"Have the French pick him up?"
"Too late. The train arrived twenty minutes ago. He's completely gone now. Besides, we have nothing to arrest him for, do we?"
"And Watkins has been warned off."
"Unless that was a genuinely wrong number, which I rather doubt, but try to prove that in a court of law!"
"Yeah." Judges didn't understand any instinct but their own.
"And don't tell me that you can't win them all! That's what they pay me to do." Owens looked down at the rug, then back up. "Please excuse me for that."
"Aah!" Murray waved it off. "You've had bad days before. So have I. It's part of the business we're in. What we both need at a time like this is a beer. Come on downstairs, and I'll treat you to a burger."
"When will you call your Director?"
"It's lunchtime over there. He always has a meeting going over lunch. We'll let it wait a few hours."
Ryan had lunch with Cantor that day in the CIA cafeteria. It could have been the eating place in any other government building. The food was just as unexciting. Ryan decided to try the lasagna, but Marty stuck with fruit salad and cake. It seemed an odd diet until Jack watched him take a tablet before eating. He washed it down with milk.
"Ulcers, Marty?"
"What makes you say that?"
"I'm married to a doc, remember? You just took a Tagamet. That's for ulcers."
"This place gets to you after a while," Cantor explained. "My stomach started acting up last year and didn't get any better. Everyone in my family comes down with it sooner or later. Bad genes, I guess. The medication helps some, but the doctor says that I need a less stressful environment." A snort.
"You do work long hours," Ryan observed.
"Anyway, my wife got offered a teaching position at the University of Texas—she's a mathematician. And to sweeten the deal they offered me a place in the Political Science Department. The pay's better than it is here, too. I've been here twelve years," he said quietly. "Long time."
"So what do you feel bad about? Teaching's great. I love it, and you'll be good at it. You'll even have a good football team to watch."
"Yeah, well, she's already down there, and I leave in a few weeks. I'm going to miss this place."
"You'll get over it. Imagine being able to walk into a building without getting permission from a computer. Hey, I walked away from my first job."
"But this one's important." Cantor drank his milk and looked across the table. "What are you going to do?"
"Ask me after the baby is born." Ryan didn't want to dwell on this question.
"The Agency needs people like you, Jack. You've got a feel for things. You don't think and act like a bureaucrat. You say what you think. Not everyone in this building does that, and that's why the Admiral likes you."
"Hell, I haven't talked to him since—"
"He knows what you're doing." Cantor smiled.
"Oh." Ryan understood. "So that's it."
"That's right. The old man really wants you, Jack. You still don't know how important that photo you tripped over was, do you?"
"All I did was show it to you, Marty," Ryan protested. "You're the one who really made the connection."
"You did exactly the right thing, exactly what an analyst is supposed to do. There was more brains in that than you know. You have a gift for this sort of work. If you can't see it, I can." Cantor examined the lasagna and winced. How could anybody eat that greasy poison? "Two years from now you'll be ready for my job."
"One bridge at a time, Marty." They let it go at that.
An hour later Ryan was back in his office. Cantor came in.
"Another pep talk?" Jack smiled. Full-court press time…
"We have a picture of a suspected ULA member and it's only a week old. We got it in from London a couple of hours ago."
"Dennis Cooley." Ryan examined it and laughed. "He looks like a real wimp. What's the story?"
Cantor explained. "Bad luck for the Brits, but maybe good luck for us. Look at the picture again and tell me something important."
"You mean… he's lost most of his hair. Oh! We can ID the guy if he turns up at one of the camps. None of the other people are bald."
"You got it. And the boss just cleared you for something. There's an op laid on for Camp -18."
"What kind?"
"The kind you watched before. Is that still bothering you?"
"No, not really." What bothers me is that it doesn't bother me, Ryan thought. Maybe it should… "Not with these guys, I don't. When?"
"I can't tell you, but soon."
"So why did you let me know—nice one, Marty. Not very subtle, though. Does the Admiral want me to stay that bad?"
"Draw your own conclusions."
An hour after that the photo expert was back. Another satellite had passed over the camp at 2208 local time. The infrared image showed eight people standing at line on the firing range. Bright tongues of flame marked two of the shapes. They were firing their weapons at night, and there were now at least eight of them there.
"What happened?" O'Donnell asked. He'd met Cooley at the airport. A cutout had gotten word out that Cooley was on the run, but the reason for it had had to wait until now.
"There was a bug in my shop."
"You're sure?" O'Donnell asked.
Cooley handed it over. The wire had been in his pocket for thirty hours. O'Donnell pulled the Toyota Land Cruiser over to examine it.
"Marconi make these for intelligence use. Quite sensitive. How long might it have been there?"
Cooley could not remember having anyone go into his back room unsupervised. "I've no idea."
O'Donnell put the vehicle back into gear, heading out into the desert. He pondered the question for over a mile. Something had gone wrong, but what…?
"Did you ever think you were being followed?"
"Never."
"How closely did you check, Dennis?" Cooley hesitated, and O'Donnell took this for an answer. "Dennis, did you ever break tradecraft—ever?"
"No, Kevin, of course not. It isn't possible that—for God's sake, Kevin, it's been weeks since I've been in contact with Watkins."
"Since your last trip to Cork." O'Donnell squinted in the bright sun.
"Yes, that's right. You had a security man watching me then—was there anyone following me?"
"If there were, he must have been a damnably clever one, and he could not have been too close… " The other possibility that O'Donnell was, considering, of course, was that Cooley had turned traitor. But if he'd done that, he wouldn't have come here, would he? the chief of the ULA thought. He knows me, knows where I live, knows McKenney, knows Sean Miller, knows about the fishing fleet at Dundalk. O'Donnell realized that Cooley knew quite a lot. No, if he'd gone tout, he wouldn't be here. Cooley was sweating despite the air conditioning in the car. Dennis didn't have the belly to risk his life that way. He could see that.
"So, Dennis, what are we to do with you?"
Cooley's heart was momentarily irregular, but he spoke with determination. "I want to be part of the next op."
"Excuse me?" O'Donnell's head came around in surprise.
"The fucking Brits—Kevin, they came after me!"
"That is something of an occupational hazard, you know."
"I'm quite serious," Cooley insisted.
It wouldn't hurt to have another man… "Are you in shape for it?"
"I will be."
The chief made his decision. "Then you can start this afternoon."
"What is it, then?"
O'Donnell explained.
"It would seem that your hunch was correct. Doctor Ryan," the man with the rimless glasses said the next afternoon. "Maybe I will take you to the track."
He was standing outside one of the huts, a dumpy little man with a head that shone from the sunlight reflecting off his sweaty, hairless dome. Camp -18 was the one.