group of snipers. We’ve gone as far as we can with our video equipment, and we need to know who the men are.”
“Snipers in the desert? What in God’s name would they be doing in the desert? Leaving aside the fact that it’s a wildlife refuge, there’s nothing worth hunting out there. I should know.” Theodore Clayton was an avid hunter and had a large trophy room in the basement of his home, where he insisted on taking Howard at regular intervals. Howard hated the glassy-eyed stares of Clayton’s victims but humoured him for his wife’s sake.
“We think they were rehearsing an assassination,” said Howard.
Clayton’s eyebrows leapt up. “You’re joking!” he exclaimed.
Howard shook his head. “I wish I was. There are three of them at different distances and heights from four dummies which we assume represent the target. We think the plane was shot down because they inadvertently stumbled on the rehearsal.”
“Cole, this almost defies belief. Who on earth would go to the trouble of rehearsing an assassination in the middle of a desert?”
“The rifle sights have to be calibrated, the timing has to be practised. Assuming they’re only going to get one chance, they’d obviously want to do a dry run somewhere secluded. They chose the site carefully. The only major highway anywhere near is 93 and that’s the other side of the Hualapai Mountains.”
Clayton held up the cassette. “And they recorded the whole thing?”
“No, one of the passengers had a camcorder. It survived the crash.”
“Fortuitous,” said Clayton.
“Depends on your point of view,” said Howard, thinking about Mrs Mitchell trying to calm her son as the plane plunged to the ground.
“So, what is it exactly that you want me to do with this?”
“We can’t make out the faces of the men in the video. There are three with rifles, and three more who seem to be organising the rehearsal. There are several vehicles there; we can see what make they are but we’d like to pick out the licence plates.”
“You’re not asking much, Cole!” laughed Clayton.
“Can you do it?” asked Howard.
“Depends,” said the older man, walking back to his desk. “Depends on how detailed the tape is, depth of focus, quality of the lens. There’s a whole series of factors at work. I’ll have to get my people to take a look at it before I can give you a verdict.”
“But you are doing work on this sort of tape analysis, aren’t you?”
“We sure are,” said Clayton, sitting down in his high-backed leather chair. “And the Government’s picking up most of the bill, too, so I’d be more than happy to help out the FBI. It’ll help us when it comes time for appropriations.”
“What’s Uncle Sam’s interest in video technology?” Howard asked.
Clayton smiled and beat a tempo on the top of his desk with his palms. “It’s not just Uncle Sam, Cole. Image processing is big business in medicine, physics, astronomy, biology, you name it, there’s hardly a scientific field not involved. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface. The day’s going to come when machines will read and analyse X-rays and Cat-scans, without any humans being involved at all. Diagnosis by machines. It’s coming.”
“That would explain why MIT would get involved, but not Clayton Electronics,” pressed Howard, recognising his father-in-law’s familiar evasion technique. He’d long ago learned that when Theodore Clayton was being flexible with the truth, his hands tended to betray his lips.
“Well, I can’t deny there are certain military applications which we think will be particularly profitable,” said Clayton. “But there’s a big future in the commercial computer processing of satellite photographs — things like crop monitoring and weather assessment. And there are opportunities in all sorts of quality control operations — computers can make interpretations on the basis of mathematical equations and statistical moments, with none of the distractions that make human decisions so unreliable.” Clayton’s fingers were tapping silently on the desk blotter. He looked levelly at his son-in-law and his voice was as steady as a judge pronouncing sentence, but Howard knew that he was hiding something. “You tell me, whose judgment would you most trust — a computer which has a one hundred per cent record of accurate diagnosis of cancer from X-rays, or a radiologist who has just broken up with his wife and had his BMW vandalised?”
“No contest, I guess,” said Howard. He wondered what Clayton was hiding. Howard crossed his legs and looked out of the window to the side of Clayton’s desk. It overlooked the parking lot and he could see Clayton’s pristine Rolls-Royce gleaming in the afternoon sun. Theodore Clayton hadn’t got to where he was by working to help further the cause of medical science, he’d made a fortune on the backs of a series of multi-million dollar defence contracts including night sights, heads-up displays and computerised video surveillance equipment.
Howard realised that his father-in-law was talking to him. “Well?” said Clayton.
“I’m sorry, Ted, what did you say? I was miles away.”
Clayton looked irritated. “I asked if you were all right for Sunday night.”
“Sunday night?”
“You and Lisa are coming round for dinner.”
Howard’s heart fell. He hated going to his in-laws’ house, and he figured that his wife had been waiting for the right time to tell him. “Sure,” he said, “we’re looking forward to it.”
Clayton stood up, leaving the cassette on the desk. “Good, good,” he said. “Hopefully I’ll have some news for you then.”
Howard frowned. Sunday was five days away. He stood up. “Is there any way of getting the results faster?” he asked. “We don’t know when the real thing is set to happen.”
“I’ll speed them up,” agreed Clayton. He patted Howard on the back as they walked to the door. “I’ll call you as soon as I have anything. By the way, haven’t you forgotten something?”
“Oh, yes. I’m really grateful, Ted. Really grateful.”
Clayton laughed. “No, I meant your briefcase. You’ve left it on the floor.”
Howard felt his cheeks flush. “Thanks,” he said through gritted teeth.
The Colonel handed Joker a bulky manila envelope and leaned back in his chair. Joker opened the package and slid the contents onto the Colonel’s desk. On top of the pile was a British passport. He picked it up and flicked through it. The passport was three years old and featured a photograph that must have come from the SAS’s files, the face thinner and the hair almost shoulder length. The name in the passport was Damien O’Brien and the date of birth was Joker’s own. He looked at the visa pages: they were blank except for a multiple re-entry visa to the United States.
“I haven’t travelled much,” he said with a smile. He picked up three sheets of typed paper which had been stapled together and read through them quickly. “Ah, I see why,” he said. “A labourer, some part-time bar work, and two convictions for drunk and disorderly conduct and one for assault. I’m not a particularly nice character, am I?”
“It’s only cover, Joker. Nothing personal.” The Colonel wrinkled his nose. The man sitting in front of him didn’t appear to have shaved for a couple of days and he stank to high heaven. His clothes looked as if they’d been slept in and there were grass stalks all over his coat.
If Joker was aware of the Colonel’s disdain for his dishevelled appearance, he didn’t show it. According to the fake CV Joker had been born thirty-six years earlier in Belfast, had lived for his first twelve years in Londonderry and attended a Catholic primary school. The house, and the school, had both been demolished years earlier — the house as part of a development project, the school following an arson attack in which the records had been destroyed. Joker had used the road and the school in previous identities when going undercover in Northern Ireland and was familiar with both.
“We’ve kept most of the background close to your own between the ages of twelve and eighteen, so that you won’t have too much trouble remembering it,” said the Colonel. “From eighteen years on we have you travelling around, never staying much in one place. That’s pretty much up to you — you can say you’ve been to Ireland, bring up your time in Scotland, use any background you feel comfortable with. There’s a number there they can use if they want to speak to someone you’ve worked with. If anyone calls they’ll be told it’s a bar in London and they’ll give you a glowing reference. The two bottom sheets are a summary of Manyon’s last report.”
Joker nodded and put the typewritten sheets back into the envelope. There were half a dozen large photographs on the desk and Joker picked them up. His eyes hardened as he looked at a woman in her mid-forties,
