interesting? Why don’t we have a bet on the side?”

Cramer chewed his gum and looked at the younger man. “How much were you thinking of?”

Simon shrugged. “How does fifty pounds sound?”

“Sounds fine to me.”

Simon nodded. “Okay, so what are the rules?”

“No rules, no umpires. Everything is allowed.”

“Headshots?”

“Headshots, physical contact, whatever.”

Simon smiled. “Okay, Mr Cramer, you have yourself a game.”

“Why don’t you guys study the maps while I change,” said Cramer, as he turned to go back to the office. Preston followed him. He closed the door behind them and leant with his back against it.

“Jesus, Mike, have you got fifty pounds?”

Cramer opened his locker and pulled out a pair of paint-splattered blue overalls. “No,” he said. He pulled on the overalls and took a pair of plastic goggles from the top shelf.

“Do you wanna borrow my helmet?”

“No.”

“Aw, come on, Mike. Their semi-automatics pack a real wallop, and you’ve told them that they can go for headshots.”

Cramer went over to his desk and pulled open the bottom drawer. He took a couple of swigs from the bottle of Famous Grouse and put it back. There was no point in offering any to Preston, he drank only imported American beers. At the back of the drawer was his paintgun, an old single-shot Splatmaster. He took it out.

“You have got to be joking,” said Preston, banging the back of his head against the door. “At least use one of my guns.”

Cramer zipped up his overalls and slid the goggles on. He checked the bolt action of the gun and that it had a full twelve-gram carbon dioxide cartridge. “This’ll do just fine, Charlie.”

Preston opened the door for him and they walked together back to the Bayswater Blasters who were fastening their gloves and neck protectors.

“Ready?” asked Cramer.

Simon raised his eyebrows when he saw Cramer’s gun. “You’re going to use that?” he said. He lifted his own gun, with its skeleton stock and laser sight. “Against these?”

Cramer winked. “Wanna raise the bet?”

Simon shook his head in amazement. “We’re ready.”

“Okay, there are four floors above here, you go up and pick your positions. I’ll give you two minutes.”

Simon put the helmet on and slipped the goggles down so that his whole head was covered. He turned to his team and signalled for them to move out. Cramer sighted down his gun at the back of the man’s head and tightened his finger on the trigger. “Bang,” he said, quietly.

“What lighting system do you want?” Preston asked him.

“Bare minimum,” said Cramer. “Just enough so they don’t fall and hurt themselves. And use the red lights, it’ll screw up their laser sights.”

Preston smiled. “Be gentle with them, Mike.”

Cramer stood at the bottom of the stairwell and waited a full ten minutes before moving up to the first level. The stairs opened out into a large bare room off which led three doorways. Once he was satisfied that the room was clear he stood with his back against a wall for another five minutes, waiting for his eyes to get used to the gloom. There was no point in rushing. He wanted them to be over-eager because that way they’d be careless. He heard a footfall from somewhere above him and muffled voices. Cramer smiled. They had no patience, these game-players. Amateurs. He began to clear the first level, moving silently from room to room, his gun at the ready. There were twelve rooms on the first floor, linked by doorways but no doors. Several had furniture in, old tables and sofas, armchairs with the stuffing oozing from torn leather like purulent wounds.

He found his first opponent crouched behind a wooden chest, his gun aimed chest high at the doorway. Cramer ducked his head around the door jamb, saw the barrel of the weapon and his opponent’s plastic mask, and pulled his head back. He took a deep breath then rolled through the doorway, hitting the floor with his shoulder and coming up with his gun at the ready before the man had a chance to aim. The red dot of a laser sight flashed across his chest but the guy’s reactions weren’t anywhere near fast enough. Cramer fired and the paintball hit his opponent smack in the middle of his mask, knocking his head back and splattering the plastic with green paint which shone blackly under the dim red overhead lights.

“You’re dead,” said Cramer.

The man sat back on the floor, resting against the wall. “Fuck,” he said.

Cramer reloaded. There were only two rooms remaining on the first floor and both were clear. Three levels left, and six men to go. He doubled back to one of the rooms, which had a trapdoor leading to the second level. A thick hemp rope hung down and Cramer grabbed it. He twisted it from side to side and then set it swinging before rushing back to the stairs. He took the stairs three at a time on the balls of his feet, keeping close to the wall, his gun at the ready. He had to pass through one room before he reached the room where the rope was, and it was clear. He put his head close to the doorway and listened. He heard something rustle and he risked a quick look. The rope was swinging gently. In the far corner of the room one of his opponents was moving cautiously towards the trapdoor, his eyes fixed on the hole and the rope, the barrel of his gun pointing down. Cramer stepped into the doorway and shot the man in the chest. The man looked up, unwilling to believe that he’d been hit so easily. He put a gloved hand onto the wet patch of paint and looked at it. Cramer raised his gun in salute, then motioned silently that the man could go down the rope and wait for his friends.

Cramer chewed his gum thoughtfully. So far he’d been lucky. His paintgun could only fire a single shot at a time so he’d have real problems if he came up against more than one opponent. He could have borrowed Preston’s gun but something about the team leader’s attitude had got under his skin. He reloaded and ducked into the next room. Clear. He heard a cough from the room ahead and smiled thinly. Despite all the money they spent on the gear, the weekend warriors just didn’t take it seriously. They got hit, they wiped off the paint and they played again. That made them careless because they knew that they’d always get another chance. Cramer had trained in a different school. He picked up a wooden chair and placed it at the side of the doorway, careful to make no sound as the legs touched the wooden floor. He placed his foot against it and then kicked it hard into the middle of the next room. It hadn’t travelled three feet before it was peppered with paintballs. The guy had his finger tight on the trigger sending out a stream of the small spheres which burst in fountains of yellow paint whenever they hit their target. Cramer bent low around the doorway, and aimed and fired with one smooth movement, catching the man dead centre in his chest. The man stopped firing and shook his head sorrowfully. “Dumb, dumb, dumb,” he muttered.

“Can’t argue with that,” said Cramer, reloading.

He waited until the defeated opponent was going back down before moving ahead, knowing that the sound of footsteps on the stairs would be a distraction. Three down, four to go.

By the time Cramer had got to the top level of the warehouse there were only two opponents left. The top level was the most dangerous because there were several old skylights through which the sunlight streamed in, leaving no dark corners in which to hide. It had originally been one large storage area but had been divided up into a maze with eight-foot tall sections of plasterboard. Cramer’s big advantage was that he’d memorised the layout of the maze, but that didn’t count for much against two opponents. He stood at the stairwell as he steadied his breathing. Above the maze were thick oak rafters, supporting the slate roof and its skylights. The rafters were about ten feet above the top of the maze and would provide a perfect vantage point, but climbing up would expose himself. He decided not to risk it, not with fifty pounds at stake. There were four entrances to the maze, one on each side, and Cramer chose the one furthest from the stairs which he’d climbed. He went in low, checking left and right before standing up. He listened. There was a scuffling noise from somewhere off to the right but it sounded more like a scavenging river rat than a pair of Reeboks. He approached a junction and bent down so that his head was at waist level before looking around the corner. Nothing. He kept his gun moving, ready to lock onto any target, his left hand out for balance as he crept forward. He felt rather than heard the presence behind him and he twisted and ducked in one movement as a stream of pellets blasted into the wall where his head had been a second earlier. He fired and saw his paintball thwack into Simon’s neck protector. Simon levelled his gun at Cramer and pulled the trigger, but before the first ball had left the barrel Cramer had launched himself to the side and into another section of the maze. The team leader was a sore loser and was refusing to acknowledge that he’d been hit. Cramer reloaded and kept moving. He could hear Simon behind him. He took a left turn and then a right, and was about to head left again when he almost bumped into the last remaining player. Cramer pulled his head back just in time to avoid a single shot and then he rolled forward and fired at the same time, catching his opponent in the chest. “Good shot,” said the man approvingly and lowered his gun. Cramer moved to go around him but as he did Simon appeared from a side passage, paint still running down his chest. Simon’s gun came up and Cramer grabbed the man he’d just shot, pulling him into the line of fire. Simon fired and bullets pounded into the man’s chest, each exploding into a yellow flower of paint.

“Hey come on, Simon!” yelled the man. His team leader was so close that the shots hurt, even through the overall and vest.

Simon kept firing, hoping that one of the balls would hit Cramer. Cramer needed one hand to hold the man up in front of him so he couldn’t reload. He pushed his human shield forward onto the barrel of Simon’s gun and then grabbed Simon’s arm, close to the elbow, twisting around to get him in a lock. Simon squealed and Cramer used his hip to throw him onto his back. The semi-automatic fell to the ground and Cramer put his foot on Simon’s chest, pinning him to the ground. Simon was winded and he lay gasping for breath, unable to speak. Cramer’s other victim got to his feet, his chest covered with yellow paint. “You bastard, Simon,” he said.

Cramer calmly reloaded his gun and aimed it at Simon’s chest. “Game, set and match,” he said quietly, and fired. The paintball caught Simon just over his heart and exploded. Cramer walked away without looking back.

Preston was waiting for him downstairs by the office with the five members of the Bayswater Blasters he’d defeated earlier. “How did it go?” Preston asked.

“Piece of cake,” Cramer said, removing his goggles. One of the men handed Cramer five ten-pound notes and he winked and accepted the money. Simon came down the stairs, his helmet still on, and went into the changing room without saying anything. The guy Cramer had used as a shield shrugged as if apologising for Simon’s bad behaviour and followed him inside.

“Did you see him?” Preston asked.

“Did I see who?” replied Cramer.

“The guy who was looking for you. Old guy, said he wanted to see you. I told him you were in the middle of a game and he said he’d give you a surprise. Borrowed a paintgun and a helmet and went in about ten minutes ago.”

Cramer frowned and spat his chewing gum into a wastepaper bin. “Old guy?” he asked. To Preston, anyone over the age of thirty was old.

Preston shrugged. “Grey hair, about your height, bit bigger. He didn’t give a name. Said he was an old friend.”

“I guess I should see what he wants,” said Cramer. He slid the goggles back on and reloaded his Splatmaster. He crept back up the stairs, wondering who his mysterious visitor was and why he wanted to play games rather than meet in the office. The first level was clear but as he passed beneath the rope and trapdoor he heard a footfall as if someone had suddenly shuffled backwards. Cramer smiled. He took the end of the rope and started swinging it, before running silently back to the stairs. It was going to be too easy, he thought. He moved through the first room on the second level, and stood for a moment by the open doorway. He heard a noise in the far right-hand corner and he moved immediately, stepping to the left and sweeping his gun around at chest height, seeking his target. He frowned as he realised that the room was deserted, then his heart sank as he saw the single paintball lying in the corner. Before he could move he felt the barrel of a gun jam up against his chin.

“Careless, Joker,” said a voice by his left ear. Cramer shifted his weight and brought up his right arm, trying to grab his adversary but the man behind him swayed easily away and swept Cramer’s feet from underneath him with a savage kick. Cramer hit the ground heavily and before he could react the man was on top of him and the gun was once more pressing into his throat. “Very careless.”

Cramer squinted up at the facemask. “Colonel?” he said.

The figure pulled off his facemask with his left hand, the right keeping the paintgun hard up against Cramer’s flesh. Cramer looked up at the familiar face of his former mentor. It had been more than two years since he had set eyes on the senior SAS officer. His hair was considerably greyer than last time they’d met, and cut slightly shorter, but the features were the same: eyes so brown they were almost black, a wide nose which had been broken several times, and a squarish jaw that gave him a deceptive farmboy look. Cramer knew the Colonel had a double first from Cambridge, was once one of the top twelve chess players in the United Kingdom, and was an acknowledged expert on early Victorian watercolours. “Good to see you, Colonel,” said Cramer.

“You’re unfit, Sergeant Cramer,” said the Colonel with a smile. “You wouldn’t last two minutes in the Killing House with those sort of moves.”

“It’s been a long time, Colonel. I guess I’m out of practice.”

“You’re out of condition, too. A few forced marches across the Brecon Beacons would do you the world of good.” The Colonel stood up and offered Cramer a hand to help him up off the ground. “You sounded like an elephant on crutches, Joker. And you never, ever, enter a room without checking out all the angles. You know that.”

Cramer rubbed his neck. “I can’t believe I fell for the oldest trick in the book.”

The Colonel slapped him on the back. “Have you got somewhere we can talk?”

Cramer took him downstairs and told Preston he was going to use the office for a while. Two more teams of paintball players had arrived and Preston was busy setting up a game for them. Cramer closed the door and waved the Colonel to a chair. He pulled the bottle of Famous Grouse from his desk drawer and held it out to the Colonel, who nodded. Cramer poured large measures of whisky into two coffee mugs and handed one to his visitor. They clinked mugs.

“To the old days,” said Cramer.

“Fuck them all,” said the Colonel.

“Yeah, fuck them all,” said Cramer. They drank, and Cramer waited for the Colonel to explain why he was visiting.

“So, how long have you been working here?” asked the Colonel.

Cramer shrugged. “A few months. It’s just temporary, until I can find something else.”

“Security job didn’t work out?”

“Too many lonely nights. Too much time to think.” Cramer wondered how the Colonel knew about his previous job as a nightwatchman. He poured himself another measure of whisky.

“Money problems? The pension coming through okay?” Cramer shrugged. He knew that the Colonel hadn’t come to talk about his financial status. “You ever meet a guy called Pete Manyon?” asked the Colonel.

Cramer shook his head.

“I guess he must have joined the regiment after you left. He was in D squadron.”

Cramer looked at the whisky at the bottom of his mug. If the Colonel had bothered to check up on his employment record, he’d have been just as capable of checking the regimental files. He’d have known full well whether or not the two men had served together.

“He died a week ago. In Washington.” He held out his empty mug for a refill. As Cramer poured in a generous measure of Famous Grouse, the Colonel scrutinised his face for any reaction. “He’d been tortured. Four of his fingers had been taken off. He’d virtually been skinned alive. And he’d been castrated.”

Cramer’s hand shook and whisky slopped down the side of the Colonel’s mug. “Shit,” said Cramer. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” said the Colonel, putting his mug down on the desk and wiping his hand with a white handkerchief.

“It was Hennessy, right?”

The Colonel nodded.

“Bitch,” said Cramer venomously.

“Manyon was a captain, working undercover in the States, on the trail of Matthew Bailey, an IRA activist. We’d heard that he’d popped up in New York so Manyon infiltrated one of the NORAID groups there.”

“Did he say he’d seen Hennessy?”

The Colonel shook his head. “No, but considering what happened to him. .”

“Yeah, yeah, I get the picture. Jesus Christ, Colonel, the bitch should have been put down years ago.”

The Colonel shrugged. “She’s been underground a long time, Joker. And she has a lot of friends.”

“I can’t believe you let a Rupert go undercover against the IRA,” said Cramer. “I mean, I’ve served under some bloody good officers, I can’t deny that, but knowing which fork to use and what month to eat oysters in doesn’t carry any weight when you’re hanging around with the boys. They can spot a Rupert a mile away.”

