O’Donnell and Sullivan left the office, but when Howard made a move to follow them, Mulholland grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. “Wait a moment, will you, Cole, I’d like a word?” He closed the door behind the departing agents and then stood leaning against his desk, his legs crossed at the ankles and his huge forearms folded across his chest. “First, I just want to repeat that I think you’ve done a first-class job on this investigation so far. I’m not the sort of director who takes credit for his operatives’ hard work, I want you to know that. When this is all over, credit will go where it’s due, I promise you.” He smiled, showing chunky white teeth that were so close together they seemed to be a seamless strip across his mouth. “Nail your colours to my mast, and I’ll back you all the way.”
Howard nodded, unsure whether or not the director was being totally honest. He’d been in the FBI long enough to know that it was action that counted, not words. “I sure appreciate that,” he said.
“Secondly, I wanted to talk to you now about our meeting with Bob Sanger. I gather you two have met?”
“Once, to brief him on Andy Kim’s computer model.”
“What did you think?”
Howard watched Mulholland’s eyes, sensing a trap. For all he knew, Mulholland and Sanger could be bosom brothers. He shrugged casually. “He seemed very professional. He was keen to move the Kims into the White House to give them access to Secret Service data. But as you said, he seems to think that Presidential security is above reproach. I think he was humouring me.”
“Yeah, that’s Bob’s way,” said Mulholland, grinning. “You’ve got to remember that Bob Sanger has only one function in life — to protect the President. He’s not interested in arrests, in solving crimes, in tracking down fugitives. All he cares about is getting the man through his term of office in one piece. Bob is like most of the top echelons of the service, he came up through the ranks. They start with the quarterlies and the watch lists, clearing the way in advance of a presidential visit, then they move up to actual bodyguarding, running interference in crowds, standing around the motorcade, escorting him wherever he goes. They spend their entire time waiting for some maniac to take a pot-shot at the President, and they know that when that happens, they have to throw themselves in the path of the bullet. That’s what the Service is there for — to take the bullet meant for the President. Something happens to the men who take on that job. You get to see it in their eyes, it’s the same thousand-yard stare you see with Vietnam veterans. But something changes behind the eyes, too. Their perspective alters, after a while they start to think of themselves as above the rest of the law enforcement agencies. They think they’re an elite, and that there’s nothing they can learn from anyone else. They forget that we have a quarter of a billion people to protect, with millions of offenders. I’m not saying Bob Sanger’s gone that way, but I’m not surprised that you thought he was humouring you. When we meet with him I want you to remember that his interest, his only interest, is to protect the President. It’s the Bureau that wants to capture Carlos, Hennessy and Bailey. We’ll be working with the Secret Service, but their objectives are different. They’ll be just as happy for Carlos to leave the country as they would be if we captured him. Bob is more likely to prefer to put Carlos on the Ten Most Wanted list than to try a softly-softly approach. If he tries to suggest that, let me handle it, okay?”
“That’s fine by me,” agreed Howard.
“Good man,” said Mulholland. He pushed himself up off the desk and slapped Howard on the back. “Okay, Cole, let me phone my producer friend and then we’ll get that chopper to Washington.”
The ringing phone jolted Patrick Farrell awake, but it took several seconds for him to clear his head. He was a deep sleeper and it took a lot to rouse him. He reached over for the receiver and grunted.
“You asleep, Pat?” an Irish voice asked. Farrell recognised Matthew Bailey’s Gaelic tones.
“Shit, Matthew, what time is it?” Farrell sat up and scratched his chest. The digits on his clock radio glowed redly. It was one-thirty.
“You alone?” asked Bailey.
Farrell looked down at the sleeping body next to him. “Sort of,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Not too far away, Pat, old son. Everything on schedule?”
“No problems here,” replied Farrell.
“I’ll be dropping by tomorrow morning, I want to put the Centurion through its paces, okay?”
“Fine, I’ll have a few bottles of Guinness ready,” laughed Farrell.
“Eight hours between bottle and throttle, remember,” said Bailey.
