The Long shot

“That’s great, Ed. Thanks. I know you must have pushed for it,” said Howard.

“Yeah, I’ve got to admit that he took some persuading,” said Mulholland. “But I told him that you were prepared to accept responsibility for him at all times, and he agreed. But he’s most definitely not to be armed, Cole, I can’t emphasise that enough. He’s to be there as a passive observer, nothing else.”

“That’s understood,” said Howard.

“So what’s your plan now?” asked Mulholland.

“Don’s having a word with the Secret Service people in Baltimore. They’re handling the on-the-ground searches and I think we should leave it up to them.”

“I agree,” said Mulholland. “Bob Sanger’s sending more of his people to Baltimore right now. There’s no point in the FBI duplicating their work.”

“Yeah, though we’re going to stick close to the President at all venues in the Baltimore-Washington area where the computer projection suggests he’s vulnerable. I’m going to talk to Andy Kim right now for a list. Then we’re off to the ball game, the President’s due there at six-thirty.”

“Okay, Cole, keep in touch.”

The line went dead and Howard called up Andy Kim’s private line in the White House computer room. Kim answered on the third ring and sounded tired and harassed. Howard asked if he had put together a list of the appointments on the President’s agenda where two out of the three snipers matched. A flustered Kim asked him to hang on and Howard tapped the phone against his cheek as he waited. The door to the hospital room was thrown open and the doctor who had treated Joker stormed in, his white coat flapping behind him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked. “Get back in bed right now.”

Joker looked at Howard for support, and the FBI agent was about to speak when Kim came back on the line. Howard turned his back on the doctor while he wrote down a list of venues. When he’d finished he had seven locations, including the ballpark and the National Aquarium, the two places where the President was going to be that evening. “The Secret Service already has this list, Andy?” asked Howard.

“That’s right, and we’re working on others now,” said Kim. He sounded as if someone was listening at his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Howard asked.

“I’m fine, Cole, there’s just quite a bit of pressure here at the moment, that’s all.”

“How’s Bonnie?”

“Dog tired,” said Kim. “Look, Cole, I have to go, we’re running a new program and I have to give it my full attention.”

“Sure, Andy, sorry,” said Howard. He switched off his phone and turned to face the doctor, who was if anything even angrier than when he’d entered the room.

“What the hell’s going on?” the doctor asked Howard.

“We need Mr Cramer’s assistance in a security matter, doctor,” said Howard, slipping the phone back into his pocket.

“He needs bed rest,” said the doctor, “he shouldn’t be on his feet.”

“I feel better,” said Joker, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“You’re in shock, and your body still hasn’t made up for the blood you lost.”

Joker shrugged. “I’m not planning on running a marathon,” he said.

“Any sort of movement is going to open up those wounds,” warned the doctor.

“Doctor, this is important,” insisted Howard; “if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be taking Mr Cramer out of your care.”

The doctor clicked his tongue in annoyance. He put his stethoscope against Joker’s chest and listened. “Your heart seems steady enough,” he admitted grudgingly. He pulled a sphygmomanometer from his coat pocket and took Joker’s blood pressure. “Your blood pressure is on the way up, too.” He looked at Howard severely. “I’d like to give him a vitamin shot, and what he really needs is a couple of days’ bed rest, but I don’t suppose I can stop you, can I?”

“No, doctor, I’m afraid you can’t.”

The door opened again and Don Clutesi came in, carrying a large brown parcel which he dropped on the bed. “There’s a shirt and a sports jacket, and underwear. There’s a pair of trousers, but I’m not sure that they’ll fit. And I had to buy the shoes.”

“Keep the receipt,” said Howard, knowing how difficult it was to get anything past the eagle eyes of the FBI’s accountants.

“I’ll get the vitamin shot,” said the doctor. “And I’d like to change his dressings before he leaves.”

Howard looked at his wristwatch. “No problem,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

The Colonel parked his dark green Range Rover in the garage and pressed the remote control device which closed the overhead door. His back ached, the lingering soreness the result of several High Altitude Low Opening freefall parachute jumps he’d made over Salisbury Plain a week earlier. He rubbed the small of his back with his knuckles. Leading from the front was all well and good, he thought, but he was getting too old for jumping out of planes.

He took his keys and opened the two high security locks on the door which led from the garage to the kitchen of the four-bedroom stone cottage. The door looked like painted wood but in fact it had a steel core and was impenetrable by any means short of a bazooka. Immediately he opened the second lock he pushed open the door and stepped into the kitchen, closing it behind him. He crossed the tiled floor quickly, opened a closet door and stuck another key into a white metal box on which a red light was flashing, neutralising the silent burglar alarm which was connected to his local police station and which would have a carload of armed police on his doorstep if it wasn’t switched off within thirty seconds.

He rubbed his back again and went through to his sitting room where he opened up a large floor-mounted globe which looked antique but which contained several bottles of malt whisky and crystal tumblers. He poured himself a large measure of an Islay malt and savoured it, breathing in its rich, peaty bouquet as he walked over to a table by the side of the fireplace where a chess game was laid out, a problem he’d been working on for several days. He looked down at the wooden pieces, his brow furrowed. The game was the ninth of a series Bobby Fischer had played against Boris Spassky in the summer of 1992. Fischer had opened with the ancient ‘Spanish Game’, but using the Exchange Variation. Spassky had resigned black’s position after only twenty-one moves but to the Colonel it was clear that he’d really lost the game on his seventeenth move when he’d moved his king. The Colonel had decided that Spassky should have taken one of white’s knights with his bishop instead, but he hadn’t yet decided where the game would have gone from there. It was an intriguing strategical problem and one that he relished.

The telephone on his hall table rang and he went over and picked it up. The light on his answer machine was flickering, indicating that he’d received several messages while he was out. The rich, almost plummy, voice on the line didn’t identify itself, but there was no need. The Colonel knew who it was, and that what he had to say must be important for him to call him at home.

“The operation has been discontinued,” the man said. “One of my operatives has been eliminated, one is missing, presumed inactive.”

“Damn,” said the Colonel quietly. “What happened?”

“Your man liquidated one at the house, for what reason I have yet to determine. The other operative followed the objective, but has since disappeared. The house was destroyed in a fire, your man is now in the Shock-trauma Unit of the University of Maryland Hospital in Baltimore and I am at a loss how to proceed further.”

“So we’ve no idea where the objective is?” asked the Colonel.

“That’s the position, yes.”

“What is my man’s status?”

“Injured, but not seriously. A request for information on his cover name has come through from New York, along with a set of fingerprints. It appears that he is sticking to his cover, but there is no way of knowing how long that will last. There is, of course, the question of what we do with him now. I do have other operatives in the area; they could tidy up the loose ends for us.”

The Colonel smiled grimly. If Joker had discovered how he’d been used, he would be bent on retaliation, and an angry SAS sergeant, albeit one who was out of condition, was not a threat to be taken lightly. Joker’s ire would be aimed not just at Mary Hennessy. “Does he know how he was being used?”

“I have no way of knowing, but if he has discovered that Five is involved there is a reasonable chance he will draw that conclusion.”

The Colonel nodded. He looked out through a leaded window across rolling countryside, not unlike the hills of the Brecon Beacons where the SAS trained its men and honed their killing edge. “I will handle him,” he said quietly.

“Are you sure?” asked the voice, though it contained little real concern; it was more a matter of ensuring that there was no misunderstanding, in case there should be ramifications at a later date.

“I’m sure,” said the Colonel. “Thank you for informing me so promptly. I’ll call you from the office tomorrow to clear up the paperwork. And I am deeply sorry about your operatives.”

“They knew the risks,” said the voice. “We’ll talk again.”

The line went dead and the Colonel replaced the receiver. It was true, the MI5 agents did know the risks, it was Joker who’d gone in blind, not knowing that he was being used as bait. The Colonel had gone through a lot of soul-searching before deciding to send his former sergeant to the United States, but in the end had decided that the ends did justify the means, and that Joker was expendable if the end result was the capture or elimination of Mary Hennessy. He doubted whether Joker would see it that way, though.

Carlos parked at the far end of the car park, facing the entrance to the huge Toys R Us warehouse, and switched off the engine. He settled back in his seat and looked at his wristwatch. When he looked up again it was to stare down the barrel of an M16 rifle. The pudgy finger on the trigger tightened and the weapon crackled and then the little boy holding it giggled. He put the rifle back to his shoulder again and aimed at Carlos’ head. The gun was almost as big as he was. Carlos smiled thinly as the boy pressed the trigger a second time. The boy’s father came up behind the boy and cuffed him around the ear.

“Don’t point your gun at strangers, son,” he chided. He apologised to Carlos and hauled the young would-be assassin off to a blue pick-up truck. Only in America, thought Carlos. They gave replica guns to four-year-old boys and wondered why they had the highest murder rate in the world. Carlos felt nothing but disgust for a society which treated guns as playthings. A gun had only one function — to kill, and it deserved always to be treated with respect.

Carlos watched the white Volkswagen turn into the car park and head in his direction. The driver parked, climbed out, and walked over to Carlos’ car. Carlos leaned over and opened the passenger door for Khatami. Khatami eased himself into the seat. He made no move to shake hands; it had been clear from the start that their relationship operated purely on a business level, but he acknowledged Carlos with a curt nod of the head. Khatami looked much the same as when the two men had first met in the First Class cabin of a jet parked on the tarmac of a Middle Eastern airport: a small, nervous man with a pointed chin and an adolescent’s moustache.

“Things are not going well,” said Khatami. It was a statement, not a question.

“Not as planned, but we shall not fail,” said Carlos.

The pick-up truck drove away, the barrel of the toy gun sticking out of the passenger window.

“The death of Rashid is a major problem,” said Khatami.

“But certainly not insurmountable,” said Carlos. “I’ve fired her weapon before, and I will do so this time. The operation can go ahead exactly as planned.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Khatami. “We had other plans for Rashid.”

Carlos narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?” he said softly.

“We have invested a great deal of time and money in this endeavour,” said Khatami. “Do you think we would have committed so many resources simply to help the IRA?”

Carlos said nothing. It was a thought that had occurred to him, but he’d assumed that his paymasters were vindictive enough to want to help anyone who acted against their enemies.

“We had our own agenda,” Khatami continued. “That is why we were so insistent that you use Rashid as one of the snipers. She was working for us. She had her own target.”

Carlos closed his eyes and sighed as he realised how he’d been manipulated all along. “The President,” he said.

“Indeed,” said Khatami. “We knew that the IRA would have nothing to do with an assassination of an American president. They depend on American goodwill for money and support. But we needed their expertise.”

Carlos reached up to grip the steering wheel. Mary Hennessy and Matthew Bailey were being set up to take the blame for the assassination of the President. And he, unwittingly, had been the one doing the setting up. He had betrayed them. And Dina Rashid had betrayed him. Was there no-one in the world who could be trusted any more? The answer hit him immediately. Of course there wasn’t. Loyalty counted for nothing in the world of the 1990s. It was every man for himself. That had been proved to him once and for all when he’d been betrayed by the Sudanese in 1994, delivered to a French ministerial jet drugged and trussed up like a chicken. “Why didn’t you tell me what you had planned?” he asked.

“It was enough that Rashid knew of our intentions. The fewer people who knew, the better. Your role in this did not depend on the nature of the target.”

Carlos nodded. He understood. He had himself sent terrorists on missions without putting them in the complete picture. Sometimes they hadn’t come back, but it was a price that had to be paid. It was results which counted, not the sensibilities of those involved. He understood what Khatami had done, but he still resented being used.

“You will be firing Rashid’s rifle,” said Khatami quietly. “Are you prepared to shoot at her target?”

Carlos felt his insides tighten. Khatami was asking him if he was prepared to assassinate the President of the United States. The enormity of what was being asked of him made him almost light-headed. But he knew that he could not refuse. Khatami was his only hope for a safe haven. Without his support Carlos would be thrown to the wolves. He quickly ran through the technicalities of the shot. The President would be in the sky box, which meant there would have to be two shots: the first to smash the glass, the second to hit the target. His marksmanship was up to it. Just.

“It would be an honour,” said Carlos.

Patrick Farrell, Sr, was sitting at his desk going over the service records of a Cessna 172, which his company used to broadcast traffic information to several radio and television stations in the area, when his secretary told him that he had visitors. She showed in two men wearing almost identical black suits and sunglasses. They looked and acted almost like robots, sweeping the room with their shielded eyes, their lips together in neither smiles nor frowns.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?” Farrell asked, getting to his feet.

“Patrick Farrell?” asked one of the men, his impassive face impossible to read. Farrell nodded. The two men flashed their credentials and identified themselves as Secret Service agents. “We’d like you to come with us, Mr Farrell,” said one.

“What’s wrong?” asked Farrell.

“We’d just like you to come with us,” said the second agent.

“And if I refuse?”

“We’d still like you to come with us,” said the first agent.

“Can I call my lawyer?”

“There’ll be time for that later, Mr Farrell,” said the first agent.

“Am I under arrest?”

“No, sir,” said the second agent. He held out his hand as if to guide Farrell out of the office.

Farrell looked over the man’s shoulder at his secretary who was nervously biting her lip. “Get hold of my son and tell him what’s happened,” said Farrell.

The two agents looked at each other as if communicating telepathically. The first agent looked at the secretary. “I think you’d better come with us, too, miss.”

Don Clutesi drove the blue Dodge to the Secret Service’s Baltimore field office in West Lombard Street, about a mile from the Shock-trauma Unit. Cole Howard briefed Joker in the back of the car. The jacket Clutesi had supplied fitted Joker around the shoulders but was slightly short in the arms and was a garish plaid. Clutesi had explained that he’d borrowed it from the Baltimore police’s Vice Squad and that it was the best he could do in the time. Joker wondered if Clutesi had deliberately chosen the most noticeable outfit so that he’d be a better target. The only thing easier for a sniper to hit would be a bullseye on the back.

Joker had continued to express surprise at the notion that one of the former Navy SEALs would go for a two thousand yard shot with the bullet taking a full four seconds to reach its target. He’d worked with military snipers before, both in Northern Ireland and the Falkland Islands, but never over that distance. It almost defied belief.

Clutesi stopped the car outside the Federal Building and dropped off Howard and Joker. He drove away in search of a parking place while the two men went inside and up to the Secret Service’s office. There Howard introduced Joker to Bob Sanger who the FBI agent explained was in charge of security arrangements for the President’s visit. Sanger looked curiously at Joker’s strange sports jacket over the top of his pince-nez spectacles. Joker felt that he ought to say something to explain his attire, but before he had the chance Sanger was shaking hands and ushering them to chairs.

Sanger handed a stack of faxes to Howard. “This is the latest from the Kims,” he said.

Howard skimmed them. They contained lists of places where the snipers might be located. He showed them to Joker. “It’s a big list,” said Joker.

“Not really,” said Sanger. “We’d be pretty much covering all those places anyway in advance of a presidential visit. We normally go through every building with a view of the President within a half-mile radius. All this does is extend our search area.”

“They seem quite specific,” said Joker. “He says the sixth and seventh floors of the Holiday Inn, but not below. That should make it easier.”

“Yeah, that would be a help, but it doesn’t mean we won’t be searching all the floors which overlook the ballpark. We can’t assume he’s right, we have to look everywhere. I mean, we wouldn’t stop searching the sewers for bombs just because we think a sniper is going to try to kill the President. We still send the Technical Security Division into the sewers, looking for time bombs, taking away trash cans and sealing manhole covers shut. We’re talking about a hundred advance agents, and since we’ve put them all on red alert we’re all working overtime.”

Howard nodded and handed back the faxes. “It’s still okay for Mr Cramer and I to be as close as possible to the presidential party for the next few days?”

