Patriot Games

'Don't move. Just stay where you are.' He ran his hand across her flanks.

'Why?'

'You said this is the last time for a while. I don't want it to be over yet.'

'The next time you can be on top,' she promised.

'It'll be worth waiting for, but you won't be as beautiful as you are now.'

'I don't feel beautiful at the moment.'

'Cathy, you are talking to an expert,' her husband pronounced. 'I am the one person in this house who can give out a dispassionate appraisal of the pulchritude of any female human being, living or dead, and I say that you are beautiful. End of discussion.'

Cathy Ryan took her own appraisal. Her belly was disfigured by gross-looking stretch marks, her breasts were bloated and sore, her feet and ankles swollen, and her legs were knotting up from her current position. 'Jack, you are a dope.'

'She never listens,' he told the ceiling.

'It's just pheromones,' she explained. 'Pregnant women smell different and it must tickle your fancy somehow or other.'

'Then how come you're beautiful when my nose is stuffy? Answer me that!'

She reached down to twist her fingers in the hair on his chest. Jack started squirming. It tickled. 'Love is blind.'

'When I kiss you, my eyes are always open.'

'I didn't know that!'

'I know,' Jack laughed quietly. 'Your eyes are always closed. Maybe your love is blind, but mine isn't.' He ran his fingertips over her abdomen. It was still slick from the baby oil she used to moisturize her skin. Jack found this a little kinky. His fingertips traced circles on the taut, smooth surface.

'You're a throwback. You're something out of a thirties movie.' She started squirming now. 'Stop that.'

'Errol Flynn never did this in the movies,' Jack noted, without stopping that.

'They had censors then.'

'Spoilsports. Some people are just no fun.' His hands expanded their horizons. The next target was the base of her neck. It was a long reach, but worth the effort. She was shivering now. 'Now, I, on the other hand…'

'Mmmmm.'

'I thought so.'

'Uh-oh. He's awake again.'

Jack felt him almost as soon as his wife. He—she, it—was rotating. Jack wondered how a baby could do that, without anything to latch on to, but the evidence was clear, his hands felt a lump shift position. The lump was his child's head, or the opposite end. Moving. Alive. Waiting to be born. He looked up to see his wife, smiling down at him and knowing what he felt.

'You're beautiful, and I love you very much. Whether you like it or not.' He was surprised to find that there were tears in his eyes. He was even more surprised by what happened next.

'Love you, too, Jack—again?'

'Maybe that wasn't the last time for a while after all…'

23 Movement

'We got these last night.' Priorities had changed somewhat at CIA. Ryan could tell. The man going over the photos with him was going gray, wore rimless glasses and a bow tie. Garters on his sleeves would not have seemed out of place. Marty stood in the corner and kept his mouth shut. 'We figure it's one of these three camps, right?'

'Yeah, the others are identified.' Ryan nodded. This drew a snort.

'You say so, son.'

'Okay, these two are active, this one as of last week, and this one two days ago.'

'What about -20, the Action-Directe camp?' Cantor asked.

'Shut down ever since the Frenchies went in. I saw the tape of that.' The man smiled in admiration. 'Anyway, here.'

It was one of the rare daylight photographs, even in color. The firing range adjacent to the camp had six men standing in line. The angle prevented them from seeing if the men held guns or not.

'Weapons training?' Ryan asked cautiously.

'Either that or they're taking a leak by the numbers.' This was humor.

'Wait a minute, you said these came in last night.'

'Look at the sun angle,' the man said derisively.

'Oh. Early morning.'

'Around midnight our time. Very good,' the man observed. Amateurs, he thought. Everybody thinks he can read a recon photo! 'You can't see any guns, but see these little points of light here? That might be sunlight reflecting off ejected cartridge brass. Okay, we have six people here. Probably Northern Europeans because they're so pale—see this one here with the sunburn, his arm looks a little pink? All appear to be male, from the short hair and style of dress. Okay, now the question is, who the hell are they?'

'They're not Action-Directe,' Marty said.

'How do you know that?' Ryan asked.

'The ones who got picked up are no longer with us. They were given trials by military tribunal and executed two weeks ago.'

'Jesus!' Ryan turned away. 'I didn't want to know that, Marty.'

'Those who asked had clergy in attendance. I thought that was decent of our colleagues.' He paused for a moment, then went on: 'It turns out that French law allows for that sort of trial under very special circumstances. So despite what we both thought all the time, it was all done by the book. Feel better?'

'Some,' Ryan admitted on reflection. It might not have made a great deal of difference to the terrorists, but at least the formality of law had been observed, and that was one of the things «civilization» meant.

'Good. A couple sang like canaries beforehand, too. DGSE was able to bag two more members outside of Paris—this hasn't made the papers yet—plus a barnful of guns and explosives. They may not be out of business, but they've been hurt.'

'All right,' the man in the bow tie acknowledged. 'And this is the guy who tumbled to it?'

'All because he likes to see tits from three hundred miles away,' Cantor replied.

'How come nobody else saw that first?' Ryan would have preferred that someone else had done all this.

'Because there aren't enough people in my section. I just got authority to hire ten new ones. I've already got them picked out. They're people who're leaving the Air Force. Pros.'

'Okay, what about the other camp?'

'Here.' A new photo came into view. 'Pretty much the same thing. We have two people visible—'

'One's a girl,' Ryan said at once.

'One appears to have shoulder-length hair,' the photo expert agreed. He went on: 'That doesn't necessarily mean it's a girl.' Jack thought about that, looking at the figure's stance and posture.

'If we assume it's a girl, what does that tell us?' he asked Marty.

'You tell me.'

'We have no indication that the ULA has female members, but we known that the PIRA does. This is the camp—remember that jeep that was driving from one to the other and was later seen parked at this camp?' Ryan paused before going on. 0h, what the hell… He grabbed the photo of the six people on the gun range. 'This is the one.'

'And what the hell are you basing that on?' the photo-intel man asked.

'Call it a strong hunch,' Ryan replied.

'That's fine. The next time I go to the track I'll bring you along to pick my horses for me. Listen, the thing