a quick conversation in French before he turned to Fitzduane.
'This is Henri,' said Maury, reverting to English.
'Let's go to it,' said Fitzduane.
Henri shook his head. 'Colonel Fitzduane, I know how you must feel, but it's more than my job is worth. This thing is going to be investigated every which way by more agencies than there are letters in the alphabet, not to mention hearings on security by both houses. IF it came out that I had armed a couple of civilians and allowed them to go terrorist hunting on the Hill… Well, it does not bear thinking about. I'd be the salami and the system the slicer, and believe me, these people do know how to cut.'
Cochrane had now recovered somewhat, though he still looked pale and shocked. He had covered Tanya's upper body with his suit jacket and now stood slumped against a filing cabinet, his clothing soaked in drying blood. He ran one hand wearily through his hair in a gesture of both exhaustion and sadness.
'He's right, Hugo,' he said. 'This is Washington. Simple direct action is not in fashion around here.'
Four office suites down the corridor, the watcher who Fitzduane had known would be somewhere close, was chatting to the attractive young intern he had met in Bullfeathers.
Jin Endo had felt his job done when he had spotted the target going through Security at the main entrance, and had phoned ahead to warn Wakami- san where he waited in the committee's reception. He had a note of where the intern worked and headed up to her office immediately, pausing only to discard hi weapons in a cleaner's cupboard.
The FarnsworthBuilding had been sealed off within two minutes of the killing of Patricio Nicanor and the others, and a further cordon was placed around the complex of buildings that made up the Hill very shortly after that.
Everyone within the inner cordon was identified and questioned.
The process took over six hours. When it was over, Jin Endo and his new girlfriend walked free together. Everyone in her office knew that Endo could not have been involved. The police knew the exact time of the assault and Endo had demonstrably been visiting his friend at that time, which also explained his reason for being in the building. Certainly, he was Japanese, but so were over a hundred other people who had been caught inside the cordon and whose tour of Congress had proved rather more exciting than expected.
That night the young intern, shaken by the gruesome details of the incident, allowed the handsome young lobbyist to comfort her. True, he was Japanese just like the terrorists, but you did not blame all Italians for the misdeeds of the Mafia.
Her lover was young and fit, and someone had tutored him well in the art of pleasing a woman. The intern was even younger, but sex was something you got plenty of inside the Beltway – if you were so inclined – so they were well matched. The sex was intense, dangerous, and endlessly satisfying. There was no denying it. Power was an aphrodisiac, and working in Washington was all about being close to power. The added aphrodisiac was being so close to death. They had both witnessed the aftermath of the carnage.
FBI agents, backtracking through the evidence, made the connection after four days.
It was only one of many leads, but it rang alarm bells when it was discovered that she had not turned up for work. True, quite a few House employees had taken time off to adjust to the shock after the attack, but most had telephoned in. This particular intern had not, and that was unlike her.
The young intern's family was wealthy, and they indulged their only daughter. After her internship she was due to study international relations at GeorgetownUniversity, so she had been comfortably set up in a lavishly equipped condo in Georgetown itself.
The agents had to break into the condo. They found the naked body of the intern, her throat cut, wrapped up in blood- and semen-stained bedsheets in the Deepfreeze.
Of her lover, there was no sign except for a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that turned out to be plain glass.
3
Kathleen Fitzduane, clad in a silk kimono that one of Hugo's Japanese friends had sent as a wedding present, leaned on the terrace railing of their borrowed apartment in Arlington and gazed out toward Washington.
Graced with rich auburn hair and long shapely legs, she was the kind of natural Irish beauty who seems almost unaware of her charms. She had an easy laugh and an infectious smile, and there was a caring warmth about her. Right now her face was in repose and there was concern in her eyes.
Directly in front and below her, less than half a mile away, was the Iwo Jima memorial showing U.S. Marines raising the Stars and Stripes on Mount Suribachi after the bloody conquest of the island. In the middle distance was the Potomac and the Pentagon, and beyond that Washington, D.C. itself. Nearby was ArlingtonNationalCemetery and FortMyer, the home of the Old Guard.
It was a particularly good location to inspire an understanding of American history, and, as such, was not an accident, Kathleen was sure.
Lee Cochrane had arranged it, and she had some honest reservations about the chief of staff. He was a little too dedicated for her taste – if that was an adequate word – and she was concerned about her husband.
Hugo Fitzduane had a penchant for causes and a deep affection for America. Hugo and Cochrane seemed like a volatile combination. Indeed, it had already produced a nightmare of violence, though, to be fair, she could scarcely blame Cochrane for that. Or could she?
Kathleen's priorities were strongly influenced by her biological clock. It did not show yet but she was now three months pregnant, and the thought of the man she loved not being there at the birth was disturbing.
Yet in her heart she knew she was helpless. Hugo's ancestors had held – indeed enhanced – their positions by force of arms for many centuries, and the urge to take a stand and test oneself in harm's way seemed to be programmed into him.
But there was a heavy price, and she had witnessed it. She had been there when Fitzduane had been brought in close to death from terrorist bullets.
Later, she had become involved herself when terrorists had taken her family hostage and tried to use her information to kill Hugo in the hospital. They had killed her father, and she still paled at the recollection. She had seen the true face of terrorism, and Hugo was right. It had to be stopped. But by her husband? That was another matter.
It had been a strange way to meet, and though she had fallen in love almost immediately, she had not expected it to work. It was too neat: patient and nurse. Such relationships rarely endured.
But they had gotten married and they were content, and even the shadow of Fitzduane's former lover did not intrude more than was inevitable. Etan had lived with Fitzduane and had borne him a son, but then she had chafed at domesticity and had moved on to greater heights in her media world and Fitzduane had been left to bring up Boots alone. Until Kathleen came along. Now Boots was for all practical purposes her son, and soon there would be another arrival. It was happiness beyond her dreams.
Kathleen smiled at herself. But it was literally true. It was not perfection because it was the nature of life that nothing was quite straightforward, but it truly was – beyond anything she had hoped for in the past.
She smiled to herself as she remembered Fitzduane asleep with little Boots in his arms. This big tall man with his steel-gray hair en brosse and his curiously gentle, unlined face and his wound-scarred body, and this tiny cheeky boy, hair all tousled, splayed across his father, totally secure in his arms and in his love. Of course, Boots – real name Peter – was not so small now. At five he was shooting up like a little rocket, but he was still very cuddly and still liked to be hugged.
Long may it last, she thought, they grow up so fast. If they have a chance to grow up. The shadow of the terrorist threat was ever present.
Hugo had first encountered terrorism by accident, and then curiosity followed by a disgust for what the man stood for had led him deeper and deeper into the hunt for the Hangman. It had all escalated into something much