“I’m still not overjoyed about the idea, but I can’t think of a good reason to deny your request,” said Sanger. “I’ve photographs of Hennessy, Bailey and Sanchez here. They’ve been handed out to all our men.” He pulled open a drawer and handed over three Secret Service identification badges, with metal chains so that they could be hung around necks. “Wear these at all times,” he said. “If one of my men or the agents who come with the President from Washington see you trying to get close without one of these, at best you’ll get your arm twisted.” He frowned. “I thought there were three of you?”

“Don Clutesi will be here shortly. He’s parking the car.” He picked up the three badges and handed one to Joker.

Sanger stood up and went over to a closet. He took out three ballistic-protective vests, gave one to Joker and the other two to Howard. “I’d be happier if you all wear these,” he said, almost apologetically. “Just in case. I wouldn’t want you guys getting hurt.”

Joker weighed his vest in his hands. It felt lighter than the body armour he’d worn in the SAS, and seemed more flexible.

“It’s made of a special woven fabric, the trade name is Spectra,” said Sanger. “They’re supposed to be ten times stronger than steel but with a fraction of the weight. We get them from a company run by Ollie North. These are certified to stop a 9 mm 124 grain full metal jacket bullet at fourteen hundred feet per second.”

Joker raised an eyebrow. “Impressive,” he said.

“Yeah, they hardly show under a shirt, either,” said Sanger.

“Do we get the dark glasses?” asked Joker.

“I don’t follow,” said Sanger, confused.

“The regulation shades. Do we get those, too?”

Sanger grinned as he realised that his leg was being pulled. “No, Mr Cramer, those you’ll just have to buy yourself. Is there anything else you guys need?”

“Binoculars would be handy,” said Joker.

Howard nodded. “We can get those from our field office,” he said. He looked at Sanger. “The President’s helicopter touches down at six, right?”

“Right,” agreed Sanger. “I’ll be at the ballpark an hour before Marine One lands. I’ll meet you there, if that’s okay with you.”

“That’s fine,” said Howard.

The intercom on Sanger’s desk buzzed and he depressed one of its buttons. A secretary told him that Don Clutesi was outside. Howard and Joker said their goodbyes and left Sanger working his way through the faxes.

Mary Hennessy drove back to the motel where she found Carlos and Schoelen cleaning their rifles on sheets of polythene spread out over a bed.

“How did it go?” Carlos asked.

“She didn’t know about the broadcast until she saw it on television,” said Mary. “There’s some sort of power game going on between her and her boss.”

“And because of that we were almost caught?” said Carlos. He picked up the barrel of Dina Rashid’s rifle and held it like a conductor about to conduct his orchestra. “If she’d known about the broadcast, we could have left earlier, and Cramer wouldn’t have killed Dina.”

“That’s true,” admitted Mary. “But there was nothing she could do. There’s something else — Cramer is still alive.”

Carlos stood up. “That’s impossible.” Behind him, Schoelen had finished cleaning his rifle.

Mary shrugged. “He’s in Shock-trauma, and the FBI are talking to him.”

Carlos paced up and down the room. “How much do they know?”

“They know who we are, but they don’t know when or where we plan to make the hit. Their computer simulation isn’t working — because they can’t anticipate where Lovell is going to be. It’s throwing out all their calculations.”

“So we go ahead?”

Mary nodded. “Security is going to be tighter, but if we’re careful we can do it. Kelly has given me a full briefing on the security arrangements at the ballpark, so we have an edge.” She opened her handbag and handed Carlos a stack of papers.

He flicked through them. “Okay,” he said. “If you’re sure.” He looked at her, his deep brown eyes boring deep into hers, leaving her in no doubt that the responsibility for failure would rest with her.

Mary returned his gaze. “I’m sure,” she said, quietly.

Carlos nodded slowly, then sat down and continued to clean the rifle. Lou Schoelen zipped up the sports bag which contained his Horstkamp sniping rifle and shouldered it. “I’ll be going,” he said. Schoelen went over to Carlos and shook his hand. “Good luck,” he said.

Carlos looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Lou, this has nothing to do with luck, you know that.” He had an opened box of Ritz crackers by his side and he slotted several into his mouth, chewing them with relish.

Schoelen smiled. “Yeah, I know, but I’d like luck on our side as well.” He waved goodbye to Mary and left.

Mary opened a drawer in the bedside cupboard and took out a packet of hair dye. She went into the bathroom, leaving Carlos sitting on the bed. Carlos finished cleaning the rifle and reassembled it. Mary came out of the bathroom, her hair wrapped in a white towel. There were red streaks on the towel, and the few strands of hair that Carlos could see were a dark red. She looked at him, saying nothing. Carlos wondered how she would react when she realised how she’d been used and that the IRA were being set up to take the blame for the assassination of the President. He smiled. She smiled back. “Bathroom’s free,” she said.

Carlos covered the rifle with the bedcover and went into the bathroom, carrying his wash bag. The sink had a red ring around it where it had been stained by the hair dye. He took out a can of menthol shaving cream and he spread some over his face, lathering it into his stubble and moustache. He used a disposable razor to remove the moustache, and then washed the remaining lather off his face. He looked very different without the facial hair, and by combing his hair in a slightly different fashion his appearance was totally altered. In the bedroom, Mary’s hairdryer kicked into life as Carlos stepped into the shower and soaped himself clean. By the time he showered and towelled himself dry, Mary was sitting in front of the dressing table putting the finishing touches to her hair. “Red suits you,” he said.

She smiled up at him. “Ilich, you said blonde suited me.”

“And it did, Mary. It did.”

He kept a towel wrapped around his broad waist as he picked up a dark pinstripe suit and a brand new white shirt, still in its polythene wrapper. He carried them into the bathroom and changed. “What do you think?” he asked Mary as he walked back into the bedroom.

She looked at him in the mirror. “Good. Every inch a businessman — all you need is a tie. And shoes, of course.”

Carlos selected a red and blue striped tie. “Are you all right, Mary?” he asked as he fastened the tie. “You seem a little apprehensive.”

“When I’m focused on what we’re doing it doesn’t worry me, but sometimes I relax and look at it from a distance, and it scares me,” she said as she combed her hair.

“Fear is good, it keeps you on your toes,” said Carlos. “It is those without fear who make mistakes and get caught.”

Mary turned and nodded. “You’re right, of course,” she said. “What about you, Ilich? Are you scared?”

Carlos shrugged. “A little,” he said. He grinned. “But if you ever tell anyone that I told you so, I’ll have to kill you.” He patted her on her shoulder to show that he was joking. “We must go soon.”

“I know,” she said. “You have the keys to the plane?”

Carlos laughed. “You sound like a doting wife, Mary. Is that how you treated your husband?”

“I suppose it was,” she said, standing up and checking her outfit in the mirror. She had changed into a yellow wrap-around skirt, a white shirt and white pumps.

Carlos sat down on the edge of his bed and broke the rifle down into its main component parts, then wrapped them in a motel towel and placed them in a black leather briefcase. “I’m really impressed with the way you handled Bailey,” he said. “He’s a changed man. Now he actually seems to be looking forward to it. And did you notice how he’s completely lost his stammer?”

Mary shuddered as she picked up her suitcase. “Yes, I noticed. Are you ready?”

Carlos slipped the box of crackers under his arm and picked up his briefcase and suitcase. “Oh yes,” he said. “More than ready.”

The FBI’s Baltimore field office was in a cream-coloured brick building on an industrial park next to Route 1-695. Cole Howard showed Joker into a small interview room, bare-walled with a couple of chairs and a teak veneer table. “Do you want a coffee or something?” asked Howard. He was carrying the bullet-proof vests in a nylon bag and he dropped them on the floor next to the table.

“Yeah, coffee would be good,” answered Joker, sitting down gingerly. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any Famous Grouse, have you?”

“Famous Grouse?” repeated Howard, his brow furrowed.

“It’s a brand of whisky,” said Joker. He moved his shoulder as if it pained him.

“I can get you some painkillers,” said Howard. “Aspirin or Tylenol or something.”

“That’ll have to do, I suppose,” said Joker. “How about a beer to wash them down?” He slouched back in the chair, his eyes closed. Howard stood and watched him for a few seconds, and then went out of the room to where the vending machines were. He realised he’d forgotten to ask how Joker took his coffee, but figured that he could probably do with the sugar, so he chose it sweet and white. When he got back to the room, Joker was still resting, his eyes firmly closed. Howard put the styrofoam cup on the table.

Don Clutesi came into the room carrying three Motorola two-way radios and three pairs of high-power binoculars. “You wouldn’t believe the paperwork I had to go through to borrow these,” he complained. “You’d think I was planning to steal them.” He put them on the table next to the coffee.

“Have you got any painkillers?” asked Howard.

“Headache?” asked Clutesi.

Howard shook his head. “They’re for Cramer.”

Clutesi went through his pockets and came up with a small foil packet of four tablets. He tossed them down on the table. “Is he going to be up to it?” he asked.

“I’ll be fine,” said Joker, opening his eyes. He grunted as he leaned forward and took the packet of painkillers. He broke open the foil pouch, swallowed a couple of the white tablets, and washed them down with the coffee, a look of disgust on his face.

Howard picked up one of the two-way radios and showed Joker how it worked. “This will be operating on the Secret Service frequency, so don’t use it unless you have something urgent to say,” explained Howard. “You’ll be able to listen in to what they’re saying, too.”

Joker nodded. He put the earpiece in his ear and slotted in its jackplug. “I’ve used similar equipment,” he said.

Howard slipped off his jacket. He was wearing a leather holster which he’d clipped to the back of his belt and he removed it, placing it on the table.

“Colt 45?” said Joker. “I thought you guys were switching over to Glocks or Berettas.”

Howard took off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. “I prefer the Colt. It’s reliable, it does the job.”

“It’s heavy to carry around all day, though,” said Joker. He gestured at the gun. “Do you mind?”

Howard looked at Clutesi and then back to Joker. “Go ahead,” he said. He dropped his shirt on the table and picked up one of the vests. Clutesi helped him fit it while Joker took the magazine out of the gun and checked the mechanism. Joker looked down the sights and weighed the gun in his hands as Howard put his shirt back on and retied his necktie. It was a good fit, and once he’d put his jacket on the vest was barely visible.

“Have you used it?” asked Joker.

“Oh sure, we have regular training with firearms,” said Howard.

Joker shook his head. “No, I meant have you really used it?”

“Sure.”

“Fired it? At someone?”

“Well, yes, I’ve fired it, but only warning shots. If you use a weapon properly, you don’t have to fire it. The threat should be enough.”

Joker laughed bitterly. “Is that what they teach you at the Academy? For fuck’s sake, Cole, a gun has one purpose and one purpose only. To kill people. Anything else is bullshit.”

“So how many people have you killed, Cramer?” asked Clutesi scornfully.

Joker turned around slowly until he was facing Clutesi. The Colt was still in Joker’s hand, and though Clutesi could see that the clip was out, he still paled. Joker looked at the FBI agent, his deep-set eyes like impenetrable black holes either side of his nose. “A few,” said Joker coldly. “Quite a few.” For a moment it appeared that Joker was going to say something else but then he shook his head, put the Colt back in the holster and handed it to Howard. Joker adjusted his jacket and scowled at Clutesi. “Are you sure this is the only jacket you can get?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so,” said Clutesi, smiling brightly. Howard had the feeling that his fellow FBI agent was getting his revenge for the urine-filled bottle. “It’s not so bad. It goes well with the jeans.”

“How’s your shoulder?” Howard asked.

“It’s painful, but I’ll be okay,” said Joker.

“The vest fits okay?”

“Sure, it’ll be fine so long as they don’t go for a head shot,” Joker replied, pocketing his two-way radio.

“Okay, let’s get down to the ballpark,” said Howard.

“What’s the chance of us stopping for a drink on the way?” asked Joker. He saw the look of distaste on Howard’s face. “For medicinal reasons,” he added.

Lou Schoelen stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor of the office building and looked up and down the corridor. The office he was looking for was three doors down on the left. A sign on the wall next to the dark blue door read ‘Quality Goods Import-Export Inc’. Schoelen took out the key Mary Hennessy had given him and unlocked the door.

The office interior was neat and bland: cream painted walls, cheap wooden furniture and metal filing cabinets, an IBM clone computer sitting on a desk. According to Mary, the office had been leased some six months earlier by one of her contacts in New York. The man made regular trips down to Baltimore, keeping up the appearance that the office was used, paying the utility bills and collecting any junk mail that arrived. The office had been selected on the basis of two main criteria: it overlooked the ballpark and had a window which could be opened. In the days of central air-conditioning, the latter had proven remarkably difficult to find.

Schoelen put his sports bag on one of the desks. He looked around the dummy office. It was impressive, and any casual observer would assume that it was a functioning business, with faxes and telexes in two wire baskets, a wall planner covered with marks and scribbled notes, and various well-thumbed directories in an old bookcase. He went over to the window and looked down at the traffic below. The car parks surrounding the stadium were empty: there was more than an hour before the game was due to begin. The stadium was in the shape of a horseshoe, the open end facing towards Schoelen and the tower blocks of the city centre. Through the gap he could see the bright green playing surface, and the sandy mound and diamond. At one side of the horseshoe was an advertisement for Coca-Cola, depicting a bottle of the soft drink which was several storeys high. Schoelen unlatched the window and slid it to the right. Immediately the throb of traffic and a distant ambulance siren flooded into the office, along with a wave of hot, moist air. He pushed open the window as far as it would go and checked the view of the pitcher’s mound in the distance. Perfect. He closed the window, sat down at the desk and unzipped the sports bag, whistling softly to himself.

Rich Lovell drove the rental car to the airfield, while Matthew Bailey sat in the passenger seat, the peak of his orange and black baseball cap pulled low over his face. Bailey had a map of the area spread out over his lap. The airfield where he was due to meet Patrick Farrell wasn’t the one where Farrell Aviation was based; it was a smaller, less accessible field to the north-east of the city, across the Bay Bridge, where the company owned a large hangar and a helicopter training centre. “So tell me, Matthew, how much are you getting for this job?” asked Lovell.

Bailey looked up from the map, his upper lip curled back in a sneer. “Money?” he said. “I’m not getting paid for this.”

Lovell raised his eyebrows. “Not a cent?”

“Nothing,” said Bailey. “I’m not a hired hand. I’m doing this because I believe in it. Because what we do will make a difference.”

“A difference to what?” asked Lovell.

Bailey frowned. “You want the next turn-off,” he said.

“You didn’t answer the question,” said Lovell. “How does killing this man make a difference? He’ll just be replaced, right?”

“It shows that we’re serious,” said Bailey. “It shows the whole world that there isn’t anyone we can’t reach. The Brits will have to listen to us. They’ll have to give us our country back.” He looked over at the American. “How much are you getting?”

Lovell laughed. “A lot,” he said. “Enough to never have to do it again. Enough to never have to do anything again.”

“Early retirement?”

“Sort of,” said Lovell. “But I won’t retire.”

“Why not?”

Lovell glanced at Bailey. “Because I enjoy it. I enjoy the anticipation, the planning, the pulling of the trigger. It’s what I do, and I do it well.”

“That’s the road,” said Bailey, pointing ahead. “Six miles down there and then we hang a left.”

Lovell nodded. “What about Mary? What drives her?”

“The Brits murdered her husband, and the Protestants killed her brother. And she believes in a united Ireland. That’s something you’ll never understand. You don’t know what it’s like to be a second-class citizen in your own country. Being a Catholic in Northern Ireland is like being. .” He struggled for an analogy. “I don’t know, I guess the closest comparison would be to being black in the South, with the whites always putting you down and pushing you around.”

“And killing this one man will change all that?” He beat a drum tattoo on the steering wheel.

“Maybe,” said Bailey.

“I don’t think so,” said Lovell. “I don’t think it’ll make any difference at all.” He grinned. “But what the hell, I get paid anyway, right?”

“Right,” said Bailey.

