"No further questions," Atkinson said.
"The witness may step down," Mr. Justice Wheeler said.
Jack stood up from the stool and turned to find the way out. As he did so, his eyes swept across Miller one last time, long enough to see that the look and the smile hadn't changed.
Jack walked back out to the grand hall as another witness passed in the other direction. He found Dan Murray waiting for him.
"Not bad," the FBI agent observed, "but you want to be careful locking horns with a lawyer. He almost tripped you up."
"You think it'll matter?"
Murray shook his head. "Nah. The trial's a formality, the case is airtight."
"What'll he get?"
"Life. Normally over here 'life' doesn't mean any more than it does stateside—six or eight years. For this kid, 'life' means life. Oh, there you are, Jimmy."
Commander Owens came down the corridor and joined them. "How did our lad perform?"
"Not an Oscar winner, but the jury liked him," Murray said.
"How can you tell that?"
"That's right, you've never been through this, have you? They sat perfectly still, hardly even breathed while you were telling your story. They believed everything you said, especially the part about how you've thought and worried about it. You come across as an honest guy."
"I am," Ryan said. "So?"
"Not everybody is," Owens pointed out. "And juries are actually quite good at noticing it. That is, some of the time."
Murray nodded. "We both have some good—well, not so good—stories about what a jury can do, but when you get down to it, the system works pretty well. Commander Owens, why don't we buy this gentleman a beer?"
"A fine idea. Agent Murray." Owens took Ryan's arm and led him to the staircase:
"That kid's a scary little bastard, isn't he?" Ryan said. He wanted a professional opinion.
"You noticed, eh?" Murray observed. "Welcome to the wonderful world of the international terrorist. Yeah, he's a tough little son of a bitch, all right. Most of 'em are, at first."
"A year from now he'll have been changed a bit. He's a hard one, mind, but the hard ones are often rather brittle," Owens said. "They sometimes crack. Time is very much on our side, Jack. And even if he doesn't, that's one less to worry about."
"A very confident witness," the TV news commentator said. "Doctor Ryan fended off a determined attack by the defense counsel, Charles Atkinson, and identified defendant Sean Miller quite positively in the second day of The Mall Murder trial in Old Bailey Number Two." The picture showed Ryan walking down the hill from the courthouse with two men in attendance. The American was gesturing about something, then laughed as he passed the TV news camera.
"Our old friend Owens. Who's the other one?" O'Donnell asked.
"Daniel E. Murray, FBI representative at Grosvenor Square," replied his intelligence officer.
"Oh. Never saw his face. So that's what he looks like. Going out for a jar, I'll wager. The hero and his coat-holders. Pity we couldn't have had a man with an RPG right there… " They'd scouted James Owens once, trying to figure a way to assassinate him, but the man always had a chase car and never used the same route twice. His house was always watched. They could have killed him, but the getaway would have been too risky, and O'Donnell was not given to sending his men on suicide missions. "Ryan goes home either tomorrow or next day."
"Oh?" The intelligence officer hadn't learned that. Where does Kevin get all his special information…?
"Too bad, isn't it? Wouldn't it be grand to send him home in a coffin, Michael?"
"I thought you said he was not a worthwhile target," Mike McKenney said.
"Ah, but he's a proud one, isn't he? Crosses swords with our friend Charlie and prances out of the Bailey for a pint of beer. Bloody American, so sure of everything." Wouldn't it be nice to… Kevin O'Donnell shook his head. "We have other things to plan. Sir John can wait, and so can we."
"I practically had to hold a gun on somebody to get to do this," Murray said over his shoulder. The FBI agent was driving his personal car, with a Diplomatic Protection Group escort on the left front seat, and a chase car of C-13 detectives trying to keep up.
Keep your eyes on the damned road, Ryan wished as hard as he could. His exposure to London traffic to this point had been minimal, and only now did he appreciate that the city's speed limit was considered a matter of contempt by the drivers. Being on the wrong side of the road didn't help either.
"Tom Hughes—he's the Chief Warder—told me what he had planned, and I figured you might want an escort who talks right."
And drives right, Ryan thought as they passed a truck—lorry—on the wrong side. Or was it the right side? How do you tell? He could tell that they'd missed the truck's taillights by about eighteen inches. English roads were not impressive for their width.
"Damned shame you didn't get to see very much."
"Well, Cathy did, and I caught a lot of TV."
"What did you watch?"
Jack laughed. "I caught a lot of the replays of the cricket championships."
"Did you ever figure out the rules?" Murray asked, turning his head again.
"It has rules?" Ryan asked incredulously. "Why spoil it with rules?"
"They say it does, but damn if I ever figured them out. But we're getting even now."
"How's that?"
"Football is becoming pretty popular over here. Our kind, I mean. I gave Jimmy Owens a big runaround last year on the difference between offside and illegal procedure."
"You mean encroachment and false start, don't you?" the DPG man inquired.
"See? They're catching on."
"You mean I could have gotten football on TV, and nobody told me!"
"Too bad, Jack," Cathy observed.
"Well, here we are." Murray stood on the brakes as he turned downhill toward the river. Jack noticed that he seemed to be heading the wrong way down a one-way street, but at least he was going more slowly now. Finally the car stopped. It was dark. The sunset came early this time of year.
"Here's your surprise." Murray jumped out and got the door, allowing Ryan to repeat his imitation of a fiddler crab exiting from a car. "Hi, there, Tom!"
Two men approached, both in Tudor uniforms of blue and red. The one in the lead, a man in his late fifties, came directly to Ryan.
"Sir John, Lady Ryan, welcome to Her Majesty's Tower of London. I am Thomas Hughes, this is Joseph Evans. I see that Dan managed to get you here on time." Everyone shook hands.
"Yeah, we didn't even have to break mach-1. May I ask what the surprise is?"
"But then it wouldn't be a surprise," Hughes pointed out. "I had hoped to conduct you around the grounds myself, but there's something I must attend to. Joe will see to your needs, and I will rejoin you shortly." The Chief Warder walked off with Dan Murray in his wake.
"Have you been to the Tower before?" Evans asked. Jack shook his head.
"I have, when I was nine," Cathy said. "I don't remember very much."
Evans motioned for them to come along with him. "Well, we'll try to implant the knowledge more permanently this time."
"You guys are all soldiers, right?"
"Actually, Sir John, we are all ex-sergeant majors—well, two of us were warrant officers. I was sergeant major in 1 Para when I retired. I had to wait four years to get accepted here. There is quite a bit of interest in this job, as you might imagine. The competition is very keen."
"So, you were what we call a command sergeant-major, sir?"