“Oh, come on,” protested Clutesi.
“Someone’s got to do it, Don,” said Howard.
“He can put it on the floor,” said Clutesi.
“Can’t reach the floor,” said Joker. “Unless I drop it. But if I drop it, it’s going to splash everywhere.”
“Shit,” said Clutesi. He held out his hand disdainfully and took the bottle over to the washbasin. He poured the contents down the sink and washed his hands.
“Our Counter-Terrorism Division has never heard of a Damien O’Brien,” said Howard. “We’re checking your prints out with MI5 in London.” Joker’s grin abruptly vanished. Howard continued to look at him, gauging his reaction. “What do you think they’re going to tell us?” Howard asked. Clutesi dried his hands on a paper towel.
Joker looked at the ink stains on his fingers, as if verifying that his prints had been taken. He looked up at Howard. There was more to this than a murder investigation. The FBI agents were obviously after Hennessy and Bailey, and the deaths of the girl and the MI5 agent seemed to be secondary to that. If Joker played his cards right, he might be able to find a way out of this mess that didn’t involve him spending a lifetime in a Federal penitentiary. If the FBI had sent his fingerprints to MI5, an identification would be forthcoming fairly soon. “My name’s Cramer,” he said slowly. “Mike Cramer.”
Howard raised an eyebrow. “So you were lying before?”
“Only about my name,” said Joker. “Everything else is the truth.”
Howard nodded thoughtfully. “You came into this country with a false passport?”
“Yeah. Sort of.”
“Must have been a good one,” said Howard.
“Yeah, it was.”
“So where did you get it from? And why didn’t you use your own?”
“A friend got it for me. He works for the Department of Immigration and he owes me a favour. It’s a genuine passport, it’s just the name which is different. I didn’t think it made sense to try to tail Hennessy using my own name.”
“You still say you’re working alone?” said Clutesi, his voice loaded with disbelief.
“You think if I had any back-up at all, they’d have allowed this to happen to me?” asked Joker. “Why don’t you guys tell me what’s going on here? What do you think the IRA are up to?”
Howard took the envelope out of his jacket pocket and flicked through the photographs inside. He handed the picture of the man with the receding hairline and moustache to Joker. “You saw this guy, right?”
“In the basement,” said Joker.
“His name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. Most of the world knows him as Carlos the Jackal.”
Joker’s jaw dropped. “The IRA’s working with Carlos? What the fuck are they up to?”
“To be honest, Cramer, we were kind of hoping you’d be able to tell us.”
Joker shook his head. “I didn’t even know he was Carlos,” he said. “That explains why Hennessy kept on asking me how much I knew. She wanted to find out if I knew what they’d planned. Whatever it is, it must be bloody important.”
Howard nodded and took back the photograph. “We know they were working with three world-class snipers, one of whom you killed in the basement.”
“The girl?”
“The girl. Dina Rashid, a Lebanese. The other two are former Navy SEALs.”
“And who do you think they’re trying to kill?”
Howard smiled enigmatically. “Cramer, we’re the FBI agents, we’re the ones who’re supposed to be asking the questions here.”
“It must be someone important, right?”
“We think they’re planning to kill the President. And soon.”
Joker frowned. “Why would the IRA want to help assassinate the President of the United States? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does if you know that Carlos and representatives of the IRA were guests of Saddam Hussein in Iraq not so long ago.”
“What? You think Saddam Hussein is behind it? What would he have to gain by killing the President?”
Howard shrugged. “Revenge for Desert Storm, we think. He’s never forgiven the States or Britain for forcing him out of Kuwait. But it doesn’t end there. There was the cruise missile attack on Baghdad after the Iraqis tried to kill George Bush in Kuwait. And the Iraqi fighter we brought down recently in the no-fly zone was a real slap in the face for him. He hates the US with a vengeance. As a result we’ve seen a growing number of terrorist attacks here. We had a big one in New York in ‘93, remember? The World Trade Center. They killed six people, and they were planning to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels under the Hudson River and the United Nations headquarters. We caught the guys, but next time we might not be so lucky.”
“The IRA weren’t involved, were they?”
“Not that we can prove, but the bomb was similar to ones that have been used in Northern Ireland and London. We believe that the IRA have been helping Muslim fundamentalists in several locations around the world.”
“But you said this time they’re planning to use snipers?”
“We know they were practising a sniper hit in the Arizona desert several weeks ago. And we’re talking real long-distance stuff. We think one of the snipers is going to be firing from two thousand yards away.”
“Two thousand yards?” said Joker, with the emphasis on thousand. “You mean two hundred, surely?”
“No, two thousand yards. Six thousand feet. Our sniping experts tell us that the bullet will take four full seconds to reach its target.”
Joker looked stunned. “That’s incredible,” he said. “You don’t think they’re still going ahead, do you? Now that you know what they’re up to?”
Howard shrugged. “We don’t know. There’s another problem. We think there’s a chance that Hennessy, Carlos and Bailey might be planning to be nearer the target.”
Intuitively, Joker realised what the FBI agent wanted from him. He was the only person who’d seen the three terrorists close up. “In case the snipers fail?” he said.
“Or helping with the co-ordination,” said Howard.
“When do you think they’ll do it?” asked Joker.
“We don’t know. But soon. Assuming they don’t cancel.”
“Carlos isn’t a man who’s likely to be scared off,” said Joker. “I remember what he did in Vienna with the OPEC ministers. If anything, I think he’d relish a challenge. So, Agent Howard, what is it you want from me?”
Howard looked at Clutesi and then back at Joker. “We want to put you close to the presidential guard. Not as part of the President’s protective screen, but as an observer. You know what Carlos looks like, in the flesh. If he’s in disguise, you might spot him.”
Joker scratched his chin and winced as he moved his injured shoulder. He indicated the chain with his left hand.
“You’ll be released into the FBI’s custody,” said Howard. “I’ll be taking a chance on you, Cramer, but I don’t think you’ll let me down.”
Joker looked at him with hard eyes. “Yeah, and if Hennessy or Carlos sees me around the President, maybe they’ll take a shot at me first.”
“That’s possible,” agreed Howard.
“Do I get a gun?”
Howard smiled and shook his head. “It’s going to be hard enough to persuade the Secret Service to let you within a mile of the President, I don’t think there’s much chance of you carrying a gun.”
“Bullet-proof vest?”
“That I think we can arrange,” said Howard. “Does that mean you’ll do it?”
Joker nodded. “I’d do anything to get another crack at that bitch.”
“I thought you’d say that,” said Howard.
Marty Edberg pointed at the television monitor showing a close-up of the Orioles scoreboard. “Go to two,” he said. His assistant pressed a button on the console and the picture flashed up on the large screen in the centre of the wall of monitors. The picture wavered crazily and Edberg slammed his hand down on the console. “Wendy,
