1The successful conclusion of the Worldpark operation turned out to be a problem for some, and one of them was Colonel Tomas Nuncio, the senior officer of the Guardia Civil on the scene. Assumed by the local media to be the officer in command of the operation, he was immediately besieged with requests for details of the operation, along with videotapes for the TV reporters. So successful had he been in isolating the theme park from press coverage that his superiors in Madrid themselves had little idea what had taken place, and this also weighed on his decision. So the colonel decided to release Worldpark's own video coverage, deeming this to be the most innocuous footage possible, as it showed very little.

2The most dramatic part had been the descent of the shooting team from the helicopter to the castle roof, and then from the roof of the castle to the control- room windows, and that, Nuncio decided, was pure vanilla, lasting a mere four minutes, the time required for Paddy Connolly to place his line charges on the window frames and move aside to detonate them. Nothing of the shooting inside the room had been taped, because the terrorists had themselves wrecked the surveillance camera inside the facility. The elimination of the castle-roof sentry had been taped, but was not released due to the gruesome nature of his head wound, and the same was true of the killing of the last of them, the one named Andre who had killed the little Dutch girl—which scene had also been recorded, but was withheld for the same reason. The rest was all let go. The distance of the cameras from the actual scene of action prevented the recognition, or even the sight of the faces of the rescue team, merely their jaunty steps outside, many of them carrying the rescued children—that, he decided, could harm or offend no one, least of all the special-operations team from England, who now had one of the tricornio hats from his force to go along with the eagle of Worldpark's notional VI Legion as a souvenir of their successful mission.

3And so, the black-and-white video was released to CNN, Sky News, and other interested news agencies for broadcast around the world, to give substance to the commentary of various reporters who'd assembled at Worldpark's main gate, there to comment at great and erroneous length about the expertise of the Guardia Civil's special-action team dispatched from Madrid to resolve this hateful episode at one of the world's great theme parks.

4It was eight o'clock in the evening when Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov saw it in his New York apartment, as he smoked a cigar and sipped a vodka neat while his VCR taped it for later detailed examination. The assault phase, he saw, was both expert and expected in all details. The flashes of light from the explosives used were dramatic and singularly useless for showing him anything, and the parade of the rescuers as predictable as the dawn, their springy steps, their slung weapons, and their arms full of small children. Well, such men would naturally feel elation at the successful conclusion of such a mission, and the trailing footage showed them walking off to a building, where there must have been a physician to take care of the one child who'd sustained a minor injury during the operation, as the reporters said. Then, later, the troops had come outside, and one of them had swiped an arm against the stone wall of the building, lighting a match, which he used…

5…to light a pipe…

6To light a pipe, Popov saw. He was surprised at his own reaction to that. He blinked hard, leaning forward in his seat. The camera didn't zoom in, but the soldier/policeman in question was clearly smoking a curved pipe, puffing the smoke out every few seconds as he spoke with his comrades… doing nothing dramatic, just talking unrecorded words calmly, as such men did after a successful mission, doubtless discussing who had done what, what had gone according to plan and what had not. It might as easily have been in a club or bar, for trained men always spoke the same way in those circumstances, whether they were soldiers or doctors or football players, after the stress of the job was concluded, and the lessons-learned phase began. It was the usual mark of professionals, Popov knew. Then the picture changed, back to the face of some American reporter who blathered on until the break for the next commercial, to be followed, the anchorman said, by some political development or other in Washington. With that, Popov rewound the tape, ejected it, and then reached for a different tape. He inserted it into the VCR, then fast-forwarded to the end of the incident in Bern, through the takedown phase and into the aftermath where… yes, a man had lit a pipe. He'd remembered that from watching from across the street, hadn't he?

7Then he got the tape of the press coverage from the Vienna incident, and… yes, at the end a man had lit a pipe. In every case it was a man of about one hundred eighty centimeters in height, making much the same gesture with the match, holding the pipe in exactly the same way, gesturing to another with it in exactly the same manner, the way men did with pipes… "…ahh, nichevo," the intelligence officer said to himself in the expensive high- rise apartment. He spent another half an hour, cueing and rerunning the tapes.