The men drove the rest of the way in silence, other than when Bailey gave Lovell directions. Eventually they saw the hangar. “Wow, it looks huge close up,” said Lovell. “Like a giant white whale or something.” He was looking at an airship which was to the left of the hangar, tethered to the ground with ropes. The blimp was more than a hundred feet long and emblazoned with the logo of a Japanese electronics company. Below the gas-filled envelope was a white gondola with windows all around it and two fan-shaped engines at the rear.

Lovell parked the car next to the hangar and took his bag out of the trunk while Bailey stretched. Patrick Farrell came over to meet them. He was wearing the same short-sleeved white shirt as they were, with black slacks. He shook Bailey’s hand and the Irishman introduced him to Lovell. Farrell cast a predatory eye over Lovell’s body as he shook hands and Bailey threw him a warning look.

“Are we ready to go?” asked Bailey.

“Yup,” said Farrell. “The laser sight is under my seat in a bag. There are two personnel, a cameraman and his assistant. The cameraman’s a big brute, I can tell you. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

The three men went over to the base of the blimp. Four ground-crew in blue overalls were preparing to help with the launch. There were two doors to the gondola, one on each side, and each bore the aviation company’s logo. A set of aluminium steps had been placed next to one of the doors and Farrell stood to one side to allow Bailey and Lovell to climb aboard. Lovell stowed his bag behind the pilot’s seat and nodded a greeting to the cameraman and his assistant. As Farrell had said, the cameraman was massive, a big bear of a man with a wild ginger beard and hairy forearms. He was the last choice he would have expected for an assignment in an airship. As if to compensate for the man’s bulk, his assistant was much younger and slighter, barely five feet six inches tall and with the lithe figure of a ballet dancer. They were both fussing over their equipment.

Bailey climbed into the co-pilot’s seat and scanned the instrument panel. It was very similar to the standard aeroplane panel: attitude indicator, heading indicator, compass, airspeed indicator, vertical speed indicator, altimeter, slip and turn indicator, power indicators for the two engines, and magnetic compass. The airship was also fitted with DME and VOR navigation equipment, and an expensive Trimble TNL-GPS system which used twenty-seven navigation satellites orbiting the earth to fix its position to within fifteen feet. There was an extra dial which would allow them to read the speed and direction of the wind once they were stationary in the air, connected to a meter suspended under the gondola.

The controls were also similar to those of a fixed-wing aircraft, despite the difference in the propulsion system, with rudder pedals on the floor, power throttles in between the two seats and control wheels in front of the pilot and co-pilot.

A soft hand squeezed his shoulder and Farrell slipped into the pilot’s seat. Lovell sat in a third seat at right angles to theirs and groped around for the seat harness. Farrell looked over his shoulder and asked the cameraman and his assistant to take their seats and strap themselves in for takeoff. He put on his headset and motioned for Bailey to do the same.

He handed Bailey a plastic-coated checklist which the Irishman read through as Farrell expertly went over the controls and instruments, started the two rear engines and checked that his instruments were functioning correctly. Satisfied, he gave a thumbs-up to the groundcrew and they released the tethering ropes. The airship rose slowly and almost vertically with a surprising amount of vibration. It wasn’t like a helicopter, Bailey thought, it was more like a speedboat, growling and making his chest shudder.

Farrell increased power to the engines and pulled on the control wheel. The airship glided upwards, and Bailey felt the seat press into his back. Farrell’s voice came over the headset. “Okay?” he asked.

“Terrific,” answered Bailey.

“How about you take the controls while I speak to Baltimore Approach,” he said. “Take her up to about five hundred feet and then level her off.”

Behind Bailey, Lovell sat with his hands linked in his lap. He saw the cameraman’s assistant looking at him and he smiled and winked.

Carlos smiled at the girl behind the reception desk, and signed his credit-card slip with a flourish. “Thank you, Mr Sharrard,” said the girl, handing him a key. “Your room is on the seventh floor. I hope you enjoy your stay at the Holiday Inn.”

“I’m sure I will,” said Carlos, picking up his suitcase and bag.

“Do you need help with those?” she asked.

“Oh no, my wife and I can manage just fine,” he said. He walked over to the elevator where Mary Hennessy was waiting, her newly-red hair tied back in a ponytail, a wide-brimmed hat on her head. “The seventh floor,” he said. They went up together and found their room at the far end of the building. Mary looked out through the window at a fire station and multi-storey car park while Carlos slid his suitcase into the wardrobe.

“Ready?” he asked.

Mary turned and nodded and they left the room and went back to the elevator. Mary was carrying a sports bag over her shoulder and she tapped it nervously as she waited for the elevator doors to open. There was no-one in the elevator when it arrived and they went down to the fourth floor. A trolley piled high with clean sheets, towels and bathroom supplies stood halfway along the corridor and as they walked by they saw a black maid making a bed. Mary stopped outside one of the doors and checked the number. “This is it,” she said. She knocked on the door, but there was no answer. Carlos nodded and walked back along the corridor to the room where the maid was working. He knocked quietly on the open door and heard a tap being turned off in the bathroom. The maid appeared at the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron.

“I’m really sorry to bother you, but my wife and I have just stepped out of our room without our key,” he said politely. “Do you think you could let us in with your pass key?”

“Of course, hon,” she said, giving him a beaming smile which showed a gold tooth at the front. She waddled down the corridor, swinging a pass key on a chain. She saw Mary waiting outside the door, and smiled.

“I’m sorry about this,” she said. “I feel so stupid.”

“Oh, it happens all the time, hon,” the maid said. She looked at the number of the room, then frowned. “Are you sure you have the right room?” she said. “I didn’t think there was anyone. .”

Her words were cut off as Carlos clapped his hand across her mouth. He dropped his briefcase on the floor and used his left hand to stop her thrashing about. She was a big woman but Carlos was strong and he leant backwards and tightened his grip on her mouth. Mary stepped forward and grabbed the key, ripping it off the chain. She inserted it into the lock, opened the door and then went to pick up the briefcase as Carlos half pushed, half carried, the struggling maid into the room.

Carlos pulled the maid down onto the bed like a cowboy wrestling a steer to the ground as Mary closed the door. The maid’s legs were flailing around and Carlos was trying to get his left arm around the woman’s throat, but he was finding it difficult. The maid’s breath was coming in short gasps and her eyes were wide with fright, but she wasn’t losing consciousness.

Mary grinned. “Come on Ilich, finish her off.”

The maid thrashed her head from side to side as Carlos struggled to get his arm around her neck.

Mary shook her head in amusement and reached into her bag. Her hand reappeared with the P228 and its silencer and she aimed, almost casually, at the maid’s chest, manoeuvring the weapon so that there was no chance of hitting Carlos. The gun coughed once and the maid’s legs both kicked out together and a red stain appeared on her apron. Mary fired once more, to make certain, and Carlos released his grip on the woman’s mouth.

“Get rid of the trolley,” he said as he began wrapping the body in the bedcover.

Mary went out into the corridor and pushed in the laden trolley. Carlos swung the body of the maid over his shoulder and dumped her in the bathtub, then put the trolley into the bathroom and closed the door. He walked over to the window and looked out. Less than half a mile away was the baseball park, and he had a perfect view of the pitcher’s mound and the spectator stands behind it.

“Help me with the table, please,” he asked, and he and Mary moved the dressing table until it was in front of the window.

Mary looked at her wristwatch. “I’ll have to be going, Ilich,” she said. She wasn’t sure how to say goodbye. She knew that he wouldn’t want her to wish him luck, and it seemed trite to just say that she’d see him later at the airfield. What they were about to do was of such enormity that it merited some words to mark the occasion, but nothing came to mind. She realised that he was looking at her with an amused smile on his face and for the first time she was flustered in his presence.

Carlos stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her in a fierce embrace, more like a wrestler’s bear hug than a friendly squeeze. He kissed her on both cheeks, then pushed her away, his big hands on her shoulders. “We will succeed,” he said. “We will both get what we want. What we need.” His dark eyes bored into hers and she tilted her head down, feeling like a small child in the grip of her father. He put a finger under her chin and lifted her head up. “Go,” he commanded softly. “And take care.”

As she left the room, Carlos opened his briefcase and began assembling Dina’s rifle. In the car park below, youngsters with bright orange flags were guiding drivers into parking spaces, while the sidewalks were thronged with baseball fans, chattering and laughing as they headed towards the ballpark.

Patrick Farrell switched on the Global Positioning System and read his position on the display as Matthew Bailey turned the airship to the north, over the Chesapeake Bay. At an altitude of only five hundred feet they could clearly see the waves curling on the water below. Bailey watched a yacht carve through the sea, an elderly man in a white crew-neck sweater holding the wheel with one arm and drinking a can of beer with the other.

Farrell had spoken to Baltimore Approach and had received permission to enter the Terminal Control Area around the main international airport. “Fly a heading of Three Five Five,” Farrell told Bailey, “that’ll take us over the city. You’ll have to climb, take us up to about nine hundred feet to make sure we’re well clear of any obstructions.”

Bailey nodded and made the course correction and began to gain altitude. Down to his left, several miles away, he could see the burnt hulk of the house they’d stayed at, reduced to blackened timbers and fallen masonry, the grass around it rutted by the wheels of the fire engines and emergency vehicles which had long since departed. To his right were the twin spans of the Bay Bridge, ferrying traffic across the bay.

Bailey took a quick look over his shoulder. The cameraman and his assistant were preparing their equipment. The assistant had lifted a hatch in the floor of the gondola in which there was a mounting for the camera which would allow it to film directly downwards.

“We’re right on schedule,” said Farrell. “According to ATIS, the wind is below five knots.”

“Perfect,” said Bailey. Ahead he saw the tower blocks of the city centre, sparkling in the light of the late afternoon sun as it headed inexorably for the horizon.

Cole Howard found Bob Sanger on the second level of the main stand, checking security arrangements at the entrance to the sky boxes, where corporations paid huge amounts of money for the privilege of entertaining their executives and clients. Because the President and an entourage of VIPs were to be in one of the main boxes, the corporations had been required to submit a list of their guests in advance, and each visitor had to show the requisite pass and be checked off against a list held by the Secret Service agents. The managing director of a leading oil company and a woman who was not his wife had been turned away for not having the correct pass, and the oil company’s public relations executive was trying to persuade Sanger to be more flexible. Sanger refused to budge. He explained patiently that the security arrangements could not be altered under any circumstances, and that if the PR man continued to make a scene he would be removed from the ballpark and would spend the next twenty-four hours in a cell.

Howard watched with great amusement as the man stormed off, threatening to take the matter up with Sanger’s boss.

“What an asshole,” said Sanger, as he walked over to Howard, Joker and Clutesi. “I don’t think he realises that my boss is the President of the United States. What does he think? That I’d put his catering arrangements before the President’s security?” He was wearing the regulation dark glasses, and Howard realised it was the first time he’d seen the Secret Service man without his pince-nez spectacles. The dark glasses made him look slightly sinister until he smiled. “So, how are the vests?” Sanger asked.

“The vests are just great,” said Howard. “What time does the President arrive?”

Sanger looked at his wristwatch. “Ten minutes,” he said. “Marine One will land in the ballpark, over there.” He pointed and Howard saw that he had an earpiece in his right ear. “Our men will escort him and the First Lady directly into the stand. He’ll greet the Prime Minister inside the sky box. After the anthem the Prime Minister will go down to the mound and throw the first pitch, then he’ll be escorted back to the sky box. His own security team will be with him, and we’ll have our own agents around them.”

Howard frowned and reached into his pocket for the sheets of paper Kelly had given him. He flicked to the itinerary for the visit to the ballpark. There was no mention of the Prime Minister throwing the first pitch. It was a bad slip.

Sanger turned to look at the three men. “You’ve got your radios on, right?” All three nodded. “Okay, we use code-names over the air so that there’s no mix-up. You’ll hear the President referred to as Pied Piper.”

“Pied Piper?” said Joker. “You’re not serious?”

Sanger smiled. “That’s his code-name. We started using it during the election and I guess no-one saw fit to change it.”

“The President knows, right?” said Howard.

“Sure,” said Sanger. “He’s got a sense of humour. You know what George and Barbara Bush were? Timber Wolf and Tranquillity. Bit pretentious, huh?”

“I guess so,” said Howard.

“Yeah, well, you’ll hear the Prime Minister referred to as Parliament. The Fantasy Factory must have been working through ‘p’ code-names.” He grinned ruefully at the jargon. “That’s what the guys call the Service’s Intelligence Division,” he explained. “The top agent here will be Dave Steadman, he’ll be arriving on Marine One with the presidential team. Once the helicopter lands, Steadman will be in charge and it’ll be his voice you’ll hear directing operations. Where do you guys plan to be?”

“We’ll be down on the diamond when the helicopter lands,” said Howard. “Then we’ll follow you up to the sky box. I guess he’ll be most vulnerable walking from the helicopter to the stand?”

“Actually, no. He’ll be shielded from the tall buildings by the helicopter,” said Sanger. “He’ll be most vulnerable in the sky box.” He gestured over at the buildings looking down on the ballpark. “We’ve got men on all the floors which Andy Kim says are potential trouble spots. Ed Mulholland has arranged for a hundred rookies from the Academy to help. We’ve got sixty around the ballpark and we’re using them to monitor the buildings, too.” Overhead they heard the thud of helicopter rotors and they looked up at a Maryland National Guard Huey, circling over the ballpark. “There are two National Guard Hueys up there, and a Police spotter helicopter. We’ve got snipers from the Baltimore SWAT unit in the Hueys, and on top of some of the taller buildings.” He gestured around the stand. “We’ve brought in almost a hundred extra agents in plain clothes and they’re scattered among the spectators.”

He pointed to a long, brick building to the right of the stadium, many of whose windows looked directly down into the ballpark. “We’ve got snipers in there, too.”

Joker looked over at the building. It was so close that he could see the faces of the people looking out. If they were offices, he could imagine a lot of people offering to work overtime on game nights. They had a perfect view of the ballpark, almost as close as some of the spectators who’d paid to get in.

“I can’t stress enough how important it is that you keep the identification we’ve given you in full view at all times,” continued Sanger. “I’d like you to also keep your FBI badges visible, too. And don’t make any movement that could in any way be interpreted as being hostile to the President. Everyone’s a little jittery today.”

The three men nodded. “Okay,” said Sanger, “I’ll leave you to it. I’ve got a few more checks to make before Marine One touches down.” He turned to go, and then stopped short as if he’d just remembered something. “Oh yeah,” he said, “we picked up Patrick Farrell this morning. He denies all knowledge of Matthew Bailey, but we’re putting the squeeze on him right now. If he knows anything, we’ll get him to talk.”

He smiled and walked off. “What is it with the dark glasses?” asked Joker. “How come all Secret Service agents have them?”

“Gives them an air of mystery,” said Clutesi. “Makes them seem more than human. Sorta like your jacket.” He grinned and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. It was in the high eighties and humid.

Howard smiled. “It’s more than image,” he said. Through the earpiece he heard Sanger calling in for situation reports from agents on top of a bank building. “They can look over a crowd, and no one knows who or what they’re looking at. Without the glasses they’d only have eye contact with a few individuals — with them, they can stare out a whole crowd. And if a psychopath thinks he’s been stared at, he’s not going to do anything stupid. That’s the theory anyway.” He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a pair of Ray-Bans. He put them on, and grinned. “And if you can’t beat ‘em. .”

Joker looked out over the ballpark. He put his binoculars to his eyes and scanned across the Marriott Hotel and the Holiday Inn to the tops of the tallest tower blocks in the distance. On one he saw two men in blue overalls with ‘SWAT’ stencilled on their chests in white letters. One of them had a rifle with a telescopic sight and a blue cap, with the peak pointed backwards. “Four seconds, you said?” Joker asked.

Howard looked through his binoculars. “That’s for the sniper who was two thousand yards away,” he said. “A shot from those buildings there would take less than a second.”

“Where would the long shot come from?” Joker asked.

