them business-class: Ben and a vacationing travel agent.
Ben moved through first. The uniformed officer was American, and he leafed through the passport, without looking up. “Purpose of trip?”
“Business. Meetings in Boston first, then New York.”
“Ah-hah. How long do you intend to stay in the United States, sir?”
“Maybe three weeks. No longer.”
The immigration official looked through a large black book with clipped-in computerized pages. Found nothing, took his stamp, and confirmed in Ben’s passport that he had entered the United States on April 11, 2006, at the port of Shannon. In the space that was marked “Admitted until…” the officer just wrote “
Essentially, the world’s most wanted man was in the U.S.A. “Enjoy your flight, sir,” said the immigration man, handing him a customs form to be completed for Logan Airport, Boston.
Admiral MacLean was still trying to track down Douglas Anderson. He called Boodle’s in St. James’s and was irritated to find the Scottish banker was not in residence at his club, and furthermore was not expected. Then he called the Connaught Hotel, then Brown’s, with the same lack of success.
Finally, supposing that Douglas and Natalie had stayed another couple of nights in France, he called Galashiels Manor again, and asked Beresford to please ensure that Mr. Anderson called him on a matter of some urgency. Whatever time of the day or night he received the message.
Dick Saunders, the CIA chief at the Boston Station, had been on duty since 0700. In company with two field officers, Joe Pecce and Fred Corcoran, they had been combing passenger lists for incoming flights from Great Britain, especially from Scotland.
Right now was the busy time, with big jets trundling in off the Atlantic every five minutes until 1500: the morning flights from Europe. There were British Airways 747’s from Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Heathrow. There was American Airlines from Heathrow, and a North Western out of Gatwick. Virgin had one from Manchester. They were all interspersed with flights from Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, Rome, and one from Dublin-Shannon.
The three CIA observers would have their work cut out for them, as they had had every day for the past week, since the order had come down from on high to try to find a traveling Arab named Ben Adnam, probably from Scotland, maybe from England, no visa, probably under an assumed name. But each agent had a good photograph, and they placed themselves strategically in the glassed kiosks with the immigration staff, making it well-nigh impossible for
Their problem was that Ben Adnam did not have to pass through the glass kiosks into the United States. He had already completed that formality back in southern Ireland. Aer Lingus Flight 005 came in on time, 1410, and, along with the rest of the passengers, Ben walked straight through the immigration area, down the steps to the customs hall, and collected his bag.
Admiral Morgan’s last line of defense was field officer Pecce, who was down in the hall, standing at one of the main-desk search centers watching the incoming passengers from Edinburgh. Ben Adnam walked right by him, 25 feet to his left, with his head held high, bag in hand. He handed his customs form to the officer, who initialed it, and told him to present it at the door. Half a minute later he was out in the arrivals hall, taking his time, walking with his bag toward the exit.
He turned left outside the international building and headed for Terminal D, where he hoped to locate either American or United Airlines. He decided on a direct route to Kansas, and bought a ticket, no longer terribly concerned about leaving a trail.
Thus, with just one change at Kansas City, Missouri, he flew straight to Wichita, and from there took a small local flight down to Dodge City, the old Wild West town in the southwest of Kansas, a 45-mile car ride from the big ranch run by Bill and Laura Baldridge. Arnold Morgan had not yet ordered a team in to protect Bill’s household.
Ben arrived at Dodge City airport on the evening of Thursday, April 13. He rented a dark red Ford Taurus station wagon for a week, using his Scottish credit card and his British license. And he was checked into a new hotel out near the airport before2100.
At that precise time Bill and Laura were sitting alone beside the big fire in the living room, half-watching the television news, half-reading magazines. They had dined earlier that evening with both of Laura’s daughters and Bill’s mother, and they were each sipping a glass of port, a habit imported from the home of Iain MacLean in faraway Scotland.
Bill’s days were busy in the early spring, keeping track of the herds, which his brother Ray tended on a day- to-day basis, and watching the beef markets, deciding when to buy and what to sell. The warmer weather sometimes came late to the High Plains, and it was often frosty and still freezing cold when the master of the great Baldridge spread marched out onto the frozen ground before first light. Sometimes he was so tired in the evenings he could have crashed into bed at seven o’clock, but he treasured the peaceful later hours with his beautiful Scottish wife, and they always stayed up until around eleven-thirty.
They had both talked to her father this evening, and he was unusually tense, explaining to them that he still thought it possible that Ben might try to get into the United States, despite Admiral Morgan’s dragnet around the points of entry.
The veteran Royal Navy submariner begged Laura to be careful, and when he spoke to Bill he practically forbade him to allow her to be alone at any time of the day or night.
“I don’t need to tell you how dangerous, or how mad he may be,” said Admiral MacLean. “But I intend to ask Admiral Morgan to get some heavy security into the ranch within the next twenty-four hours. I simply do not consider it worth taking a chance.”
By 2130 Ben Adnam had completed a study of a detailed map of the counties that surrounded Dodge City. And there, just west of Burdett, he noted in red letters the symbol “B/B,” then, in parenthesis (Baldridge). It looked as if the main ranch buildings were right off Route 156, where the Pawnee River and Buckner Creek converged before winding down to the Arkansas River. The Scottish newspaper that had described Lt. Commander Baldridge as a farmer was right. Ben figured there were thousands and thousands of acres out there in the flat grazing land that straddles Pawnee County and Hodgeman County. “About twice the size of Baghdad,” he murmured. “It could be hard to find the house, but you couldn’t miss the land.”
Ben, dressed in his dark track suit and soft, black running shoes, left the hotel, with his bag, at around 2145, driving fast out along Route 50 from Dodge City. He turned north up 283 to Jetmore, then east, 23 miles to Burdett, the little town that sits almost on the border of Pawnee County. He checked the road signs every few minutes. They stayed consistent. There were no turns. He was running dead straight along 156.
Ben drove through the little township of Hanston, which he guessed was his halfway point from Jetmore. He checked the reading on the speedometer and resolved to start slowing down and searching after 10 more miles.
Instinct more than navigational skill guided him, and approximately one and a half miles before he reached Burdett, he made a sharp right turn into the pitch darkness of a south-running country road. Way out to the left he could see lights, and as he came to a bridge he slowed and stopped, winding down the window, and hearing the unmissable sound of a flowing river not far below.
He reversed the car, swinging backward into a gateway and heading back to Route 156, where he took the next right turn, into an equally dark country road. But there were lights dead ahead now, floodlighting the great iron gates and archway of the B/B Ranch. He could see that the entrance was closed, and that the post-and-rail fence ran right up to stone pillars guarding the entrance. He caught sight of two carved wooden longhorn steers on each post but kept going, driving at 50 mph past the B-Bar-B, where Laura lived.
He kept driving for a mile. The fence had ended, and Ben could see a clump of trees on the edge of the frosty road. He pulled off onto the grass shoulder and parked behind the trees. Then he pulled on an extra sweater, leather gloves, and a dark woolen hat. He checked that his big desert knife was firm in the back of his leather belt