8The clothing was the same in every case. The man the same size, the same gestures and body language, the same weapons slung the same way, the same everything, the former KGB officer saw. And that meant the same man… in three separate countries.

9But this man was not Swiss, not Austrian, and not Spanish. Next Popov backed off his deductive thoughts, searching for other facts he could discern from the visual information he had there. There were other people visible in all the tapes.

10The pipe smoker was often attended by another man, shorter than he, to whom the pipe smoker appeared to speak with some degree of friendly deference. There was another around, a large, muscular one who in two of the tapes carried a heavy machine gun, but in the third, carrying a child, did not. So, he had two and maybe a third man on the tapes who had appeared in Bern, Vienna, and Spain. In every case, the reporters had credited the rescue to local police, but no, that wasn't the truth, was it? So, who were these people who arrived with the speed and decisiveness of a thunderbolt—in three different countries… twice to conclude operations that he had initiated, and once to settle one begun by others—and who they had been, he didn't know nor especially care. The reporters said that they'd demanded the release of his old friend, the Jackal. What fools. The French would as soon toss Napoleon's corpse from Les Invalides as give up that murderer. Il'ych Ramirez Sanchez, named with Lenin's own patronymic by his communist father.

11Popov shook that thought off. He'd just discovered something of great importance.

12Somewhere in Europe was a special-operations team that crossed international borders as easily as a businessman flying in an airliner, that had freedom to operate in different countries, that displaced and did the work of local police… and did it well, expertly… and this operation would not hurt them, would it? Their prestige and international acceptability would only grow from the rescue of the children at Worldpark…

13"Nichevo," he whispered to himself again. He'd learned something of great importance this night, and to celebrate he poured himself another vodka. Now he had to follow it up. How? He'd think that one over, sleeping on the thought, trusting his trained brain to come up with something.

14They were nearly home already. The MC-130 had picked them up and flown the now relaxed team back to Hereford, their weapons re-packed in the plastic carrying cases, their demeanor not the least bit tense. Some of the men were cutting up. Others were explaining what they'd done to team members who'd not had the chance to participate directly. Mike Pierce, Clark saw, was especially animated in his conversation with his neighbor. He was now the Rainbow kill- leader. Homer Johnston was chatting with Weber—they’d come to some sort of deal, something agreed between them. Weber had taken a beautiful but out-of- policy shot to disable the terrorist's Uzi, allowing Johnston to—of course, John told himself, he didn't just want to kill the bastard who'd murdered the little girl.

15He'd wanted to hurt the little prick, to send him off to hell with a special, personal message. He'd have to talk to Sergeant Johnston about that. It was outside of Rainbow policy. It was unprofessional. Just killing the bastards was enough. You could always trust God to handle the special treatment. But—well, John told himself he could understand that, couldn't he? There had once been that little bastard called Billy to whom he'd given a very special interrogation in a recompression chamber, and though he remembered it with a measure of pain and shame, at the time he'd felt it justified… and he'd gotten the information he'd needed at the time, hadn't he? Even so, he'd have to talk with Homer, advise him never to do such a thing again. And Homer would listen, John knew. He'd exorcised the demons once, and once, usually, was enough. It must have been hard for him to sit at his rifle, watching the murder of a child, the power to avenge her instantly right there in his skilled hands, and yet do nothing. Could you have done that, John? Clark asked himself, not really knowing what the answer was in his current, exhausted state. He felt the wheels thump down on the Hereford runway, and the props roar into reverse pitch to slow the aircraft.

16Well, John thought, his idea, his concept for Rainbow was working out rather well, wasn't it? Three deployments, three clean missions. Two hostages killed, one before his team deployed to Bern, the other just barely after their arrival in the park, neither one the result of negligence or mistake on the part of his men. Their mission performance had been as nearly perfect as anything he'd ever seen. Even his fellow animals of 3rd SOG in Vietnam hadn't been this good, and that was something he'd never expected to say or even think. The thought came suddenly, and just as unexpectedly came the near-need for tears, that he might have the honor to command such warriors as these, to send them out and bring them back as they were now, smiling as they stood, hoisting their gear on their shoulders and walking to the open rear cargo door on the Herky Bird, behind which waited their trucks. His men.