Howard pointed to a spot over the city. “That way, about four hundred feet or so in the air. I guess that would be a twenty-five storey building or so, and as you can see there’s nothing that big anywhere near there.”

Joker nodded, and scanned the crowds with his high-powered binoculars. “You really think Hennessy will be here?”

Howard shrugged. “Maybe,” he said.

Matthew Bailey looked at the altimeter and saw that they were still at nine hundred feet. Directly below were several brick apartment buildings, their flat roofs peppered with air-conditioning units. Bailey had been surprised how easy it was to steer the large airship, once he’d followed Farrell’s advice and begun to treat it more as a boat and less as an aeroplane. The constant vibration was a nuisance and he hoped that Lovell wouldn’t find it too much of a distraction when it came to making his shot.

“You can start to descend now, we’ve passed over the tallest buildings,” Farrell said through the headset.

Bailey nodded and rotated the control wheel slightly forward. The nose of the airship dipped down like a whale preparing to swim deep. Farrell was keeping a close eye on the GPS, and cross-referencing it with the DME and VOR, trying to pinpoint the airship’s position until they were in the exact spot for Lovell’s two thousand yard shot. Farrell turned round and nodded at Lovell. “Nearly there,” he shouted over the noise of the two engines. “Now would be a good time.”

Lovell smiled and reached down into his bag. He took out a small automatic pistol and shot the cameraman in the neck. The assistant looked up, his mouth open, and Lovell shot him in the forehead. Blood and brain matter peppered the window and the assistant slumped forward onto the camera equipment they’d been preparing. The cameraman had clasped his hands to his wounded neck and blood was dribbling through his fingers as his mouth worked soundlessly. Lovell put a second bullet into the man’s skull and he fell sideways, his massive bulk sending a shudder through the gondola. Lovell flicked the safety back on the automatic and put it back into his bag. The cartridges he had used had specially reduced loads which resulted in comparatively slow-moving bullets, fast enough to kill at close range but slow enough to stay lodged within the bodies and not pass through the walls or windows of the gondola.

Lovell unfastened his harness and dragged the bodies to the far end of the gondola, where they wouldn’t get in his way, and then knelt down and unpacked his rifle.

Bailey unbuckled his harness and slipped out of his seat, taking care not to unplug his headset. He pulled a green nylon bag from under Farrell’s seat. Inside was a laser targeting device, normally used by hunters, which had been fixed to a metal frame and a telescopic sight. Bailey carried it over to the hole in the bottom of the gondola where the television crew had been installing their camera. Bailey slid their equipment to the side and fixed the laser into the mounting, attaching it with four bolts.

Mary Hennessy handed her ticket to the grey-haired man at the gate, took the stub he gave her, and pushed through the turnstile, taking care not to snag her bag on the chrome bars. The man’s orange peaked cap was pushed back on his head and his forehead was bathed in sweat. The stadium was packed with fans, most of them dressed in colourful T-shirts and shorts, and the black and orange Oriole insignia was everywhere. The crowds were buzzing, and as Mary walked she heard good-natured arguments about the merits of the players, the teams, and whether or not the Prime Minister would manage to reach the catcher with his pitch.

She walked by food stalls where men in short sleeves were selling giant pretzels and hot dogs and the air was thick with the smell of french fries and onions. The lavatories were on her right. Kelly Armstrong was standing at the entrance wearing a pale blue jacket over a white dress. She gave no sign that she recognised Mary, but followed her into the lavatory. Most of the stalls were empty and Mary selected the one in the corner, furthest from the entrance. She put her bag on top of the toilet and undressed, hanging her clothes on the peg on the back of the door. From the bag she took out her orange and black usher’s uniform and the orange cap with its shiny black peak. She slipped on the black pants and fastened her orange suspenders, then put on the shirt and waistcoat, and adjusted the cap. She fastened her transceiver and holster around her waist, then took out a compact and checked her appearance in the small mirror. She tore off a piece of toilet paper and rubbed away her lipstick. She had a pair of bifocals in the bag and she put them on. The combination of bifocals and no make-up made her look much older. She nodded at her reflection, then rolled up her original clothes and stuffed them into the bag.

She knocked on the stall door twice and heard Kelly say that the coast was clear. Mary slipped out of the stall and pushed the bag into the bottom of the trash bag by the sinks. She gave herself a final check in the grimy washroom mirror and walked by Kelly to mingle with the crowds. As she went she heard the FBI agent whisper “Good luck.”

Lou Schoelen opened the office window and stood to the side as he looked at the ballpark in the distance. Four floors below, traffic was bumper to bumper as office workers headed out to the suburbs. Beyond the roads were the harbour-side shopping malls, and beyond them was the harbour, littered with small boats. Schoelen inserted the earpiece of his transceiver into his ear and switched it on. He clipped the radio to the rear of his belt, picked up his Horstkamp and knelt down by the side of the desk. He had put a large commercial directory on the desk and he rested the barrel of the rifle on it while he put his eye to the scope. He centred the pitcher’s mound in the scope, then swung the rifle slightly to the left so that the crosshairs were centred on the chest of a man wearing a grey suit and sunglasses.

He tested the pull on the trigger, then slipped his finger out of the trigger guard and laid the rifle on its side. He looked at the large stainless-steel diving watch on his wrist and rocked back on his heels. The excitement was almost sexual and he took several deep breaths. High in the air above the ballpark he saw a large green helicopter, Marine One. He picked up the rifle and focused on the helicopter as it circled over the stadium, then aimed at where he knew the fuel tanks were. One shot and Marine One would go down in flames, taking with it the most important man in America. Schoelen smiled. It would almost be worth it, but that wasn’t what he was being paid five million dollars for. He put the rifle back on the desk and watched the helicopter flare for landing.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” said Cole Howard, the binoculars pressed to his eyes as he watched the door of Marine One open and fold outwards to form a set of steps.

“I’m amazed that something that ungainly can fly,” said Clutesi.

The two FBI agents had left the main stand and gone down to the baseball diamond with Joker so that they could be closer to the President when he disembarked. Joker stood with his back to the helicopter, scanning the crowd for any faces he recognised.

As Howard watched Marine One, two Secret Service agents came down the steps, resulting in a wave of tumultuous applause from the spectators. Secret Service agents ran out and surrounded the helicopter, their heads swivelling from side to side, their hands never far from their concealed weapons. The radio crackled in Howard’s ear and he recognised Sanger’s voice, asking for situation reports from the men in the tunnel leading to the stand through which the President would be walking. Marine One had landed close to the tunnel entrance and effectively shielded the President from the buildings which overlooked the ballpark.

In his earpiece, Howard heard a voice say that Pied Piper was moving to the door of Marine One. The President appeared at the top of the steps and waved to the crowd. Howard heard an agent say that he’d seen a man reaching inside his jacket and there was a flurry of activity close to the tunnel with a trio of black-suited agents surrounding the man. It turned out to be a camera the man was reaching for. If the President was aware of the disturbance, he showed no sign of it. He walked down the steps, waving with his right hand and keeping a careful grip on the safety rail with his left. As soon as his feet touched the ground he was surrounded by half a dozen of the Secret Service’s bulkier agents and they moved together to the tunnel like some strange fourteen-legged sea creature. Only when the President and his security team were safely in the tunnel did the First Lady appear, followed by several more Secret Service agents. The First Lady followed her husband’s example and waved to the crowds before she descended. A second group of agents surrounded her and ushered her into the tunnel.

The crowd yelled and the rotor blades of Marine One began to spin, accompanied by the roaring whistle of its massive turbine. The huge helicopter lifted off, turned slowly in the air, and then flew up into the sky. It lifted up beyond the stands and the ranks of powerful spotlights which had been switched on, even though there was still plenty of daylight left.

“Come on,” said Howard, and he led Clutesi and Joker towards the tunnel entrance. Joker jogged to keep up with the fast-walking FBI agent. “Sanger says we’ll be allowed into the sky box, but he’d like us to keep our distance,” said Howard.

“The box is enclosed, so it’s unlikely that a sniper would try to shoot him through glass, isn’t it?” asked Joker. “The glass would deflect any bullet.”

Two Secret Service agents barred the way of the three men, their hands moving inside their jackets, until they saw their identification. They moved apart, their faces displaying no emotion.

“Yeah, that’d be the case if there was just one sniper,” said Howard. “But we’re talking about three. It could be that the first shot is to smash the glass, and it’s the second and third which will be the killing shots.”

They reached the sky box just in time to see the President shaking the hand of the Prime Minister. The two men were talking and smiling, though it seemed to Howard that the President was bored and only going through the motions. The First Lady joined them and began talking earnestly to the Prime Minister. A discreet distance behind the VIPs stood Sanger, his head turning slowly from side to side.

“Does your Prime Minister go in for sports?” Howard asked Joker, his voice little more than a whisper.

“Cricket, mainly,” said Joker. “And he goes to the odd soccer match.”

“I don’t see his wife here,” said Howard.

“She doesn’t get too involved in affairs of state,” said Joker. “Not like your First Lady.”

Howard grinned good-naturedly. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Seems to me that we voted in a two-man team without realising it.”

Secret Service agents were constantly moving around the President and his guests, and they were still on edge even though there were no members of the public within fifty feet. There were other security personnel around, members of the Prime Minister’s bodyguard unit. They seemed smaller and less fit than the American agents, and not as well groomed. The Secret Service agents wore expensive, immaculate suits, brilliant white shirts and perfectly knotted ties which wouldn’t be out of place in a bank’s boardroom. The Brits wore suits, but they clearly weren’t made-to-measure and their shoes were dull and scuffed. They did have one thing in common with their American counterparts, however — cold, watchful eyes, But while the Secret Service hid their eyes behind dark glasses, the Brits kept theirs unshielded and Howard had eye-contact with several of them as he stood by the door with Clutesi and Joker.

“Are these guys SAS?” Clutesi asked Joker.

Joker looked at the men standing guard on the Prime Minister and grinned. “No way,” he said. “They’re cops, not soldiers.”

Through his earpiece Howard heard an agent he assumed was Dave Steadman calling for situation reports from his men around the stadium. The President pointed down to the pitcher’s mound and said something and the Prime Minister smiled wryly. The First Lady said something to him and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. They all laughed.

“He doesn’t seem the happiest of campers,” Howard whispered.

Joker shrugged. “He’s got a lot of problems at home,” he said quietly. “How are they leaving? By helicopter?”

Howard shook his head. “Motorcade,” he said.

“That’s risky, isn’t it?”

“They’re only going to the National Aquarium, less than a mile away. Sanger says they’ve arranged for a dummy motorcade to leave first by the main entrance as planned. The real motorcade will go ten minutes later through a back way. They’re using a bullet-proof Rolls-Royce from the British Embassy in Washington. Sanger seems happy with the arrangements.”

Joker nodded. He looked out through the window of the sky box. Secret Service agents were gathering around the diamond. “I think I’ll go down and check out the ground level again,” he said. “Is that okay with you?”

“Sure,” said Howard. “Just remember what Sanger said — no sudden moves, okay?” Howard watched Joker go.

“Isn’t that your friend?” asked Clutesi, tapping Howard on the shoulder.

Howard’s heart sank as he recognised Kelly Armstrong. “What the hell’s she doing here?” he muttered under his breath.

Kelly walked up and greeted Clutesi and Howard. “I didn’t realise you’d be here,” she said to Howard.

“I was going to say the same,” he replied.

“I wanted to talk to the Brits about their security arrangements,” she said. “Why are you here? I thought the Kims had ruled out the ballpark.”

“They have done, but we wanted to keep Cramer close to the President to see if he recognises anyone.”

“Cramer?” said Kelly, frowning.

“The British guy we found at the house.”

“You mean O’Brien.”

“His real name’s Cramer. He used to be with SAS.”

Kelly looked confused. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

“We only just found out ourselves,” said Howard.

“And I really should have been told that you’d be here today.”

“I don’t see why. You have your job to do, I have mine.”

“But if you thought the assassins were going to strike here, I should have been told.”

Howard took a deep breath. “Like I said, we just wanted Cramer here to see if he could recognise anybody. He’ll be sticking close to the President for the next few days while we continue to look for the snipers.”

“I wish you’d stop hiding things from me,” she said. “It’s as if you’re deliberately trying to make me look stupid.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” she retorted. “You’ve resented me being part of this investigation right from the start.”

Heads began turning to see what the argument was about. Clutesi was watching the two of them, scratching his chin thoughtfully.

“That’s not true, Kelly,” said Howard. “Besides, I don’t think this is the place to be having this discussion.”

“Where would you rather have it? In a bar? The way I hear it, you function better with a few drinks inside you.”

“That’s not called for,” said Howard quietly.

“Yeah? Once a drunk, always a drunk, that’s what I say,” she said. “We all know that if it wasn’t for your father-in-law you wouldn’t even be with the Bureau.” For a moment it looked as if she wanted to slap him across the face, but then she turned on her heels and walked away.

Howard could feel his heart racing and he fought to contain his anger. “I wonder what’s got her so riled up?” said Clutesi.

“She’s just an evil bitch,” said Howard.

“I don’t think so,” said Clutesi. “I think there’s more to it than that.”

Through the open window of his hotel room, Carlos watched the President’s helicopter climb into the air and fly away from the stadium like a monstrous insect. Carlos linked the fingers of his hands and cracked his knuckles. In the distance he heard the first few bars of the Star Spangled Banner echoing around the ballpark. He checked that his microphone was clipped to the collar of his shirt and that his earpiece was firmly in place, then he carried the television set over to the dressing table. He took a pillow from the bed, placed it on top of the TV, then drew up a chair and sat down. The TV provided a perfect rest for the rifle, and the pillow would add extra stability and help dampen the recoil. Next to the television set he put the P228 and its silencer.

Lined up on the table were three gleaming brass cartridges. He picked up one and rolled the smooth metal between his fingers.

“Dina, this one is for you,” he whispered. He kissed the cartridge and slotted it into the breech. The first shot to break the glass, the second for the President’s chest. If there was time, a third. It would be the greatest achievement of his life: the assassination of the President of the United States. The IRA might take the blame, but the credit would be his. His heart thudded and he took a deep breath to steady his nerves. He had to banish all anxiety from his mind, he had to focus on the target, not the man. In the distance, he heard a deep, throaty voice begin to sing the National Anthem.

Patrick Farrell scanned the instrument panel and turned the blimp’s nose slightly to the left. He looked at the altimeter. They were four hundred feet above the ground and Farrell was trying to put the airship in exactly the right position. He was using the GPS, VOR and DME equipment as primary navigation aids, but the final adjustment would have to be done visually by Bailey using the laser sight. During rehearsals earlier in the year they’d pinpointed an intersection of an alley and a road which was exactly two thousand yards from the pitcher’s mound. If the airship was directly above the intersection, it was in the perfect position for Lovell’s shot. Farrell was nudging the airship over the school, making small, precise corrections of the control wheel and rudders. He looked at the reading of the wind computer. Once he had the blimp stationary in the air, using the twin engines to hold it steady, he would be able to read the wind speed and direction and relay it to the snipers in time for them to make their wind corrections.

“Almost there,” said Farrell in his headset. “I’ll tune the radio to the general frequency.”

Bailey looked over his shoulder and nodded as Farrell turned the dial to the frequency the snipers were using. Lovell was kneeling by the open window, his eye pressed to the scope of his rifle. He was as still as a stone statue, and Bailey could barely see the man’s chest rise and fall as he breathed. Behind Bailey, a pool of blood was slowly spreading out from under the two corpses. He put his eye to the telescopic sight. Down below he could see the small red dot of the laser dancing on the roof of a black Cadillac. The alley was to the left of the dot and Bailey began calling out instructions to Farrell, guiding him slowly to the exact spot where Lovell would make his shot.

Marty Edberg clenched his knuckles and glared at the television monitor. The shot of the giant scoreboard was wavering as if the man operating the camera had Parkinson’s Disease.