“He was an experienced officer, Joker. He’d been with D squadron for almost three years.”

“How old was he?”

“Twenty-five.”

Cramer shook his head, almost sadly. “After what happened to Mick Newmarch, I’d have thought the SAS would’ve learnt its lesson.”

“I know how the NCOs feel about officers, but Manyon was different. His parents were Irish, his accent was perfect and he knew Belfast inside out. His cover was faultless, Joker.”

“So how did he get caught?” Cramer poured himself another whisky. He offered a refill to the Colonel but he shook his head. The question was clearly rhetorical and the Colonel didn’t answer.

“How are you these days, Joker?” The Colonel looked Cramer up and down like a surgeon contemplating a forthcoming operation. Cramer wondered if he looked like a man who’d lost his nerve.

“I get by,” Cramer replied. “Why do you ask? Is Mars and Minerva thinking of doing a feature on me? It’d be nice to get an honourable mention in the regimental journal.”

“You sound bitter.”

“No, not bitter, Colonel. I can’t spend all my time looking back, there’s no profit in that. I just want to get on with my life.”

The two men sat in silence. Overhead they heard shouts and the sound of running feet. “You should let them try it with live ammo,” said the Colonel with a smile. “See how they like it.”

“Yeah,” agreed Cramer. “They’d piss themselves stupid the first time they used a real weapon.”

The Colonel looked at Cramer with unblinking eyes. “What about you? Could you face action again?”

Cramer started, the question catching him by surprise. He looked at his former boss, wondering if he was joking. “I’m Elvis, Colonel. You know that. Yesterday’s man.”

“You were right when you said the boys could spot undercover officers, Joker. We need someone who fits in, someone who doesn’t look like he’s just come off a parade ground. You know as well as I do that even when our men grow their hair and slouch around in torn jeans and Nikes, they still look like soldiers. Undercover work isn’t our speciality.” Cramer was already shaking his head. “We need someone who has lost his edge, Joker. No disrespect, but we need someone who doesn’t look as if he can handle himself, someone who has let himself go.”

“Thanks, Colonel. Thanks a bunch. You’re really making me feel good about myself.”

“I’m being honest, that’s all. Have you taken a look at yourself recently? You reek of drink, you’ve got broken veins in your cheeks that have been months in the making, and you’ve a gut on you that’d do credit to a Sumo wrestler. No-one in their right mind would ever suspect you of being in the SAS.”

“That goes for me, too, Colonel. Double.”

“We want Mary Hennessy, Joker. We want to take her out. A hard arrest, a shoot-to-kill operation, whatever you want to call it.”

“Revenge.”

“That’s as good a word as any, Joker. And you’re the man who can get it for us.”

Cramer finished his whisky and picked up the bottle. It was empty. Completely empty. He dropped it into the wastepaper bin by the side of his desk. “You’re asking me because of what happened to Newmarch, aren’t you? And because of what she did to me?”

“I’m asking you because you’re the best man for the job. The only man.”

Cramer shuddered. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“I understand that.” The Colonel stood up and held out his hand. Cramer shook it. “You know where you can reach me, Sergeant Cramer.”

“Yes, sir,” Cramer replied. The ‘sir’ slipped out naturally and the Colonel smiled. He left the office, leaving Joker deep in thought, staring at the empty whisky bottle.

Cole Howard caught the morning flight to Washington, DC. As he sat in the front row of the economy section he flicked through the pack of Trivial Pursuit cards he’d brought with him. “You like playing?” asked his neighbour, an elderly woman in a neck brace. “My nephews bought me a set last Christmas. I play it all the time.”

“I dislike the game intensely,” Howard answered. The woman looked shocked as if Howard had sworn at her and she buried her head in a magazine. Howard began to go through the cards, memorising the answers.

There was a queue for taxis when he arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport but he took the wait good-naturedly. The FBI laboratories were half an hour’s drive from the airport, during which time he worked his way through another two dozen cards. On arrival, he clipped his FBI badge to his breast pocket and flashed his identification at the security guards at reception. He was told that the lab he was looking for was on the second floor. There he asked for Dr Kim. He wasn’t surprised when a woman came out to meet him, because they’d spoken several times on the phone, but he was surprised at how young and attractive she was. She was Oriental, with waist-length hair which she wore as a single braid. She had razor-sharp cheekbones and a small, delicate mouth and oval eyes which narrowed almost to slits when she smiled. “Dr Kim,” said Howard, as they shook hands. His hand seemed to dwarf hers. It was as delicate as a six-year-old’s, with nails painted a deep red.

“Call me Bonnie,” she said. “My lab’s this way.” Her high heels clicked on the tiled floor as they walked. Even with the heels the top of her forehead barely reached his shoulders, and Howard was only a little over six feet tall. She took him past several doors and into a long, thin laboratory which had white benches lining the walls and a small cubbyhole of an office at the end. On the benches in the lab were several IBM computers and racks of VCRs and monitors. One of the VCRs had been opened up and she’d been doing something with a circuit board and a soldering iron. The iron was still on and she pulled out the plug.

She poured him a cup of coffee from a percolator and sat on a swivel chair facing one of the monitors. She opened a drawer under the bench and handed him a pale blue file.

“These are prints of what I’ve been able to achieve so far,” she said. “But I wanted you to see the video with me, too. I have some suggestions which might help.”

Howard sipped his coffee as she started the video. By now he knew every second by heart, and he could watch it without emotion. He no longer grieved for the dying family, and he could listen to the woman’s last words of comfort to her son without cringing inside. They watched it together, in silence.

“This is the original video,” she said, “the same version you’ve seen in Phoenix. I’ve taken the signal on the tape and programmed it into the computer, then used it to boost the definition several-fold. To see it we’ll need a very high-definition television monitor, this one here.” She flicked a switch on a console and the video played again on a wider television screen. Howard could see the improvement immediately. Bonnie kept her hand on the pause button and as the camera panned to the ground below she pressed it. The frozen picture was much sharper than on a standard video-recorder, too; there was no fuzzy line or flickering. On the screen was one of the towers, and Howard could clearly see a figure with a rifle. The face was still blurred.

“The quality is much improved, but there are limits to what we can do with analog methods,” said Bonnie. She let the video play on. “We can get better results by digitising the video and storing it on a CD.” She patted one of the computers, an unimposing white box. “This is our image processor, which takes the video signal and digitises it. We call it a frame grabber. It can digitise images in real-time — about one-thirtieth of a second each — and save them into storage. Then we use a computer to handle and process the data. Once we’ve processed the images and cleaned them up, we can choose the frames we want on the monitor, and print them on a film recorder. That gives us much better definition. That’s what’s in the file — computer-generated pictures.”

Howard opened the file and looked inside. There was a stack of more than twenty glossy eight-by-tens. He went through them. There were photographs of the towers, and close-ups of the snipers. None was clear enough to make out their faces, however.

“That’s the best I can do with my equipment,” Bonnie said as she saw his face fall. “Not much help, I’m afraid. Though you can see that they’re better than the images we had on the screen.”

“What have you done to them?” Howard asked.

“I tried neighbourhood averaging first, but that wasn’t too helpful,” she said. “Those pictures are after I used a technique called median filtering. I could probably enhance them more if I used pixel aggregation, but that’s going to take me more time.” She smiled as she saw the deep furrows appear on Howard’s forehead. She took a sheet of paper and a pencil, and drew a square box with deft strokes. “Imagine this is a tiny piece of the screen,” she said. “That unit is as small as you can go. It’s indivisible. We call it a pixel. The camcorder in the plane was a Toshiba TSC-100, with a Canon 12:1 servo zoom lens, and it records 410,000 pixels with seven hundred horizontal lines. That’s a lot more than the average camcorder, some have fewer than 300,000 pixels on the image sensor. He had some pretty specialised equipment.”

Howard nodded. “He was a real-estate salesman, he used it to make videos of properties he was selling.”

“Ah, that explains it,” said Bonnie. “We’re lucky he had it, because anything less powerful and we probably wouldn’t see half the details we have. You can make that pixel as large as you want, it’ll still be one unit. You’ll just have a big pixel. What neighbourhood averaging does is to smooth out the image by taking an average of the colour and brightness of individual pixels in a predefined area. There was an improvement in the clarity of the images, but the edges blurred and we actually lost some detail, which was to be expected. Median filtering is a similar computer technique, but it uses a median value instead of an average value. It’s a small difference, but a significant one. I ran through a three-by-three neighbourhood and then a five-by-five, right on up to a nine-by-nine. For the worst areas I’d like to use the technique I mentioned, pixel aggregation. You choose a pixel which has properties you can clearly identify in terms of colour or texture and then you gradually move outwards, adding to it pixels of matching qualities, until you grow a defined region. That produces clusters of matching pixels, which can then be highlighted. I’m afraid it’ll take me quite a while with the equipment I have.”

Howard continued to go through the photographs as he listened to Bonnie’s explanation, most of which went way over his head. One of the pictures showed a row of bald, naked figures. “What are these?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m quite proud of those,” she said. “You could barely see them in the original, and the camera only picked them up once, but they’re there all right. They’re what the snipers are aiming at. Four dummies. The sort used in shop window displays.”

Howard put two photographs on the bench. They showed two sedan cars and a large flatbed truck. “I didn’t see these in the video,” he said.

Bonnie nodded eagerly. “They were only there for a few seconds, when the plane was spinning. The quality isn’t good, but you can see the colour and make. They’re Chrysler Imperials, one blue, one white. The truck I’m not sure about. Could be a Dodge.”

“That’s good, really good,” said Howard. He made a mental note to ask the Sheriff’s Department about tyre tracks at the scene.

The next set of pictures showed a group of three people standing together, a middle-aged man with a paunch, a young man, and a woman. The older man was holding something in his hand. There was a magnifying glass on the bench and Howard used it to examine the object.

“It’s a walkie-talkie, I think,” said Bonnie. “I assume he used it to keep in contact with the snipers.”

“Is there any way of magnifying the photographs any further?” Howard asked.

Bonnie shook her head. Her long braid swung from side to side like a rope. “I’ve taken it as far as I can,” she said. “I can make the images bigger, but I don’t have the software necessary for the sort of filtering that would make them any sharper. You should try one of the Japanese firms. Sony, or Hitachi. They should have the computers geared up for it. Or you could try firms working on artificial intelligence or robotics.”

“Robotics?” queried Howard.

“Robotics companies are big on artificial intelligence, and that’s the sort of expertise you’ll need. The pictures can be cleared up further by the application of algorithms using what are called the Hough Transform and Fourier Transform, and I can tell you which experts would be able to do that. A computer with some form of artificial intelligence could compare adjoining pixels and correct for abnormalities based on an assumption of what it’s looking for.”

Howard frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“Well, if the computer knows it’s looking at a face, it will know that an eye has a certain shape, so has a nose, so has a chin. It has to know whether a dark patch is a moustache, a nostril, or the pupil of an eye. It has to know that human bodies are made up of curves, but that mechanical objects are usually flat surfaces. If it’s looking at a licence plate, for instance, it must know to look for numbers and letters and not abstract shapes. I’m sorry, Agent Howard, I’m not explaining this very well.”

“Cole,” he said, “please call me Cole. And you’re doing just fine. Actually, I know someone who has access to the sort of technology you’re talking about.”

“Really?” she said. “Who would that be?”

“Clayton Electronics.”

Bonnie raised her eyebrows. “They’re good. Of course, their head office is in Phoenix, I’d forgotten. Why didn’t you go to them first?”

Howard stacked the photographs together and slid them back into the file. “We wanted to keep it within the FBI as much as possible. You’ve seen the video, you know what the implications are.”

Bonnie lowered her eyes and her cheeks reddened like a guilty schoolgirl. Howard wanted to ask her what was wrong but felt that she’d shy away from such a direct approach. He waited for her to tell him what was troubling her.

“I had an idea,” she said, still avoiding his eyes. “Well, not my idea, really. It was my husband’s.”

“Your husband?”

She nodded and raised her head. “He’s a mathematician. A PhD. He specialises in computer graphics.”

Howard was bemused, but he listened attentively. Bonnie Kim was clearly very intelligent and anything she had to offer on the case could only be of help.

“I was explaining about the video, about the three men with rifles and the towers, and he said it would make an interesting computer model. You could program the coordinates of the men and the targets, and get a 3-D structure representing their positions.”

Howard understood why she’d been embarrassed. She’d told her husband about the video, and was now worried she’d breached security. He wanted to tell her that it was okay, but he didn’t want to interrupt her. Her eyes were shining with enthusiasm. “You work out the heights of the towers, you calculate the angles and distances to the target, and then you superimpose that model on all the different venues where the target is due to appear.”

Howard tapped the file with his fingers. “He could do that?”

“He could do the preliminary work, sure. I haven’t shown him the video, but if I did he could put together the model, he said. He’d need to know the exact time of day the video was shot, so that he could use the shadows to determine heights and so on, and he might have to go out to the site to make some measurements, but yes, he could do it.”

“What about the venues? How would he get those into his computer?”

“You’d need street plans and the heights of the various buildings. He could customise a program for you, but it would take a lot of work to input the information. Once it’s in, though, the program would produce a 3-D model of the area, and it could then superimpose the snipers and target on it. It would tell you if the snipers were preparing for that venue or not. And if the models do fit, it’ll tell you exactly where the snipers will be. It’s a brilliant idea.”

Howard smiled. “It is. Your husband’s a very clever man. We do have one problem, though. At the moment we don’t know who the target is.”

Bonnie’s mouth opened, showing perfect white teeth. “Oh. I just assumed. .”

“That it was the President?”

She nodded. “You think it’s someone else?”

“Bonnie, we just don’t know. But your husband’s idea is a good one. We know the President’s itinerary well in advance; if he can set the program up for us, I can bring in extra manpower to do the inputting.”

“So I can tell him to go ahead?”

“Sure.”

Bonnie positively beamed. “He’ll be so pleased. He thinks it’ll be like a detective story. He suggested I ask you to come to dinner with us, tonight. I’ll cook, and he can go over the details with you.”

It was an offer Howard couldn’t refuse.

Andy and Bonnie Kim’s house was a spacious single-storey ranch house in a quiet suburban road to the north of Washington. The grass was neatly cropped, the paths were edged with orderly flower beds and the Stars and Stripes fluttered from a white flagpole. Two cars were parked outside when Howard arrived: a Buick Roadmaster and a Cherokee Laredo, and when Bonnie Kim opened the front door and let him in he could see that the interior was just as all-American. It wasn’t what Howard expected at all. He’d always assumed that Koreans stuck closely to their heritage, but the Kims seemed to want it made clear to everyone that they were Americans through to the core.

Andy Kim had a round, smiling face and a mop of black hair which was continually falling over his eyes. He was as tall as Howard, but much thinner, and his horn-rimmed spectacles gave him a bookish appearance. He shook hands with Howard and asked him if he wanted a beer. Howard said he’d prefer an orange juice and Andy led him through to the living room while Bonnie went to the kitchen. Bonnie had changed from her working clothes into a floral print dress with a white collar and she’d let her hair loose so that it flowed around her shoulders and down her back. She looked impossibly young and he realised that she probably adopted the more severe look in the laboratory in order to be taken more seriously. She’d lost the high heels too and now stood just a little over five feet tall.