17"The bar is open!" Clark called to them, when he stood.

18"A little late, John," Alistair observed.

19"If the door's locked, we'll have Paddy blow it," Clark insisted, with a vicious grin.

20Stanley considered that and nodded. "Quite so, the lads have earned a pint or two each." Besides which, he knew how to pick locks.

21They walked into the club still wearing their ninja suits, and found the barman waiting. There were a few others in the club as well, mainly SAS troopers sipping at their last-call pints. Several of them applauded when the Rainbow team came in, which warmed the room. John walked to the bar, leading his men and ordering beer for all.

22"I do love this stuff," Mike Pierce said a minute later, taking his Guinness and sipping through the thin layer of foam.

23"Two, Mike?" Clark asked.

24"Yeah." He nodded. "The one at the desk, he was on the phone. Tap-tap," Pierce said, touching two fingers to the side of his head. "Then another one, shooting from behind a desk. I jumped over and gave him three on the fly. Landed, rolled, and three more in the back of the head. So long, Charlie. Then one more, got a piece of him, along with Ding and Eddie. Ain't supposed to like this part of the job.

25I know that—but, Jesus, it felt good to take those fuckers down. Killin' kids, man.

26Not good. Well, they ain't gonna be doing any more of that, sir. Not with the new sheriff in town. "

27"Well, nice going, Mr. Marshal," John replied, with a raised-glass salute. There'd be no nightmares about this one, Clark thought, sipping his own dark beer. He looked around. In the corner, Weber and Johnston were talking, the latter with his hand on the former's shoulder, doubtless thanking him for the fine shot to disable the murderer's Uzi. Clark walked over and stood next to the two sergeants.

28"I know, boss," Homer said, without being told anything. "Never again, but goddamn, it felt good."

29"Like you said, never again, Homer."

30"Yes, sir. Slapped the trigger a little hard," Johnston said, to cover his ass in an official sense.

31"Bullshit," Rainbow Six observed. "I'll accept it—just this once. And you, Dieter, nice shot, but—"

32"Nie wieder. Herr General. I know, sir." The German nodded his submission to the moment. "Homer, Junge, the look on his face when you hit him. Ach, that was something to see, my friend. Good for the one on the castle roof, too."

33"Easy shot," Johnston said dismissively. "He was standing still. Zap. Easier 'n throwing darts, pal."

34Clark patted both on the shoulder and wandered over to Chavez and Price.

35"Did you have to land on my arm?" Ding complained lightly.

36"So, next time, come through the window straight, not at an angle."

37"Right." Chavez took a long sip of the Guinness.

38"How'd it go?" John asked them.

39"Aside from being hit twice, not bad," Chavez replied. "I have to get a new vest, though." Once hit, the vests were considered to be ruined for further use. This one would go back to the manufacturer for study to see how it had performed. "Which one was that, you think, Eddie?"

40"The last one, I think, the one who just stood and sprayed at the children."

41"Well, that was the plan, for us to stop those rounds, and that one went down hard. You, me, Mike, and Oso, I think, took him apart." Whatever cop had recovered that body would need a blotter and a freezer bag to collect the spilled brains.

42"That we did," Price agreed as Julio came over.

43"Hey, that was okay, guys!" First Sergeant Vega told them, pleased to have finally participated in a field operation.

44"Since when do we punch our targets?" Chavez asked.

45Vega looked a little embarrassed. "Instinct, he was so close. You know, probably could have taken him alive, but—well, nobody ever told me to do that, y'know?"

46"That's cool, Oso. That wasn't part of the mission, not with a room full of kids."

47Vega nodded. "What I figured, and the shot was pretty automatic, too, just playin' like we practice, man. Anyway, that one went down real good, jefe."

48"Any problem on the window?" Price wanted to know.

49Vega shook his head. "Nah, gave it a good kick, and it moved just fine. Bumped a shoulder coming through the frame, but no problems there. I was pretty pumped. But you know, you shoulda had me cover the kids. I'm bigger, I woulda stopped more bullets."

