The base engineer’s building was so typical of its type that the ones in the former Soviet Union could hardly have been different. The paint was peeling, and the parking area lumpy and fragmented. The double doors into the back had locks on them, of the type a child could have picked with a hairpin, Popov thought, but, then, the most dangerous weapon in there would have been a screwdriver. Miles parked his truck and waved for Popov to follow him. Inside was also as expected: a cheap desk for the plumber to do his paperwork on, a well-worn swivel chair whose stuffing was visible through the cracked vinyl on the seat, and a pegboard hung with tools, few of which could have been younger than five years, judging by the chipped paint on the forged steel.
“Do they let you purchase new tools?” Popov asked, just to stay in character.
“I have to make a request, with justification, to the chief of the physical-plant department. He’s usually a decent bloke about it, and I don’t ask for things I don’t need.” Miles pulled a Post-it note from his desk. “They want that watercooler fixed today. Why can’t they just drink Coca-Cola?” he wondered aloud. “Well, want to come along?”
“Why not?” Popov stood and followed him out the door. Five minutes later, he regretted it. An armed soldier was outside the entrance to headquarters—and then he realized that this was the headquarters for Rainbow. Inside would be Clark, Ivan Timofeyevich, himself.
Miles parked the truck, got out, walked to the rear door, and opened it, pulling out his toolbox.
“I’ll need a small pipe wrench,” he told Popov, who opened the canvas sack he’d brought, and extracted a brand-new twelve-inch Rigid wrench.
“Will this do?”
“Perfect.” Miles waved him along. “Good afternoon, Corp,” he said to the soldier, who nodded politely in reply, but said nothing.
For his part, Popov was more than surprised. In Russia the security would have been much tighter. But this was England, and the plumber was doubtless known to the guard. With that, he was inside, trying not to look around too obviously, and exercising all of his self-control not to appear nervous. Miles immediately set to work, unscrewing the front, setting the cover aside, and peering back into the guts of the watercooler. He held his hand out for the small wrench, which Popov handed to him.
“Nice feel for the adjustment . . . but it’s brand-new, so that’s to be expected . . .” He tightened on a pipe and gave the wrench a twist. “Come on, now . . . there.” He pulled the pipe out and inspected it by holding it up to a light. “Ah, well, that I can fix. Bloody miracle,” he added. He slid back on his knees and looked in his toolbox. “The pipe is merely clogged up. Look, must be thirty years of sediment in there.” He handed it over.
Popov made a show of looking through the pipe, but saw nothing at all, the metal tube was so packed with—sediment, he guessed from what Miles had said. Then the plumber took it back and inserted a small screwdriver, jammed it like the ramrod of a musket to clear it out, then switched ends to do the same from the other direction.
“So, we’re going to get clean water for our coffee?” a voice asked.
“I expect so, sir,” Miles replied.
Popov looked up and managed to keep his heart beating. It was Clark, Ivan Timofeyevich, as the KGB file had identified him. Tall, middle fifties, smiling down at the two workmen, dressed in suit and tie, which somehow looked uncomfortable on him. He nodded politely at the man, and looked back down to his tools while thinking as loudly as he could, Go away!
“There, that should do it,” Miles said, reaching to put the pipe back inside, then taking the wrench from Popov to screw it into place. In another moment he stood and turned the plastic handle. The water that came out was dirty. “We just need to keep this open for five minutes or so, sir, to allow the pipe to flush itself out.”
“Fair enough. Thanks,” the American said, then walked off.
“A pleasure, sir,” Miles said to the disappearing back. “That was the boss, Mr. Clark.”
“Really? Polite enough.”
“Yes, decent bloke.” Miles stood and flipped the plastic lever. The water coming out of the spigot was clouded at first, but after a few minutes it appeared totally clear. “Well, that’s one job done. It’s a nice wrench,” Miles said, handing it back. “What do they cost?”
“This one—it’s yours.”
