First Daughter

And then there's the British, who haven't had a God-driven thought in their heads in centuries. The God Delusion is a book written by one of them.' He snapped his fingers. 'What's his name, Nina?'

'Richard Dawkins,' Nina said, emerging from her near-coma. 'An Oxford professor.'

Garner waved away her words. 'Who cares where he's from? The point is, we're under attack.'

'What's further aggravated the Administration,' Nina continued blandly, 'is a recent European Union survey asking its citizens to rank their life values. Religion came in last, far behind human rights, peace, democracy, individual freedom, and the like.'

Garner shook his head. 'Don't they know we're in a religious war for our very way of life? Faith-based policy is the only way to fight it.'

'Which is why this Administration is hostile to the incoming one.' Having awoken, Nina now seemed on a roll. 'Moderate Republicanism as represented by Edward Carson and his people is a step backward, as far as the president is concerned.'

'Okay, this is all very enlightening,' Jack said, 'but what the hell does it have to do with the kidnapping of Alli Carson?'

'Everything,' Garner said, scowling. 'We have reason to believe that the people who planned and carried out the kidnapping are missionary secularists, a group calling itself E-Two, the Second Enlightenment.'

'That refers to the ongoing-often violent-conflict originating in Europe's eighteenth-century Enlightenment,' Nina said.

'A so-called intellectual movement,' Garner sneered, making the word synonymous with criminal.

'Reason over superstition, that was the Enlightenment's battle cry, led by George Berkeley, Thomas Paine, who returned to the pioneering work of Pascal, Leibniz, Galileo, and Isaac Newton,' Nina said. 'And it's E-Two's credo as well.'

'I never heard of them,' Jack said before he could stop himself.

'No?' Garner cocked his head. 'Your ATF office was forwarded the official memos Homeland Security sent around. The last one was-what? — but three months ago.' He leered like a pornographer. 'If you didn't see it, either you're negligent or you can't read.'

'What makes you think this organization is involved?' Jack, the bile of anger feeding the heat of his shame, asked. 'The most likely suspects are Al-Qaeda or a homegrown derivative.'

Garner shook his head. 'First off, the terrorist chatter's been elevated for about ten days now, but you know that ebbs and flows, and a lot of it is just trying to play with our minds. There's nothing there for us. Second, there have been no unusual movements in the suspected cells we have under surveillance.'

'What about the cells you know nothing about?' Jack said.

Nina looked at Garner, who nodded.

'Show him,' he assented.

Nina fanned out a handful of forensic photos of two men, naked from the waist up, with fatal wounds on their backs.

Jack studied the visuals with a relief only he could fully comprehend. 'Who are they?'

'The Secret Service personnel assigned to guard Alli Carson,' Garner said while Nina's lips were still opening.

Jack felt an unpleasant prickling at the back of his neck. The news just got worse and worse. The photos showed the respective bodies in situ.

'The killers are professionals,' Garner said with an unforgivable degree of condescension. 'They know how to kill quickly, cleanly, and efficiently.' He pointed. 'They took their wallets, keys, pads, cell phones. Just to rub our noses in it, I guess, because we've locked down everything belonging to or attached to these two individuals, so there's nothing the perps can do with the personal items. And see here.'

Beside each body, partially wedged beneath their left sides, were what appeared to be playing cards.

He peered more closely. 'What are those?'

Garner dropped two clear plastic evidence bags onto the photos. Each one contained a playing card. Drawn in the center of each card was a circle with a familiar three-pronged symbol: a stylized peace sign. 'During the war in Nam, U.S. soldiers used to leave an ace of spades on the bodies of their victims. These E-Two sonsabitches are doing the same thing, leaving their logo on their victims.'

Reaching down to his feet, he pulled a document out of a briefcase, read it out loud. 'Faith-based initiatives and policies are spreading from America to Europe, where faith-based reasoning is taking root in the burgeoning Islamic populations of France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, et cetera. All too soon, Muslims will be running for office in these countries, and faith-based initiatives will begin there…' There followed a list of statistics showing the alarming rise of Muslims into Europe, as well as increasing militance of certain sections.

'Here.' Garner handed over the manifesto. 'Read the rest yourself.'

Jack, who was inordinately attuned to such undertones, wondered whether Garner suspected-or, worse, knew. Chief Bennett had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep Jack's secret under wraps, but with the Homeland Security geeks, one never knew. They were as zealous as a Sunni imam, and if they didn't like you-and clearly Garner didn't like Jack-and if they felt threatened by you-and clearly Garner felt threatened as hell-they would move heaven and earth to find the skeleton in your closet, even if it was an enigma wrapped inside a conundrum.

Jack stared down at the impassioned tract, which was signed 'The Second Enlightenment.' It contained a stylized peace sign identical to those on the playing cards found on the Secret Service detail.

'It's official now,' Garner said. 'E-Two are terrorists of the first rank. They won't hesitate to kill again-I can guarantee you that because E-Two's manifesto calls for a drastic change in the current president's faith-based policies before he leaves office. We believe that it is seeking to discredit him in front of the entire world, to sabotage his legacy, to force him to admit that his policies are wrong.' He took the document back from Jack. 'It's clear from the evidence that E-Two has abducted Alli Carson. I want all our energies concentrated on this organization.'

'Sounds like a leap of faith, rather than a leap of logic,' Jack said.

Garner squared around, bringing to bear every asset that had allowed him to climb the jungle gym of federal politics. 'Do I look like I care what it sounds like to you, McClure? Goddamnit, you're in my army now. The President of the United States has tasked me with getting Alli Carson back, alive and as quickly as is humanly possible. I'm telling you how. Either you're with us or get out of our way.'

'I'd like to see some hard evidence-'

'The E-Two cards on the bodies of our fallen soldiers aren't enough for you?' Garner rose and, with him, Nina.

The atmosphere had deteriorated from unpleasant to toxic. Jack went to the window, stood staring out at the neat manicured lawns.

He gathered himself. 'I need to see where it happened.'

'Of course.' Nina nodded. 'I'll take you.'

'I know the way.'

Garner's knife-edge smile just barely revealed the tips of white, even teeth. 'Of course you do. Nevertheless, I'll accompany you.'

SIX

LIGHT, MELANCHOLY as a ghost, tiptoed into the room through a pair of mullioned windows. It was northern light, dismal, vagrant, at this time of year almost spectral. Hugh Garner had peeled back the yellow-and-black tape that marked the boundary of the crime scene like an admonishing finger, but as he was about to step across the threshold, Jack blocked his way.

Jack snapped on latex gloves. 'How many people have been through here?'

'I don't know.' Garner shrugged. 'Maybe a dozen.'

Jack shook his head. 'It looks like a shit disco in here. You sure took your time getting me over here.'

'Everything in this 'shit disco' was tagged, photoed, and bagged without your expertise. You read the