Howard sat down on a long sofa and looked around the room. One wall was lined with bookshelves, a mixture of scientific books, romances and thrillers, all of them in English. On a coffee table were copies of Scientific American, Fortune and several computer magazines. The large-screen television was on but the sound had been muted. The Washington Redskins were playing.

“Do you want to watch the game?” Andy asked.

“I’m not a big football fan,” replied Howard.

“Really? I love it. There’s a lot of mathematics in football, you know?”

Bonnie came into the room carrying a bottle of Budweiser for her husband and a tall glass of orange juice for Howard. “Dinner’s ready,” she said, “come on through.”

Before he’d stepped into the house, Howard had expected that Bonnie would cook Korean food for him and that he’d have to deal with chopsticks but having seen the interior he wasn’t in the least surprised to see that Bonnie had prepared steak, french fries and ears of white corn. After the meal, Bonnie served them coffee and all three of them went into the study, a wood-panelled room with several workbenches which were stacked high with electrical equipment and computers. Andy sipped his coffee as he switched on one of the machines. “I’ve done a little preparatory work already,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“No problem,” said Howard, sitting on a stool and watching as Andy’s fingers played across the keyboard.

“These graphics are really simple, but they’ll give you an idea what I have in mind,” said Andy. Two circles appeared on the screen, green on a black background. Andy pressed another series of keys and the circles were replaced by two figures, one a man with a rifle, another a standing figure. “Okay, suppose we have one sniper, and a target. And suppose the distance between them is five hundred feet, and the angle is ten degrees.” His fingers tapped at the keyboard and the picture became three-dimensional, with a dotted circle above the target. “We know that the sniper must be somewhere along this line,” Andy continued. “Now, if we superimpose the sniper’s possible positions on a city plan. .” Several square and oblong shapes appeared on screen in various colours. “I know, they don’t look like buildings, but you get the drift,” he said.

Howard smiled. “I’m trying,” he said.

Andy flicked his hair from his eyes and pushed his spectacles higher up his nose. “Okay, so now we can see which of the buildings are the right height and position to contain the sniper. And you can tell which floor he must be on to shoot at the required angle. Now, with only one sniper there are several positions which satisfy the position requirements.” He pointed to four positions on the three-dimensional map where buildings coincided with the circle. “But, if we increase the number of snipers, we restrict the number of options.”

Andy bent over the keyboard and began pressing keys quickly. The shapes disappeared from the screen and he added two more snipers, each linked to the target with a dotted line. “With three points to work with, the positions become more fixed, each has a spatial relationship with the others, and with the target. This time we don’t get a circle, we have a tetrahedron. .” A three-dimensional four-sided shape appeared on the screen, like a knifepoint sticking into the ground. “Now it becomes much more difficult to fit this shape into the model of the city.” He called up the coloured blocks again. “See, all three points representing the snipers have to be in the correct position. There is only one solution.” He pointed to the three places where the sniper positions coincided with the buildings.

Howard drank his coffee. “How long did it take you to set this up?” he asked.

Andy beamed. “About three hours, but this model is really simplistic. A true working model will be much more complicated.”

“But possible?”

“Of course.”

“How long would it take?”

Andy shrugged. “The snipers and target model would take a few hours, but getting the measurements and angles is the hard part. I’d have to go out to the desert and I’d need to give the video a thorough analysis.”

“You haven’t seen it yet?”

“Of course not,” said Andy. “Bonnie wouldn’t dream of bringing FBI work home with her. She’d stay in the lab all night, but bring work home? Never.”

“I can arrange for you to see it at the lab,” said Howard.

“Okay, and I’ll have to go out to Arizona. I’ll need the best part of a day there.”

“That’s no problem,” said Howard. “You can come back with me, tomorrow morning. You can watch the video when you get back. And I already have a list of places where the President is going to be. We can use them to see if your system works. Can I ask you something, though? What do you get out of this? I mean, the FBI will cover expenses, and I guess we could come up with some consulting fees, but there’s still a lot of work involved.”

Andy looked at his wife and she nodded encouragement. “What I’d like, if it’s okay with you, is to do a paper on it, if it works. Most of my research is pretty dry stuff, all very academic, and this is a real sexy application of my computer modelling. It’d be a great paper, it’d really get people talking.”

Howard thought about Andy’s proposal. “We’d need approval of the text,” he said eventually.

“Sure. No sweat.”

“And we might want to hold out some of the details, you realise that?”

“It’s the mathematics I’m interested in, mainly.”

“And you’ve got to realise that if this goes wrong, we’ll have to keep the lid on it. You might not get the chance to publish anything.”

“I’ll take the risk.”

Howard nodded. “It’s a deal, then.” Andy grinned and Bonnie leaned over and hugged him.

Joker caught the afternoon train down to Hereford. He’d lost his licence six months earlier after a police car had pulled him over on the M25 with a blood-alcohol level almost twice the legal limit. It was a sunny day, but cold, and he was wearing a Navy pea jacket and black wool trousers. He spent the journey deep in thought, his shoulders hunched and his eyes focused in the middle distance as he stared at the countryside which rushed by the train window.

He’d vowed never to return to the SAS Sterling Lines barracks and hadn’t even replied to the Regiment’s invitation to attend its fiftieth anniversary celebrations in 1991. His time with the SAS had been one of the most challenging, and exciting, periods of his life, but it had also changed him forever. It went above and beyond being a soldier: the SAS had taught him to kill, and part of that training had been a dehumanising programme which left him with a cold, hard place where his conscience used to be. It was only after he’d left the Regiment that he’d realised what he’d lost. What they’d taken away from him.

The daylight was starting to leach from the sky as he walked away from the station and he thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket. He’d taken the day off from the paintball arena, but he hadn’t made up his mind yet whether or not to work with the Colonel. There were things he had to get straight in his head first, and for that he needed someone to talk to. A friend. He kept his head down as he walked, but his feet took him unerringly to a pub he used to frequent, set in the middle of a row of brick cottages with leaded windows and old, warping oak doors. There were two barmaids pulling pints and wiping glasses, one of whom he recognised. Her name was Dolly and she served him with a smile but no hint of recognition, leaving Joker in no doubt as to how much he’d changed over the last few years.

He ordered a Famous Grouse, a double. Two young soldiers stood together at a video game in one corner of the bar, feeding it coins as they drank pints of lager. They had the crew-cuts and thick moustaches that marked them out as being from the Parachute Regiments, from where the SAS drew most of its recruits. It would also make them feel right at home in some of London’s rough trade gay bars. Joker could never understand why they allowed the Paras to stick with their macho style once they joined the ranks of the SAS. The officers insisted that the men refrained from using military plates on their cars and that they dressed as civilians when moving between operations, yet they were so easy to spot that any terrorist worth his salt would have no problem in targeting them, on or off duty.

Joker drained his glass and signalled for another. Dolly put a refill in front of him. “Don’t I know you?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said, handing her a twenty-pound note. “Can you give me a bottle of that, to take away?”

She nodded, wrapped a bottle in a sheet of purple tissue paper and gave it to him with his change.

As Joker drank his second whisky, a woman appeared at his side and sat down on a bar stool. He saw her reflection in the mirror above the cash register: she was a bleached blonde with a washed-out complexion as if she’d spent too many years indoors. In the mirror she appeared to be about thirty-five years old but when Joker turned to look at her he saw that she was older. She was wearing a red blouse and a black skirt that was a fraction too tight. The two squaddies at the video game burst into laughter and Joker had the feeling that they were laughing at her. Relations between the SAS and the locals were strained at the best of times: the soldiers usually called them ‘pointyheads’ and treated them with contempt, while the local men accused the soldiers of stealing their women. The Saturday-night fights in the crowded bars of Hereford were legendary, as were the queues in the hospital emergency room afterwards.

The woman ordered a brandy and Coke and when she’d been served she raised her glass to Joker. “Down the hatch,” she said, and he smiled. She had the eager-to-please look of a scolded puppy.

“Cheers,” said Joker.

When she put the glass back on the bar it was smeared with lipstick. She nodded at the bottle in his pocket. “You need a hand to drink that?” she said. “I don’t live far from here.”

Joker felt a sudden wave of compassion for the woman. She looked as if she expected men to treat her badly and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “I can’t,” he said, “I’m visiting a friend and he’s a big drinker.”

Her face fell momentarily, then she smiled. “Enjoy yourself,” she said.

Joker drained his glass and left the warmth of the bar. He walked quickly, surprised at how much the temperature had dropped. He wondered if he was getting soft. The church was a brisk ten minutes walk away from the pub. It was built of grey stone with a slate roof and shielded from the road by a line of spreading chestnut trees. The wooden gate squeaked as Joker pushed it open and he walked slowly down the gravel path. He’d been to the church on more than a dozen occasions in his dress uniform: three times for weddings and the remainder for funerals. The churchyard was where the SAS buried its dead.

Joker followed the path around to the left of the church. The graves were immaculately maintained, the grass verges trimmed with military precision and there were fresh flowers in brass vases on many of the stone and marble slabs. As Joker’s feet crunched along the gravel, the graves he passed sparked off memories and he shuddered. Two of his friends had died in an ambush on the Irish border, another had perished in a car bomb in Germany. Mick Newmarch was the only one he’d seen die.

There was a fresh grave to the left, covered with bouquets of flowers which had begun to wither. The stone was clearly new and it bore the name of Pete Manyon. Joker stopped for a minute and looked at the cards that were still affixed to the floral tributes. A wife. Parents. A wreath in the form of the regimental crest.

The stone on Newmarch’s grave was brutal in its simplicity: it was a grey granite block into which had been carved the officer’s name, rank, date of birth and the date he’d died. That was it. No words of condolence, no prayers for his soul. Just the facts. When it came time for Joker to be buried six feet below the ground, that was all the epitaph he wanted. The grave was set back from the path and Joker walked across the short-cropped grass, unwrapping the bottle of Famous Grouse. He took off his pea jacket, dropped it down next to the stone and sat on it. “Evening, Mick,” he said.

He looked up at the darkening sky as he unscrewed the cap on the bottle. One or two of the brightest stars were already visible and it didn’t look as if it was going to rain.

“It’s been a while, Mick,” said Joker. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner.” He took a long, deep pull on the whisky and felt its warmth spread across his chest. He looked at the bleak stone monument. “Drink, Mick?” he asked. He poured a measure of the spirit in a slow trickle onto the lush grass and then took another mouthful himself.

Cole Howard picked up a copy of Electronics Monthly and glanced through it. He looked at his watch and pulled a face. He’d been kept waiting for fifteen minutes in his father-in-law’s office, yet he’d arrived right on time for the four o’clock appointment. There were times when Theodore Clayton could be an out-and-out bastard. Clayton’s secretary looked up from her word-processor as if she’d read his mind. “I’m sorry, Mr Howard, he’s still on his call. He knows you’re here.”

“Oh, I’m sure he does, Allison. I’m sure he does.”

He tried to read an article on a new Japanese microprocessor but his vocabulary wasn’t up to it. He tossed it back on the table and watched the tropical fish in the tank by the secretary’s desk. Brightly coloured fish weaved in and out of fronds of plants that seemed too green to be real and a stream of small bubbles dribbled up from a plastic galleon sitting on the gravel at the bottom.

At Howard’s feet was a brown leather briefcase. All it contained was the original Mitchell video. Howard could have carried the videocassette in his jacket pocket but he felt more confident entering his father-in-law’s office with a briefcase. It suggested status and authority, as did the dark grey suit he’d put on. Theodore Clayton always managed to make Howard feel as if he hadn’t washed behind his ears that morning and that he was about to be scolded for the oversight.

He’d caught the first flight from Washington with Andy Kim, who was now out in the desert with the men from the Sheriffs Department who’d been first at the scene. Howard had wanted to go with them but he knew it was important to get the video to Clayton now that he knew the limits of the FBI’s technology. He looked at his watch again and smoothed the creases of his trousers. After a while he stood up and walked over to a display case containing some of Clayton’s kachina dolls. The religious figures, carved from the roots of cottonwood trees by the Hopi Indians of Northern Arizona, were extremely valuable, and some of them dated back to the eighteenth century. Clayton was an avid collector of Native American art, and he enjoyed putting it on show, more as an exhibition of his wealth than his good taste.

“Mr Clayton will see you now, Mr Howard,” said the secretary. She stood up and opened the door for him. Howard knew that Clayton wouldn’t even consider walking to the reception area to greet him, and that when he entered his office the man would be sitting behind his big desk. He was right. Clayton waited until Howard was halfway across the large expanse of shag-pile carpet before getting to his feet and he adjusted the cuffs of his made-to-measure silk shirt before stepping around his antique desk. Clayton’s suits were made for him by a tailor in London’s Savile Row who flew over every six months for fitting sessions and they cost more than Howard earned in a month. Clayton was as well groomed as a TV weatherman and had the chiselled good looks to go with the wardrobe: brown hair greying at the temples, the sort of teeth that only serious money can buy, a light tan which suggested business trips overseas rather than vacations, and just enough wrinkles to imply maturity and confidence.

“Cole, Cole, sorry to have kept you waiting for so long.” Clayton’s apology and gleaming smile seemed as artificial as the plants in the fish tank outside. He slapped Howard on the back and guided him to a sofa in the corner of the office.

“Oh, I know how busy you are, Ted.” Howard sat down and put the briefcase on his knees.

“You said this was important?”

“Very,” said Howard.

“FBI business, or is there a problem at home?”

Howard felt himself flushing involuntarily. “No, Ted, there’s no problem at home.”

Clayton put a firm hand on Howard’s shoulder and squeezed. “Glad to hear it, Cole. Glad to hear it. So, what can I do for you?”

Howard opened the briefcase, took out the videocassette and handed it to the older man. “This is a recording of an incident out in the desert near the Havasu Lake Wildlife Refuge last week. A small plane was shot down by a group of snipers. We’ve gone as far as we can with our video equipment, and we need to know who the men are.”

“Snipers in the desert? What in God’s name would they be doing in the desert? Leaving aside the fact that it’s a wildlife refuge, there’s nothing worth hunting out there. I should know.” Theodore Clayton was an avid hunter and had a large trophy room in the basement of his home, where he insisted on taking Howard at regular intervals. Howard hated the glassy-eyed stares of Clayton’s victims but humoured him for his wife’s sake.

“We think they were rehearsing an assassination,” said Howard.

Clayton’s eyebrows leapt up. “You’re joking!” he exclaimed.

Howard shook his head. “I wish I was. There are three of them at different distances and heights from four dummies which we assume represent the target. We think the plane was shot down because they inadvertently stumbled on the rehearsal.”

“Cole, this almost defies belief. Who on earth would go to the trouble of rehearsing an assassination in the middle of a desert?”