“Wendy,” he said through gritted teeth, “tell Lonnie to get a grip on himself, will you? Tell him if he can’t give me a steady shot I’ll come out there and rip his throat out with my bare hands.”

Edberg’s assistant spoke quietly into her microphone and the picture on the monitor steadied.

“Thank you,” said Edberg. On the main monitor, a bulky, cowboy-hatted country and western singer was putting every ounce of effort into his rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, and the picture was so sharp that Edberg could see the tears welling up in the man’s eyes.

“Wendy, get me a close-up of the flag, and then we’ll superimpose the singer on it,” he said. His assistant spoke quickly to one of the cameramen and monitor number three soon had a tight shot of a fluttering Stars and Stripes. She moved one of the sliders and slowly brought up the flag on the main monitor so that it rippled like a ghost behind the singer. “Good,” said Edberg approvingly.

The light on the phone in front of Wendy blinked and she picked it up. After listening for a few moments she handed the receiver over to Edberg. “It’s the Secret Service guy, he wants to know why we don’t have the airship pictures yet.”

Edberg looked at monitor ten. The screen was still blank. “Tell him I’d like to know the reason, too,” said Edberg. “Tell him we can’t reach the blimp, we’re assuming they’re having technical problems.”

Wendy relayed the message, then covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “He says he wants to speak to you, Marty.”

Edberg glared at her. “Explain to Dick Tracy that we’re in the middle of putting out pictures that are being watched by millions of people, and that I’ll call him when I get the time. Just now, I’m busy.”

His long-suffering assistant nodded. Edberg glared at the ranks of monitors. The shot of the score board was wavering again. Edberg put his head in his hands.

Cole Howard and Don Clutesi had moved to the far wall of the sky box as the President and First Lady made small-talk with the Prime Minister. As soon as the National Anthem began everybody stood to attention and faced the diamond, knowing that it was a photo opportunity that would have all the newspaper and television cameras pointing their way. Everyone looked appropriately sombre, with the exception of the Secret Service agents, who continued to prowl around their charges. Bob Sanger stood two steps behind the President. Through his earpiece, Howard heard situation reports being called in from around the stadium.

Howard saw Joker come out of the tunnel and stop dead at the edge of the diamond as if he’d just realised that everyone in the stadium was standing stock still out of respect. Howard smiled at the man’s appalling plaid jacket. He looked across at Clutesi who was also grinning. Clutesi shrugged and Howard shook his head admonishingly. Howard saw that Joker was carrying a can of Budweiser and he groaned inwardly.

Howard surveyed the presidential party. The Prime Minister’s own security team seemed far more relaxed than the Secret Service agents. He wondered when they had last had to deal with an assassination attempt. He recalled the IRA attempt to hit Number 10 Downing Street with mortars and the bombing of a hotel during a Conservative Party conference, but assassinations with firearms seemed rare in Britain. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that gun ownership was restricted there or that the people had more respect for their authority figures than the Americans had for their President. On television, he’d seen British politicians and members of the British Royal Family moving through crowds, seemingly at ease, with little in the way of security. At sports events, too, they generally got much closer to the public than the President ever did, closer even than American movie stars got to their fans.

Howard frowned as he stared at the pitcher’s mound. He pulled his cellular phone out of his pocket and whispered to Clutesi that he was going out in the hallway. Clutesi had his hand over his heart as the anthem played.

Howard nodded to two Secret Service agents standing guard in the corridor, and moved away from them so that they couldn’t eavesdrop. He tapped out Andy Kim’s number in the White House and it was answered on the third ring by Bonnie Kim. She was surprised, and apparently delighted, to hear from him. He asked if her husband was there and she passed the telephone over to him.

“Andy, do me a favour. Can you call up the Baltimore ballpark and tell me what effect it would have if the target was on the pitcher’s mound,” said Howard.

“But I thought the President was in the sky box?” queried Andy.

“I know, I know, but I’ve just found out that the Prime Minister is throwing the first pitch, down on the mound. Try it for me, will you?”

“Sure, Cole, sure. Kelly Armstrong sent me a copy of the Prime Minister’s agenda but there’s nothing on it about him being on the mound or I’d have done it already. It’ll take a few minutes. Do you want me to call you back?”

“No, I’ll hold on.” Howard heard the National Anthem come to an end, and then in his earpiece he heard the Secret Service preparing to escort the Prime Minister and the First Lady down to the diamond where the manager of the Orioles was to present him with the game ball. “And Andy, please hurry.”

Patrick Farrell looked down and made a slight adjustment to the power and turned the nose of the airship into the wind. The movement resulted in a sideways drift and he looked down and tried to line up with the corner of the road and the alley by following Bailey’s terse instructions.

“Good, that’s good,” said Bailey through his headset. “Six feet more.” On the ground below the airship, the small red dot moved inexorably towards the alley. Bailey lifted his head and saw Lovell still with the rifle to his cheek. Bailey wanted some sign from the sniper that everything was okay, but Lovell ignored him.

Bailey looked down through the scope again. The red dot was slowly moving across the pavement. “Steady,” he said.

Farrell eased off on the power to the engines. The GPS display hadn’t changed for some time, an indication of Farrell’s skill at manoeuvring the airship, but it was only accurate to fifty feet or so. The rest was up to Bailey.

“That’s it, perfect,” said Bailey. Farrell wiped the back of his arm across his forehead and it came away damp. In the distance, the pilot could see Secret Service agents gathering around the pitcher’s mound.

Joker took a long pull at his can of Budweiser. It was too warm for his taste but he needed the alcohol rather than the refreshment. One of the Secret Service agents stared at him and looked as if he was about to say something, but Joker pointed to the ID hanging around his neck. Joker drained the can and tossed it behind him. The crowd roared and cheered as the Country and Western singer finished his rendition of the National Anthem. In Joker’s ear a buzzing voice told him that Parliament was making his way down from the sky box. The agents around the mound visibly tensed.

Joker put his binoculars to his eyes and began scanning the crowds. He wanted to get Mary Hennessy so badly that he could almost taste it. He raised the binoculars higher and winced as it put his injured shoulder under strain. He was hot and the bullet-proof vest was a torture to wear. He considered taking it off because it covered such a small area of his body. He doubted that the limited protection it offered was worth the discomfort.

Cole Howard kept his cellular phone pressed to his left ear. The constant Secret Service transmissions in his right ear were irritating, but he knew they were necessary so he didn’t remove the earpiece. He heard Sanger calling ahead that Parliament was leaving the sky box and he flattened himself against the wall of the corridor so that he wouldn’t be in the way when the entourage went by on the way to the escalator.

Two agents came out of the sky box, looked up and down, and then headed towards him. Another two agents followed, and then Howard saw the Prime Minister and the First Lady. The Prime Minister walked slowly, a half step behind the First Lady, and he had a worried frown as if he was dreading the forthcoming pitch. Howard wanted to tell him that throwing the first pitch was a rare honour, one that most baseball fans would die for. The Prime Minister looked at him and Howard smiled, wanting to show some support, but the FBI agent’s gesture was ignored and the Prime Minister’s face remained a stone mask. Howard felt stupid, standing there with an inane grin on his face, and he turned the smile into a face-stretching exercise as if his eyes were itching.

“Cole?” It was Andy Kim on the phone.

“Yes, Andy?”

“Okay, this is a rough calculation, but I reckon that so far as the buildings nearest the ballpark are concerned, that’s the Marriott Hotel and the Holiday Inn and the offices nearby, you’d be looking at two floors lower if they were aiming at the pitcher’s mound. For the buildings a mile or so away you’d drop about four floors. Is that any help?”

“Yeah, thanks Andy. One more thing — does dropping the target to the mound mean you get a match for the long shot?”

“Afraid not, Cole, There’s still nothing anywhere near that position.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ve got to go, I’ll call you later.”

Howard switched the phone off and went back to the sky box. Sanger was standing by the door. He nodded at Howard.

“Everything okay?” Sanger asked. “I see you’ve let the Brit off his leash. You know he’s drinking?”

“You’ve got men in all the buildings overlooking the ballpark, right?” said Howard, ignoring the dig at Cramer.

“Sure, we did full searches and now they’re on the floors that Kim recommended.” Sanger’s brow wrinkled. “Is there a problem?”

“It’s not a problem, more a hunch. What if it’s the Prime Minister who’s the target and not the President?”

“We sent the details to Kim,” said Sanger. “They’re together all the time, so it wouldn’t. .” Realisation dawned. “Except for when he’s on the mound.”

Howard nodded. “Kim says he didn’t know the Prime Minister would be there — he was assuming they were together all the time they were in the stadium. The difference is equivalent to two floors in the buildings within a half mile or so, four floors if they’re a mile away. .”

Sanger held up his hand to silence Howard and put his radio to his mouth. He began to call up his agents, speaking quickly and urgently.

Joker put down his binoculars and wiped his forehead with the arm of his jacket. Sweat was pouring off his face and his upper body was soaking wet under the vest. He desperately wanted another beer.

“Parliament is in the tunnel,” said a voice in his ear and he instinctively looked towards the entrance where British bodyguards were standing at attention. A gust of wind lifted the jacket of one and Joker saw an MP5K Heckler amp; Koch hanging from a sling in the small of his back. Joker looked at the gun. It was a shorter barrelled version of the submachine gun he’d used during his time with the SAS. The wind dropped and the jacket fell back into place, concealing the gun once more. He wiped his forehead again and put the binoculars back to his eyes and scanned the stands. He saw parents with children, young couples, old men and teenagers, almost everyone wearing shirts or caps with the Oriole bird logo. Most were eating or drinking, and vendors ran up and down the aisles selling beer, popcorn, burgers and soft drinks.

The stadium was all seating and was better organised than any sports event he’d ever seen in Britain. He remembered the Old Firm soccer matches he’d gone to in Glasgow, Celtic versus Rangers, where the aggression on the pitch unfailingly spilled over to violence on the terraces. The animosity among the spectators was compounded by the fact that Roman Catholics supported Celtic and the Protestants backed Rangers, and the taunts that were yelled back and forth had as much to do with religion as they did with soccer. Compared with that, the ballpark was a night at the opera.

A female usher flashed through Joker’s field of vision and then was gone, but something made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and he panned the binoculars back, searching for her. He found her. She had red hair and glasses and was wearing what looked like an official uniform, but it was Mary Hennessy, he was sure of it. She was leaning against a metal barrier and staring down at the baseball diamond, a faraway smile on her face. Joker reached for his two-way radio and pressed the transmit button.

Mary stood at the front of the middle aisle on the second-level stand looking down on third base. She turned around, making sure that there were no other ushers nearby. So long as she didn’t get too close, no one would realise she wasn’t a regular member of the ballpark staff. According to the map Kelly Armstrong had given her, there were no undercover FBI agents nearby. At the top of the aisle she saw Kelly but she deliberately avoided eye contact. Mary wasn’t sure exactly what Kelly thought she would achieve by being present, but she’d said that she wanted to be close by, to watch and, if necessary, to help.

Mary turned and saw the Prime Minister walk to the centre of the mound, holding the game ball as if not sure what to do with it. His security men were standing to the side, scanning the faces of the spectators, alert for any threatening signs, and beyond them were the agents of the Secret Service. The First Lady stood at the side of the mound, some twenty feet or so from the Prime Minister. Mary smiled. She wished there were some way she could tell the Prime Minister what was going to happen, so that she could see the fear in his face. In a fantasy that made her head spin she imagined shouting to him just before the bullets struck, telling him that he was going to die and cursing him as his chest exploded.

She bent her neck and put her chin down close to the microphone. The transceiver was clipped to the belt of her trousers in plain view. Many of the genuine ushers carried radios and it added rather than detracted from her authenticity.

“Check One,” she said, pressing the earpiece into her ear to cut out some of the crowd noise.

“Check One,” she heard. It was Lovell’s voice.

“Check Two,” said Mary.

“Check Two,” said Schoelen.

“Check Three,” said Mary.

“Check Three,” said Carlos.

“Check Wind,” she said.

There was a pause then she heard Farrell’s voice. “One Nine Seven at Three,” he said. Mary’s heart lifted. The wind was negligible.

“One Nine Seven at Three,” repeated Lovell.

“One Nine Seven at Three,” said Schoelen.

“One Nine Seven at Three,” said Carlos.

“With you, One,” said Mary. Now it was up to Lovell. Mary leant against the metal barrier and watched the Prime Minister prepare to throw the ball. She frowned as she saw a man in a plaid jacket and jeans who was looking in her direction through binoculars. He didn’t look like the rest of the Secret Service agents or the members of the British security contingent and Mary squinted, trying to get a better look at the stranger.

Rich Lovell centred the cross-hairs of his telescopic sight over the centre of the Prime Minister’s chest. Lovell exhaled slowly, as he focused his entire being on the shot. In Lovell’s mind the Prime Minister was no longer a man. He was a target, nothing more.

The Prime Minister took a step to the side and Lovell moved the rifle to keep him centred. Four seconds was a long time and Lovell had to be totally certain that the target wouldn’t move while the bullet was in flight. The fact that there would be two more chances, two more snipers, didn’t affect Lovell’s judgment. He wanted his bullet to be the one that did the damage. He inhaled tidally, taking in just enough air for his body’s needs. There had to be no excessive movement. He had long ago tuned out the vibration and noise of the two engines at the rear of the airship. Even though Bailey was crouched only feet behind him, in Lovell’s mind he no longer existed. The heat and humidity were no longer factors. All that mattered was the target and the four seconds between it and the barrel of the Barrett 82A1.

“Do you see her?” asked the spotter. He had his binoculars fixed on Mary Hennessy, across the stadium.

“Got her,” said the sniper. He was kneeling down with his Sauer Model 200 hunting rifle resting against the parapet around the roof of the office building adjacent to the ballpark. It was an expensive weapon, and the sniper had bought it from a sergeant who had retired from the Baltimore SWAT unit. It was a.308 Winchester calibre and with hand-loaded factory ammunition it could easily achieve 1/2 MOA. The woman was about three hundred yards away.

The spotter spoke into his walkie-talkie. “We have a clear shot,” he said.

“Hold for green light,” said the SWAT team commander.

The Sauer had a three-round magazine, but the sniper knew he would need only one shot. He was using soft-point bullets and they would rip a human chest apart. He nestled the cross-hairs in the woman’s cleavage.

The man in the plaid jacket continued to scrutinise her through his binoculars, and Mary Hennessy instinctively knew something had gone wrong. She turned and looked up the aisle. There were two men standing just behind Kelly Armstrong, men in dark suits and sunglasses. They hadn’t been there five minutes earlier. She looked to her left and saw two more Secret Service agents, moving down the aisle parallel to her.

Her heart began to race. She whirled around and looked at the pitcher’s mound. The Prime Minister was preparing to throw the ball, the catcher squatting down and holding out a gloved hand.

She looked over her shoulder. The two men were moving down the stairs towards her, their hands moving inside their jackets.

“Sniper One, fire now,” she said into the microphone. “Shoot the bastard now, damn you!”

There was no reply and she realised that the microphone wasn’t working. She must have pulled it out of the socket of the transceiver when she turned. She reached behind her for the loose wire.

Kelly saw Mary Hennessy fumble for something at her waist. Something had alarmed her, and then Kelly realised what it was. Two men in suits and dark glasses were moving down the aisle parallel to her. Secret Service agents.

Kelly frowned, not sure what to do. “There she is,” said a voice behind her, and she whirled around. There were two more agents behind her, one young and one middle-aged, so similar that they could have been father and son.

“Excuse me, miss,” said the older agent, moving to get by her.

Kelly pulled out her FBI credentials and identified herself.

“Please let us by, miss, we’ll handle this,” said the younger agent. He put a hand on her arm and tried to move her. Kelly resisted.

“What’s happening?” she said, wanting to give Mary every second she could.