50Chavez didn't say that he'd worried about Vega's agility—wrongly, as it had turned out. An important lesson learned. Bulky as Oso was, he moved lightly on his feet, far more so than Ding had expected. The bear could dance pretty well, though at 225 pounds, he was a little large for a tutu.

51"Fine operation," Bill Tawney said, joining the group.

52"Anything develop?"

53"We have a possible identification on one of them, the chap who killed the child.

54The French ran the photo through some police informants, and they think it might be an Andre Herr, Parisian by birth, thought to be a stringer for Action Directe once upon a time, but nothing definite. More information is on the way, they say.

55The whole set of photos and fingerprints from Spain is on its way to Paris now for follow-up investigation. Not all of the photos will be very useful, I am told. "

56"Yeah, well, a burst of hollowpoints will rearrange a guy's face, man," Chavez observed with a chuckle. "Not a hell of a lot we can do about that."

57"So, who initiated the operation?" Clark asked.

58Tawney shrugged. "Not a clue at this point. That's for the French police to investigate."

59"Would be nice to know. We've had three incidents since we got here. Isn't that a lot?" Chavez asked, suddenly very serious.

60"It is," the intelligence officer agreed. "It would not have been ten or fifteen years ago, but things had quieted down recently." Another shrug. "Could be mere coincidence, or perhaps copycatting, but—" "Copycat? I shouldn't think so, sir," Eddie Price observed. "We've given bloody little encouragement to any terr' who has ambitions, and today's operation ought to have a further calming effect on those people."

61"That makes sense to me," Ding agreed. "Like Mike Pierce said, there's a new sheriff in town, and the word on the street ought to be 'don't fuck with him' even if people think we're just local cops with an attitude. Take it a step further, Mr. C."

62"Go public?" Clark shook his head. "That's never been part of the plan, Domingo."

63"Well, if the mission's to take the bastards down in the field, that's one thing. If the mission is to make these bastards think twice about raising hell—to stop terrorist incidents from happening at all—then it's another thing entirely. The idea of a new sheriff in town might just take the starch out of their backs and put them back to washing cars, or whatever the hell they do when they're not being bad.

64Deterrence, we call it, when nation-states do it. Will it work on a terrorist mentality? Something to talk with Doc Bellow about, John," Chavez concluded.

65And again Chavez had surprised him, Clark realized. Three straight successes, all of them covered on the TV news, might well have an effect on the surviving terrorists in Europe or elsewhere with lingering ambitions, mightn't it? And that was something to talk to Paul Bellow about. But it was much too soon for anyone on the team to be that optimistic… probably, John told himself with a thoughtful sip. The party was just beginning to break up. It had been a very long day for the Rainbow troopers, and one by one they set their glasses down on the bar, which ought to have closed some time before, and headed for the door for the walk to their homes. Another day and another mission had ended. Yet another day had already begun, and in only a few hours, they'd be awakened to run and exercise and begin another day of routine training.

66"Were you planning to leave us?" the jailer asked Inmate Sanchez in a voice dripping with irony.

67"What do you mean?" Carlos responded.

68"Some colleagues of yours misbehaved yesterday," the prison guard responded, tossing a copy of Le Figaro through the door. "They will not do so again."

69The photo on the front page was taken off the Worldpark video, the quality miserably poor, but clear enough to show a soldier dressed in black carrying a child, and the first paragraph of the story told the tale. Carlos scanned it, sitting on his prison bed to read the piece in detail, then felt a depth of black despair that he'd not thought possible. Someone had heard his plea, he realized, and it had come to nothing. Life in this stone cage beckoned as he looked up to the sun coming in the single window. Life. It would be a long one, probably a healthy one, and certainly a bleak one. His hands crumpled the paper when he'd finished the article. Damn the Spanish police. Damn the world.

70"Yes, I saw it on the news last night," he said into the phone as he shaved.

71"I need to see you. I have something to show you, sir," Popov's voice said, just after seven in the morning.

72The man thought about that. Popov was a clever bastard who'd done his jobs without much in the way of questions… and there was little in the way of a paper trail, certainly nothing his lawyers couldn't handle if it came to that, and it wouldn't. There were ways of dealing with Popov, too, if it came to that.

