'Yeah. Anything else?'
'Gunny, that's it. It ain't much. A possible name, a suggestion of possible affiliation. Man, that's all they got.'
'Christ,' said Bob. He searched his memory for anything that he had learned about Trig that touched on any issue of strategic warfare, but came up blank. It was all Vietnam, the war, that sort of thing.
'Sorry I wasn't any help.'
'Jack, you were great. I'm much obliged.'
'Talk to you.'
'Out here.'
'Out.'
Bob put the phone down, more confused than ever.
He felt everything was now hopelessly twisted out of his slender ability to grasp it. The 'strategic' business had him buffaloed. Where the hell did that come from? What did it mean?
He called Trig's mother and got her right away.
'Have you learned anything, Sergeant Swagger?'
'Well, maybe. It turns out the fellow's name is Robert Fitzpatrick. The rower.'
'Yes. The Irishman.'
'Yeah, him. The British think he was a Russian agent, but not the sort that would be interested in the peace movement or anything like that. They think his mission would have been nuclear warfare, missiles, that sort of thing. Is there anything in Trig's life that would touch on that?'
'Good heavens, no. I mean, I assume the conventional peace movement wisdom on strategic warfare was simply 'Let's ban the bomb and everything will be peachy,' but it wasn't an issue, not at all. They were fighting to stop the war that was going on, the war they saw on television, the war that threatened them.'
'Your husband was in the State Department. Did he have any connection with any of this?'
'Not at all. He was in the counselor service. We served in a number of embassies abroad representing American interests but never had a thing to do with the missiles or that sort of thing. He finished up his career managing an economic research project.'
'A brother, a sister?'
'My brother is the famous Yale ornithologist, two of Jack's are dead, one a doctor, the other a lawyer in New York, the third, a survivor, manages the family money, my sister is three times divorced and lives in New York, spending money and trying to look younger.'
'All right.'
'You'll get it. Eventually, Sergeant Swagger, you'll figure it out.'
'I think I'm out of my league this time, ma'am. I will keep working on it, though.'
'Good luck.'
'Thanks.'
He hung up, stumped. He opened the phone book, found a commercial shooting range called On Target over near the airport. There, he rented a stock .45 and spent an hour shooting holes in a target at twenty-five yards while his campers cooled their heels outside in the parking lot.
When he emerged, the food choices weren't great: Popeyes Fried Chicken, a Pizza Hut, a Subway and, down the road a bit, a Hardee's. He decided on Subway, and was walking toward it when he realized what it had to be and where he had to go next.
JBonson was flagged down after the 3 p.m. meeting by his secretary, who said there was an urgent call from Team Cowboy. He took it in his office.
'He burned us.'
'Shit.'
'He knew we were there all along.'
'Where did he go?'
'He slipped us so easily it was pathetic. Went into a Subway bathroom, never came out.'
'Subway, where, in DC or Baltimore?'
'No, the sandwich shop. On Route 175 near Fort Meade. Went in, never came out. We waited and finally checked it out. He was long gone. His rental car was still there in the parking lot, but he was long gone.'
'Shit,' said Bonson.
Where has the cowboy gone? What does he know?
CHAPTER forty-one.
Solaratov knew the one sound rule that held true the world over: to catch a professional, hire a professional.
This meant that in his time he had worked with criminals of all stripe and shape, including mujahideen skyjackers, Parisian strong-arm men, Angolese poachers and Russian mafioso. But never a seventeen-year-old boy, with dreadlocks, a baseball cap backward on his head and a pair of trousers so baggy they could contain three or
