ask me.”

There was a pause while Thorn digested the renewed warning.

“Understood, Sam,” he said finally. “We’ll lie up here in the shade until the heat dies down.”

“Smart move.” Farrell stood up. “I’m heading out the door now.”

After hanging up, he went into the master bedroom and pulled open the nightstand drawer closest to his side of the bed.

Inside lay a 9mm Beretta, a spare magazine, and a Milt Sparks holster that fit inside the waistband of his pants. As a former commander of all the U.S. military’s counterterrorist units, he’d found it remarkably easy to obtain a special federal concealed weapons permit.

Sam Farrell strongly doubted he’d need the pistol, but he’d listened too closely to Peter Thorn’s accounts of the nightmare ambushes at Pechenga and Wilhelmshaven to take anything for granted. And more than three decades of active Army service had taught him the wisdom of the old Boy Scout motto—“Be Prepared.” Hand-to- hand combat might work out okay for Peter and Helen in a pinch, but he preferred to be ready to meet trouble with three or four steeljacketed slugs.

Planning Cell, Caraco Complex, Chantilly, Virginia (D MINUS 4)

Rolf Ulrich Reichardt listened intently, trying to ferret out the hidden subtext from the welter of moronic American banalities and idioms. He turned to Jopp. “Rewind the tape.”

The wiry sound specialist nodded and flipped another series of switches on his equipment.

Reichardt heard the conversation begin. Halfway through he saw Ibrahim appear at the door. The Saudi prince spent two or three hours each day at the complex now — monitoring each phase as the Operation came ever closer to fruition.

The German said nothing and kept listening, letting the voices play their childish dance of secret codes all over again.

When the tape ended he pulled off the headphones.

“Well, Herr Reichardt, what is your report?” Ibrahim asked sharply.

“Hashemi said you had news of our friend, General Farrell.”

“Yes, Highness,” Reichardt said. He offered the other man the headphones and signaled Jopp to recue the phone intercept. “We picked up this telephone call on the American’s private line an hour or so ago.”

Ibrahim heard it through himself in growing impatience. He looked up.

“What of it? Farrell arranges dinner with this man Carlson and his wife? Of what possible significance is that?”

“That is what we are meant to think, Highness,” Reichardt said calmly.

He nodded at Jopp. “But then our clever friend here ran the conversation through his little black boxes — as a precaution.”

“And?”

“Both men are lying,” Reichardt answered.

“To each other?” Ibrahim sounded surprised.

The ex-Stasi officer shook his head. “To any potential eavesdroppers.”

He smiled, a hunter’s grim smile. “General Farrell knows that the FBI wishes to arrest his two friends. Given that, he must suspect his telephones have been tapped by the authorities.

These cheerful idiocies are obviously a rough, shorthand code to arrange a rendezvous.”

“You believe this Carlson is actually Colonel Thorn? And that he and the woman Gray are now quartered in a safe house somewhere in this area?”

“Yes, Highness, that is what I believe,” Reichardt said. Nothing else made sense. Somehow Farrell had smuggled his proteges back into the United States — evading the arrest order issued by the FBI.

“And their intentions?”

“I cannot predict precisely what they will do next,” Reichardt admitted. “We can hope that your assurances to General Farrell will delay any further effort on their part. But prudence demands we assume they will again try to contact those with power in their own government — undoubtedly using Farrell as a go-between.”

Ibrahim shook his head. “I find that possibility unacceptable, Herr Reichardt. There is an old proverb, “News shouted loudly enough from the rooftops will not always fall on deaf ears.”

The ex-Stasi officer nodded grimly. “True, Highness. And General Farrell’s evident ability to smuggle these two back into the United States, right under the nose of the FBI, testifies both to his persistence and his residual power. Such a man is very dangerous.”’

He turned as Johann Brandt approached. “Well?”

“The American is definitely on his way to a covert rendezvous, sir,” the tall, powerfully built man replied. “He left his house forty-five minutes ago and drove to the closest Metro station.”

Reichardt read the faint hesitation in his subordinate’s voice.

“Harzer lost him there, didn’t he?”

Brandt nodded reluctantly. “Yes, sir. Parking was difficult. By the time Max got to the platform, Farrell had already boarded a train. The American apparently timed it perfectly.”

Unfortunate. The Metro system sprawled over two states and the entire District of Columbia. There were dozens of stations along its five interconnecting lines. Essentially, Farrell had now vanished into one of the world’s largest haystacks. Reichardt risked a quick glance at Ibrahim.

The Saudi prince stared back at him dispassionately — an expression the German found somehow more worrying than even an open display of anger.

“What now, Herr Reichardt? Do we simply admit defeat and pray to Allah that our enemies sit idly by until it is too late?”

“No, Highness,” Reichardt said, thinking rapidly. The outline of a basic plan flowed into his consciousness with lightning speed.

“Farrell will reemerge. He must — if he is to function as a go-between. More to the point, the general is still a lawabiding man — despite his recent defiance of the FBI. Given that basic fact, PEREGRINE should prove of great use in persuading Farrell to bring Colonel Thorn and his female associate within our reach.”

The German smiled coldly. “After all, why not kill four birds with one stone — instead of just two?”

Ibrahim nodded in both understanding and approval. “Let it be so. And do it today. These people have already diverted too much of our time, energy, and resources.”

The Madison Inn, Washington, D.C.

The Madison Inn had rooms spread across three adjoining Victorian town houses — all located on the same treelined culdesac within blocks of the Woodley Park Zoo. The bed-and-breakfast was quiet, discreet, and reasonably priced. Peter Thorn and Helen Gray had managed to secure a third-story corner room with a good view of the whole street.

Sam Farrell took the staircase two steps at a time — pleased to notice that he wasn’t winded when he reached the top landing.

All those years of calisthenics were paying off — even in retirement.

Thorn opened the door at his first knock and ushered him inside with a strained smile and a quick, firm handshake. Helen turned from the window where she’d obviously been keeping watch. She hurried over and hugged him tightly with a whispered “Thank you” in his ear.

Farrell took the chair they offered him and waited until they were both sitting down. He studied them carefully, noting the signs of surface fatigue and deep-seated worry. “You two look a little wrung-out. Something go wrong on the way from Ramstein?”

“Almost,” Thorn said quietly. “I nearly walked us right into the Dover brig …”

Farrell listened while they filled him in on their narrow escape and the comparatively uneventful train trip down to Union Station.

When they finished, he shook his head. “That was a little more nip-and-tuck than I’d planned. You were lucky, Pete.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you’re here and that’s what counts.”

“Does it?” Helen asked in a soft voice. “We’re still wanted by our own people. And we’re not any closer to nailing the bad guys we’re chasing — not unless you’ve pulled a rabbit out of the hat in the last couple of days,

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