73"Okay, be there at eight-fifteen."

74"Yes, sir," the Russian said, hanging up.

75Pete was in real agony now, Killgore saw. It was time to move him. This he ordered at once, and two orderlies came in dressed in upgraded protective gear to load the wino onto a gurney for transport to the clinical side. Killgore followed them and his patient. The clinical side was essentially a duplication of the room in which the street bums had lounged and drunk their booze, waiting unknowingly for the onset of symptoms. He now had them all, to the point that booze and moderate doses of morphine no longer handled the pain. The orderlies loaded Pete onto a bed, next to which was an electronically operated "Christmas tree" medication dispenser. Killgore handled the stick, and got the IV plugged into Pete's major vein. Then he keyed the electronic box, and seconds later, the patient relaxed with a large bolus of medication. The eyes went sleepy and the body relaxed while the Shiva continued to eat him alive from the inside out. Another IV would be set up to feed him with nutrients to keep his body going, along with various drugs to see if any of them had an unexpectedly beneficial effect on the Shiva. They had a whole roomful of such drugs, ranging from antibiotics—which were expected to be useless against this viral infection—to Interleukin-2 and a newly developed -3a, which, some thought, might help, plus tailored Shiva antibodies taken from experimental animals. None were expected to work, but all had to be tested to make sure they didn't, lest there be a surprise out there when the epidemic spread. Vaccine-B was expected to work, and that was being tested now with the new control group of people kidnapped from Manhattan bars, along with the notional Vaccine-A, whose purpose was rather different from -B. The nanocapsules developed on the other side of the house would come in very handy indeed.

76As was being demonstrated even as he had the thought, looking down at Pete's dying body. Subject F4, Mary Bannister, felt sick to her stomach, just a mild queasiness at this point, but didn't think much of it. That sort of thing happened, and she didn't feel all that bad, some antacids would probably help, and those she got from her medicine cabinet, which was pretty well stocked with over-the- counter medications. Other than that, she felt pretty mellow, as she smiled at herself in the mirror and liked what she saw, a youngish, attractive woman wearing pink silk jammies. With that thought, she walked out of her room, her hair glossy and a spring in her step. Chip was in the sitting room, reading a magazine slowly on the couch, and she made straight for him and sat down beside him.

77"Hi, Chip." She smiled.

78"Hi, Mary." He smiled back, reaching to touch her hand.

79"I upped the Valium in her breakfast," Barbara Archer said in the control room, zooming the camera in. "Along with the other one." The other one was an inhibition reducer.

80"You look nice today," Chip told her, his words imperfectly captured by the hidden shotgun microphone.

81"Thank you." Another smile.

82"She looks pretty dreamy."

83"She ought to be," Barbara observed coldly. "There's enough in her to make a nun shuck her habit and get it on."

84"What about him?"

85"Oh, yeah—didn’t give him any steroids." Dr. Archer had a little chuckle at that.

86In proof of which, Chip leaned over to kiss Mary on the lips. They were alone in the sitting room.

87"How's her blood work look, Barb?"

88"Loaded with antibodies, and starting to get some small bricks. She ought to be symptomatic in another few days."

89"Eat, drink, and be merry, people, for next week, you die," the other physician told the TV screen.

90"Too bad," Dr. Archer agreed. She showed the emotion one might display on seeing a dead dog at the side of the road.

91"Nice figure," the man said, as the pajama tops came off. "I haven't seen an X- rated movie in a long time, Barb." A videotape was running, of course. The experimental protocol was set in stone. Everything had to be recorded so that the staff could monitor the entire test program. Nice tits, he thought, about the same time Chip did, right before he caressed them on the screen.

92"She was fairly inhibited when she got here. The tranquilizers really work, depressing them that way." Another clinical observation. Things progressed rapidly from that point on. Both doctors sipped their coffee as they watched. Tranquilizers or not, the baser human instincts charged forward, and within five minutes Chip and Mary were humping madly away, with the usual sound effects, though the picture, blessedly, wasn't all that clear. A few minutes later, they were lying side by side on the thick shag rug, kissing tiredly and contentedly, his hand stroking her breasts, his eyes closed, his breathing deep and regular as he rolled onto his back.

