Colin gulped air and emitted a loud burp, and then Jared did the same, and both of them cracked up laughing again.
After dinner, Sarah went upstairs to kiss Jared good night. He was lying in bed, holding Huckleberry, the teddy bear, reading the biography of Satchel Paige. He rarely cuddled with his teddy bear anymore; he considered that kid’s stuff.
“Is that a kid’s version?” Sarah asked.
“Grown-up version.” He returned to reading. After a moment, he looked up and asked peevishly, “Yes?”
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Your Excellency,” Sarah said in mock-dudgeon. “I just came up to say good night.”
“Oh. Good night.” He turned his head to one side to receive a kiss.
Sarah complied. “Didn’t you read this already?”
Jared stared at her blankly for a long time, and then said: “Yes, so?”
“Everything okay with you?”
“Yes,” he said, and turned back to the book.
“Because you’d tell me if everything weren’t okay, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.” Not looking up.
“It’s this weekend, isn’t it?” Sarah asked, suddenly realizing. Saturday was two days away, which meant he spent the day with his father.
Jared kept reading as if he hadn’t heard her.
“You’re worried about Saturday,” she persisted.
He looked up. “No,” he said, his mouth curling in sarcasm. “I’m not ‘worried’ about Saturday.”
“But you’re not looking forward to it.”
He hesitated. “No,” he said in a small voice.
“You want to talk about it?”
“Not really,” he said, still more softly.
“Do you not want Daddy to come this weekend? You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, you know.”
“I know. I don’t know. It’s okay. It’s just that…” His voice trailed off. “Why does he act the way he does?”
“Because that’s the way he is.” That meant nothing, it was unhelpful, and they both knew it. “We all have our blind spots, and Daddy-”
“Yeah, I know. That’s the way he is.” He returned to the book and added: “But I hate it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Perhaps the greatest difficulty in the business of counterterrorism is deciding what to ignore and what to pursue. You are faced with a vast quantity of intelligence, but most of it is simply noise, static: pillow talk, intercepted telegrams, rumors. Ninety-nine percent of it is useless.
Yet the cost of ignoring the wrong scrap of information may be incalculable. Any intelligence professional who disregards a lead that results in an act of terrorism may be held culpable professionally, not to speak of morally, for the death of a human being-or the death of a hundred thousand.
Duke Taylor’s career had been built upon a number of talents, from his ability to get along with just about anybody, to his sharp (though often hidden) intellect, to his golf skills. Not least among his talents, however, was an instinct, the thing that separated an intelligence bureaucrat from a professional.
And his instinct told him that Noah Willkie was right, and the CIA was wrong: there was a major act of terrorism in the planning.
Shortly after his meeting with Willkie, he summoned two of his brightest lieutenants, Russell Ullman and Christine Vigiani, both of them counterterrorism analysts, and briefed them in on the NSA intercept. Ullman, a broad-shouldered, strapping Aryan from Minnesota in his early thirties, was an operational analyst. Vigiani, some years older, and an intelligence research specialist, was tiny, compact, dark-haired, introverted. Both took copious notes.
“For reasons I can’t get into, this doesn’t go beyond this room. That’s why I’m taking the unusual step of having just you guys here without the section and unit chiefs. Now, I want to make sure the boys at Fort Meade add some names to their watch list-Heinrich Fürst, this fellow Elkind. Russell, can you draft a list of all possible trip words?”
“Right,” Ullman said, “but how can we ask NSA about this if we’re not supposed to know anything about it?”
“Leave it to me, Russ. That’s what I’m here for, the diplomacy part. You people do the heavy lifting. Chris, run down whatever you can on Fürst. Have Kendall or Wendy do a complete computer search. Wendy might be better. She’s good on Germanic languages, variant spellings, what-have-you. Have our legal attachés in Germany and Austria make discreet contact, see what they can learn.”
She nodded and scrawled a note. “I’ll try,” she said dubiously, “but I’m sure it’s not his real name.”
“Well, see what you can get. Don’t forget about our own people. Maybe somebody knows something. Round up anybody who knows something about Elkind or Manhattan Bank. Field agent, transcriptionist, even the guy who washes the office cars in the Albuquerque field office.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Vigiani asked, genuinely curious.
“Wendy, the computer whiz, can help you. There’s a hidden search parameter she can call up, with my authorization.” Taylor saw the woman’s puzzlement, and added: “She’ll explain it. Basically, anytime anyone accesses the Bureau’s databases, there’s a notation made of it here in the central files, what they were asking about, et cetera.
“Now, and this is the biggest task: I want a pile of files on my desk by tomorrow morning-all possible terrorist suspects.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Ullman said.
“Put as many people as you need on this, okay? I want all the usual suspects, plus anyone else on the radar screen. Any terrorist with a track record. We’ve got to start broad.”
“Whoa,” Ullman said. “You’re basically saying, any terrorist alive.”
“Every one that fits this MO,” Duke Taylor said. “On my desk. By tomorrow morning.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sarah’s marriage to Peter Cronin was a mystery that only deepened with time. The reason she’d done it was simple. He’d gotten her pregnant. But that begged several questions: why she decided to keep the baby; why she felt she had to marry him just because he’d knocked her up; and, the biggest question of all, why she had been attracted to him in the first place.
True, he was movie-star handsome, a brawny, virile blond with a dazzling smile. That should have captured her attention for no more than five minutes. Once you got to know Peter at all, it was obvious he was crude, domineering, a creep. Yet at the same time he could be immensely charming when he wanted to.
When he first asked her out, after they’d met on some minor FBI-police task force, she accepted quickly. He’s different from me, she told herself, but that’s all to the good. She was the overly refined one, perhaps effete, in need of an infusion of street savvy. Their sex life was incredibly exciting. She’d never felt so carried away. They’d fight, his blistering anger would surface, they’d get back together. The roller coaster went on like that for five months until her period was a few days late and a pregnancy test she bought at a drugstore confirmed her suspicion.
There was never even a discussion of abortion; she didn’t believe in it. It hadn’t happened before. She’d never had the chance to test her moral code.
But Peter wanted to get married, and although the voice of reason in her kept shrilling against it, they went to Boston City Hall and did it several days later. They moved in together, and it was as if nothing had happened. Their relationship remained tumultuous, they still fought constantly, he still knew how to reduce her to tears.
And within a few months, he began to have affairs. First it was a sister of one of his cop friends, then a secretary he’d met at a bar called Richard’s, then a whole succession of them.
At first, Sarah faulted herself. She hadn’t been much of a wife. She was career-obsessed. Sure, Peter worked long hours, but hers were worse. It hadn’t yet occurred to her that if a man works hard, he’s ambitious, but if a woman works hard, she’s negligent. After one traumatic fight, Peter promised to end the extracurricular activities. Sarah accepted his teary apologies. They would try to rebuild their marriage, for the sake of their unborn child.