“The rifle sights have to be calibrated, the timing has to be practised. Assuming they’re only going to get one chance, they’d obviously want to do a dry run somewhere secluded. They chose the site carefully. The only major highway anywhere near is 93 and that’s the other side of the Hualapai Mountains.”

Clayton held up the cassette. “And they recorded the whole thing?”

“No, one of the passengers had a camcorder. It survived the crash.”

“Fortuitous,” said Clayton.

“Depends on your point of view,” said Howard, thinking about Mrs Mitchell trying to calm her son as the plane plunged to the ground.

“So, what is it exactly that you want me to do with this?”

“We can’t make out the faces of the men in the video. There are three with rifles, and three more who seem to be organising the rehearsal. There are several vehicles there; we can see what make they are but we’d like to pick out the licence plates.”

“You’re not asking much, Cole!” laughed Clayton.

“Can you do it?” asked Howard.

“Depends,” said the older man, walking back to his desk. “Depends on how detailed the tape is, depth of focus, quality of the lens. There’s a whole series of factors at work. I’ll have to get my people to take a look at it before I can give you a verdict.”

“But you are doing work on this sort of tape analysis, aren’t you?”

“We sure are,” said Clayton, sitting down in his high-backed leather chair. “And the Government’s picking up most of the bill, too, so I’d be more than happy to help out the FBI. It’ll help us when it comes time for appropriations.”

“What’s Uncle Sam’s interest in video technology?” Howard asked.

Clayton smiled and beat a tempo on the top of his desk with his palms. “It’s not just Uncle Sam, Cole. Image processing is big business in medicine, physics, astronomy, biology, you name it, there’s hardly a scientific field not involved. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface. The day’s going to come when machines will read and analyse X-rays and Cat-scans, without any humans being involved at all. Diagnosis by machines. It’s coming.”

“That would explain why MIT would get involved, but not Clayton Electronics,” pressed Howard, recognising his father-in-law’s familiar evasion technique. He’d long ago learned that when Theodore Clayton was being flexible with the truth, his hands tended to betray his lips.

“Well, I can’t deny there are certain military applications which we think will be particularly profitable,” said Clayton. “But there’s a big future in the commercial computer processing of satellite photographs — things like crop monitoring and weather assessment. And there are opportunities in all sorts of quality control operations — computers can make interpretations on the basis of mathematical equations and statistical moments, with none of the distractions that make human decisions so unreliable.” Clayton’s fingers were tapping silently on the desk blotter. He looked levelly at his son-in-law and his voice was as steady as a judge pronouncing sentence, but Howard knew that he was hiding something. “You tell me, whose judgment would you most trust — a computer which has a one hundred per cent record of accurate diagnosis of cancer from X-rays, or a radiologist who has just broken up with his wife and had his BMW vandalised?”

“No contest, I guess,” said Howard. He wondered what Clayton was hiding. Howard crossed his legs and looked out of the window to the side of Clayton’s desk. It overlooked the parking lot and he could see Clayton’s pristine Rolls-Royce gleaming in the afternoon sun. Theodore Clayton hadn’t got to where he was by working to help further the cause of medical science, he’d made a fortune on the backs of a series of multi-million dollar defence contracts including night sights, heads-up displays and computerised video surveillance equipment.

Howard realised that his father-in-law was talking to him. “Well?” said Clayton.

“I’m sorry, Ted, what did you say? I was miles away.”

Clayton looked irritated. “I asked if you were all right for Sunday night.”

“Sunday night?”

“You and Lisa are coming round for dinner.”

Howard’s heart fell. He hated going to his in-laws’ house, and he figured that his wife had been waiting for the right time to tell him. “Sure,” he said, “we’re looking forward to it.”

Clayton stood up, leaving the cassette on the desk. “Good, good,” he said. “Hopefully I’ll have some news for you then.”

Howard frowned. Sunday was five days away. He stood up. “Is there any way of getting the results faster?” he asked. “We don’t know when the real thing is set to happen.”

“I’ll speed them up,” agreed Clayton. He patted Howard on the back as they walked to the door. “I’ll call you as soon as I have anything. By the way, haven’t you forgotten something?”

“Oh, yes. I’m really grateful, Ted. Really grateful.”

Clayton laughed. “No, I meant your briefcase. You’ve left it on the floor.”

Howard felt his cheeks flush. “Thanks,” he said through gritted teeth.

The Colonel handed Joker a bulky manila envelope and leaned back in his chair. Joker opened the package and slid the contents onto the Colonel’s desk. On top of the pile was a British passport. He picked it up and flicked through it. The passport was three years old and featured a photograph that must have come from the SAS’s files, the face thinner and the hair almost shoulder length. The name in the passport was Damien O’Brien and the date of birth was Joker’s own. He looked at the visa pages: they were blank except for a multiple re-entry visa to the United States.

“I haven’t travelled much,” he said with a smile. He picked up three sheets of typed paper which had been stapled together and read through them quickly. “Ah, I see why,” he said. “A labourer, some part-time bar work, and two convictions for drunk and disorderly conduct and one for assault. I’m not a particularly nice character, am I?”

“It’s only cover, Joker. Nothing personal.” The Colonel wrinkled his nose. The man sitting in front of him didn’t appear to have shaved for a couple of days and he stank to high heaven. His clothes looked as if they’d been slept in and there were grass stalks all over his coat.

If Joker was aware of the Colonel’s disdain for his dishevelled appearance, he didn’t show it. According to the fake CV Joker had been born thirty-six years earlier in Belfast, had lived for his first twelve years in Londonderry and attended a Catholic primary school. The house, and the school, had both been demolished years earlier — the house as part of a development project, the school following an arson attack in which the records had been destroyed. Joker had used the road and the school in previous identities when going undercover in Northern Ireland and was familiar with both.

“We’ve kept most of the background close to your own between the ages of twelve and eighteen, so that you won’t have too much trouble remembering it,” said the Colonel. “From eighteen years on we have you travelling around, never staying much in one place. That’s pretty much up to you — you can say you’ve been to Ireland, bring up your time in Scotland, use any background you feel comfortable with. There’s a number there they can use if they want to speak to someone you’ve worked with. If anyone calls they’ll be told it’s a bar in London and they’ll give you a glowing reference. The two bottom sheets are a summary of Manyon’s last report.”

Joker nodded and put the typewritten sheets back into the envelope. There were half a dozen large photographs on the desk and Joker picked them up. His eyes hardened as he looked at a woman in her mid-forties, dark brown hair lightly curled in a pageboy cut and her eyes moist. Another of the photographs was a full-length shot, clearly taken at a funeral because she was wearing black and had a handkerchief in her right hand. In the background he saw men in black berets and sunglasses and a coffin covered with the Republican tricolour flag.

“They’re the latest pictures we have of Mary Hennessy, taken at her husband’s funeral five years ago,” said the Colonel. “You’ve seen her since, of course.”

“She hadn’t changed,” said Joker, his eyes fixed on the picture. He could see a big automatic in the hands of one of the men standing by the coffin.

“She’s certain to have altered her appearance by now. She could be blonde, a red-head, brunette, we’ve no way of knowing. Her hair could be longer, or permed, and she could be wearing coloured contact lenses. And she could have put on weight.”

“No,” said Joker quietly, looking at the woman’s slim figure and shapely legs. “She was too vain about her looks. The hair, yeah, she might change that, but she won’t change her figure and she won’t risk plastic surgery. And even if she did, I’d always recognise her.”

There was a photograph of her getting into a car, and another of her outside a large red-brick house. Joker recognised several of the men with her, all of them leading IRA and Sinn Fein figures. The rest of the photographs were of Matthew Bailey. He was below average height with an unruly mop of red hair and piercing green eyes. He had a snub nose dotted with freckles and a deep dimple in his chin, as if someone had poked him with a finger and left an impression in the flesh, and a mole under his left eye. “Bailey is now twenty-six years old, and is responsible for the deaths of at least four members of the RUC,” continued the Colonel. “The IRA sent him to the States about six months ago when Northern Ireland had become too hot for him. One of the FBI’s anti-terrorist units almost caught him in Los Angeles four months ago trying to purchase a ground-to-air missile system but he was tipped off and disappeared for a while. Last month we received reports that he’d surfaced in New York and we sent Manyon in.”

Joker looked up sharply. “Tipped off, you said? Who could’ve tipped him off?”

“You know as well as me that the US is full of Irish Americans who sympathise with the IRA, Joker. They don’t see them as terrorists but as freedom fighters. And the law enforcement organisations have more than their fair share of Irish Americans. Every second cop in New York has an Irish name, just about, and they all wear the shamrock on St Paddy’s Day.”

“Are you saying we can’t trust the American cops?”

“Cops, FBI, Attorney-General’s Office, you’re to steer clear of them all. There’s to be no contact with the Americans at all. We can’t afford to blow this, we’ll only get one chance.”

Joker held up a picture of Bailey and one of Hennessy. They could have been mother and son. “What makes you think they’re together?” he asked the Colonel. “Did Manyon see them?”

“No. We had no idea she was there. It was only when Manyon’s body turned up that we recognised her signature. The Americans don’t even know — they’re treating it as a straightforward murder investigation.”

“They don’t know Manyon was with the regiment?”

The Colonel shook his head. “No. His sister arranged to have the body brought back, and his cover held.”

Joker put the photographs on top of the passport. He smiled when he saw there was a UK driving licence in the name of Damien O’Brien. He thought of his own revoked driving licence, suspended for a further two and a half years. His smile widened when he saw a thick wad of banknotes. He ran his thumbnail along one edge of the stack of cash and images of Benjamin Franklin flicked past. They were almost all one hundred dollar bills. “There’s five thousand dollars there,” said the Colonel. “We’re also giving you two credit cards, one Visa and one Mastercard, in the name of Damien O’Brien. You can use those for purchases or for withdrawing cash, up to $300 a day on each one. You should use the cards wherever possible, they’re keyed into a bank account which we’ll be monitoring. Each time you use the cards we’ll know within minutes where you are. I suggest you use them once a day; just make a small withdrawal so that we can keep track of you.”

“What about back-up while I’m there?”

“You’ll be alone,” said the Colonel. “The last thing you want is a team following you around. This is completely solo, Joker. It has to be if it’s going to work.”

Joker put the money back in the envelope and slid in the photographs and typed sheets.

“What about a weapon?”

“That you’ll have to get while you’re there. The sort of company you’ll be in, you won’t have any trouble getting tooled up.”

Joker rubbed his chin with both hands. He could feel the stubble from several days’ growth scratch the skin of his palms. “And then? You still haven’t told me exactly how you want me to take them out.”

The Colonel smiled thinly. “That’s up to you,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

Joker nodded. He understood why it was a solo mission and why there would be no contact with the Americans. “Colonel, it’ll be a pleasure,” he said. Joker wished that he felt as confident as he sounded. His last encounter with Mary Hennessy had left him shattered — physically and emotionally — and his enthusiasm for the Colonel’s mission was tinged with an emotion he hadn’t felt for some time. Fear.

Cole Howard drove back to his office after dropping Andy Kim off at the airport. The mathematician had spent the previous day in the desert with several men from the Sheriffs Department and a laser measuring device which Howard had managed to borrow from the County Highways Department. Kim had been keen to get back to Washington and begin running his numbers through the university’s mainframe computer. He’d been like an excited child during the ride to the airport, bobbing his head backwards and forwards as he talked. Howard wished he could have got the same enthusiasm from the young FBI agent who’d been assigned to help track down the vehicles used in the desert rehearsal. She was a twenty-five-year-old college graduate straight out of the Academy, a pushy woman with too much hair who’d seen Silence of the Lambs fifteen times and clearly decided to model herself on Hannibal Lecter rather than on Jodie Foster’s character. She was tall, had backswept blonde hair and a sharp profile, with pale green eyes that always seemed to regard Howard with contempt. It was a look he was used to seeing in his father-in-law’s eyes. Her name was Kelly Armstrong and she seemed to blame Howard for giving her the mundane job to do, even though the assignment had come direct from Jake Sheldon. Howard had wanted someone more experienced but Sheldon had insisted that he use the new girl, because tracking down rental cars didn’t require anything more than a room temperature IQ. She hadn’t smiled at him once, and her icy politeness annoyed the hell out of him.

She was waiting for him in his office. She looked pointedly at her wristwatch, an expensive gold Cartier, and pursed her glossy pink lips. Howard wanted to tell her that he was late because of Andy Kim, but he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of having to explain himself.

“Good morning, Kelly,” he said, coldly.

“Cole,” she acknowledged. “I’ve found twelve rental companies within fifty miles of Phoenix who rent or lease vehicles of the make and colour in the Mitchell video. In all there were eighty-three out on the day of the shooting.” She looked at her notebook and flipped over a page with the sound of tearing cloth. “Seventy-nine have been returned, four are still out. All four are still within their rental agreements.”

Howard nodded and sat behind his desk. He waved Kelly to sit down but she ignored him. “All eighty-three were paid for by credit card, and all went through without incident. No fake cards, no stolen cards. I’ve run checks on all the driving licences and other than a few dozen unpaid tickets and a guy who owes several thousand dollars in child support, there’s nothing untoward.” Howard opened his mouth to speak but Kelly continued. “I asked all the rental companies if they had rented out a blue and a white car at the same time, and none had. A total of eight had been involved in an accident of some form, but all were collision damage and all had the names and insurance details of the other drivers involved.”

“Good work, Kelly,” he said. “You’ve done a good job.” She nodded and turned to go. “But. .” he began and she tensed. When she turned back she was looking down her sharp nose at him like an angry bird preparing to peck out his eyes. She raised her left eyebrow archly.

“Those cars must have come from somewhere,” he continued.

“Without licence plates it’s going to be difficult to track them down,” she said slowly.

“Difficult, but not impossible,” said Howard.

“We’re not even sure they’re rental cars,” she said.

“True, but it’s unlikely they’d risk using their own vehicles.”

“They could be stolen.”

“That’s also true. In fact, that’s a good line of inquiry. You should check if any stolen cars match the description. But first you should start checking all the licences which were used to obtain the rentals we know about.”

Her smile tightened. “I already told you that I’d done that.”

Howard shook his head. “No, you said the licences were in order. Which they would be if they’d been stolen and not reported. Or if the licences were genuine but based on fake IDs. All you need for a licence is to pass the test and show a birth certificate. And birth certificates are easy to forge or you can get one for a dead child. What we’ve got to do is to contact the owner of each licence and check that they did rent the car. And ask them where they went.”

“Cole, that could take weeks.”

“If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes,” said Howard. “And if that draws a blank you’ll have to widen the area of investigation. Go to a one-hundred-mile radius from Phoenix. And keep extending it, to Tucson and beyond if it’s necessary. This is important, Kelly.” The girl glared at him as if she was going to say something, but instead she just nodded and turned on her heels. Her expensive wool skirt swung from side to side like a filly’s tail as she stormed out of Howard’s office.