93"Well, Barb, if nothing else, we have a pretty good weekend getaway for couples here," the man observed with a sly grin. "How long do you figure on his blood work?"

94"Three or four days until he starts showing antibodies, probably." Chip hadn't been exposed in the shower as Mary had.

95"What about the vaccine testers?"

96"Five with -A. We have three left as uncontaminated controls for -B testing."

97"Oh? Who are we letting live?"

98"M2, M3, and F9," Dr. Archer replied. "They seem to have proper attitudes.

99One's a member of the Sierra Club, would you believe? The others like it outdoors, and they should be okay with what we're doing. "

100"Political criteria for scientific tests—what are we coming to?" the man asked with another chuckle.

101"Well, if they're going to live, they might as well be people we can get along with," Archer observed.

102"True." A nod. "How confident are you with -B?"

103"Very. I expect it to be about ninety-seven percent effective, perhaps a little better," she added conservatively.

104"But not a hundred?"

105"No, Shiva's a little too nasty for that," Archer told him. "The animal testing is a little crude, I admit, but the results follow the computer model almost exactly, well within the testing-error criteria. Steve's been pretty good on that side."

106"Berg's pretty smart," the other doctor agreed. Then he shifted in his chair. "You know, Barb, what we're doing here isn't exactly—" "I know that," she assured him. "But we all knew that coming in."

107"True." He nodded submission, annoyed at himself for the second thoughts.

108Well, his family would survive, and they all shared his love of the world and its many sorts of inhabitants. Still, these two people on the TV, they were humans, just like himself, and he'd just peeped in on them like some sort of pervert. Oh, yeah, they'd only done it because both were loaded with drugs fed to them through their food or in pill form, but they were both sentenced to death and— "Relax, will you?" Archer said, looking at his face and reading his mind. "At least they're getting a little love, aren't they? That's a hell of a lot more than the rest of the world'll get—"

109"I won't have to watch them." Being a voyeur wasn't his idea of fun, and he'd told himself often enough that he wouldn't have to watch what he'd be helping to start.

110"No, but we'll know about it. It'll be on the TV news, won't it? But then it will be too late, and if they find out, their last conscious act will be to come after us.

111That's the part that has me worried. "

112"The Project enclave in Kansas is pretty damned secure, Barb," the man assured her. "The one in Brazil's even more so." Which was where he'd be going eventually.

113The rain forest had always fascinated him.

114"Could be better," Barbara Archer thought.

115"The world isn't a laboratory, doctor, remember?" Wasn't that what the whole Shiva project was about, for Christ's sake? Christ? he wondered. Well, another idea that had to be set aside. He wasn't cynical enough to invoke the name of God into what they were doing. Nature, perhaps, which wasn't quite the same thing, he thought.

116"Good morning, Dmitriy," he said, coming into his office early.

117"Good morning, sir," the intelligence officer said, rising to his feet as his employer entered the anteroom. It was a European custom, harkening back to royalty, and one that had somehow conveyed itself to the Marxist state that had nurtured and trained the Russian now living in New York.

118"What do you have for me?" the boss asked, unlocking his office door and going in.

119"Something very interesting," Popov said. "How important it is I am not certain.

120You can better judge that than I can. "

121"Okay, let's see it." He sat down and turned in his swivel chair to flip on his office coffee machine.

122Popov went to the far wall, and slid back the panel that covered the electronics equipment in the woodwork. He retrieved the remote control and keyed up the large-screen TV and VCR. Then he inserted a videocassette.

123"This is the news coverage of Bern," he told his employer. The tape only ran for thirty seconds before he stopped it, ejected the cassette, and inserted another.

124"Vienna," he said then, hitting the PLAY button. Another segment, which ran less than a minute. This he also ejected. "Last night at the park in Spain." This one he also played. This segment lasted just over a minute before he stopped it.

125"Yes?" the man said, when it was all over.

126"What did you see, sir?"

127"Some guys smoking—the same guy, you're saying?"

128"Correct. In all three incidents, the same man, or so it would appear."

