'I was with that boy when he died. May seventh, 1972.
He bled out in my arms. This is something I been working on a long time.'
'Urn,' said the boy.
'Look, I know you're busy. You must be. But I was hoping you'd have a cup of coffee with me. I'd like to talk about your dad. I want to know about him.'
'He was quite a guy,' the boy said.
'Or so I hear.' He looked at his watch.
'Hell, why not? I have nothing else to do.'
CHAPTER forty-three.
Bonson was debriefing the team in the Rossyin safe house. It was not a happy time.
'I warned you he was good. You people were supposed to be the best. What the hell went on?'
'He was good. He was professional. He read us, burned us and turned us when it suited him,' came the answer.
'Sometimes people are just too good and they can do that to you. That's all.'
'All right, let's go through it again, very carefully.'
For what seemed the tenth time, the team narrated their one day of adventures with Bob Lee Swagger, where he'd been, what they'd learned, how indifferent to them he seemed, how swiftly and effectively he had slipped them.
Bonson listened carefully.
'Usually there's a moment,' one of the ex-FBI agents said, 'when you can tell you've been burned. There was nothing like that this time. He just disappeared.'
'I figure he made it out back, cut through the neighborhood behind us and called a cab from another little shopping center about a mile away. Or maybe he went up to the roof and waited until nightfall and slipped away.'
'You didn't see him interact with anybody?'
'Nobody.'
'He had no contacts?'
'He made those phone calls.'
'We did get that, sir.'
The agents had written down the numbers of the phone booths and through them tracked the destinations of the calls, which turned out to be the American embassy in London, first the general number, and the next day the office of the Marine NCOIC of the embassy guard.
'We could have inquiries made.'
'No, no, I know what he was asking about. He's very smart, this guy. He looks like Clint Eastwood and talks like Gomer Pyle and yet he's got a natural gift for this sort of thing. He's very--' It was at this time an earnest young man entered the room.
'Commander Bonson,' he said, 'Sierra-Bravo-Four is on the phone.'
Bonson looked about himself, stunned, then took the phone and waited for the switchboard to route it to him.
'Bonson.'
'Sierra-Bravo-Four here,' he heard Swagger's voice.
'Where the hell are you?'
'You didn't tell me about the baby-sitters.'
'It's for your own good.'
'I work alone. I made that clear, Bonson.'
'We don't do it that way anymore. You have to come in. You have to come under control. It's the only way I can help you.'
'I need some questions answered.'
'Where are you? I can have you picked up in an hour.'
There was a pause.
'I'm outside, asshole.'
'What?'
'I said, I'm outside, with a cellular I picked up at the Kmart a few minutes ago.'
'How did--' There was a clang as something hit the window.
'I just threw a rock at your window, asshole. Good thing it wasn't an RPG, you wouldn't last long in a war, asshole. I rented another car and followed the baby-sitters you had staking out my car back to your place. Now, let me in and let's start talking.'
Swagger came in, past the team whom he had so adroitly out managed