Mary Hennessy stood in front of the bathroom mirror and studied her reflection. She’d always wanted to be a blonde when she was a little girl. She’d driven her mother to distraction: each time a birthday came round she’d always ask for the same thing — blonde curls — and she’d sent innumerable letters up the chimney to Santa Claus until she’d reached the age where she realised that hair colour was genetic and not something that a parent could change. By the time she discovered that chemicals could alter her natural brown colour she no longer wanted to be blonde. Now here she was, just about to turn fifty, with hair the colour of a mid-summer wheatfield. She turned her head from side to side, then bent forward to check the roots. The dye job was good for another week or so, she decided. She raised her head and smoothed the skin around her neck with her fingertips. It was, she acknowledged with a twinge of regret, beginning to lose some of its elasticity. She shuddered, remembering the turkey necks of old aunts who’d visited her house when she was a child and given her minty-tasting kisses and pressed sixpences into her palm. Soon it would be her turn to face the ravages of time, and she wasn’t looking forward to it. Perversely, her hair looked better than ever: the blonde locks suited her and the light perm made it much fuller. It also completely altered her appearance, though it matched the photograph in the American passport on her dressing table.

She adjusted the neck of her polo-neck pullover and then took a houndstooth jacket out of the closet and slipped it on. With the black jeans the outfit was casual but businesslike, she decided. Just right. She collected her car from the hotel car park and drove to the airport.

Matthew Bailey was waiting for her in the cafeteria with a half-eaten croissant and a cup of cold coffee in front of him. He stood up too quickly when he saw her and spilled his coffee over the table top. Mary smiled. Bailey was almost half her age, easily young enough to be her son, but he’d made it clear on several occasions that he’d dearly love to get inside her pants. That was one of the reasons she’d dressed so severely, so that there was no question of leading him on.

“The plane was early,” he said, mopping up his coffee with paper serviettes.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve checked,” said Mary.

“Oh no, that’s okay,” he said. “I didn’t m-m-mind.”

Mary had noticed that Bailey developed a slight stammer when they were alone together. It was hard to believe that the slightly-built young man was responsible for the deaths of four RUC officers in Northern Ireland. He was a full two inches shorter than Mary, with unkempt red hair and a sprinkling of freckles across his snub nose. He had the sort of hair which was difficult to dye — he’d tried it once with black colouring and it had turned out dark green — so he’d changed his appearance by cutting his hair short, growing a thin moustache and wearing John Lennon-type spectacles. It made him look about nineteen years old, and he dressed like an all-American student in sweatshirts, baggy jeans, and baseball boots. She slid onto the seat opposite him. “How did it go?” she asked.

“No problems,” he said. He looked around for somewhere to put the wet serviettes. “Do you want anything? Coffee?” Mary shook her head. Bailey put the serviettes in an ashtray. “I bought a ticket to LA on the Amex card and used it to rent a car at the airport and to pay for a m-m-motel there. I returned the car on the second day and put the cards in a wallet with a few dollars and dropped it in Central LA. I hung around to make sure it was picked up — a couple of black guys got it and I could tell they weren’t going to hand it in.” He grinned. “One of them started dancing up and down. You should have seen it, it was so funny. I paid cash for the ticket back here, and I’ve destroyed the licence.”

“Good. That should do the trick.”

“Do you really think anyone will be after us?” he said.

“I don’t know, but it’s better to be on the safe side. After we brought that plane down in the desert the place must have been swarming with cops. There’s always a chance they’ll find out about the cars from the tyre tracks, or they might manage to find someone who saw us at a filling station. If they find where we rented the car from they’ll have a record of the two credit cards and licences we used.”

“But they were in phony names anyway.”

“I know, but by laying a false trail in LA we’ll have them thinking we’re on the other side of the country.”

Bailey nodded and toyed with his cup. He obviously had something on his mind and Mary waited for him to speak. Bailey kept his eyes lowered. “We’re still going ahead, then?”

“What do you mean?” she asked. She kept her voice low and even, though her heart had begun to race. The last thing she needed was for Bailey to get cold feet at this stage.

“I just thought, what with what happened in the desert and all, that you’d think about calling it off.”

“Oh no, Matthew. Oh no. There’s no question of us backing out now. Except for the plane, everything went according to plan. The rifles are all calibrated and we practised the shoot itself. We’re ready to go.”

“Okay,” he said quietly.

Mary reached over and touched the back of his hand lightly. He flinched as if he’d received an electric shock and then smiled at her. “We’re only going to get one chance at this,” she said. “We’ve invested a great deal of time and money to get this far, surely you don’t want that to be wasted?”

“But what about that Sass-man? Manyon?”

Mary snorted. “He didn’t know what we were planning. You heard what he said, it was you he was following, that’s all. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Like the plane,” said Bailey.

“Like the plane,” she repeated. She ran her index finger along the back of Bailey’s hand. “The SAS had heard that you were in the States, and they sent him over to investigate. He knew nothing.”

“If he can find me, there’ll be others.”

Mary withdrew her hand. “Which is why you’re going to Florida until we’re ready for the final phase. Go to Disneyworld, hang around in the sun, enjoy yourself. This time of year Florida is full of Brits, no-one will find you there. We’ll meet in Baltimore in four weeks.” She slipped him a piece of paper on which she’d written a telephone number. “Call me at this hotel on April twelfth. I’ll tell you where we’re staying then.”

Bailey didn’t look convinced. Mary leaned forward over the table. “Matthew, I need you for this. I really do.” She smiled as warmly as she could. “Matthew, you’re with me on this, aren’t you?” He nodded and she rewarded him with another smile. “It’ll be fine, really. Now you disappear for a few weeks and contact me on the twelfth. Before midday.” She stood up, bent down to kiss him lightly on the cheek, and walked away. She knew he was watching her go and she swung her hips just a little more than usual, hating herself but knowing it was necessary.

Joker flew into New York on the afternoon of March 17, stiff and cramped after eight hours at the back of a British Airways 747. World Traveller the airline called it, but to Joker it would always be Cattle Class: tiny seats, no legroom and food as plastic as the smile of the stewardesses. He didn’t realise the significance of the date until his Yellow Cab ground to a halt somewhere around 72nd Street. The cab driver twisted round and grinned. “Fucking Irish,” he said in a thick accent which Joker guessed was Slavic.

“Huh?” said Joker, who’d been half asleep. Even the back of a New York cab was more comfortable than his British Airways seat and the driver had the heater full on.

“Fucking Irish,” the driver repeated. “Today’s the St Patrick’s Day Parade and the traffic’s not moving. It’s going to be like this all fucking day. Today it’s the fucking Irish, next week it’s the fucking Greeks and next month, wouldya believe it, it’s the fucking Puerto Ricans.”

“No problem,” said Joker. “I’m in no hurry.”

“Whatever you say,” said the driver. He began pumping his fist on the horn. “You English?”

“Scottish,” replied Joker.

“Yeah? I’m from Turkey. Great fucking country, America. Fucking great.” He continued to pound on the horn and swear at the traffic ahead. It seemed to Joker that the man’s swearing vocabulary was limited to the one expletive and that he couldn’t go for more than a minute without using it at least twice.

Joker looked across at the crowds walking by the shops. It was a cold spring day and most people were wearing long coats and scarves. The gutters were full of rubbish: old newspapers, squashed soft drink cans and empty cigarette packs. No-one seemed to care. A thick-set man in an expensive cashmere overcoat dropped a half-finished cigar onto the ground and it glowed redly until it was crushed by a white high-heeled shoe. Joker’s gaze travelled up from the shoe to a shapely leg that disappeared into a fawn raincoat. The woman was a brunette, her hair glossy and shoulder length. She brushed past a large black man who thrust a styrofoam cup at her and asked for change. The beggar shouted something after her but she showed no sign of hearing him and he waved the cup at a businessman who pretended not to see him. Eye contact seemed to be kept to a minimum as if acknowledging another’s existence would only lead to confrontation. The beggar saw that Joker was looking at him and he grinned. He ambled over to the cab, put a hand on the roof and bent down.

“Got any change?” he mouthed through the closed window.

Joker shook his head. All he had were the bills the Colonel had given him.

“Fuck off, why don’t you?” the cab driver shouted. “Leave my fare alone.”

“It’s okay,” said Joker. “No problem.”

“And get your filthy fucking hand off my fucking cab!” the driver screamed.

The beggar walked to the front of the vehicle. He was wearing a shabby grey wool coat, with the buttons missing, over brown trousers that were wearing thin at the knees and a stained green pullover. He was still smiling but there was a cold, almost psychotic, stare in his eyes. His neck muscles tensed and he reared his head back and then he spat a stream of greenish phlegm across the windscreen.

“You fucking animal!” the driver screamed. He switched his wipers on and they streaked the saliva across the glass. The beggar began to cackle, nodding his head backwards and forwards as he laughed. The driver pressed his windscreen wash button and thin jets of water crawled up the glass. “What the fuck is this city coming to?” the driver yelled rhetorically. The traffic began to move and the cab pulled away. Joker turned to watch the beggar and for a couple of seconds they had eye contact and he had a cold feeling somewhere deep inside as he realised that he didn’t have too far to fall before he’d have to live on the streets himself and he wondered how he’d make out in a city like New York without a home, without money. After he’d quit his job as a nightwatchman on the Isle of Dogs, he was out of work for almost six weeks and he’d come close to being destitute. If his landlord hadn’t agreed to wait for his rent, Joker knew he’d have ended up sleeping in shop doorways. He had no close family and no savings and he was all too well aware that there was no Government safety-net waiting to catch him if he fell. “Fucking animals,” repeated the driver.

“Yeah,” said Joker, not wanting to argue. “Can you drop me here?”

“I thought you said Thirty-seventh Street?”

“Yeah, I did, but I’m feeling ill. I’d rather walk.”

“Okay, okay. Whatever you want. Just don’t throw up in the fucking cab, that’s all.” The cab slammed to a halt and Joker thrust the fare through a small hole in a Perspex barrier that kept the driver insulated from his passengers. He opened the door and pulled his cheap suitcase after him. The outside air felt cold after the overheated cab interior so he walked briskly to keep warm. In the distance he could hear the wail of bagpipes and he headed towards them.

He found the parade heading down Fifth Avenue and stood among the watching crowds, the suitcase at his feet and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his pea jacket. A group of kilted pipers were playing Mull of Kintyre. The pipers moved on, followed by a huge float in the shape of the Loch Ness Monster on either side of which had been stencilled the name of a Japanese computer company. Across the thoroughfare was an imposing white marble and stone Gothic cathedral and as the float moved by Joker saw it was called St Patrick’s.

Joker wondered how many of the spectators who were cheering and waving flags realised that the pipers and the monster were Scottish and not Irish. It didn’t seem to make any difference, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. A gleaming fire engine rolled by, decorated with huge cardboard shamrocks and with the firemen all dressed in green. It was followed by a large float decorated like an Irish hill with large inflatable cows surrounding a huge yellow block with the word BUTTER etched into it.

Behind the float was a line of old American cars, all convertibles with big, sweeping fins and lots of chrome. In the back of each car were youngsters waving to the crowds and on the doors were printed cards with the names of what Joker supposed were television shows: In Living Colour, Herman’s Head, Roc. They were getting the most response from the crowds, lots of shouts and screams and whooping noises and the occasional small child running over to get an autograph. What they had to do with St Patrick’s Day, Joker couldn’t imagine. There were lines of blue-uniformed policemen marching at attention, all with shamrocks pinned to the breasts of their tunics, and Joker recalled the Colonel’s warning about the number of Irish-Americans who were involved in law enforcement. A clown in a bright yellow costume and a blue wig appeared in front of Joker, waving a bucket. A sign in the bucket detailed the charities the money was for but Joker just shrugged and said he didn’t have any change.

“Yeah, right,” said the clown dismissively and flopped over in his yard-long shoes to a group of children. Paper streamers were raining down from the skyscrapers overlooking the parade and one wrapped itself around Joker’s neck. He pulled it off and dropped it into the street.

A float sponsored by an insurance company rolled by, decked out in green with a trio of fiddlers playing an Irish folk tune while half a dozen girls danced a jig. Joker picked up his suitcase and began walking through the crowds.

He’d been in New York a number of times before and knew that there were several small hotels off 37th Street, close to the East River. He made slow progress along Fifth Avenue because of all the sightseers. A marching band of young black girls in silver spandex outfits and tall braided helmets overtook him in a flurry of whirling sticks, followed by young boys in similar outfits blowing brass instruments and beating drums. He decided to get off Fifth Avenue and waited until there was a gap in the parade before dashing across. Once he’d left the route of the parade the streets were relatively quiet and after a twenty-minute walk he was outside the hotel he’d chosen: The White Horse. It had been formed by knocking together two brownstone houses and refurbished on the cheap with plasterboard partitions, plastic light fittings and thin carpets. There was a small reception desk beyond the main door where a Hispanic woman was talking on the phone. She raised her eyebrows when Joker walked in but carried on her conversation. Joker put his suitcase down and waited. Eventually she pushed over a registration card for him to fill in. The ballpoint pen she gave him leaked and there were blobs of ink all over the card by the time he’d finished. She picked up the card, read it, took an imprint from his credit card and handed him a key, all the time talking into the phone. She gestured at a staircase to her right as she cackled away in Spanish.

Joker’s room was on the third floor, at the back of the hotel, where it overlooked an alley which was dark and forbidding even in the afternoon. A rusting fire escape wound its way down the building and Joker pulled open the window to take a closer look. It provided a back way out in an emergency but he was also well aware that it offered a way in for any intruder. He checked the lock on the window but he knew that it wouldn’t deter an enthusiastic amateur, never mind a professional. An air-conditioner was set into the wall underneath the window but nothing happened when he switched it on. He kicked it halfheartedly.

A small bathroom led off the bedroom, containing a shower stall, a cracked yellow washbasin and a toilet. A piece of paper was wrapped across the seat along with a note telling him that it had been sanitised for his protection. He picked up a glass tumbler from the shelf under the bathroom mirror and went back into the bedroom where he sat on the single bed and opened his suitcase. He took out a bottle of Famous Grouse and poured himself a decent measure. He toasted his reflection in the window. “‘If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere’,” he said, his voice loaded with sarcasm.

Howard sat in Theodore Clayton’s outer office, his leather briefcase at his feet. His father-in-law’s secretary kept flashing him sympathetic looks but Howard didn’t show his annoyance. If Clayton wanted to play infantile power games, it was a small price to pay for the help the FBI was getting.

Clayton kept him waiting just ten minutes so Howard figured he’d got off lightly. Clayton also opened the office door himself and personally ushered Howard in.

“Sorry, Cole, I was on the phone to Tokyo.”

“Tokyo?” said Howard, puzzled. “I thought you were competing with the Japanese.”

“Product-wise, we are, but all the technology is the same and there are several firms over there who are interested in taking stakes in us. It’s the latest way of doing business with the Japs — they call it co-opetition — a combination of co-operation and competition.”

“Would the Government allow that?”

“What do you mean?” said Clayton, sitting behind his uncluttered desk. A photograph of Lisa beamed from a brass frame, next to a picture of Clayton’s second wife, Jennifer. The two women were surprisingly alike — blonde hair, fair skin, blue eyes — though Jennifer was the younger of the two by more than five years.