129"Go on," his employer told Popov.

130"The same special-operations group responded to and terminated all three incidents. That is very interesting."

131"Why?"

132Popov took a patient breath. This man may have been a genius in some areas, but in others he was a babe in the woods. "Sir, the same team responded to incidents in three separate countries, with three separate national police forces, and in all three cases, this special team took over from those three separate national police agencies and dealt with the situation. In other words, there is now some special internationally credited team of special-operations troops—I would expect them to be military rather than policemen—currently operating in Europe.

133Such a group has never been admitted to in the open press. It is, therefore, a 'black' group, highly secret. I can speculate that it is a NATO team of some sort, but that is only speculation. Now," Popov went on, "I have some questions for you. "

134"Okay." The boss nodded.

135"Did you know of this team? Did you know they existed?"

136A shake of the head. "No." Then he turned to pour a cup of coffee.

137"Is it possible for you to find out some things about them?"

138A shrug. "Maybe. Why is it important?"

139"That depends on another question—why are you paying me to incite terrorists to do things?" Popov asked.

140"You do not have a need to know that, Dmitriy."

141"Yes, sir, I do have such a need. One cannot stage operations against sophisticated opposition without having some idea of the overall objective. It simply cannot be done, sir. Moreover, you have applied significant assets to these operations. There must be a point. I need to know what it is." The unspoken part, which got through the words, was that he wanted to know, and in due course, he might well figure it out, whether he was told or not.

142It also occurred to his employer that his existence was somewhat in pawn to this Russian ex-spook. He could deny everything the man might say in an open public forum, and he even had the ability to make the man disappear, an option less attractive than it appeared outside of a movie script, since Popov might well have told others, or even left a written record.

143The bank accounts from which Popov had drawn the funds he'd distributed were thoroughly laundered, of course, but there was a trail of sorts that a very clever and thorough investigator might be able to trace back closely enough to him to cause some minor concern. The problem with electronic banking was that there was always a trail of electrons, and bank records were both time-stamped and amount-specific, enough to make some connection appear to exist. That could be an embarrassment of large or small order. Worse, it wasn't something he could easily afford, but a hindrance to the larger mission now under way in places as diverse as New York, Kansas, and Brazil. And Australia, of course, which was the whole point of what he was doing.

144"Dmitriy, will you let me think about that?"

145"Yes, sir. Of course. I merely say that if you want me to do my job effectively, I need to know more. Surely you have other people in your confidence. Show these tapes to those people and see if they think the information is significant." Popov stood. "Call me when you need me, sir."

146"Thanks for the information." He waited for the door to close, then dialed a number from memory. The phone rang four times before it was answered: "Hi," a voice said in the earpiece. "You've reached the home of Bill Henriksen.

147Sorry, I can't make it to the phone right now. Why don't you try my office. "

148"Damn," the executive said. Then he had an idea, and picked up the remote for his TV. CBS, no, NBC, no…

149"But to kill a sick child," the host said on ABC's Good Morning, America.

150"Charlie, a long time ago, a guy named Lenin said that the purpose of terrorism was to terrorize. That's who they are, and that's what they do. It's still a dangerous world out there, maybe even more so today that there are no nation-states who, though they used to support terrorists, actually imposed some restraints on their behavior. Those restraints are gone now," Henriksen said. "This group reportedly wanted their old friend Carlos the Jackal released from prison. Well, it didn't work, but it's worth noting that they cared enough to try a classic terrorist mission, to secure the release of one of their own. Fortunately, the mission failed, thanks to the Spanish police."

151"How would you evaluate the police performance?"

152"Pretty good. They all train out of the same playbook, of course, and the best of them cross-train at Fort Bragg or at Hereford in England, and other places, Germany and Israel, for example."

153"But one hostage was murdered."

154"Charlie, you can't stop them all," the expert said sadly. "You can be ten feet away with a loaded weapon in your hands, and sometimes you can't take action, because to do so would only get more hostages killed. I'm as sickened by that murder as you are, my friend, but these people won't be doing any more of that."

155"Well, thanks for coming in. Bill Henriksen, president of Global Security and a consultant to ABC on terrorism. It's forty-six minutes after the hour." Cut to commercial.