“Well, thank you, my friend.” Miles smiled on his way out the door and past the corporal of the British Army’s military police.
Next they rode around the base. Popov asked where Clark lived, and Miles obliged by taking a left turn and heading off to the senior officers’ quarters.
“Not a bad house, is it?”
“It looks comfortable enough.” It was made of brown brick, with what appeared to be a slate roof, and about a hundred square meters, and a garden in the back.
“I put the plumbing in that one myself,” Miles told him, “back when it was renovated. Ah, that must be the missus.”
A woman came out dressed in a nurse’s uniform, walked to the car, and got in. Popov looked and recorded the image.
“They have a daughter who’s a doctor at the same hospital the mum works at,” Miles told him. “Bun in the oven for that one. I think she’s married to one of the soldiers. Looks just like her mum, tall, blond, and pretty—smasher, really.”
“Where do they live?”
“Oh, over that way, I think,” Miles replied, waving vaguely to the west. “Officer housing, like this one, but smaller.”
“So, what can you offer us?” the police superintendent asked.
Bill Henriksen liked the Australians. They came right to the point. They were sitting in Canberra, Australia’s capital, with the country’s most senior cop and some people in military uniforms.
“Well, first of all, you know my background.” He’d already made sure that his FBI experience and the reputation of his company were well known. “You know that I work with the FBI, and sometimes even with Delta at Fort Bragg. Therefore I have contacts, good ones, and perhaps in some ways better than your own,” he said, risking a small boast.
“Our own SAS are excellent,” the chief told him.
“I know it,” Bill responded, with a nod and a smile. “We worked together several times when I was in the Hostage Rescue Team, in Perth twice, Quantico and Fort Bragg once each, back when Brigadier Philip Stocker was the boss. What’s he do now, by the way?”
“Retired three years ago,” the chief answered.
“Well, Phil knows me. Good man, one of the best I ever met,” Henriksen pronounced. “Anyway, what do I bring to the party? I work with all the hardware suppliers. I can connect you with H&K for the new MP-10 that our guys like—it was developed for an FBI requirement, because we decided the nine millimeter wasn’t powerful enough. However, the new Smith & Wesson ten-millimeter cartridge is—it’s a whole new world for the H&K weapon. But anyone can get guns for you. I also do business with E-Systems, Collins, Fredericks-Anders, Micro-Systems, Halliday, Inc., and all the other electronics companies. I know what’s happening in communications and surveillance equipment. Your SAS is weak in that area, according to my contacts. I can help fix that, and I can get you good prices for the equipment you need. In addition, my people can help train you up on the new equipment. I have a team of former Delta and HRT people. Mostly NCOs, including the regimental sergeant major from the Special Operations Training Center at Bragg, Dick Voss. He’s the best in the world, and he works for me now.”
“I’ve met him,” the Aussie SAS major noted. “Yes, he’s very good indeed.”
“So, what can I do for you?” Henriksen asked. “Well, you’ve all seen the upsurge of terrorist activity in Europe, and that’s a threat you need to take seriously for the Olympics. Your SAS people don’t need any advice from me or anyone else on tactics, but what my company can do is to get you state-of-the-art electronics gear for surveillance and communication. I know all the people who custom-make the gear our guys use, and that’s stuff your people want to have. I know t
hat—they have to want it. Well, I can help you get exactly what you need, and train your troops up on it. There’s no other company in the world with our expertise.”
The reply was silence. Henriksen could read their minds, however. The terrorism they’d watched on TV, just like everyone else had, had perked up their ears. It must have. People in this line of work worried for a living, always searched for threats, real and imagined. The Olympic games were a catch of immense prestige for their nation, and also the most prestigious terrorist target on the planet, which the German police had learned the hard way at Munich in 1972. In many ways the Palestinian attack had been the kick-off of the world terrorist game, and as a result the Israeli team was always a little better looked-after than any other national collection of athletes, and invariably had some of their own military’s commandos tucked in with the wrestlers, generally with the knowledge of the host nation’s security people. Nobody wanted Munich to happen again.