“Your defence work? Surely they wouldn’t want overseas investors to be involved.”

Clayton snorted and shook his head. “You think the Government gives a damn? There are no boundaries where business is concerned, Cole. Money is the universal language, the common philosophy. I tell you, the best thing that could happen to this country’s armed forces would be if we had Japanese-built jets flying off Japanese-built aircraft carriers, and we had our soldiers driving Japanese tanks and flying Japanese helicopters.”

“And using Japanese atomic weapons?” asked Howard, his voice loaded with irony.

“You mock, my boy, but it’ll come. I remember when the first Japanese motorcycles arrived in this country, and how we laughed at them. Sewing machines on wheels. You know what car I drive now? A Nissan, and there isn’t an American car can match it.”

Howard knew that Clayton was being economical with the truth — more often than not the industrialist was to be found behind the wheel of a Rolls-Royce.

Clayton opened one of his desk drawers and took out a cardboard folder. “Anyway, at the moment we’re just talking about a share stake. That’s confidential by the way. I’d hate to see you hauled in for insider trading.” He smiled to show Howard that he was joking and passed him the file. “This is what we’ve managed to do with your video.”

“I didn’t expect you to move so quickly,” said Howard, opening the file.

“I had a couple of PhDs who were dying to show me what they can do with the new $10 million computer I bought for them. I think you’ll be impressed.”

The top two photographs were of the cars, and Howard’s heart sank when he saw them because there wasn’t much more detail than in the ones Bonnie Kim had done for him. Clayton walked around behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Yeah, those were a disappointment, the angle was just too acute to be able to do anything with the tags. You’ll be more impressed with the faces.”

Howard put the car pictures on the desk. The next photograph was of the man who’d been holding the walkie-talkie. It was a close-up of his face, and it was a big improvement on the pictures Bonnie Kim had produced, though he doubted it was clear enough to make a positive identification.

“Pretty good, huh?” said Clayton.

The picture in Howard’s hands had little of the blurring that had made Bonnie’s prints so difficult to decipher. The man was middle-aged and balding, with a round, plump face and dark sunglasses, though his features were hard to define. “Much better,” admitted Howard. “But still not quite good enough, I’m afraid.” He handed the picture to Clayton. “It’s sharper than our versions, but there isn’t enough detail for us to get a match from file pictures. Is there anything else you can do?”

“Oh sure,” said Clayton confidently. “That’s just for starters. They did what your lab had already done, the median filtering thing, but they coupled that with a technique we use to remove the blur caused by motion. A large part of the blurring was caused by the movement of the camcorder, and isn’t a result of the distances involved. My boys ran the images through a program which compensates for the speed of the plane.”

“Did they try pixel aggregation?” Howard asked, remembering the term Bonnie Kim had used.

Clayton frowned. “I think so,” he said. His fingers began to tap nervously on his blotter and Howard suppressed a smile. “I know they’ve a few more ideas up their sleeves, it’s just that some of the techniques take longer to run. There are some quite complicated transformations involved.”

Howard nodded but he felt that his father-in-law’s explanation was somewhat disjointed and he wondered exactly how much of the technology the older man actually understood. He had the feeling that Clayton was trying to articulate ideas which he didn’t fully comprehend. He studied the face in the photograph. The features were flabby as if the man was used to living well and disdained physical exercise. The skin was olive coloured and Howard wondered if the man might be from the Mediterranean or the Middle East. The dark glasses hid the eyes and the nose was still pretty much a blur. The man could have had a moustache or it could just have been a shadow. Some of the photographs were full-length shots of the man. It was difficult to get an idea of how tall he was, but he was certainly broad in proportion to his height, with wide shoulders and an expansive girth.

The pictures of the younger man were slightly clearer. He had short, reddish hair and was wearing spectacles with small, round lenses. There was a picture of the three figures together and he was the shortest of the three, smaller even than the woman. The images of the woman were the least helpful — she was shading her eyes with her hand in most of the shots and in all but one of the pictures all that was visible was her blonde hair and the bottom of her face. Howard doubted that even the FBI’s photographic experts would be able to produce a match from their files for any of the pictures but he felt that Clayton was hoping for a more positive reaction. And gratitude. “These are good, Ted. Really good. Let’s hope that your men can improve them even more.” He passed quickly through the pictures of the dummies and on to the photographs of the snipers. They all had their faces close to the telescopic sights on their weapons and Howard’s heart fell.

“What’s wrong?” asked Clayton, leaning forward.

“The snipers,” said Howard. “I guess I was expecting more.”

“I know what you mean, but the computer can’t picture what isn’t there; it has to have something to work with. They’re still much better than the originals.”

“Oh sure, they’re a big improvement. But I doubt if we’ll be able to get an identification from them. There just isn’t enough detail.”

Clayton walked around Howard’s chair and stood behind him. Howard flipped through the photographs on his lap. He showed Clayton one of a sniper in the kneeling position. “Can you get a close-up on the rifle this guy’s holding?”

“That’s the sniper who was furthest away from the targets, isn’t it? We’re working on close-ups now. Incidentally, that’s one hell of a shot he’s trying to make. It must be two thousand yards.”

“I know,” said Howard.

“You’re right, though, it’s like no other rifle I’ve ever seen.” Clayton pointed at another photograph, also of a sniper with a rifle. “I think this is a Horstkamp, a German model. I actually have one in my collection. It’s a big gun, you could bring down an elephant with it. But this other one, it’s got a completely different profile. You should get your weapons experts to have a look at it. It might be easier to identify the weapon than the man.”

Howard nodded as he looked at the rifle. His father-in-law was right, the rifle was unusual.

“By the way, don’t forget about Sunday,” said Clayton.

“We’ll be there,” said Howard. “We’re looking forward to it.”

He left the office with his briefcase under his arm and a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Joker flicked through the cable channels of the television in his room as he drank his way through the bottle of Famous Grouse. There seemed to be an unending stream of glitzy game shows, old situation comedies and Seventies police shows, punctuated with advertisements that insulted his intelligence. He waited until eight o’clock before leaving his room. Lights were going on around the city and the brightest of the stars were managing to make their presence felt in the darkening sky. He put up the collar of his pea jacket and hunched his shoulders against a biting wind that had begun to blow from the East River.

The file which the Colonel had given him to read in Hereford had included Pete Many on’s last report. Many on had been hanging around an Irish pub on the Upper East Side called Filbin’s while he was tracking Matthew Bailey, and Joker figured it was as good a place as any to start.

Filbin’s wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Dublin back street. It had small, leaded windows, a dark oak door and inside were wooden beams which ran the length of a narrow, smoke-filled room with a group of Formica tables and rickety wooden chairs at the far end. There was draught Guinness and Tennents lager and as impressive a range of malt and blended whiskies as Joker had ever seen. The bar itself ran for a good thirty feet, an edifice of polished wood and brass with no stools to get in the way, just a thick brass rod running along the bottom so that the hardened drinker’s position could be assumed with the minimum of effort. Joker stood with one foot on the rod and leant on the bar. He took off his wool hat and thrust it into his coat pocket. A small, pixie-like barman walked over, polishing a glass, and asked Joker what he was having.

“Do you have a Grouse?” Joker asked in his soft Irish accent.

“Aye, I have to work on St Patrick’s Day, but other than that I’m okay.” The barman said it deadpan, with no trace of a smile. He finished polishing the glass, put it in the gantry behind the bar and grinned impishly at Joker. “Seriously, it’s a Famous Grouse you want?”

“If it’s not too much trouble,” said Joker. The barman poured a measure of whisky into a glass. “Make it a double,” said Joker.

The barman didn’t ask if he wanted ice but placed the glass and a jug of water in front of him, recognising a serious drinker. Joker thanked him and paid for the drink.

“The name’s Shorty,” said the barman.

“Aye, it would be,” said Joker. He carried his whisky over to a table and sat down. On the wood-panelled wall behind him were several framed black and white photographs of unnamed boxers. There were a dozen men in the bar and most of them appeared to be construction workers in jeans and heavy jackets, drinking pints of Guinness and speaking in Irish accents. Joker eavesdropped as he sipped his whisky, letting their accents and the rhythm of their speech wash over him. It had been almost four years since Joker had been in Ireland and he knew his accent would be a little rusty, though his cover story would allow for that. He tried to work out where the men were from by their accents: he was certain one was from Londonderry, and two were from the South, but his ear wasn’t as acute as it used to be. He knew that an Irishman could often tell to within twenty miles where a countryman came from just from the sound of his voice.

Two teenagers appeared in front of Joker. They were both wearing green T-shirts and had green scarves tied around their heads and one of them was carrying a green bucket. The taller of the two held his bucket out and Joker saw that it contained coins and banknotes.

“Anything for the cause?” the teenager asked. His accent was north Belfast, harsh and nasal, and he had the aggressive tilt to the chin that Joker had seen on countless teenagers standing on street corners in Northern Ireland, youngsters who used the power of the IRA as a way of intimidating others. They weren’t politically committed, they often had no idea what the ideas and the aims of the IRA were, other than that they wanted British troops out of Ireland, but by joining the organisation they could escape the boredom and hopelessness of the dole queue and gain some measure of self-respect. And a chance to skim a few pounds off the money they collected “for the cause”.

Joker took out his wallet. Behind the bar, Shorty polished a glass and watched.

“A dollar buys a bullet for the boys,” said the second youth.

Joker put a five-dollar bill into the bucket.

“Thanks, mister,” said the boy holding the bucket.

“Don’t mention it,” said Joker, smiling.

The two teenagers swaggered off and waved the bucket in front of the construction workers. Joker had seen such IRA fund-raising in Belfast drinking holes but had been surprised to see it so openly in the United States. He wondered if the Americans who poured cash into the IRA’s coffers knew where their money went. Irish-Americans had a romantic view of the IRA: freewheeling freedom-fighters battling an oppressive army which had no reason to be in their country. Joker knew what the flipside was. To him the IRA meant cowardly ambushes, bombs in crowded shopping centres and teenage soldiers shot in the back. Ceasefire or no ceasefire. He drained his glass and went to the bar for a refill. Shorty poured him another double Grouse and gave him a fresh jug of water. “I see you’re contributing to the cause,” he said conversationally.

“Will the money actually get there?” Joker asked.

“Oh, sure enough,” said Shorty, an evil grin on his face. “If they tried ripping off the boys in here, they’d lose their kneecaps before you could say Gerry Adams.” He chortled and put the clean glass back on the gantry. “I’ve been trying to place your accent. Where in Belfast are you from?”

“I moved to Scotland when I was a bairn, and I’ve been in London for a few years,” said Joker.

“Aye, I could tell that, right enough,” said the barman. “What brings you to the Big Apple?”

“Spot of bother with the taxman,” said Joker. “I thought I’d see if I can get work here for a while, until things have cooled down.”

“Yeah? What do you do?”

Joker shrugged. “Bit of everything. I’ve been a brickie, I’ve done some bar work, I pretty much take what I can get.”

“You got a Green Card?”

Joker laughed and raised his glass in salute. “Oh aye, and a return ticket on Concorde.” He leant against the bar and chatted with Shorty, all the while keeping one ear tuned to the Irish construction workers.

“How do I look?” Cole Howard asked, adjusting his tie in the dressing mirror.

“Are you going to wear that tie, honey?” said his wife, standing behind him. Howard sighed. Obviously that had been his intention, but equally obviously Lisa didn’t approve. She went over to his wardrobe and pulled out a blue silk tie she’d bought for him several Christmasses ago. “Try this,” she said, handing it to him. Howard had to admit that she was right. It looked much better with the dark blue suit he was wearing.

Lisa didn’t say anything but she stood next to the dressing table and waited for him to comment on her dress. It was a new one, pale green silk, low over the shoulder and cut to just below her knees. She’d fastened her long blonde hair back in a pony tail, a look which he knew her father preferred. Daddy’s little girl. Around her neck was a thin gold and diamond necklace, a present from Theodore Clayton. “Fabulous,” he said.

“Are you sure?” she said.

Howard could never understand why Lisa was so insecure. She was beautiful, well-educated, a terrific mother to their two children, and the daughter of one of the richest men in the state, yet she constantly sought approval. “Really,” he said, stepping forward and taking her in his arms.

She laughed and pushed him away. “You’ll mess my make-up,” she said.

“You don’t need it,” he said, trying to kiss her again.

She slipped out of his arms. “Later,” she said. “I’ll check on Eddy and Katherine.”

Howard gave himself a final check in the mirror and then went downstairs where their babysitter, the teenage daughter of one of their neighbours, was watching Star Trek. “Hiya, Pauline,” he said.

“Hello, Mr Howard,” she said, her eyes still on the screen. She was a pretty girl, but still at the gawky stage, knowing that men were looking at her in a different way but not sure how she should handle it. It would be another ten years or so before his own daughter reached that stage, but he was already dreading it.

“What’s Captain Kirk up to?” Howard asked.

Pauline looked at him, raised her eyebrows and sighed. “That’s Star Trek, Mr Howard. This is the Next Generation.” She shook her head sadly and turned back to the television, her skirt halfway up her thighs. The girl was fifteen years old and she dressed like a hooker, though Howard knew she was getting straight A’s at High School. Howard wondered how he’d handle Katherine when she began wearing make-up and high heels and wandered around the house without a bra. And the boys, standing on the doorstep with sweating palms, queuing up like dogs around a bitch on heat. So far Howard reckoned he’d done a pretty good job bringing up his two children, but they were still at the stage where they thought he was the bravest, smartest and kindest human being on the planet. Apart from their mother, of course.

Lisa came down the stairs, one of her many fur coats slung over her shoulders. “They’re asleep,” she said to Howard. She gave Pauline the rundown on where they’d be, where the food was and what to do if there was an emergency, then went out to the Jaguar. The green XJS was Lisa’s, another gift from her father, but Howard drove. Theodore Clayton lived a half-hour’s drive away from their house, on an estate in Paradise Valley, to the north of Phoenix. Howard handled the car well, though he drove it only when Lisa was with him. She would have been quite happy for him to use it every day, but he never quite felt comfortable at the wheel. It felt too much like Clayton’s car, and he didn’t like being beholden to his father-in-law. As he drove he was aware of his wife looking at him. He smiled. “What?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Go on, say it. You were going to say something.”

“Always the FBI agent,” she said.

“But I’m right, right?”

They sat in silence for a while, both watching as the Jaguar swallowed up the miles of road. “Daddy will probably ask again, you know?”

“He does every time we go around,” agreed Howard. “He won’t take no for an answer.”

“He’s used to getting what he wants,” said Lisa. She flipped the sun visor down and checked her make-up in the vanity mirror.

Howard knew she was nervous, as she always was when she was visiting her father. Howard had learnt from experience that it was the worst possible time to start an argument with her. Eventually she broke the strained silence, and her voice was softer. “And if he does ask again?”