156In his desk he had Bill's beeper number. This he called, keying in his private line. Four minutes later, the phone rang.

157"Yeah, John, what is it?" There was street noise on the cellular phone.

158Henriksen must have been outside the ABC studio, just off Central Park West, probably walking to his car.

159"Bill, I need to see you in my office ASAP. Can you come right down?"

160"Sure. Give me twenty minutes."

161Henriksen had a clicker to get into the building's garage, and access to one of the reserved spaces. He walked into the office eighteen minutes after the call.

162"What gives?"

163"Caught you on TV this morning."

164"They always call me in on this stuff," Henriksen said. "Great job taking the bastards down, least from what the TV footage showed. I'll get the rest of it."

165"Oh?"

166"Yeah, I have the right contacts. The video they released was edited down quite a bit. My people'll get all the tapes from the Spanish—it isn't classified in any way—for analysis."

167"Watch this," John told him, flipping his office TV to the VCR and running the released tape of Worldpark. Then he had to rise and switch to the cassette of Vienna. Thirty seconds of that and then Bern. "So, what do you think?"

168"The same team on all three?" Henriksen wondered aloud. "Sure does look like it—but who the hell are they?"

169"You know who Popov is, right?"

170Bill nodded. "Yeah, the KGB guy you found. Is he the guy who twigged to this?"

171"Yep." A nod. "Less than an hour ago, he was in here to show me these tapes. It worries him. Does it worry you?"

172The former FBI agent grimaced. "Not sure. I'd want to know more about them first."

173"Can you find out?"

174This time he shrugged. "I can talk to some contacts, rattle a few bushes. Thing is, if there is a really black special-ops team out there, I should have known about it already. I mean, I've got the contacts throughout the business. What about you?"

175"I can probably try a few things, quietly. Probably mask it as plain curiosity."

176"Okay, I can check around. What else did Popov say to you?"

177"He wants to know why I'm having him do the things."

178"That's the problem with spooks. They like to know things. I mean, he's thinking, what if he starts a mission and one of the subjects gets taken alive. Very often they sing like fucking canaries once they're in custody, John. If one fingers him, he could be in the shitter. Unlikely, I admit, but possible, and spooks are trained to be cautious."

179"What if we have to take him out?"

180Another grimace. "You want to be careful doing that, in case he's left a package with a friend somewhere. No telling if he has, but I'd have to assume he's done it.

181Like I said, they're trained to be cautious. This operation is not without its dangers, John. We knew that going in. How close are we to having the technical—" "Very close. The test program is moving along nicely. Another month or so and we'll know all we need to know. "

182"Well, all I have to do is get the contract for Sydney. I'm flying down tomorrow.

183These incidents won't hurt. "

184"Who will you be working with?"

185"The Aussies have their own SAS. It's supposed to be small—pretty well-trained, but short on the newest hardware. That's the hook I plan to use. I got what they need, at cost," Henriksen emphasized. "Run that tape again, the one of the Spanish job," he said.

186John rose from his desk, inserted the tape, and rewound it back to the beginning of the released TV coverage. It showed the assault team zip-lining down from the helicopter.

187"Shit, I missed that!" the expert admitted.

188"What?"

189"We need to have the tape enhanced, but that doesn't look like a police chopper.

190It's a Sikorsky H-60."

191"So?"

192"So, the -60 has never been certified for civilian use. See how it's got POLICE painted on the side? That's a civilian application. It isn't a police chopper, John.

193It's military… and if this is a refueling probe," he said, pointing, "then it's a special-ops bird. That means U.S. Air Force, man. That also tells us where these people are based—"

194"Where?"

195"England. The Air Force has a special-ops wing based in Europe, part in Germany, part in England… MH-60K, I think the designation of the chopper is, made for combat search-and-rescue and getting people into special places to do special things. Hey, your friend Popov is right. There is a special bunch of people handling these things, and they've got American support at least, maybe a lot more. Thing is, who the hell are they?"

196"It's important?"

197"Potentially, yes. What if the Aussies call them in to help out on the job I'm trying to get, John? That could screw up the whole thing."