'Oh, it has nothing to do with them as such,' said Kilmara. 'It has to do with families and backgrounds and the like. For instance, included in the Draker seventeen at present are a minor Saudi princeling – and there're thousands of those knocking around – a cousin of the Kennedy clan, two children of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, the son of a Japanese automobile tycoon… Well, you get the drift.'
'How about Rudi von Graffenlaub and the girl, Toni Hoffman?'
'In our baby computer system, nada,' said Kilmara. 'But that doesn't mean there shouldn't have been. It's a rough-and-ready classification. Deciding who might be a terrorist or criminal target is very much a matter of judgment. To make life more confusing, fashions change in the terrorist business. It's politicians during one phase and businessmen the next. For all I know, it will be garbage collectors after that – or pregnant mothers. It's all show biz in this game. It's the media impact that counts.'
'So what do you do about these PTs, apart from giving them a couple of initials on computer input?'
'Well,' said Kilmara, 'if one of them drowns in the municipal swimming pool, we drain it a bit faster, but that's about the size of it. Basically it's the government contribution to the media game. It's called taking every reasonable precaution. It helps to cover the official ass if something does happen.'
'Were you always so cynical?' said Fitzduane, 'or did someone salt your baby food?'
Kilmara turned his cigarette lighter into a small flamethrower to work on his pipe. Success achieved, he stood up from his chair and walked across to a whiteboard screwed to the wall. He picked up a black dry-wipe felt pen and started to write.
'You find it odd, Hugo, that we don't do much more? Well, let me throw a few figures at you. They're a little rough, but they're accurate enough to make the point, and the same situation applies to most other Western European countries.'
'We have about ten thousand police in this country to deal with about three and a half million people. Police work is a twenty-four-hour-a-day business and involves a great many things other than guarding against terrorism, so at any one time the force would be stretched to the extreme to free up from routine duties any more than a thousand, and even that would mean drawing manpower from all over Ireland. In the wee hours manpower resources are even more limited. At such times it's an interesting thought that the entire country's internal security is looked after by a mere few hundred.
'Now, to set against the resources I've described – and I have left the army out of the equation to keep things simple – we have more than eight thousand names classified ‘PT’ or higher, and remember ‘PT’ is only a judgment. We could probably triple that number if we did our homework. Now, it takes at least six trained personnel to provide reasonable security for one target. That means we would need a minimum total of forty-eight thousand trained bodyguards.
'We don't have them. We can't afford them. And we really don't need them. As I have mentioned before, there just aren't that many terrorist incidents – just enough to keep the likes of Gunther and me in reading and drinking money.'
'Amen to that,' said Gunther. He closed his copy of the book he had been reading, Winnie-the-Pooh, with a snap. 'Great book,' he said. 'No sex and no violence. I'd be out of a job in Pooh Corner.'
'Shut up and have a drink,' said Kilmara, 'and let's see if we can make some sense out of our Wiesbaden friends' enigmatic communication.'
'Wiesbaden?' asked Fitzduane. 'How does Wiesbaden enter the picture?'
Kilmara slid open the top drawer of his desk and removed his service automatic. Fitzduane noticed with some relief that the safety was on.
Kilmara gestured with his pistol. 'People think this is how we fight terrorism. Not so.' He tossed the weapon back into the drawer and closed it with a flourish. 'Firepower plays a part, of course, but the real secret is intelligence, and the key to that, these days, is the computer.'
He looked across at Gunther. 'You tell him, Gunther. It's your Heimat, and you like the things.'
'Wiesbaden is the headquarters of the BKA, the Bundeskriminalamt,' said Gunther. 'The BKA is, very roughly, the German equivalent of the FBI. It has primary responsibility for counterterrorism, with my old outfit, GSG-9, providing muscle when terrorists have been identified and located. The BKA has been very successful at hunting down terrorists, and one of the secrets of this success is the Wiesbaden computer' – he grinned – ”better known as the Kommissar.'
'It's quite an installation,' interjected Kilmara. 'I was there a year or so ago. It's all glass and concrete and sits on a hill that, appropriately enough, used to be a place of execution. More than three thousand acolytes feed the beast in Wiesbaden alone, and the budget runs to hundred of millions of deutsche marks. They don't just record information. The positively vacuum it up. Names, descriptions, addresses, relatives, ancestors, contacts, personal habits, food preferences, sexual idiosyncrasies, speech patterns – you name it, anything that might in some way contribute to the hunt gets entered.'
'Twelve million constantly updated files, and the number is climbing,' said Gunther with pride.
George Orwell's 1984 has arrived, thought Fitzduane. It just hasn't been noticed. He took the whiskey Kilmara had poured him.
'Very interesting,' he said, 'but what has the Kommissar go to do with my modest investigation?'
Kilmara held up his glass. ' Slainte!'
' Prosit!' said Gunther, similarly equipped.
'Ole!' said Fitzduane a little sourly. Games were being played.
Kilmara slid a file across the desk. 'One of the twelve million,' he said. 'Reads kind of sanitized.'
Fitzduane picked up the thin file. It was labeled: RUDOLF VON GRAFFENLAUB (DECEASED).
7
The young German tourist and his pretty Italian girlfriend had flown into Dublin the night before not he direct Swissair flight from Zurich. The German checked his Japanese watch when they landed. In the predictable, boring way of the Swiss, the flight had been on time.
At the Avis desk in the arrivals area they rented a small, navy blue Ford Escort for a period of one week at the off-season rate. They opted for unlimited mileage and full insurance. They identified themselves as Dieter Kretz, aged twenty-four, from Hamburg, and Tina Brugnoli, aged nineteen, from Milan. They paid their deposit in cash.
Armed with maps, guidebooks, and copious directions, Dieter and Tina drove into the center of Dublin and checked into a double room at the Royal Dublin Hotel on
O'Connell Street . They ate in the hotel restaurant and retired early. A fly on the wall would have noticed that they spoke little as they undressed, and thought they slept together naked in the large double bed, they did not make love.
When Dieter awoke in the morning, he could hear Tina in the bathroom. The door was open, and light spilled into the curtained bedroom. He threw back the bedclothes and stretched like a cat, his both lithe and strong, his chest covered with curly black hair. A thick black mustache drooped above shining white teeth. He looked with pleasure at his penis jutting hard and erect. Moisture gleamed at the tip of his organ, and it was throbbing, crying out for relief.
He rose from the bed and walked the few paces to the bathroom. Tina's hair was tied loosely on top of her head, and she was bent over the basin. Her young body was olive gold in color, and she was naked except for skimpy black panties. He could see the down on the back of her neck. He rested his fingers on the top of the cleft of her buttocks and slowly moved them down, taking the black panties with them. He pushed the thin panties down to just above her knees.
Tina scarcely stirred. She gripped the sides of the basin with long, slim hands as he slowly parted the cheeks of her buttocks and then there was the sweet small and cool, smooth touch of hand cream. She gave a muffled cry when he entered her constricted passage, and her knuckles turned white as she gripped the basin. She sucked on his finger. There was so much pain and so much pleasure. It was the way of the Circle. It was so ordained in the Grimoire.
It was so enforced by the Leader.
