"Okay, what do we have?" John asked his senior executives.
"This name, Iosef Serov. It's not on our computer in London," said Cyril Holt of the Security Service. "What about CIA?"
Clark shook his head. "We have two guys named Serov on the books. One's dead. The other one's in his late sixties and retired in Moscow. What about the description?"
"Well, it fits this chap." Holt passed a photo across the table.
"I've seen this one before."
"He's the chap who met with Ivan Kirilenko in London some weeks ago. That fits the rest of the puzzle, John. We believe he was involved in the leak of information on your organization, as you will recall. For him, then, to show up with Grady-well, it does fit, almost too well, as a matter of fact."
"Any way to press this?"
"We can go to the RVS-both we and CIA have relatively good relations with Sergey Golovko, and perhaps they can assist us. I will lobby very hard for that," Holt promised.
"What else?"
"These numbers," Bill Tawney put in. "One is probably a bank account identification number, and the other is probably the control-activation code number. We'll have their police look into it for us. That will tell us something, if the money hasn't been laundered, of course, and if the account is still active, which it ought to be."
"The weapons," the senior cop present told them, "judging by the serial numbers, are of Soviet origin, from the factory in Kazan. They're fairly old, at least ten years, but none of them had ever been fired before today. On the drug issue, I forwarded the information to Dennis Maguire-he's chief of the Garda. It will be on the telly in the morning. They found and seized ten pounds of pure cocaine-by `pure' I mean medicinal quality, almost as though it had been purchased from a pharmaceutical house. The street value is enormous. Millions," the chief superintendent told them. "It was found in a semi abandoned farmhouse on the Irish West Coast."
"We have identification on three of the six prisoners. One has not yet been able to talk to us because of his injuries. Oh, they were using cellular phones to communicate, like walkie-talkies. Your Noonan chap did very well indeed to close the phone cells down. God only knows how many lives that saved," Holt told them.
At the far end of the table, Chavez nodded and shivered at the news. If they'd been able to coordinate their actions… Jesus. It would not have been a good day for the good guys. What they'd had was bad enough. There would be funerals. People would have to put on their Class-A uniforms and line up and fire off the guns… and then they'd have to replace the men who were gone. Not far away, Mike Chin was in a bed, a cast on one of his wounded legs because a bone was broken. Team-1 was out of business for at least a month, even as well as they'd fought back. Noonan had come through big-time, having killed three of them with his pistol, along with Franklin, who'd just about decapitated one with his big MacMillan.50, then used his monster rifle to kill the little brown truck and keep the five terrorists in it from getting away. Chavez was looking down at the conference table and shaking his head when his beeper went off. He lifted it and saw that it was his home number. He rose from his seat and called on the wall phone.
"Yeah, honey?"
"Ding, you want to come over here. It's started," Patsy told him calmly. Ding's response was a sudden flip of his heart.
"On the way, baby." Ding hung up. "John, I gotta get home. Patsy says it's started."
"Okay, Domingo." Clark managed a smile, finally. "Give her a kiss for me."
"Roge-o, Mr. C." And Chavez headed for the door.
"The timing on this thing is never good, is it?" Tawney observed.
"Well, at least something good is happening today." John rubbed his eyes. He even accepted the idea of becoming a grandfather. It beat the hell out of losing people, a fact that had yet to hammer all the way into his consciousness. His people. Two of them, dead. Several Tore wounded. His people.
"Okay," Clark went on. "What about the information leak? People, we've been set up and hit. What are we going to do about it?"
"Hello, Ed, it's Carol," the President's Science Advisor said.
"Hi, Dr. Brightling. What can I do for you?"
"What the hell happened in England today? Was it our people our Rainbow team, I mean?"
"Yes, Carol, it was."
"How did they do? The TV wasn't very clear, and-
"Two dead, four or so wounded," the DCI answered. T-' Nine terrorists dead, six captured, including their leader."
"The radios we got to them, how'd they work?"
"Not sure. I haven't seen the after-action report yet, but I know the main thing they're going to want to know."
"What's that, Ed?"
"Who spilled the beans. They knew John's name, his wife and daughter's names, identities, and place of work. They had good intel, and John isn't very happy about that."
"The family members, are they okay?"
"Yeah, no civilians hurt, thank God. Hell, Carol, I know Sandy and Patricia. There's going to be some serious fallout over this one."
"Anything I can do to help?"
"Not sure yet, but I won't forget you asked."
"Yeah, well, I want to know if those radio gadgets worked. I told the guys at E-Systems to get them out pronto, 'cuz these guys are important. Gee, I hope they helped some."
"I'll find out, Carol," the DCI promised.
"Okay, you know where to reach me."
"Okay, thanks for the call."
CHAPTER 30
It was everything he'd expected-not knowing what to expect-and more, and at the end of it Domingo Chavez held his son in his hands.
"Well," he said, looking down at the new life that would be his to guard, educate, and in time present to the world. After a second that seemed to last into weeks, he handed the newborn to his wife.
Patsy's face was bathed in perspiration, and weary from the five-hour ordeal of delivery, but already, as such things went, the pain was forgotten. The goal had been achieved, and she held her child. The package was pink, hairless, and noisy, the last part assuaged by the proximity of Patsy's left breast, as John Conor Chavez got his first meal. But Patsy was exhausted, and in due course a nurse removed the child to the nursery. Then Ding kissed his wife and walked alongside her bed as she was wheeled to her room. She was already asleep when they arrived. He kissed her one last time and walked outside. His car took him back onto the Hereford base, and then to the official home of Rainbow Six.
"Yeah?" John said, opening the door.
Chavez just handed over a cigar with a blue ring. "John Conor Chavez, seven pounds eleven ounces. Patsy's doing fine, granpop," Ding said, with a subdued grin. After all. Patsy had done the hard part.
There are moments to make the strongest of men weep, and this was one of them. The two men embraced. "Well," John said, after a minute or so, reaching into the pocket of his bathrobe for a handkerchief with which he rubbed his eyes. "Who's he look like?"
"Winston Churchill," Domingo replied with a laugh. "Hell, John, I've never been able to figure that one out, but John Conor Chavez is a confusing enough name, isn't it? The little bastard has a lot of heritage behind him. I'll start him off on karate and guns about age five… maybe six," Ding mused.
"Better golf and baseball, but he's your kid, Domingo. Come on in."
"Well?" Sandy demanded, and Chavez gave the news for the second time while his boss lit up his Cuban cigar. He despised smoking, and Sandy, a nurse, hardly approved of the vice, but on this one occasion, both relented. Mrs. Clark gave Ding a hug. "John Conor?"