'Well, he was,' said Martin. 'Now he is so fucking rich he does not need us anymore. But he remains on the books as an asset. He is a psychopath. He makes Saddam Hussein look like a choirboy – but he is our psychopath. And experience shows that the Agency needs psychopaths. There are things that need to be done that only people like that will do.'
'William, how do you sleep at night?' said Kilmara.
'I look at the bigger picture and count the pixels,' said Martin, 'until the whiskey cuts in.'
He stood up and stretched, then walked to the window and looked down at the street below. 'So what about Fitzduane, then?' he said. 'Is he getting involved or reverting to tourist?'
Kilmara chuckled. 'He's becoming a father in six months, so he isn't planning anything foolish. He was asked, but he turned them down. So relax. And that's hot news from the horse's mouth.'
Martin left the window and stood with his hands in his pockets looking down at Kilmara, who was still sitting back comfortably. 'You know, Shane, just between us, this whole damn thing makes me very uneasy. I'm following policy, but I think those congressional troublemakers are right. Maurice Isser is the smartest damn analyst I have ever come across, and Cochrane, Maury, and Warner make one hell of a team. If they smell something rotten, then they're right.'
'But you're not going to do anything,' said Kilmara.
'Not a damn thing,' said Martin. 'And by the way, when is your boy leaving town?'
'You sound like the sheriff,' said Kilmara, amused. 'Tomorrow all three of us are off to Fayetteville to do a little homework. I am somewhat surprised that Kathleen is coming, but I guess she will tour the area while we go to the exhibition.'
'Which Fayetteville?' said Martin. 'There is a whole raft of them in this country, all called after Lafayette, I guess. We used to like the French in those days.'
'Fayetteville, North Carolina,' said Kilmara.
'Uh-huh!' said Martin. 'Fayetteville is right next to FortBragg, home of the 82 ^ nd Airborne, Delta Force, and other peaceful people.'
'The very place,' said Kilmara. 'Not a high-crime environment like Washington. Peaceful. Lots of young men and women doing healthy things like jumping out of airplanes and learning how to survive on snakes and weevils. And we might do a little touring.'
'What's this exhibition?' said Martin.
'A sort of Ideal Homes exhibition, except the booths don't show microwaves and Japanese bread cookers. This one is focused more on my kind of work.'
'Which is what these days?' said Martin. He smiled. 'Given your advancing years and all.' He knew perfectly well what Kilmara did, but was not quite clear what he was leading up to.
'Special operations,' said General Kilmara guilelessly.
'Maury, I have never seen anything like it in my life,' said Fitzduane quite truthfully. 'That isn't a mobile home. It's a whole way of life. If it was any bigger, it could apply for statehood.'
Maury beamed. He loved to travel, and no more so that around the United States. But meeting strangers day after day was a strain. He had designed his own solution and built it himself.
'Power steering; air conditioning; quad sound; satellite dish; multichannel TV; microwave; dishwasher; three bedrooms; two showers; and four networked computers. All the comforts of a luxury condo, and it travels,' said Maury proudly.
'And you can train for the Boston Marathon while running up and down the aisle,' said Fitzduane dryly. 'Maury, this thing is HUGE! Is it legal? What does it eat? Aah!'
Kathleen retrieved her elbow from her husband's ribs. True, it was the weirdest mobile home she had ever seen, but she and Romeo y Julietta were not averse to some modest adventuring. And if two-thirds of the present family felt like that, well – Hugo could come too. It was democracy. He was outvoted.
Fitzduane had planned to fly to Fayetteville via Raleigh. Maury had pointed out that by the time they had changed planes and hung around the airport for the connection, they might as well drive. Further, he would drive them. He had met Kathleen and it had been devotion at first sight. He was, he had announced, instantly enslaved.
Neither Fitzduane nor Kathleen found any reason to disbelieve him. Maury, once he had broken through the initial contact barrier, was proving to be no fan of moderation. On the other hand, he was a marvelous companion and had snippets of information about practically everywhere and everything.
General Shane Kilmara was more dubious. He had reached the stage in life where he had a sense of order. But he was prevailed upon. America, he had found, had that kind of effect on him. The impossible suddenly seemed possible.
They set out for North Carolina with Maury acting as a human guidebook. As they passed one Civil War site after another, Kathleen was strangely moved.
'It's all so much and it's all so close,' she said quietly. 'It has an effect. You can see – feel – why they fought. I'll never feel quite the same about the South again.' She wanted to cry. There were reasons why people fought and died, and some of them were good reasons. She reached out for her husband's hand and grasped it, and he put his arm around her and hugged her to him.
General Shane Kilmara, who had seen more of war than most, felt exactly the same way as he looked out through tinted picture windows.
He had been there before, and he always did. He was reminded of a visit to ArlingtonNationalCemetery just south of the Pentagon and within no distance at all of Washington, D.C. The graveyard had originally been Robert E. Lee's home until a Northerner, disgusted by the bloodshed, had made sure Lee would never return again by using the immediate surrounds of the house in which to bury the dead. The cherry orchards were cut down and it became the NationalCemetery.
Not far from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Kilmara had found an impressive monument erected to the memory of the Southern dead and had expressed some surprise. This had started, after all, as a Northern graveyard, and the South were the vanquished. Yet their dead, the enemy, were honored and within living memory of the war itself.
'Don't be surprised, General,' his guide, a young lieutenant from the Old Guard, had said. 'It's appropriate, sir. You're standing in Virginia.'
6
Dana and Texas watched Maury's custom-built mobile home pull into the forecourt of the BastogneInn amp; ConferenceCenter in Fayetteville with some relief. They had been assigned by Lee Cochrane to keep an eye on the Fitzduane party and had followed them down all the way from Washington. They had not enjoyed the scenery. On the open road they considered that goddamn mobile home too damn vulnerable.
They could not figure out why four sensible adults who all knew they were potential terrorist targets should expose themselves in this way. They had finally come to the correct conclusion that even if you were a target you had to try for some semblance of a normal existence or life would scarcely be worth living. You would be a prisoner. It was the same thinking that had kept the security down to two. Still, however understandable that was, it was tough on your bodyguards.
A vast sign reading ‘The Spec-Forces Show’ was festooned across the front of the hotel. A large sticker in the rear window of a pickup advised: 'Special Operations Exhibition – Don't Drink amp; Drive: You Might Spill Your Drink.’ Another simply read: ‘I Don't Brake For Terrorists.’
Dana, who had been driving, glanced across at Texas. 'Boys will be boys,' she said. 'I guess we're in the right place.'
Texas rubbed her eyes. Following a vehicle was exhausting. You were not only keeping an eye on it, but you had to both look out for potential trouble and remember your own security. And that meant covering your ass. She