Howard shook his head slowly. “The answer’s going to be the same, Lisa. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. I like doing what I’m doing. I like being with the Bureau. I wouldn’t get the same satisfaction as your father’s head of security.”

“You’d get a lot more money, though,” his wife said. It was a discussion they’d had many times, and they’d both expressed their views so often that they talked about it almost on auto-pilot, as if the words no longer had meaning.

“I know, I know,” said Howard. “Maybe in the future; we’ll see. .”

“That’s what you always say,” said Lisa.

“But at least I’m not saying never,” said Howard. “I’m just saying not right now.” Howard’s stomach tightened as he drove off the highway and onto the single track road which led to the Clayton estate. White fences seemed to stretch for miles, enclosing paddocks where sleek Arabian horses stood proudly, their heads turning to follow the Jaguar. The first time he had seen the Clayton house he’d stopped his car and checked the directions Lisa had given him. He’d been going out with her for three months and while it was clear she had money she’d never given him any hint of the magnitude of Theodore Clayton’s wealth. They were both students — he was studying law and she was an English major — and most of their time was spent either in bed or hitting the books, and there had been little time for discussing their families. Howard had never forgotten how nervous he’d been the first time he’d driven his clapped-out Ford Mustang up to the front of the house, and how dry his mouth had been as he’d rung the doorbell. The wait for the door to open had been one of the longest in his life and it had taken all his self-control not to run back to the car and drive off. Even now, more than a decade later, he had the feeling that he didn’t belong and that the door would be slammed in his face.

The house had been designed in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright, a two-storey home which curved around a teardrop-shaped pool. The twelve-bedroom house was made from stone ground on the site which blended perfectly into the desert setting, and had huge windows that took full advantage of the magnificent views of Camelback Mountain. It was a short drive to the Paradise Valley Country Club, where Clayton was a leading light, and he was only minutes away from Arizona’s finest golf clubs. To the left of the multi-million dollar home were stables which were twice the size of Howard’s own house, and a garage which contained Clayton’s collection of old British sports cars.

Howard parked the Jaguar next to Clayton’s Rolls-Royce as Lisa checked her make-up again. Jarvis, Clayton’s butler since before Lisa was born, opened the door for them and took them into the impressive drawing room where Theodore Clayton was waiting with Jennifer, his second wife.

Lisa’s mother lived in Connecticut, supported by five-figure monthly alimony cheques. Howard liked the first Mrs Clayton, whose only mistake had been to grow old, and he and Lisa visited her with the children every few months. But he could see why the industrialist had traded her in for a new model. Jennifer had long blonde hair, perfect skin and the firm figure of a cheerleader. She was wearing a tight white dress, cut low at the front to show her ample cleavage and the large diamond pendant which nestled there. She was, Howard had to admit, absolutely gorgeous, but there was a cold, predatory gleam in her eyes. Often it appeared that she looked right through Howard, as if only men with net assets of more than a million dollars were visible to her ice-blue eyes. She would be absolutely amazing in bed, Howard decided, but her performance would be in direct proportion to the wealth of her lover. It was the money she’d make love to, not the man. Clayton and Jennifer made a perfect couple, and like the horses outside it was as if they were posing for the effect: he with his right hand in the pocket of his blazer, she with her head tilted to tighten her jaw and show off her flawless neck. Clayton stepped forward and hugged Lisa while Jennifer watched with flint-hard eyes. When Clayton released his daughter and shook hands with Howard, Jennifer and Lisa embraced warily with little warmth. They complimented each other on their dresses and their jewellery while Clayton watched them with obvious pleasure. After all, thought Howard, he had paid for it all.

The rest of the guests arrived shortly afterwards: the owner of a local television station and his trophy wife, a white-haired oil man from Texas and a companion young enough to be his granddaughter, and a lawyer from Phoenix who, apart from Howard, was the only one there with a wife close to his own age.

Dinner, as always, was perfect, cooked by Clayton’s personal chef and served in the dining room by Jarvis and two maids in black and white uniforms. On the walls were several of Clayton’s Navajo rugs, some of them more than a hundred years old. The best of Clayton’s collection was on loan to Phoenix’s Heard Museum and the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. Clayton took great delight in telling his dinner guests how both museums had recently asked him to lend them more. With the top quality rugs worth upwards of $75,000, Howard reckoned that the industrialist was as interested in their investment potential as he was in their artistic quality.

Clayton loved Maine lobster and he took obvious pride in telling his guests that the crustaceans had been flown in from the East Coast on his private jet that morning.

Over coffee the conversation turned to a recent court case where a serial killer had used a camcorder to record the gruesome deaths of his victims and had then sent the tapes to local television stations. Several had refused to show the grisly tapes, but others, including the station owned by the man at Clayton’s table, had aired them. When the subject came up, Clayton smiled and nodded at Howard as if to reassure him that he knew the tape of the snipers was to be treated as confidential.

The lawyer suggested that the tapes were evidence of a crime and as such shouldn’t be made public as they could prejudice a later trial, an argument which Howard considered valid.

Clayton screwed up his napkin and dropped it on the table in front of him. He nodded fiercely. “This is the video age, and I’m not talking about the rubbish they show on MTV. There are about twenty million camcorders in this country. We’re getting to the stage now where there’s a camcorder on every street corner. Every time there’s a major disaster the camcorders get there first, we’re seeing them at crime scenes, plane crashes, car crashes, street fights. They’re being admitted in courts as evidence and used in insurance claims, but no-one has really thought through the ramifications of what it means.”

He lifted his wine glass to his lips and sipped. No-one interrupted. Clayton liked to sit and pontificate after a good meal, and his guests knew better than to try to spoil his enjoyment. Clayton slowly put the glass back on the starched cloth and gently ran his finger around the rim. He fixed his eyes on the lawyer.

“Eyewitnesses can be cross-examined and their veracity can be challenged, and as you and Cole know, no two witnesses ever see the same thing. That’s all going to change. Before long everything that happens in public is going to be recorded on tape, and the video recording will take precedence over all other forms of eyewitness evidence. It started during the LA riots in 1992 and the wave of prosecutions which followed. The camcorder is the silent witness. If you can show a jury a video, they’ll believe that over everything else. It’s the old truism: a picture is worth a thousand words. When Kennedy was shot, there was one black and white film of it, lousy quality and taken well away from the event. When Reagan took a bullet there was a videocamera there to record it. The next time they try to hit a President, there’ll be half a dozen camcorders there, and that’s not including the networks’ Death Watch cameras. Imagine what that’ll mean. Imagine what the Warren Report would have looked like if there had been half a dozen camcorders close to the motorcade in Dallas. Cover-ups become impossible. That’s what the video age means. The age of truth.”

He looked at Howard as if to make sure that he was listening. “But tapes can be altered, events can be faked,” he continued. “And the Government is only now beginning to realise the inherent problems in allowing juries to believe what they see. We’re one of several companies working on analysis of video tape, both in terms of improving the quality of recordings and in determining their fidelity.”

Howard began to realise that there were other uses for the technology Theodore Clayton was developing. He knew how keen the CIA and FBI would be to use camcorders to identify trouble makers at civil rights demonstrations, and there were certain to be those in the darker corners of the Pentagon who’d love to be able to use phony videotapes in all sorts of covert operations. Howard knew how easy it would be to blackmail someone who was a threat to Government interests, or how the right sort of tapes could be used to usurp an uncooperative head of state. The hi-tech manipulation of videotape would work both ways: in the hands of the unscrupulous it could become the greatest propaganda weapon of all time. It was already happening to a small extent in advertising, with Coca-Cola using images of long-dead Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Louis Armstrong to sell their products. It wasn’t too much of a leap to manipulate news broadcasts. Howard remembered the black and white videos he’d seen of ‘smart bombs’ seeking their targets in the Gulf War, released to the television stations to show how well US technology was performing. True or fake? Howard had no way of knowing, and nor did the viewers. But everyone believed what they saw. Clayton was predicting not an era of truth, but a time of deception and lies, when no-one would be able to trust the evidence of their own eyes.

“So what are you saying, Ted?” asked the lawyer. “Are you saying that anything that’s captured on tape should be in the public domain?”

“I think that’s happening already,” said Clayton. “The most popular shows on television are the so-called reality shows, the ones that follow around police and rescue workers doing their jobs, showing them making arrests and pulling victims out of car wrecks. The public can’t get enough of them.”

“Maybe the public needs to be protected from its blood lust,” said Howard quietly.

“And who’ll be the judges of what they should see?” asked Clayton. “Who’ll be the censors? The FBI? You want to go back to the Hoover days?” He raised his hand to silence Howard before he could reply. Theodore Clayton preferred to answer his own questions. “No, the floodgates have been opened, I’m afraid. There’s no going back.”

“And what lies ahead?” asked the television producer.

Clayton grinned. “Ah, Ross, if I only knew. If only I knew.” The two maids began clearing the table and Jarvis carried a large gold-inlaid mahogany box over to Clayton. It was his deluxe Trivial Pursuit set, a game he loved with a passion and which he insisted his guests play after wining and dining them. “Everyone ready for a game?” Clayton asked cheerfully.

“Terrific,” said Howard as Clayton lifted the lid of the box and took out the board. Lisa kicked him under the table, but not too hard. She knew how much he loathed game-playing.

Kelly Armstrong sashayed into Howard’s office unable to control her excitement. Howard was sipping a cup of hot coffee and he put it down on his desk and looked at her with an amused smile on his face. He was still feeling pleased with himself after his and Lisa’s victory at Trivial Pursuit the previous evening. It was the first time Clayton and his wife had ever lost, and Howard had been unable to stop grinning all the way home. He was still smiling when he woke up that morning. It would take a lot to spoil his day. “Yes, Kelly, what is it?” he asked.

“I’ve found the firms that hired the cars!” she gushed. “Two firms, one leased a blue Chrysler Imperial three days before the plane was shot down, another leased a white Imperial two days before. Both cars have been returned.”

“Well done,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “Do they still have them?”

“The blue one is out with another customer, the white one is still available. And it hasn’t been cleaned yet! I’ve told them to hold it for us.”

Howard stood up. “That’s the best news I’ve heard today,” he said. “How did you find the companies?”

“Like you said, I contacted all the home addresses of the drivers who’d rented the cars. Two used fake addresses — one of the streets didn’t even exist, and both were recently issued licences.”

“And the credit cards?”

“Same addresses as the licences. Both cards were recent and are tied to bank accounts here in Phoenix. I’m applying to have access to the account records. With your say-so, of course.”

“Of course,” said Howard. “Go for it.” He handed her copies of the photographs which Clayton had given him. “Then go out and talk to both rental firms. Show them these photographs, see if they recognise anyone.”

Kelly scrutinised the pictures. “These are from the video?” she asked.

“They’ve been computer enhanced,” said Howard. “I’m expecting to get improved pictures later this week.” As he and Lisa had left Clayton’s house, the industrialist had slapped Howard on the back, congratulated him on his unexpected victory at Trivial Pursuit and whispered that his researchers had been working on the tape over the weekend and had made considerable progress. They’d be in touch before the week was out, Clayton had promised.

“Where are the rental companies?” Howard asked Kelly.

“Both here in Phoenix,” she said. “There’s something else. One of the men wasn’t American, the woman who rented out the blue Imperial said she thought he had an accent: Scottish or Australian.”

“Interesting,” said Howard. He sat down again. “Good work, Kelly. I’ll make sure Jake Sheldon gets to hear what a help you’ve been on this.”

Her green eyes widened and a red glow spread across her cheeks and Howard knew without asking that she’d already spoken to Sheldon. Howard’s smile tightened and he picked up his coffee. “Thanks, Kelly,” he said. He watched her buttocks twitch under her skirt as she left his office and he imagined burying a long, sharp knife between her elegant shoulder blades.

Cole Howard knew that he needed a briefing from someone with sniping experience, someone who could give him an idea of what sort of men he was up against. His office at 201 East Indianola Street was on the fourth floor and immediately below was the Treasury Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Howard knew one of the agents in the department, a fifteen-year veteran called Bradley Caine. Howard rang Caine’s extension but got the engaged tone, so rather than wait he took the stairs down and stood at the agent’s door until he’d finished his call. The two men shook hands and Howard dropped down into the chair opposite Caine’s desk. Caine was a former soldier and he still wore his hair military-style. He was forever suffering from migraine headaches and swallowed aspirin like M amp; Ms. Without going into details, Howard explained that he needed information on snipers and their weaponry. Caine unscrewed the top of his bottle of aspirin and tossed two into his mouth, swallowing them dry.

“There’s a guy in the Phoenix SWAT team, Joe Bocconelli, let me give him a call,” said Caine. He held out the aspirin bottle to Howard, who shook his head.

“A bit early for me, Brad,” said Howard, with a smile.

Caine shrugged and dialled Bocconelli’s number. He put the call on the speaker-phone so that they could both hear him.

Bocconelli’s first thought was that Howard needed someone with a military background and Caine nodded in agreement. Bocconelli said that only a very, very special sniper could have shot down a plane with a rifle and he suggested that Howard check with the Marines, or the Navy SEALs. According to the sergeant, there were only about a dozen men in this country who could make a two thousand yard shot and that most of them would be in the military. Bocconelli recommended a sniper who lived in Virginia, not far from the Quantico Marine Corps Air Station where the Marines trained their snipers. Bocconelli had explained that the man, Bud Kratzer, was a former Marine Captain who had retired in 1979 after twenty years’ service, most of it as a sniper. He now worked as an independent consultant, selling his military skills to police SWAT teams around the country, and was a frequent visitor to Quantico where he was treated with a respect which bordered on reverence. Bocconelli also said he was on retainer from several counter-terrorist organisations but that details were understandably sketchy. Howard knew Quantico well. The FBI’s Academy was there, and so too was its Behavioral Science Unit, the office responsible for psychological profiling of hunted criminals, especially serial killers. Howard scribbled a reminder to himself on a notepad that if all else failed the BSU might give him a clue as to the sort of men who might be involved in the assassination.

Back in his own office, Howard telephoned Kratzer who said he’d be in Washington the following day and that he’d be more than happy to chat with him. Howard had hoped that the former Marine would fly to Phoenix but he said it was out of the question, much as he’d wanted to help. He was going straight from Washington to Germany for a two-week training session with the Kampfschwimmerkompanie, the German equivalent of the Navy SEALs.

Howard caught the redeye flight and he washed and shaved in the men’s room at Dulles Airport. Kratzer had suggested they meet at the FBI’s headquarters and Howard had readily agreed because visiting Washington would give him a chance to see Andy Kim and find out how he was getting on with his computer simulations. Howard had phoned ahead and arranged for an interview room to be available and given Kratzer’s details to reception so that his clearances would be ready.

Kratzer was on time and Howard went down to the reception area to meet him and escort him up to the interview room on the third floor. He was a big man, not what Howard had expected at all. He’d assumed that snipers were lean, anxious-looking men, the sort who could sit silently for hours in one position before pulling the trigger. Kratzer looked as if he’d be more at home with a pint of beer in one hand and a pizza in the other. He was about six feet six inches tall, and had the physique of a linebacker who’d spent too much time on the bench. There was something amiss with his hair and it took Howard a few minutes to realise that he was wearing some sort of toupee or hair weave and that it was a slightly different colour from Kratzer’s own hair. His hair was grey at the sides and back and black on top and Howard had to fight from staring at it.