“She’s reaching for something, possibly a weapon,” the spotter spoke into his walkie-talkie. Through the binoculars he saw the female usher groping behind her back. Up above her, moving down the aisle past a blonde woman, were two Secret Service agents. One of them had a pistol in his hand.

“You have a green light,” replied the SWAT commander, “so long as there is no possibility of collateral damage.”

The spotter could see that there was no one directly behind the woman. There were spectators on her left and right, but not close enough to be in the way. “Green light confirmed,” he said. The spotter took the walkie-talkie away from his mouth. “Shoot the bitch,” he said.

“It’ll be a pleasure,” said the sniper, his finger tightening on the trigger.

Todd Otterman stood in the corridor while the two agents from the FBI Academy ran the fibre optic lens under the office door. Many of the businesses in the tower block had agreed to hand over keys to the Secret Service for the duration of the presidential visit, but some of the smaller offices hadn’t been contacted.

One of the FBI rookies was kneeling down and threading the cable through the gap, while his colleague looked at a small black and white monitor. The camera was one the FBI used for surveillance and it was perfect for checking those offices which were locked. Otterman and the rookies had been on the seventh floor in a travel agency whose manager had agreed to open his office late so that the agents could have a comfortable base while the game was on. They’d just been about to start drinking coffee when the call had come in to recheck the offices on the lower floors. Otterman and his two rookies had taken the fifth floor, another agent had gone to the sixth floor.

The agent scrutinising the monitor suddenly stiffened. He put a hand on his colleague’s shoulder and shook him. Otterman went over and looked at the monitor. The picture was fuzzy but there was no mistaking the figure of a man kneeling in front of a desk, his eye pressed to a telescopic sight. Otterman could see that the man was preparing to fire — there was no time to call for back-up. He slid his automatic from its leather shoulder holster and signalled for the two rookies to stand to the side.

Joker watched the two Secret Service agents head down the aisle towards Mary Hennessy, and saw her fumble for whatever it was that was hanging from her belt. He heard one of the agents reporting that she was reaching for something and then he heard another voice giving instructions to a sniper. Off to his right he heard the crack of a high velocity round and then Hennessy staggered back, one hand clutching at her chest. A red stain appeared on her usher’s shirt, and it reminded him of his days in the paintball arena in London. It was a perfect hit. This was different, though, and he knew Hennessy wouldn’t be getting to her feet and complaining about being taken out of the game.

She fell back and sat down heavily on the stairs. Joker could see that her eyes were wide open as if surprised, and the hand on her chest was twitching spasmodically. A blonde woman in a blue jacket rushed by the agents and knelt at her side.

Joker panned across to the office blocks, trying to see where the sniper was. It had been a good, clean shot. As he scanned the sky something passed across his vision, something large and white with the name of a Japanese electronics company on the side. It was so unexpected that Joker thought that he’d seen an advertising hoarding at the far end of the stadium, but then he saw wispy white clouds and knew that he was still looking up high, above the buildings. He took the binoculars away from his face and shaded his eyes with his free hand, gritting his teeth as pain from his shoulder lanced across his back. It was an airship, hanging in the sky more than a mile away. He frowned as he remembered what Cole Howard had told him about the long shot, the sniper who was planning to shoot the President from two thousand yards away, and how there was nowhere the sniper could make the shot from in Baltimore.

He let the binoculars hang on their strap around his neck and spoke into the radio again. His earpiece was buzzing with agents calling in situation reports following the shooting of Mary Hennessy. “Howard, are you there?” he asked, interrupting the agents.

“Is that you, Cramer?” It was Howard’s voice.

“Yeah. Have you seen the blimp?”

“Blimp?”

“The blimp. The airship. Over the city.”

Todd Otterman thought about trying to kick in the door but dismissed the idea. There was no way of telling how strong it was, and the door was certain to be locked. He had two advantages: he had surprise on his side and he had a handgun. The sniper would have to swing his rifle through almost one hundred and eighty degrees to get a shot at the door. Otterman was breathing heavily and he could see that the two rookies were trembling. He motioned with his free hand that he was going to shoot out the lock, and that the two Academy rookies were to kick the door, then move out of the way.

They nodded and watched as Otterman mouthed a quick count: Three, Two, One, then fired at the lock. The metal screeched and the wood splintered and immediately the two rookies kicked at the door, close to the lock. The door flew inwards and Otterman stepped across the threshold, the gun held firmly in both hands.

“Secret Service!” he yelled. “Drop the weapon!”

The sniper began to turn and made no attempt to release his grip on the rifle. There was no way the Secret Service agent was going to take a chance with the President’s life. He shot the sniper twice in the back.

Carlos centred his telescopic sight on the President’s chest as he looked through the window of the sky box. He steadied his breathing. It would be so easy to pull the trigger without waiting for Lovell. He had a clear shot and the President was standing stock still, his eyes on the Prime Minister far below. Carlos was the closest sniper to the target and his bullet would take less than a second to blow the man apart. The difference in drop between the target on the pitcher’s mound and the sky box would be minimal. It would be so simple to fire now. The anticipation was almost painful. He smiled to himself and blocked such reckless thoughts out of his mind. He had to stick to the plan. His plan.

Carlos was ready. He’d compensated for the wind drift based on the figures Farrell had given him, and he had already made allowance for the fact that it had been Dina Rashid and not himself who had calibrated the scope.

He heard something move in the corridor outside but he blocked out the noise. He had to be totally focused on the target. Nothing else mattered.

Lovell’s voice in his ear almost caught him by surprise. “Target sighted,” said the laconic West Virginian accent. “Countdown starting. Five. . four. .”

Joker looked across the field at the pitcher’s mound, which was about thirty yards away from where he was standing. Secret Service chatter filled his ear again. The Prime Minister was drawing back his hand to throw, amid good-natured catcalls and whistles from the crowd. The First Lady was preparing to applaud. The Secret Service agents and the Prime Minister’s own bodyguards were all concentrating on the crowd. None of them was looking at the airship. A chill ran down Joker’s spine. He pressed the binoculars to his eyes and focused them on the gondola below the blimp. His hands were shaking and he fought to keep them steady.

The door of the gondola came into sharp focus. He was looking at a logo of a hawk and a propeller. The logo of Farrell Aviation. “Jesus Christ,” said Joker, under his breath. He panned to the right and up and he saw a bearded man at the open window sighting down a rifle. Joker began to tremble. He wanted to shout a warning but he doubted that he’d be heard above the noise of the crowd. His mind was in a whirl as he tried to decide what his next step should be, then he saw the muzzle flash and in an ice-cold moment of clarity he knew what he had to do. He dropped the binoculars and began to run. Four seconds was all he had. Joker began to silently count them off. One thousand and one. .

Carlos felt his heart race, like an engine out of control. He had the President dead centre in his telescopic sight and his finger tensed on the trigger as Lovell continued his countdown. It was an awesome feeling, knowing that Lovell’s bullet was already in the air, hurtling towards its target at more than two thousand feet per second. In his ear he heard Lovell count: “One thousand and. .”

To his horror, Carlos heard a key being inserted into the lock of the door to his room. It was followed by the whisper of the door against the carpet and Carlos knew that he had only seconds to react. A hotel employee would have knocked, it could only be the police or the Secret Service, and if he stayed at the window they’d shoot him in the back. The SEAL’s bullet was on the way and Schoelen’s would follow shortly. Carlos knew he couldn’t wait. He squeezed the trigger and the sound of the shot echoed around the hotel room. He sensed a gun being aimed at his back and knew that if he didn’t move he’d be dead. He dropped the rifle, grabbed the P228 from the table and rolled off the chair, firing twice at the doorway before he’d even looked to see who was there.

He continued to roll across the carpet, the gun coughing twice more, until he banged into the sofa. He brought up the gun, preparing to fire again. There was no need. There was only one person in the doorway, a tall, thin man in his late thirties who was sinking to his knees, blood streaming from his neck and chest. He was holding a Glock automatic, unfired. In his ear, Carlos heard: “One thousand and two. .”

Carlos scrambled to his feet and pulled the body of the dead agent into the room. It left a smear of glistening blood on the carpet. He dumped the body by the bed, kicked the door shut and raced back to the open window.

Cole Howard watched Joker sprint across the diamond, towards the mound. “What the fuck’s he up to?” asked Clutesi.

“Something to do with the airship,” said Howard. Both men heard a Secret Service agent report that he’d just killed a sniper in an office block overlooking the stadium. Clutesi’s jaw dropped. “It’s happening,” he said in disbelief.

The sky-box window exploded in a shower of glass. The guests began screaming as Secret Service agents rushed forward to protect the President. Clutesi’s eyes were wide and he looked at Howard for guidance. Bob Sanger could be heard shouting above the screams and weapons appeared as if by magic in the hands of the agents as they surrounded the President. They hustled him away from the window, several positioning themselves between his body and the outside.

A warm wind blew in through the shattered window, and down below Howard could see Joker continuing to run, his plaid jacket flapping behind him. To Howard it appeared as if the man was running in slow motion. Howard looked up and squinted at the airship hanging over the city. His mind flashed back to Andy Kim’s computer model. The long shot. “The airship,” he whispered. “There’s a sniper in the airship.”

On the mound, the ball left the Prime Minister’s hand.

Kelly cradled Mary’s head in her lap. Mary’s eyes were wide open but they didn’t seem to be focusing. Blood was bubbling from a fist-sized hole in her chest. Kelly felt a hand on her shoulder and she looked up at the two Secret Service agents.

“Leave her alone,” she spat. “Can’t you see she’s dead?”

Mary’s hand clutched at Kelly’s arm and the fingers gripped tight. Her mouth moved soundlessly, her eyes still unseeing. Kelly bent forward and put her ear close to Mary’s lips.

Joker continued to count in his head as he ran. Individual, disparate images filled his head: a Secret Service agent, his mouth wide open, staring up at the sky box, a finger against his earpiece; the catcher, reaching out with his gloved hand, smiling behind his mask; the Prime Minister, looking ill at ease, his hair untidy from the effort of pitching; the First Lady, a wide smile on her face. Two thousand yards. Four seconds. An almost impossible shot under normal circumstances, but according to Howard they were up against a sniper who could pull it off. He heard glass smash somewhere behind him, somewhere high. Joker’s heart felt as if it was bursting and his ankles were screaming in agony as they pounded into the ground. There was no time to shout a warning, no time to explain what was happening, There was only one thing he could do. One thousand and two. .

Cole Howard dashed over to Bob Sanger and grabbed his shoulder. “The Prime Minister’s a target, too. It’s a double hit!” he shouted. Howard’s spittle peppered the Secret Service agent’s face.

For a second, Sanger was too surprised to react, but then the words sank in and he reached for his radio. “Get Parliament off the mound!” he ordered. “Now.” The Secret Service agents had completely surrounded the President and were hustling him out of the sky box, their weapons held high.

Howard looked down at the diamond. The only man who was reacting was Joker.

As he hurtled towards the mound, Joker heard a call over the radio to get the Prime Minister out of the way, but knew that it would take seconds for his bodyguards to react. The ball thwacked into the catcher’s glove and the Prime Minister raised a hand, acknowledging the cheers of the crowds. One of the Secret Service agents had turned towards Joker, his mouth open, and his hand inside his jacket. Joker didn’t break his stride, he stuck out his arm and hit the man in the throat, hard enough to push him out of the way but not hard enough to kill him. The movement jolted his injured shoulder and Joker grunted. In his mind the count continued. One thousand and three. . The Prime Minister was about twelve feet away, his hand in the air and his back to Joker.

Several of the bodyguards began to move towards the Prime Minister, but they were all further away than Joker. Joker could taste blood on his lips and he could feel that the wound on his chest had reopened. He looked up at the blimp, calculating the angle, knowing that the bullet was well over halfway to its target and knowing that there was only one thing he could do. He leapt into the air, throwing himself at the Prime Minister’s back. Faces flashed by, two Secret Service agents groping for him with their hands outstretched, and Joker twisted in the air, screaming from the pain and because he wanted to block out the thinking part of his brain, the part which knew what was going to happen and which might try to flinch at the last second. Joker knew that the strongest part of the bullet-proof vest was the front and if he was to survive the impact he’d have to get his chest between the bullet and the Prime Minister. He screamed like an animal in pain, his arms out for balance, his chest up, waiting for the explosion. One thousand and four. .

Carlos swung his rifle, trying to pick up the sky box in the telescopic sight. The green playing surface flashed by, then a base, then the legs of running Secret Service agents. He trained the sight up and picked out the presidential sky box. The glass had shattered and he saw figures inside, but he couldn’t see the President. He was too late. He cursed and trained the rifle back on the mound. There was a figure lying there, but it wasn’t the Prime Minister. The man motionless on the ground was wearing a plaid jacket. Carlos took the scope away from his eye so that he could get an overall view of the diamond. The high magnification of the telescopic sight was fine for sniping, but its field of vision was far too narrow for general viewing.

Carlos blinked several times, trying to refocus his eyes. He saw the man in the plaid jacket spread-eagled on the mound, a Secret Service agent kneeling by his side. More agents were surrounding the First Lady, guns drawn, looking around to see where the shot had come from. The Prime Minister, surrounded by bodyguards, was being hustled to the tunnel. Carlos put the rifle back to his shoulder and aimed at the tunnel, hoping that he’d be able to get a clear shot. He found the group with his scope but he couldn’t pick out the Prime Minister. Carlos put down his rifle. “Mary, what’s happening?” he said into the microphone on his lapel. There was no reply. “Mary?” Still nothing.

“Sniper Three, is that you?” asked Lovell. “What’s happening?”

Cole Howard gasped as he saw Joker leap and throw himself at the Prime Minister. His first thought was that the Brit was trying to tackle the man and bring him down, but at the last moment he twisted, like a high jumper going over backwards. Howard saw his arms flail out, then his whole body convulsed as if he’d received an electric shock.

Howard looked over at Bob Sanger, who was still talking into his walkie-talkie. He turned to Don Clutesi, who was staring open-mouthed at the diamond, where the Prime Minister was being engulfed by bodyguards. One of the Secret Service agents, a gun in his hand, knelt over Joker and opened his shirt collar. Howard gripped Clutesi’s arm. “I’m going down,” Howard said urgently. “Tell Sanger to get a chopper to pick me up.”

“A chopper?” said Clutesi. “Why?”

“Just do it, Don,” said Howard. He ran to the door, throwing his binoculars to the ground.

Rich Lovell had the back of a head in his sights, but he had no way of knowing whether or not it was the Prime Minister. Carlos had told him to keep firing, but Lovell knew it was useless. His target was four seconds away, and running from him. Even if the Prime Minister hadn’t been surrounded by bodyguards, there was no way he could predict where anyone would be four seconds into the future.

“What’s happening?” screamed Matthew Bailey as he squatted by the laser sight.

“I missed,” said Lovell. “I don’t know how, but I missed.”

“What do you mean, you missed?”

Lovell looked up. “I had him in my sights, and I fired, and then at the last moment someone got in the way.”

“You mean one of his bodyguards walked into the bullet?”

Lovell shook his head. “No, some guy threw himself at the Prime Minister. The bullet got him in the chest, dead centre. Now everyone’s running off the field. I can’t get a clear shot.” He put his rifle back to his shoulder. The bodyguards had disappeared into the safety of the tunnel.

“Can you fire again?” Bailey asked.

“No,” said Lovell.

“What about Carlos and Schoelen? Have they fired?”

“I don’t know,” said Lovell.

Patrick Farrell looked anxiously over at Bailey. “What do we do?”

“We keep calm for a start,” said Bailey. “No one will know the shot came from the airship. Just take us back to the airfield.” He got to his feet and headed back to the co-pilot’s seat. “Keep talking to air-traffic control, tell them we’ve a problem with the camera and that we’re heading back.”

As Farrell put the blimp in a slow left turn, Bailey spoke into his radio microphone, a worried frown on his face. “M-M-Mary, are you there? M-M-Mary?” There was no reply.

