thought. Some men hated Jews; others hated the Arabs. Boyd had no use for either side. In the last fifty years, the sons of bitches had collectively cost the United States trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. Thanks to Boyd, all that was about to end.
But all he said was, “I don’t care if they can’t stand to be in the same room together. I just wish they’d learn to be in the same country together.” He let his gaze drift over the dozens of extra Secret Service personnel. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen security at the White House this tight.”
“You haven’t. And the closer we get to Halloween, the tighter it’s going to be.” Chandler cleared his throat. “I hear you advised the President against canceling either today’s reception, or the Children of the Book Conference in Miami next weekend.”
“That’s right.”
“Was that wise?”
Boyd huffed a rough laugh. “You know as well as I do how many terrorist threats we get every day. They’re always bullshit. The President leaks a few choice ones to the press, the people get nice and scared, and no one complains the next time Randolph wants to ram a special defense-spending bill through Congress. It’s a win-win situation all around.”
“I have a nasty feeling this one’s different.”
Boyd studied the long New England face of the man beside him. Gordon Chandler might be a ruthless son of a bitch, but like so many of the idiots down at Langley, he was still an effete Ivy League blueblood. “You got any new intelligence to back that up?”
Chandler dropped his voice again. “You’ve heard about U-114?”
Boyd shrugged. “Nazi subs are valuable commodities these days. I’ll be surprised if there are any left in shallow waters by the end of the decade.”
“I hope to God that’s all there is to it.”
Boyd was aware of his aide, Phillips, hovering a few feet away. Boyd gave the DCI a hearty clap on the shoulder. “I’ll tell you what, Chandler. Come next Sunday, if no crazy A-rabs have treated us to some nasty Halloween surprise, I’ll suspend my lifelong prohibition against imbibing on the Lord’s day, just so you can have the privilege of buying me a drink.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Then you can send a case of Jack Daniel’s to my funeral.”
Captain Phillips waited until the DCI had laughed and moved off. Then he took a step forward and said, “There’ve been some developments.”
Boyd drained his glass and set it aside. “It’s about time. Let’s go.”
15
Berlin, Germany: Sunday 25 October 2:05 P.M. local time
The newspaper was the latest edition of the International Herald Tribune, which told Jax nothing.
Tossing it aside, he searched Tweed Coat’s pockets, the lining of his jacket, the soles of his shoes. But the assassin was obviously a professional. Jax found a handful of euros and rubles, but no ID.
He started checking clothing labels. The guy’s jacket had come from London. His shirt was French. His shoes, Italian. A European, perhaps. Judging from the rubles, possibly a Russian. But not necessarily.
Jax sat back on his heels, his gaze going to the dead man’s gun. A Walther P99. The Russian mafia liked Walthers. But so did a lot of other people. Jax knew guys in the Company who liked to carry Walthers.
He pushed to his feet. He was getting hungry. Unwilling to take the chance of having Tweed Coat accidentally discovered by some room-service personnel, he rummaged around until he found a spare blanket on a shelf in the closet. Rolling the dead body up in blue polyester, he dragged the corpse into the closet and shut the door before dialing room service. Then he put in a call to Matt.
Matt’s voice was gravelly with concern. “I heard your flight had been canceled,” he said. “This isn’t good, Jax. It means you won’t be in Kaliningrad to meet October when she lands.”
“At the moment, babysitting Beckham’s remote viewer is the least of my problems.” The phone was encrypted, but Jax still chose his words carefully. “I had an unexpected visitor.”
There was a moment’s pause. Matt said, “Was this someone we know?”
“One of our competitors’ representatives. Fortunately I managed to convince him we had this market all sewn up, so he’s moved on to greener pastures.”
Matt groaned. “Oh, jeez; not again. Did you call Peter Davidson?”
“Petra. Petra Davidson.” Jax glanced at the closed closet doors. “My concern is, there are indications the competition found out that I was going to be working this market from our own home office. You might want to check and see if there’s been any interest in my being assigned to this area.”
“Shit. I’ll look into it.” Matt drew a deep breath. “In the meantime, be careful, okay?”
“I’m always careful.”
Matt laughed and hung up.
Jax sat for a time staring unseeingly at the phone in his hand. Then he went to pull the folder with October Guinness’s remote viewing session out of his bag. He’d been so convinced it was all a bunch of woo-woo bullshit that he hadn’t even bothered to look at the report. The arrival of Tweed Coat changed things.
He thumbed quickly through the Colonel’s report, then read the transcript of the viewing itself. Jax had witnessed one of October’s viewings last summer, and he’d done enough research on the subject to understand how RV worked…just not enough to believe in it.
He flipped to the drawings at the back of the report and felt a faint chill run up his spine. October’s sketches were rudimentary but detailed enough that Jax had no doubt he was staring at a picture of a World War II-era U- boat resting on a long, flat barge. The barge was tied up at a wharf beside a line of what looked like warehouses. To the right she had drawn a smaller corrugated metal building located about halfway up a hill; an office, perhaps. Beyond that he could see a rocky point covered with wind-stunted pines.
Jax thumbed back through the report. He wanted to think the Colonel must have given her some indication of the target, but Jax knew McClintock was too careful, too professional, to have frontloaded the viewing that way. There was little doubt that October had “seen” a U-boat. The only question was, how accurate was their interpretation that the target location was Kaliningrad? The arrival of Tweed Coat seemed to suggest that it was pretty damned accurate.
It was nearly ten o’clock, long after Jax had finished his trout amandine and put the tray outside the door, when he heard a desultory squeak, squeak coming down the hall toward his room. He’d been reading Herbert Werner’s Iron Coffins. Now he lifted his head and listened.
The squeaking stopped outside his door. He heard a murmur, followed by a knock. A female voice with the unmistakable intonations of the Bronx said, “This is Petra Davidson. I’ve got your agricultural reports.”
Setting aside his book, Jax went to open the door.
The woman standing in the corridor was short, probably no more than five foot two. She had thick dark hair she wore cropped boylike in a style that might have given her a gamin look when she was in her twenties. Now that she was in her mid-thirties, the effect was somewhat different. Her body had begun to thicken with the approach of middle age, although she still looked solid. Jax had no doubt she ran her three to five miles every morning with the same determination as she practiced regularly at the shooting range. Her dark synthetic pantsuit was eminently practical, her low-heeled pumps sensible. She was a short woman in a man’s world, which meant she had to try twice as hard and be twice as tough.
She snapped, “Jason Aldrich?”
“That’s right.” He looked beyond her, to the two burly guys in buzz haircuts pushing a big maid’s cart covered in canvas. “And these, I take it, are the Marines?”
The Marines were obviously anxious to get out of the hall. They shoved past Jax and into the room, the wheels on their maid’s cart shrieking with each revolution. Jax glanced down at the large briefcase Petra carried. Since she hadn’t known if she was being called to the scene of a shooting or a knifing or something worse, procedure