“Yeah,” said Farrell, “right.” The sleeping figure next to him began to stir. Farrell reached down and ruffled the mane of black hair on the pillow. He lowered his voice. “Matthew, everything’s cosy here, but you might have a problem in New York. Do you know a guy by the name of O’Brien? Damien O’Brien?”
There was silence at the other end of the line for a while. “I know a Seamus O’Brien, but I can’t think of a Damien,” said Bailey. “There is a Damien J. O’Brien, lives in Dublin, one of the old school, but he must be in his seventies now and I never met him. What’s up?”
“There was a Damien O’Brien asking questions about you in New York a few days ago. Said he was a friend of yours.” An arm snaked through the sheets and Farrell felt a hand crawl across his thighs. He opened his legs and smiled.
“Seamus is getting on eighty years old and he’s in an old folks’ home in Derry, far as I know,” said Bailey.
“Thing of it is, Matthew, is that a couple of the boys went round to have a word with this O’Brien, to see what his game was. Police found them tied up in O’Brien’s room, both of them shot dead.”
“Bloody hell,” whispered Bailey, his voice so faint that Farrell could barely hear him. The inquisitive hand found its target and began to squeeze. Farrell stifled a groan. “What about this O’Brien?” asked Bailey. “Where is he now?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Matthew. He did a runner.”
“Sass-man, you think?”
“Dunno, he seemed okay from what I was told. Shorty gave him a job in Filbin’s, and you know that Shorty can smell SAS a mile off. O’Brien was a boozer, damn near an alcoholic.”
“So what do you think? Was he on to us? Was he trying to find out who did Manyon in?”
“Manyon?”
“The SAS officer that Mary got hold of. He was using the name Ballantine, but his real name was Pete Manyon.”
“O’Brien didn’t mention Manyon, it was you he was asking for.”
Bailey snorted. “Jesus, Pat, he’d hardly waltz around Filbin’s asking about an SAS officer, would he?”
“Yeah, sorry,” said Farrell. The hand in his groin was a distraction he could well do without, but it felt so good he didn’t want to push it away. He slid down the bed.
“You okay, Pat? You’re breathing heavy,” said Bailey.
“Just tired, that’s all. Maybe this guy O’Brien was working for the Feds, and they pulled him out when our guys got suspicious.”
“Feds wouldn’t kill our men, surely?” said Bailey. “MI5 would, and so would the SAS, but not the Feds. Not unless there was a shoot-out.”
“No shoot-out, the guys were tied up and naked, shot in the face and chest. Police reckon it was a gang killing, maybe drug-related.”
“Fuck!” exclaimed Bailey. “What in God’s name is going on? You think O’Brien knows where I am?”
“Matthew, nobody knows where you are.”
“Yeah, that’s right enough. You haven’t seen anyone strange around the airfield?”
“Come on, you’re getting paranoid,” said Farrell.
“Yeah, maybe, but I’d feel happier if you kept your eyes open.”
“Okay, I will do,” said Farrell. The hand between his thighs was becoming more insistent. “Look, I’ll see you tomorrow, I’ve gotta get back to sleep. I’m knackered.”
“Okay, Pat, old son, get a good night’s kip. I’ll be at the airfield at six. Cheers.”
The line went dead before Farrell could complain about the early start and he shook his head as he replaced the receiver. He rolled over and looked down at the young man next to him. “Right, you sod, I’ll make you suffer for that.”
“Oh good,” sighed the man, pulling Farrell down on top of him.
Cole Howard looked down on the lights of the Capitol as the helicopter descended out of the clouds. Washington was breathtaking at night, the national monuments illuminated in all their splendour while the drug dealers and hookers carried out their trades in the dark places in between. Crack cocaine, AIDS, murders, Washington had more of them than almost any other city in the world, but from the air none of that was visible and Howard looked down as entranced as a sight-seeing schoolboy.
It wasn’t his first trip in a helicopter but he was still a little uneasy. He could never forget that the whole contraption depended on a whirling rotor which was held in place by a single steel nut. Even with the headphones on he could hear the roar of the massive turbine of the JetRanger helicopter and his buttocks tingled from the vibration. It was difficult to imagine that the machine could hold itself together, even though he knew that flying in a helicopter was a hundred times safer than driving on the roads below.