The words came out slowly and Kelly had to strain to hear. “Did we get him?” asked Mary, her grip tightening on Kelly’s arm.

Kelly looked down at the baseball diamond. The First Lady was being ushered to the tunnel, surrounded by armed Secret Service agents. A helicopter thundered overhead, its rotor wash tugging at their suits. More agents were pushing the Prime Minister into the darkness of the tunnel, out of danger.

Kelly cradled Mary’s head in her lap. The blood had stopped bubbling from her chest, replaced with a pink froth. “Yes,” Kelly whispered.

“You’re sure?” gasped Mary, her eyelids fluttering.

Kelly saw the Prime Minister disappear into the safety of the tunnel. “Yes,” she lied, “I’m sure.”

Kelly felt Mary shiver and then relax. Blood dribbled from the corner of Mary’s mouth and down her neck.

Cole Howard ran out of the sky box, past the President and his entourage of Secret Service agents amid a forest of Uzis and Heckler amp; Koch submachine guns.

He took the escalator, jumping the stairs four at a time. On the ground level he saw the Prime Minister and his security team heading in his direction and Howard unclipped his FBI badge from the breast pocket of his suit and held it aloft. “FBI!” he yelled, to make sure that there would be no confusion. The American and British bodyguards were all edgy, with their fingers inside the trigger guards of their weapons, and the Prime Minister appeared to be in a state of shock. An older Secret Service agent, a Uzi held aloft, was screaming at them to move faster and looking over his shoulder as if he expected to see pursuers.

Howard sprinted down the tunnel, shouting all the way that he was with the FBI. He had to squeeze by the First Lady and her bodyguards before he burst out of the confined space and into the huge stadium. He heard a public announcement reverberating around the arena, calling for everyone to remain calm. Howard could see spectators streaming towards the exits while others were standing in shock. Howard looked up. In the distance he could see the airship turning and heading away from the city. A deafening beating sound filled his ears and he tilted back his head. Directly overhead was a National Guard Huey helicopter, coming in to land. The downbeat of the rotors sent dust and sand whirling around Howard, stinging his eyes and making it hard to breathe. He ducked his head and put a hand over his mouth as the helicopter went by and landed about fifty yards away.

When he looked up the Huey was on the ground, its rotors still turning. Howard jogged towards it, bent double at the waist. Hands grabbed for him and half pulled, half dragged him inside and almost immediately the rotors speeded up and the Huey leapt back into the air.

Carlos pushed the maid’s trolley to one side and checked himself in the bathroom mirror. Satisfied that there was no blood on his face or clothes, he picked up his briefcase, stepped over the body of the dead Secret Service agent, and let himself out of the room. In the elevator a pretty brunette with a name badge identifying her as an assistant manager smiled and asked if he was enjoying his stay.

Carlos returned her smile and nodded. “It’s a fine hotel,” he said. When the elevator arrived at the ground floor she held the door open for him and allowed him out first, wishing him a good day. They were always so polite, the Americans, thought Carlos as he left the hotel, swinging the briefcase. Overhead, a National Guard helicopter was climbing into the air.

Cole Howard yelled at the pilot to head for the airship, but his voice was lost in the roar of the turbine. A crewman in an olive flightsuit handed him a headset and showed him how to operate the microphone switch. Through the intercom system Howard explained that there was a sniper on board the airship.

In the back of the Huey with Howard were the National Guard crewman, a hard-faced Secret Service agent in a dark grey suit and ubiquitous sunglasses and a SWAT sniper in black overalls.

“What’s the plan, can we shoot the blimp down?” asked the agent.

“Wouldn’t it explode?” the crewman cut in. “Aren’t they full of inflammable gas or something?”

“You’re thinking of the Hindenberg; back then they were full of hydrogen,” said the pilot. “These days they use other gases that don’t burn.”

“So we can shoot holes in it?” asked the sniper.

“I guess so,” said Howard. The Huey was climbing rapidly and his stomach turned over. He took deep breaths, trying to quell his unease.

“I dunno about that,” said the pilot. “Look at the size of it, it’s as big as a whale. You could put a hundred holes in it and it’d still stay up for hours.”

The Secret Service agent had his fingers pressed to his earpiece. “They tried to shoot the President,” he yelled.

“He’s okay, I saw him,” shouted Howard.

“You sure?” said the agent.

“Really,” said Howard. “Your guys got him out safely. He’s okay.” The agent looked relieved. Howard turned to the SWAT sniper. “What about the engines? Could you put a bullet in the engines?”

“I could try, but this isn’t the steadiest of shooting platforms,” said the sniper. “We’d have to get really close. And the closer we get the better a target we are for the guy on board. You’ve got to remember he isn’t being shaken around as much as we are.”

Howard nodded. He patted the pilot on the back. “Can you call up the other helicopters, get them to hover nearby?” he asked.

“Sure,” said the pilot.

“Tell them there’s a sniper on board, so they’ll have to stay above it.”

“Okay,” said the pilot. Over the headset, Howard heard him giving instructions to the other helicopter pilots.

Howard looked around the cargo compartment. Behind the crew member was a winch and a bright orange harness. Howard pointed at the weapon hanging from a sling under the Secret Service agent’s jacket. “What are you carrying?” he asked.

“Uzi,” said the agent.

Howard nodded. “I think I’ve got an idea,” he said, slipping off his jacket.

“There’s a helicopter heading this way,” shouted Rich Lovell, pulling the barrel of his rifle inside the gondola and squatting on the floor.

“They can’t know we’re involved,” said Bailey. “Just stay down out of sight. We’ll be okay.”

Lovell’s right foot was sticking into the neck of the bearded cameraman and he pulled it away with a look of disgust on his face.

“What do we do?” asked Farrell.

“We keep on our present course all the way back to the airfield,” said Bailey. “We land this thing, we tie you up, Rich and I drive to Bay Bridge. You tell them we hijacked the blimp and killed the camera crew because they put up a struggle. We fly off into the sunset.”

“Maybe I should come with you; I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this.”

“Whatever you want,” said Bailey. With Dina Rashid dead, there would be an extra seat on the Centurion. “But they’ve nothing on you. All you have to do is to stick to your story. Tell them there was a gun on you every step of the way.”

Farrell shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“There’s another chopper coming our way,” said Lovell. From where he was squatting he saw a two-seater Robinson R-22 police helicopter through the opposite window. “It’s only a spotter but it’s definitely after us.”

“What do we do now?” asked Farrell, his voice unsteady in Bailey’s headset.

Bailey wracked his brains. What would Mary do? “A spotter chopper isn’t going to do us any harm,” he said.

“But it can follow us until we land,” said Farrell.

Lovell sneaked a look through the window above his head. “Shit, now there’s another one. Another Huey.”

Bailey looked over to his left. About half a mile away were two green National Guard helicopters. They were quite clearly heading towards the blimp. In the open cargo door of one of the Hueys Bailey could see a SWAT sniper, one leg resting on the skid, a rifle slung across his chest.

“Rich, can you stop them?” Bailey looked at the former Navy SEAL. He knew that the question wasn’t if Lovell could, but whether or not he was prepared to.

Lovell stared at Bailey. He reached up and slowly scratched his beard as he looked down his long, hooked nose at Bailey. He nodded, once, and got up on his knees, sticking the barrel of the Barrett out of the open window. He sighted through the scope and tightened his finger on the trigger. Just as it seemed he was about to fire, he took his eye away. “What the fuck?” he exclaimed. “Would you take a look at that!”

Bailey and Farrell looked to the left. A man in an olive green flightsuit was sitting on the edge of the cargo hold, a bright orange harness looped under his arms. As the men in the blimp watched, the figure slipped off the side of the helicopter, kicked away from the skids, and dropped as the line paid out.

“What the hell’s he doing?” asked Lovell.

The helicopter began to climb as the winch paid out its line and the figure swung from side to side like a hypnotist’s pendulum.

“Who cares?” said Bailey. “Just shoot the fucker.”

The wind buffeted Cole Howard as the Huey picked up speed. It rippled the arms and legs of the flightsuit with the sound of whips cracking and threatened to spin him in circles. Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes and he narrowed them to almost slits to cut down on the discomfort. He experimented with his limbs, seeing what position would minimise the spinning. He opened his legs and extended his arms and adopted the position he’d seen skydivers use on television. It appeared to work, the spinning motion stopped, though the air pushed against his arms and legs like a living thing. The Uzi swung on its sling and banged against his chest as it was tossed around but he ignored it and concentrated on maintaining a stable position.

He looked down and immediately regretted it. The city was falling away beneath his feet and his stomach lurched, the bitter taste of bile rising in his throat. He tilted his head back and swallowed and felt the acrid liquid slide back down to his stomach. Above him he saw the crewman, shivering in the doorway in pale green thermal underwear, one hand gripping the winch, the other in a thumbs-up. Howard made a thumbs-up sign with his left hand but immediately began to spin to the right, so he thrust out both hands to the side to stabilise his position.

The winch continued to pay out. Howard had asked for the maximum length so that he could be as far away from the helicopter as possible, but the more the line extended, the more isolated he felt. He knew that the steel line was virtually unbreakable but he was all too well aware of how thin it was and that it was the only thing keeping him from falling to his death hundreds of feet below. Through his narrowed eyes he saw the blimp, side on and level with the helicopter. Howard began to experiment, he moved his arms in at the same time as he pushed his legs out, trying to hold the Uzi and at the same time remain stable. It seemed to work, though the new position had the effect of thrusting his head forward into the wind and he had to hold his head up higher to see ahead.

Rich Lovell refocused his telescopic sight on the man on the winch-line. He saw the Uzi across his chest and smiled thinly. The submachine gun was a fearsome weapon, one which was often used by the Navy SEALs, but it was only effective close up. At more than fifty feet, it was as useful as a peashooter. Lovell estimated the distance to be about seven hundred yards and he ran the calculations through the memorised charts in his head, figuring out how much the bullet would drop and by how much he’d have to compensate bearing in mind that his scope was set for a two thousand yard hit. The calculations were complex but he’d done them thousands of times before and it took him less than three seconds. He aimed low, took a breath, let half of it out, and squeezed the trigger.

As the bullet exploded from the muzzle, Lovell saw the man jerk upwards, out of harm’s way, like a marionette in the hands of an inexperienced puppeteer. The sniper took his eye from the scope to see what had happened. He could see that all the line had been payed out and that the man in the flightsuit was now ascending at the same rate as the Huey. He put his eye back to the telescopic sight and tried to take aim again, but he was too late, the helicopter had climbed above the blimp and the huge gas-filled envelope blocked his field of vision. He looked around for the other National Guard Huey, but realised that it too had flown above the airship.

Lovell twisted around. On the other side of the blimp he could see the black and white police helicopter, hovering about a mile away. Lovell smiled. They clearly figured they were out of range, but the sniper knew better. He knelt down, took aim, and fired. He kept his eye to the scope as he mentally counted off the four seconds it took the bullet to arc through the air, and then saw the tail rotor disintegrate. The small helicopter immediately began to spin out of control as black smoke poured from its shattered tail gearbox. It lost height quickly, spinning faster and faster, and Lovell leant forward to watch it spiral down. It took almost twenty seconds for it to reach the ground where it smashed into a truck and burst into flames. Cars swerved to avoid the inferno, crashing into each other and mounting the sidewalks.

Lovell pulled the rifle back inside the gondola. He peered up, hoping for a glimpse of one of the Hueys that he knew were hovering overhead, but all he saw was the blimp envelope and the darkening sky. “Can you see them?” he asked Bailey.

“No,” said Bailey through the headset.

“They know we’re here,” said Farrell. “What do we do now?”

“Just fly the fucking thing and let me think,” said Bailey.

Lovell caressed the barrel of his rifle. Bailey wasn’t holding up well and Lovell had a growing sense of impending doom. He’d have been a lot happier if Carlos or Mary had been in control. He looked down at the smoking wreckage of the helicopter. A parachute would have been nice, just step out of the door, pull the ripcord and float away. But he didn’t have a parachute and until the blimp got a lot closer to the ground, he was in the hands of Bailey and Farrell. And they didn’t inspire confidence. Lovell turned around again to look out of the window. A figure was hanging outside, about twenty feet away from the gondola, with a Uzi in his hands and his legs wide apart. Lovell swung his rifle around but he knew he wouldn’t have time to get off a shot. His reaction was instinctive and had little to do with his chance of succeeding. The windows of the gondola exploded at the same time as he felt four quick punches to his chest. Lovell looked down and saw four small black holes in a neat line across his shirt, red holes with black centres like poppies. He tried to breathe but there was something liquid in his throat that bubbled and wouldn’t let in the air and then he began to cough, heaving spasms that brought up mouthfuls of sweet, sticky blood that dribbled down his chin. The poppies grew and merged together into one red mass.

Lovell looked up. The figure jerked upwards again and disappeared. A cold numbness spread out from Lovell’s chest and his vision blurred. He sat back on the floor, his rifle between his legs. In his headset he could hear Farrell and Bailey shouting at the same time. Lovell tried to tell them that he’d been hit but his mouth was full of blood and he couldn’t think of the words, they seemed to skip at the edge of his conscious mind like wild horses that didn’t want to be corralled.

Lovell fell to the side. His head thudded down next to the cameraman and he found himself staring into the dead man’s eyes. Lovell tried to push himself up but he had no feeling in his arms or legs. He heard Bailey shouting, but his voice was faraway as if at the end of a long tunnel. Lovell felt tired and he closed his eyes.

When the Huey lurched back above the airship, Cole Howard almost threw up. He began to spin and he let the Uzi fall back on its sling as he flung his arms out, trying to stop the dizzying movement. When he was stable again he signalled to the crewman to begin hauling in the line.

As he began to rise towards the Huey and its thudding rotor blades, Howard looked down on the huge airship below him. The rotor wash was flattening down the top of the blimp. It looked solid enough to walk on, but Howard knew it was an illusion. The airship was heading towards the inner harbour, away from the tower blocks. From below, the sounds of emergency sirens drifted up as fire engines and ambulances rushed towards the burning police helicopter. Howard had watched in horror as the crippled chopper had spun to the ground, knowing that he was powerless to help. He’d realised that the sniper must have been on the opposite side of the gondola so he had signalled to the crewman that he wanted to go down. When Howard had dropped level with the gondola he’d had the chance of shooting the sniper in the back, but he’d waited. He wasn’t sure if it was because he’d wanted the man to have a chance, or if it was because he wanted to see the face of the man he was about to kill. Whatever the reason, he’d seen the look of surprise on the man’s face before pressing the trigger of the Uzi.

Howard was turning slowly as he was winched up and he saw the second National Guard Huey hovering a few hundred yards away. When Howard drew level with the open door the crewman leant out and grabbed the line. Howard fumbled with his feet and found the skid, and then sat down heavily on the metal floor. He gestured to the crewman to give him a headset so that he could speak to the pilot.

“There are three men, I got one,” said Howard. “They might be willing to land now. Can you talk to them?”

“I can try,” said the pilot. Howard heard the pilot request the airship pilot to descend, but he was ignored. The pilot repeated his commands several times, but there was no response.

“He might not have the radio switched on,” the pilot said to Howard.

“Or he might just be ignoring us,” said the Secret Service agent. “Why don’t we riddle the thing with bullets? It’ll land eventually. We can just follow them down.”

“What if they’ve got parachutes?” said the SWAT sniper. “They could be heading for a drop zone.”

Howard nodded. The sniper had a point. Also, they’d brought down a police helicopter and probably killed the occupants. Howard doubted that they’d give up easily. “I’ve an idea,” he said to the pilot. “Can you get the other chopper to fly on the opposite side of the blimp as a distraction. Tell them to be careful, though.”

“Sure,” said the pilot.

Patrick Farrell looked over his shoulder at the three bodies in the back of the gondola. Bits of glass were still falling from the window frame and wind was roaring through. “Oh sweet Jesus, now what the fuck do we do?” His hands were trembling on the controls. “Matthew, what do we do?”