The recent terrorism incidents in Europe had lit up awareness across the world, but nowhere more seriously than in Australia, a nation with great sensitivity to crime— not long ago, a madman had shot to death a number of innocent people, including children, which had resulted in the outlawing of guns throughout the country by the parliamentarians in this very city.
“What do you know about the European incidents?” the Aussie SAS officer asked.
Henriksen affected a sensitive look. “Much of what I know is, well, off-the-record, if you know what I mean.”
“We all have security clearances,” the cop told him.
“Okay, but you see, the problem is, I am not cleared into this stuff, exactly, and—oh, what the hell. The team doing the takedowns is called ‘Rainbow.’ It’s a black operation composed mainly of Americans and Brits, but some other NATO nationalities tossed in, too. They’re based in U.K., at Hereford. Their commander is an American CIA type, guy name of John Clark. He’s a serious dude, guys, and so’s his outfit. Their three known operations went down smooth as a baby’s ass. They have access to American equipment—helicopters and such—and they evidently have diplomatic agreements in place to operate all over Europe, when the countries with problems invite them in. Has your government talked to anyone about them?”
“We’re aware of it,” the chief cop replied. “What you said is correct in all details. In honesty, I didn’t know the name of the commander. Anything else you can tell us about him?”
“I’ve never met the man. Only know him by reputation. He’s a very senior field officer, close to the DCI, and I gather that our president knows him personally as well. So, you would expect him to have a very good intelligence staff and, well, his operational people have shown what they can do, haven’t they?”
“Bloody right,” the major observed. “The Worldpark job was as good a bit of sorting out as I have ever seen, even better than the Iranian Embassy job in London, way back when.”
“You could have handled it about the same way,” Henriksen observed generously, and meaning it. The Australian Special Air Service was based on the British model, and while it didn’t seem to get much work, the times he’d exercised with them during his FBI career had left him in little doubt as to their abilities. “Which squadron, Major?”
“First Saber,” the young officer replied.
“I remember Major Bob Fremont and—”
“He’s our colonel now,” the major informed him.
“Really? I have to keep better track. That’s one kick-ass officer. He and Gus Werner got along very well.” Henriksen paused. “Anyway, that’s what I bring to the party, guys. My people and I all speak the language. We have all the contacts we need on the operational side and the industrial side. We have access to all the newest hardware. And we can be down here to assist your people in three or four days from the moment you say ‘come.’ ”
There were no additional questions. The top cop seemed properly impressed, and the SAS major even more so.
“Thanks very much indeed for coming,” the policeman said, standing. It was hard not to like the Aussies, and their country was still largely in a pristine state. A forbidding desert, most of it, into which camels had been admitted, the only place outside Arabia where they’d done well. He’d read somewhere that Jefferson Davis, of all people, had tried to get them to breed in the American Southwest, but it hadn’t worked out, probably because the initial population had been too small to survive. He couldn’t decide if that was bad luck or not. The animals weren’t native to either country, and interfering with nature’s plan was usually a bad thing to do. On the other hand, horses and burros weren’t native, either, and he liked the idea of wild horses, so long as they were properly controlled by predators.
No, he reminded himself, Australia wasn’t really pristine, was it? Dingoes, the wild dogs of the Outback, had also been introduced, and they’d killed off or crowded out the marsupial animals that belonged there. The thought made him vaguely sad. There were relatively few people here, but even that small number had still managed to upset the ecostructure. Maybe that was a sign that man simply couldn’t be trusted anywhere, he thought, even a few of them in a whole continental landmass. And so, the Project was needed here as well.