Kratzer had huge fingers, as massive as bananas: they looked too big to squeeze into a trigger guard. His hands were clenching and unclenching as if he were exercising. “Joe Bocconelli gave you my name, you said?” he asked as they rode up in the elevator.

“Yeah, he’s a member of the Phoenix SWAT team. He said he’d been in one of your training programmes a couple of years back.”

“Can’t say I remember,” said Kratzer. “But it was good of him to put you on to me.”

The elevator doors hissed open and the two men walked along the corridor to the interview room. “Good of him? Why do you say that?” asked Howard.

“Well, the FBI is going to pay me for this, isn’t it? A consulting fee?”

“Well. .” said Howard, who hadn’t expected to be asked for money.

“Because I’ll tell you right now, Bud Kratzer doesn’t do anything for free. I put in twenty hard years with the Marine Corps for shit money, and now it’s payback time. My skills are my pension, and I have to squeeze it for every cent I can. Capish?”

“Loud and clear,” said Howard. “Though I was sort of hoping that you’d do it as a public service.”

Kratzer stopped and looked at Howard as if to see if he was joking. Suddenly he burst into laughter and slapped Howard on the back. “Hell, and I thought you FBI guys had no sense of humour.”

Howard took him along to the interview room and held the door open for him as he tried to guess how much money the former Marine might be talking about. The room contained a large desk and several chairs and Kratzer slid into the largest. He looked at a chunky gold watch on his wrist. “Okay, my meter is running, let’s get on with this. What do you want to know?”

“Snipers,” said Howard, “I want to know what sort of men they are.”

Kratzer leaned back in his chair and looked up at the polystyrene-tiled ceiling. “A sniper is the most cost-effective killing machine there is, and at the same time he’s one of the most maligned,” he said, speaking as if he were delivering a speech to a large auditorium. “During the Second World War, to kill one enemy soldier the Allied Forces had to fire about twenty-five thousand rounds. In Korea our soldiers had to shoot an average of fifty thousand rounds and by the time Vietnam came around that had jumped to two hundred and fifty thousand. Just think about that, Special Agent Howard, a quarter of a million bullets fired just to kill one VC. And that doesn’t include all the bombs we dropped on them. Now, take the sniper. When I was in Nam, our unit averaged 1.5 rounds per kill. For every three bullets we fired, we killed two Victor Charlie. The sniper’s the surgeon of the battlefield. He goes in with his rifle, takes out an assigned target, and returns to his base. It’s the cleanest form of combat there is. No innocent bystanders get hurt, there’s no fallout, no dangerous hardware left behind. Snipers are the elite.”

Kratzer lowered his eyes and looked at Howard. “But the generals don’t see the sniper as a saviour, they see him as belonging to the dirty tricks department. I’ve had it said to me by some of our most respected military minds that the snipers are cowards of war, that they shouldn’t even be used. These are the same generals who want to spend billions on nuclear weapons. They’re prepared to kill civilians on a scale undreamed of, but they don’t want to remove one enemy from the battlefield with a single shot. I can see you frowning. You don’t follow me?”

“I follow you, but I don’t see what point you’re trying to make.”

“The point is that snipers have to believe in themselves totally. They have to know that what they are doing is right.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a paperback book. He threw it onto the desk in front of Howard who picked it up and looked at the cover. ‘Marine Sniper’, it said, and underneath, ‘93 confirmed kills’.

“You want to get inside the mind of a sniper, read this,” said Kratzer. “It’s the biography of a guy called Carlos Hathcock, a gunnery sergeant who served with the Marines and did two tours in Nam. A couple of publishers have been after me to write a book like it, but I’ve never gotten around to it.”

“Ninety-three kills?” queried Howard.

“Confirmed kills,” said Kratzer. “Those are the ones with witnesses. I got eighteen myself, but I was in Nam towards the end, when we weren’t interested in winning. Read that book and you’ll have a good idea of how a sniper thinks. The first kill you’ll read about is a twelve-year-old boy. The kill he’s most proud of is a woman.”

Howard looked at the cover: a painting of a man in a bush hat with a rifle pressed to his cheek, his face smeared with camouflage make-up.

“Long Tra’ng the VC called him, because of a white feather he wore in his hat,” Kratzer continued. “He was just a kid in Nam, but he was an amazing shot. He once plugged a VC at twenty-five hundred yards.”

“Do youngsters usually make the best snipers?” asked Howard.

“Not necessarily,” said Kratzer. “They need to be experienced with guns, so country boys are best, especially ones from poor families who have to hunt to supplement the cooking-pot. An empty stomach is the best incentive there is, right?”

“Right,” agreed Howard.

“But there’s a lot of technical stuff to learn as a military sniper. It’s one thing to hunt rabbits with a shotgun, quite another to nail a VC at a thousand yards. It’s only with age that you get that experience. I was in my late twenties when I was in Nam. Hathcock was twenty-five, I think. But it’s not a skill you lose. There’s some stamina involved, but once you’ve got the technique, and providing you can maintain the level of concentration needed, you could be a world-class sniper well into your forties.”

“I was thinking about what you were saying about conscience. Doesn’t it get harder to pull the trigger as you get older?”

Kratzer smiled. He picked up a match off the desk and began to pick his teeth with it. “I’d have no hesitation at all,” he said. “I went down on bended knees and begged them to send me to the Gulf. I’d love to have blown away a few ragheads.”

Kratzer’s eyes widened. Howard had seen the same hungry look in his father-in-law’s eyes when he was discussing his latest hunting expedition.

Howard held up the book. A soldier who could kill at twenty-five hundred yards sounded like just the man he was looking for. “This Hathcock, is he still in the Marines?”

Kratzer shook his head. “Bit of a sad story, really. He had to leave the Marines for medical reasons a few months before he’d put in his twenty.”

“What was wrong with him?”

“Multiple sclerosis, I think. Shakes all the time. Ironic, isn’t it? His main claim to fame was that he could lie perfectly still and shoot a bullet thousands of feet with almost perfect accuracy. Now he can’t even lift a beer to his lips without spilling it. There’s a lesson there for all of us: when it comes down to it, all you’ve got is yourself to depend on. You can give your all to an organisation like the Marines but if you’re no more use to them, out you go. I tell you, when they call me in to help with their sniper training, they pay through the nose. I’m not giving them the chance to kick me in the balls, no sir.”

Kratzer sounded bitter and Howard wondered if he’d also been put under pressure to resign from the Marines. Howard hadn’t had much experience with snipers, but it seemed to him that there was something not quite right about Kratzer. He was too overbearing, like a television evangelist.

“What’s involved in making a shot of two thousand yards or more?” Howard asked.

“You need a gun that packs a real punch, for a start,” said Kratzer, still working at his back molars with the matchstick. “A lot of snipers in Nam used Model-70 Winchesters, 30–06 Springfield calibre, but I wouldn’t be happy shooting one beyond a thousand yards. Sometime in the late Sixties, 1967 I think, Marine Corps snipers began using the Remington 700 with an M-40 scope. They used the same 7.62 ammo that the M-14 rifle used but it had more than its fair share of problems, not the least being it wasn’t really up to taking the sort of hard knocks a rifle gets out in the field, and neither the stock nor the barrel were camouflaged. The boys at Quantico ended up modifying it to come up with the M-40A1. It had a modified stock of pressure-moulded fibreglass and a twenty-four-inch stainless-steel barrel with a large diameter. I’ll tell you, Agent Howard, with that weapon you could hold your shot group inside a twelve-inch circle at almost fifteen hundred yards. If you were up to it. But for the really long shots we’d use the M-2.50-calibre machine gun, it’s got a stable trajectory for almost three thousand yards. The bullets are so much bigger, you see, 700 grains, so they get more momentum. You could fire one of those babes well over two thousand yards, and with a ten-power telescopic sight like a Lyman or a Unertl you’d have a high degree of accuracy. Maybe not as accurate as the M-40A1, but close. Certainly enough to hit the target and, with the man-stopper bullets, that’s all you’d need.”

Howard nodded. He had the computer-enhanced photographs of the Arizona snipers in his briefcase but he wanted to get a general idea of how snipers operated before showing them to Kratzer. “Joe said that only military-trained snipers can make the really long shots.”

“Damn right,” said Kratzer. He took the matchstick from his mouth, examined the moist end and then chewed it again. “SWAT teams don’t have the space, not in the urban environment. But in a war zone, the further you are from the target, the better. You don’t want the enemy to hear or see you.”

“And long shots create special problems?”

“Sure do. Gravity and wind. When you shoot at point-blank range they’re relatively unimportant, but over long distances they’re as vital as the type of gun and ammunition. Do you want the short explanation, or the detailed one?”

Howard felt like asking for a price breakdown first, but instead he told the former Marine that he wanted as much detail as possible. Kratzer swung his legs up on the desk. His shoes gleamed as if he’d spent all morning polishing them.

“A bullet is just like a baseball being thrown through the air,” he said. “As it travels, gravity pulls it down, so to throw a long distance you have to throw it up and along. It follows a parabolic path, moving up to a peak and then down as it travels through the air. A bullet is the same: the path it travels depends on its initial velocity, the rate it loses velocity, and the distance it has to travel. Over one hundred yards, a 650-grain bullet will probably fall about six inches. So to hit the target you’d have to aim six inches high. And over that distance the bullet’s velocity would probably fall from twenty-eight hundred feet per second to about twenty-six eighty feet per second. Over five hundred yards the drop would be about eighty-two inches. Almost seven feet. And the bullet would slow to twenty-one hundred feet per second. Still not much of a change in the velocity.”

Howard nodded. He scribbled the numbers into his notebook because he knew he’d never remember them.

“Now, suppose you’re trying for the really long shot. Two thousand yards, say. Over that distance the bullet will slow to under a thousand feet per second, about one-third of the velocity it had as it left the barrel of the rifle. And the drop is of the order of two thousand inches.”

“Two thousand inches?” said Howard, in disbelief.

Kratzer smiled, pleased by the FBI agent’s response. “Uh-huh. That’s one hundred and sixty-seven feet,” he said, “give or take.”

“So you’re saying that the sniper would have to aim one hundred and sixty-seven feet above his target?”

“It’s not quite as simple as that, because like I said, the bullet follows a parabolic path. And you’d have to take into account if the target was above or below the sniper. But that’s the basic idea. Is that what you’re after, a sniper who’s planning a two thousand yard hit?”

Howard nodded and Kratzer’s eyes widened. “You know that it’ll take a bullet four seconds to travel that distance?” Kratzer asked. “Four full seconds. He’d have to be sure of his shot, he’d have to know that his target wouldn’t move. Even at a slow walk the target could easily get out of the way.” Kratzer steepled his fingers under his chin. “It’d be one hell of a long shot,” he mused. To Howard, the man sounded almost envious.

“So any sniper attempting such a shot would probably have a number of practice shots first?” asked Howard.

“Absolutely. He’d be crazy not to. But not everything can be planned in advance. A sniper has to be able to calculate the wind velocity in the field at the instant he shoots: he looks for drifting smoke, the movement of grass or the waving of tree branches. There’s a sort of Beaufort scale for wind. A wind under three miles an hour, you wouldn’t feel it but it’d make smoke drift. Between three and five miles an hour and you’d feel it on your cheek. Between five and eight miles an hour and you’ll see leaves on trees moving all the time, between eight and twelve and dust is raised from the ground, and a wind of between twelve and fifteen miles an hour will make small trees sway. Those figures are pretty accurate.”

The words were rattling from Kratzer’s mouth like bullets, as if the man was charging by the word rather than the minute. Most of the numbers went right by Howard.

“Now, say the range is one thousand yards. You multiply the wind velocity, say it’s four, by ten, the range in hundreds of yards. That gives you a figure of forty. You divide that number by a constant, in this case it’s ten, and that gives you the number of minutes of angle you have to take into account as the windage factor. Four. You understand about MOA?”

Howard frowned and shook his head.

“MOA is Minute of Angle,” explained Kratzer. “It’s a measure of the accuracy of a weapon. Basically, if a rifle has one MOA it means that over a hundred yards a test firing will give you a grouping of about one inch. For serious sniping, one MOA is the minimum. Okay, so two clicks on the scope compensate for one minute of angle. Eight clicks puts you right on the target if the windage factor is four. Now, I’ve made that sound simple.”

Howard smiled ruefully. “Yeah, right.”

“Back in Nam we either did the sums in our head or used charts we carried with us. These days there are pocket calculators that can work it all out for you.”

Howard tapped his notebook with his pen. “It seems to me that there’s a dehumanising effect in all this,” he said. “The sniper becomes so focused that he’s no longer aware of what he’s shooting at. The target almost becomes abstract.”

Kratzer nodded enthusiastically. “That’s probably true,” he agreed.

“So to what extent would a sniper concern himself with the nature of the target?”

“I’ve killed three women, and it doesn’t keep me awake at night, if that’s what you mean.” Kratzer seemed proud of the achievement.

Howard opened his briefcase and handed the photographs to him. “I’d like your opinion on the weapons being used here. And if you recognise any of the faces, I’ll not only be amazed, I’ll be eternally in your debt.”

Kratzer studied the faces. “I see what you mean,” he said. “These were taken with a hell of a long lens, right?”

“Something like that,” said Howard.

“These three guys were all shooting at the same target?”

“Yeah.”

Kratzer tossed one of the pictures back to Howard. “This one was furthest away, right?”

Howard was impressed. The man had picked out the sniper who had been two thousand yards from the dummies. “How did you know?” he asked.

Kratzer grinned. “That there is a Barrett 82A1 semiautomatic rifle. Short recoil operated, magazine-fed, air-cooled. Takes.50 calibre ammunition. If my memory serves me well it has a maximum range of more than seven thousand yards but for sniping you wouldn’t go much beyond two thousand. It’s American made, the firm is based in Virginia, I think.”

“It looks almost futuristic.”

“Yeah, they used one in the movie Robocop. Remember when the terrorists blow up a car with one shot from a rifle? That was a Barrett. It’s one hell of a weapon.”

“Does the army use it?”

“Yeah, all the armed forces use it. It was responsible for a lot of long-range kills in Iraq and Kuwait during Desert Storm. The UK uses them, too, and they’ve got them in France, Italy, and Israel, I think. The company’ll give you more details, I’m sure.”

Kratzer took the photograph back and studied it again. “There’s a sniper in the Navy SEALs, name of Rich Lovell. He’s an expert shot with the Barrett. I’m not certain, not a hundred per cent, but this might be Lovell. The face isn’t clear, but there’s something about the way he holds his head when he uses the scope. That could be him.”

Howard noted down the name and Kratzer told him where the SEALs were based. They were one of the units happy to pay the former Marine for sniping coaching. “What about the other two weapons? My father-in-law said that one of them might be a Horstkamp.”