Bailey was also shaking, his eyes darting around like a trapped rat looking for a way out. He peered down at the waters of the inner harbour. “How far could we jump?” he asked.

“Not this far, that’s for sure,” replied Farrell.

“What if we go lower? They’re above us, they might not see us jump.”

“Matthew, we’re five hundred feet up.”

“So like I said, go lower.”

“If we go lower they’ll go lower. They’ll be radioing to the cops right now.”

Bailey looked over at Farrell. “Have you got a better idea?”

“Tell them we give up. We haven’t done anything, it was Lovell who fired the shots. He brought the chopper down.”

“Fuck you, Farrell. You think they’ll let us go just because our fingers weren’t on the trigger?”

Before Farrell could reply one of the Hueys began to descend in a slow hover, about six hundred yards to their right. In the open cargo doorway they saw a SWAT sniper, his rifle at the ready.

“Take us down,” hissed Bailey, then he removed his headset and hung it up. He twisted out of his seat and looked around for Lovell’s rifle. It was still in the dead man’s grasp and the sniper had fallen on top of it. Farrell rotated the wheel forward and the airship dipped down. The bodies shifted as if they were still alive and a river of thick, treacly blood flowed across the floor towards Bailey’s knee.

Some sixth sense made Bailey turn around. His mouth dropped. A man was rushing towards him through the air, his knees up and his feet forward, a submachine gun in his hands. Bailey began to scream. He saw Lovell’s handgun lying in the bag on the floor and he grabbed for it, bringing it up with both hands. He pulled the trigger, screaming all the while.

The pilot of the Huey flared the rotor blades, bringing the helicopter to almost a dead stop in the air and swinging Cole Howard forward on the end of the wire. Howard braced himself for the impact as he surged forward towards the door of the gondola. He saw another man with a handgun and Howard pulled the trigger of the Uzi, sending a stream of bullets blasting across the gondola. As the Uzi kicked in his hands he felt a lancing pain in his shoulder. What little glass there was remaining was shattered and the door was peppered with holes. The man with the gun disappeared and Howard let the Uzi hang on its sling so that his hands were free.

He slammed into the door so hard that the breath was driven from his body. The impact drove his knees against his chest and he clawed at the window frame for support. The nerves in his shoulder shrieked with pain, leaving him in no doubt that he’d been hit. The pilot of the Huey descended a few yards to take the strain off the wire. Howard managed to get his good arm through the shattered door window and he groped around for the door handle. In the seat opposite sat a pilot in a white short-sleeved shirt, a look of panic in his eyes.

Howard pulled open the door and hauled himself inside. He could feel warm blood dribbling down his arm under the flightsuit. There were four bodies to the rear of the gondola and he recognised one as Matthew Bailey. Bailey was on his back, his red hair matted with the darker crimson of fresh blood. One of the Uzi bullets had blown away a good-sized chunk of the side of his head. Howard kicked him with the toe of his shoe, but there was no doubt that he was dead.

“Take this thing down!” Howard screamed at the pilot. He slipped the orange harness over his arms, switching the Uzi from hand to hand, and then he threw the harness out so that the Huey pilot would know he was okay. The harness disappeared upwards as it was winched in. Howard moved to the front of the gondola and eased himself into the co-pilot’s seat. He looked around for something to stem the flow of blood from his injured shoulder but couldn’t see anything. “And hurry,” he said.

“It wasn’t my fault,” whined the pilot. “They made me do it.”

Howard pointed the muzzle of the Uzi at the pilot’s groin. “Just get me on the ground,” he said through clenched teeth.

Carlos walked quickly around the small plane, untying the ropes which were holding down its wings and the tail, and checking that the flaps and ailerons were functioning. He didn’t bother visually checking the fuel tanks, but as soon as he was settled in the pilot’s seat and had put his briefcase on the front passenger seat, he turned on the electrics and looked at the fuel gauges. Matthew Bailey had been as good as his word — both tanks were full. Not that Carlos required full tanks.

He started the engine and the propeller was soon a whirling blur. The airfield was deserted, but there was still enough light to see by. He looked at the wind-sock and taxied to the end of the runway which would allow him to take off into the wind.

The plane almost leapt into the air as if making light of its single passenger. Carlos kept the plane in a steep climb, flying it parallel to the Bay Bridge. In the far distance he could see the tower blocks of Baltimore city centre. When he was about halfway along the bridge he made a slow turn to the left, and continued to climb.

As he handled the controls, Carlos tried to work out where they had gone wrong and why the operation had fallen apart. It wasn’t that he wanted to apportion blame, it was that he rarely failed and when he did it was always because someone else had let him down. He went over and over the steps in his mind, looking for the weak point. Not Mary Hennessy, of that he was sure. And Matthew Bailey had done everything that was asked of him. The snipers too.

Maybe it was just bad luck, plain and simple. Maybe the gods had just decided that Ilich Ramirez Sanchez would not be allowed to retire, to rest on his laurels and spend his old age with his wife and family. His luck had clearly run out the day he’d escaped from France. He was like a cat which had used up all of its nine lives. The displays on the radios in the control panel were blank. There was no one that Carlos wanted, or needed, to speak to.

He flew south, down the centre of the Chesapeake Bay.

Carlos thought about his wife and children. He wondered how they were, and if Magdalena had found the time to get the stereo repaired. They had a nice house, a house he could relax in, with several acres of well-tended garden behind a high stone wall.

He turned the plane to the left until the heading indicator showed that he was flying east. He remembered how his children had cried when he’d told them that he’d be leaving them for a while, and how they’d nodded seriously when he’d made them promise to take care of their mother. His own mother had cried, too, and she’d held him tightly as if knowing that she would never see him again. He remembered, too, how urgent Magdalena’s love-making had been on his final night in the house, his suitcase packed and locked on the floor at the end of the bed.

There was no going back, Carlos knew. That had been the deal. If he had succeeded he would have had a sanctuary for the rest of his life, no matter what the international pressure. But if he failed, there was to be no link to his paymasters. In return for his silence, his family would be allowed to stay in their home. Carlos had made sure that whatever happened there was enough money in their overseas bank accounts to ensure that Magdalena and their children would never want for anything. Ahead of him he saw the blue vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, the sky above it beginning to darken as the sun dipped down below the horizon.

Carlos relaxed as he flew over the water. He’d given it his best shot. He had done nothing to be ashamed of. He looked down at the white tips of the waves some four thousand feet below him. A man could hide for a long time under the water, he thought. Maybe for ever. He opened the briefcase and took out the P228. He unscrewed the silencer and tossed it into the rear of the plane. There would be nobody around to hear the shot. He took his left hand off the control yolk and pressed the barrel of the gun to his right temple.

“Magdalena, I love you,” he whispered.

The doctor put the finishing touches to the dressings and stepped back to admire his handiwork. “You’re a very lucky man, Special Agent Howard,” he said.

“I don’t feel particularly lucky, Doc,” Howard replied.

The doctor removed his rubber gloves and tossed them into a trash bag. “If the bullet hadn’t glanced off your shoulder blade, and if it had exited downwards and not upwards, you wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

Howard was sitting on the edge of a hospital cot, stripped to the waist. He tried to stand but the doctor shook his head and held up his hand, Indian-greeting style, and told him to stay put. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. You need at least a day in bed.”

“I want to go home,” said Howard.

“I gather home is in Phoenix, and you’re in no fit state to be flying. You stay put, and that’s an order.”

“But my wife. .” Howard began,

“. . is waiting outside,” finished the doctor. He nodded to a nurse who left the room and came back a few minutes later with Lisa.

Lisa Howard rushed over to the cot, went to hug her husband, then held herself back as she saw the dressings. “I won’t break,” Howard said quietly and she grinned and reached for him. There were tears in her eyes. “What are you doing here?” he asked in amazement.

“Jake called me and said I should get here. Daddy arranged a jet.” She looked suddenly uncomfortable at the mention of her father, and Howard couldn’t help but laugh.

“That’s great,” he said. “Honey, that’s just great.” He stood up and hugged her hard, squeezing her against him even though it hurt like hell.

“Honey, I’m so sorry,” Lisa whispered into his ear. “About the golf clubs. About everything. When can you come home?”

“Tonight,” said Howard.

“When he’s stronger,” insisted the doctor.

The door opened again and Bob Sanger appeared with Don Clutesi close behind. Clutesi was smiling. “Cole, how are you?” asked Sanger.

“Fine,” said Howard.

The doctor sighed in exasperation. “Agent Howard, try to remember that I’m the one with the medical degree, will you?”

Howard grinned at Sanger. “Really, Bob, I’ll be okay.”

“Are you up for a visitor?” Sanger asked.

“This is my wife, Lisa. She’s the only visitor I need right now.” He kept a tight hold on his wife’s hand as if afraid that she’d leave him.

“Oh, I think you might want to make an exception in this case,” said Sanger, opening the door wide.

Two more Secret Service agents entered, checked out the room, then went to stand in opposite corners like trained attack dogs. Three more men appeared, and Howard sat up straighter as he recognised the one in the centre. It was the President, flanked by agents. Howard thought he seemed surprisingly calm, considering what he’d been through.

“Special Agent Howard, I just wanted to thank you for your actions today. I will be forever in your debt.” There was no doubting the sincerity in the President’s voice nor the concern in his voice. “Are you okay?”

Before Howard could reply, the doctor stepped forward. “A few days’ rest and he’ll be fine,” he said.

The President nodded. “Good, I’m real glad to hear that. Real glad. If there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate to call my office.”

“Yes, sir. I will. But Mike Cramer is the one who you should thank,” said Howard. “He’s the one who saved the Prime Minister.”

“I wish I could, Agent Howard,” said the President. “If it wasn’t for him I’d have a hell of a lot of explaining to do to the British Government. Unfortunately he seems to have disappeared.”

Howard looked across at Sanger in surprise. “What happened?”

It was the doctor who answered. “We don’t know,” he said. “We were treating him here in Shock-trauma, the nurse left him alone for a few minutes, when she got back he was gone.”

“Is he okay?”

“He has a bruise the size of a dinner plate on his chest and he won’t be doing any hang-gliding for a while, but he’s in no serious danger. The body armour wasn’t even pierced.” He smiled. “I think the manufacturers could use him to advertise their product.”

“Is what I hear true, that the sniper was more than one mile away?” asked the President, his head cocked to the right.

“Two thousand yards,” said Howard.

“If it had been much closer, the slug would have gone right through the vest, and him,” said the doctor. “As it was, the bullet had slowed down considerably, but it was still travelling at several hundred feet per second when it hit him.”

“That’s absolutely unbelievable,” said the President, shaking his head in amazement. “It almost defies comprehension. What Cramer did is just as unbelievable, diving in the path of the bullet the way he did.”

Howard wondered what it was that had inspired Cramer to throw himself in front of the bullet. Then it came to him in a flash — Cramer hadn’t been concerned about saving the Prime Minister so much as he had been about thwarting Mary Hennessy. It was hatred which had driven Cramer, not respect for the politician. Howard realised that the President was looking at him, waiting for him to say something.

“I’m glad you’re all right, sir,” Howard said.

The President flashed his trademark grin. “Agent Howard, you’re not alone in that.” He turned and smiled at Bob Sanger. “Maybe you should get this man on our team, Bob.”

“Sounds good to me, sir,” replied Sanger.

The President turned back to Howard. “Well, I suppose I must be going. I’m supposed to be taking the PM to the aquarium, but I don’t think he’s in the mood for looking at fish.” He smiled and held out his hand. “I owe you one, Agent Howard.”

Howard shook the President’s hand. The flesh was warm and the grip was firm.

Lisa stepped forward as the President and his entourage left the hospital room. She looked as if she was going to say something but then changed her mind. Instead, she kissed her husband on the mouth, hard and with feeling. It was Howard who broke away first. Clutesi was grinning.

“Any news of Carlos?” Howard asked.

“Not yet, but he won’t get far,” Clutesi answered. “Kelly Armstrong was just asking me the same question.”

“She’s here?”

“Downstairs. They were treating her for shock but she was checking herself out when I saw her. She was with Hennessy when she was killed. She was covered in her blood.”

“How come?”

Clutesi shrugged. “She was up in the stands when the SWAT sniper took Hennessy out.” Clutesi stood by the window. He slanted the blinds so that he could look down at the road below.

“That seems like a hell of a coincidence,” said Sanger.

Clutesi saw Kelly Armstrong leave the main entrance and walk purposefully down the road, her blonde hair swinging gently in the breeze. She was a real stunner, thought Clutesi, and from the way she swung her hips she knew it. There was something familiar about her, something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He’d seen her before at the same angle, looking down at her from a window. Clutesi clasped a hand to the back of his neck. A bar. She’d been going into a bar and he’d been on surveillance. It came to him in a rush and he slapped his hand against his leg. “Now I remember!” he shouted.

The Colonel came wide awake, all his senses alert. He turned his head to look at the bedside clock. It was three o’clock in the morning. He lay back and listened, allowing his mind to roam among the rooms of his cottage, trying to find the source of the noise which had woken him. The Colonel was a light sleeper, but he was never disturbed by the sounds of the countryside: barking foxes, hunting owls or sheep kicking over rocks. It must have been something else.

His nearest neighbours were a mile away, a working farm owned by a former Merchant Navy captain, and it wasn’t unusual to hear tractors starting up at first light. But it was still dark outside, and if it had been a tractor or any other sort of vehicle, he’d have heard the sound for some time.

The Colonel sat up slowly. He slept naked and the sheets whispered as they slid down his chest. The road which led to his cottage was dotted with potholes and it was impossible for anyone to drive down without the vehicle rattling and banging. And for twenty feet around his cottage there was a layer of gravel chippings, several inches deep. It was impossible to approach the dwelling silently.

The house seemed silent. On the Colonel’s right was an electronic panel linked to a security system which covered every door and window in the house, and which was connected to pressure sensors embedded in the road and at various key points in the garden. All the lights on the display glowed red, none was flashing. If any of the alarms were triggered, the system would automatically call his local police station and the police would arrive within eight minutes. Under normal circumstances the Colonel would have put it down to an unremembered nightmare, but something felt wrong. His insides were tight as if his body knew something that his mind didn’t, and over the years he’d learned to trust his instincts. He twisted to the left and opened a drawer in his bedside table, where he kept a loaded Browning Hi-Power 9 mm automatic.

He slid out of the bed, switched off the gun’s safety, and took a blue silk dressing gown from a hook on the back of the door. He pressed his ear to the door jamb and listened. Nothing. He eased the door open and slipped into the corridor, his nerves on edge. He kept close to the wall and tip-toed to the top of the stairs, keeping his left hand flat against the plaster, feeling his way.

He peered down the stairs into the gloom at the bottom of the hall, moving his head slowly from side to side to utilise peripheral vision as much as possible. With infinite patience he made his way down the stairs, keeping close to the wall and taking one step at a time so that the wood wouldn’t betray him by squeaking. It had been more than fifteen minutes since he had woken up but still he had heard nothing other than his own footsteps.

Five doors led off the hallway at the bottom: to his study, the sitting room, a closet, the kitchen, and the main front door. The only one which was ajar was the door to the sitting room. He padded past the hall table and stood by the open door. If there was an intruder behind it, he would be at his most vulnerable when he stepped across the threshold. He listened intently, his head slightly down, focusing every fibre of his being on the room beyond the door. He heard a noise, a knocking sound like a foot brushing wood, from the far side of the study, close to the window. He raised the Browning, pushed open the door, and moved quickly inside, taking aim at the corner where he’d heard the noise.

There was no one there. His heart fell as he saw the single white knight lying in the corner where it had been thrown. He began to turn, but before he could move, the barrel of a gun was jammed against his neck and a hand clamped down over the Browning.

“Careless, Colonel,” said a voice by his left ear.