It was a pity he didn’t have more time. He wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef. An avid skin diver, he’d never made it down here with flippers and wet suit to see that most magnificent exemplar of natural beauty. Well, maybe someday, in a few years, it would be easier, Bill thought, as he looked across the table at his hosts. He couldn’t think of them as fellow human beings, could he? They were competitors, rivals for the ownership of the planet, but unlike himself they were poor stewards. Not all of them, perhaps. Maybe some loved nature as much as he did, but, unfortunately, there wasn’t time to identify them, and so they had to be lumped together as enemies, and for that, they’d have to pay the price. A pity.
Skip Bannister had been worried for some time. He hadn’t wanted his daughter to go off to New York in the first place. It was a long way from Gary, Indiana. Sure, the papers said that crime was down in that dreadful city on the Hudson, but it was still too damned big and too damned anonymous for real people to live in—especially single girls. For him, Mary would always be his little girl, remembered forever as a pink, wet, noisy package in his arms, delivered by a mother who’d died six years later, a daughter who’d grown up needing dollhouses to be built, a series of bicycles to be assembled, clothes to be bought, an education provided for, and then, finally, to his great discomfort, the little bird had finally grown her feathers and flown from the nest—for New York City, a hateful, crowded place full of hateful, obnoxious people. But he’d kept his peace on that, as he’d done when Mary had dated boys he hadn’t been all that crazy about, because Mary had been as strong-willed as all girls her age tended to be. Off to make her fortune, meet Mr. Right, or something like that.
But then she’d disappeared, and Skip Bannister had had no idea what to do. It had started when she hadn’t called for five straight days. So, he’d called her New York number and let the phone ring for several minutes. Maybe she’d been out on a date or perhaps working late. He would have tried her work number, but she’d never gotten around to giving it to him. He’d indulged her all through her life—maybe a mistake, he thought now, or maybe not—as single fathers tended to do.
But now she was gone. He’d kept calling that number at all hours of day and night, but the phone had just kept ringing, and after a week of it he’d gotten worried. Another few days and he’d gotten worried enough to call the police to make a missing-person’s report. That had been a very disagreeable event. The officer he’d finally gotten had asked all manner of questions about his daughter’s previous conduct, and explained patiently after twenty minutes that, you know, young women did this sort of thing all the time, and they almost always turned up safe somewhere, hey, you know, it’s just part of growing up, proving to themselves that they’re their own persons. And so, somewhere in New York was a paper fi
le or a computer entry on one Bannister, Mary Eileen, female, missing, whom the NYPD didn’t even regard as important enough for them to send an officer to her apartment on the Upper West Side to check things out. Skip Bannister had done that himself, driving in only to find a “super” who asked him if he was going to take his daughter’s stuff out, because he hadn’t seen her in weeks, and the rent would soon be due . . .
At that point Skip—James Thomas—Bannister had panicked and gone to the local police precinct station to make a report in person and demand further action, and learned that he’d come to the wrong place, but, yes, they could take down a missing-person’s report there, too. And there, from a fiftyish police detective, he’d heard exactly the same thing he’d listened to over the phone. Look, it’s only been a few weeks. No dead female of your daughter’s description has turned up—so, she’s probably alive and healthy somewhere, and ninety-nine out of a hundred of these cases turn out to be a girl who just wanted to spread her wings some and fly on her own, y’know?
Not his Mary, James T. “Skip” Bannister had replied to a calm and unlistening policeman. Sir, they all say that, and in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases—no, you know, it’s actually higher than that—that’s how it turns out, and I’m sorry but we don’t have the manpower to investigate all of these cases. Sorry, but that’s just how this sort of thing works. So, why not just go home and wait for the phone to ring?
That he’d done, and driven all the way back to Gary in a rage that grew out of his panic, arriving, finally, to find six messages on his answering machine, and he’d run through them quickly, hoping to—but not finding one from his missing daughter.
Like most Americans, James Thomas Bannister owned a personal computer, and while he’d bought it on a whim and not really used it all that much, this day, like every other, he turned it on and logged onto the Net to check his e-mail. And finally, this morning, he saw a letter in the IN box from his daughter. He moved his mouse, clicking on the letter, which sprang into life on his RGB monitor and—