Patriot Games

to have to face that particular question. If forced, he'd just say no, and that would kill his chance to get into Langley.

'I understand. Take your time. When do you want to come over?'

Why are you making it so easy? 'Could I come over tomorrow morning? My first class isn't until two in the afternoon.'

'No problem. Be at the main gate at eight in the morning. They'll be waiting for you. See ya.'

'Goodbye, sir.' Jack hung up.

Well, that was easy. Too easy, Jack thought. What's he up to? Ryan dismissed the thought. He wanted to look at what CIA had. They might have stuff the FBI didn't; at the least he'd get a look at more data than he had now, and Jack wanted to do that.

Nevertheless the drive home was a troubled one. Jack watched his rearview mirror after remembering that he'd left the Academy the same way he always did. The hell of it was, he did see familiar cars. That was a problem with making your commute about the same time every day. There were at least twenty cars that he had learned to recognize. There was someone's secretary driving her Camaro Z-28. She had to be a secretary. She was dressed too well to be anything else. Then there was the young lawyer in his BMW—the car made him a lawyer, Ryan thought, wondering how he had ever assigned tags to his fellow commuters. What if a new one shows up? he wondered. Will you be able to tell which one is a terrorist? Fat chance, he knew. Miller, for all the danger that lay on his face, would look ordinary enough with a jacket and tie, just another state employee fighting his way up Route 2 into Annapolis…

'Paranoid, all this is paranoid,' Ryan murmured to himself. Pretty soon he'd check the rear seat in his car before he got in, to see if someone might be lurking back there like on TV, with a pistol or garrote! He wondered if the whole thing might be a stupid, paranoid waste of time. What if Dan Murray just had a bug up his ass or was simply being cautious? The Bureau probably taught its men to be cautious on these things, he was sure. Do I scare Cathy over this? What if that's all there is to it?

What if it's not?

That's why I'm going to go to Langley tomorrow, Ryan answered himself.

They sent Sally to bed at 8:30, dressed in her bunny-rabbit sleeper, the flannel pajamas with feet that keep kids warm through the night. She was getting a little old for that, Jack thought, but his wife insisted on them, since their daughter had a habit of kicking the blankets on the floor in the middle of the night.

'How was work today?' his wife asked.

'The mids gave me a medal,' he said, and explained on for a few minutes. Finally he pulled the Order of the Purple Target out of his briefcase. Cathy found it amusing. The smiling stopped when he related the visit from Mr. Shaw of the FBI. Jack ran through the information, careful to include everything the agent had said.

'So, he doesn't really think it'll be a problem?' she asked hopefully.

'We can't ignore it.'

Cathy turned away for a moment. She didn't know what to make of this new information. Of course, her husband thought. Neither do I.

'So what are you going to do?' she asked finally.

'For one thing I'm going to call an alarm company and have the house wired. Next, I've already put my shotgun back together, and it's loaded—'

'No, Jack, not in this house, not with Sally around,' Cathy said at once.

'It's on the top shelf in my closet. It's loaded, but it doesn't have a round chambered. She can't possibly get to it, not even with a stool to stand on. It stays loaded, Cathy. I'm also going to start practicing some with it, and maybe get a pistol, too. And' — he hesitated—'I want you to start shooting, too.'

'No! I'm a doctor, Jack. I don't use guns.'

'They don't bite,' Jack said patiently. 'I just want you to meet a guy I know who teaches women to shoot. Just meet the guy.'

'No.' Cathy was adamant. Jack took a deep breath. It would take an hour to persuade her, that was the usual time required for her common sense to overcome her prejudices. The problem was, he didn't want to spend an hour on the subject right now.

'So you're going to call the alarm company tomorrow morning?' she asked.

'I have to go somewhere.'

'Where? You don't have any classes until after lunch.'

Ryan took a deep breath. 'I'm going over to Langley.'

'What's at Langley?'

'The CIA,' Jack answered simply.

'What?'

'Remember last summer? I got that consulting money from Mitre Corporation?'

'Yeah.'

'All the work was at CIA headquarters.'

'But—you said over in England that you never—'

'That's where the checks came from. That's who I was working for. But CIA was where I was working at.'

'You lied?' Cathy was astounded. 'You lied in a courtroom?'

'No. I said that I was never employed by CIA, and I wasn't.'

'But you never told me.'

'You didn't need to know,' Jack replied. I knew this wasn't a good idea…

'I'm your wife, dammit! What were you doing there?'

'I was part of a team of academics. Every few years they bring in outsiders to look at some of their data, just as sort of a check on the regular people who work there. I'm not a spy or anything. I did all the work sitting at a little desk in a little room on the third floor. I wrote a report, and that was that.' There was no sense in explaining the rest to her.

'What was the report about?'

'I can't say.'

'Jack!' She was really mad now.

'Look, babe, I signed an agreement that I would never discuss the work with anybody who wasn't cleared—I gave my word, Cathy.' That calmed her down a bit. She knew that her husband was a real stickler for keeping his word. It was actually one of the things she loved about him. It annoyed her that he used this as a defense, but she knew that it was a wall she couldn't breach. She tried another tack.

'So why are you going back?'

'I want to see some information they have. You ought to be able to figure out what that information is.'

'About these ULA people, then.'

'Well, let's just say that I'm not worried about the Chinese right now.'

'You really are worried about them, aren't you?' She was starting to worry, finally.

'Yeah, I guess I am.'

'But why? You said the FBI said they weren't—'

'I don't know—hell, yes, I do know. It's that Miller bastard, the one at the trial. He wants to kill me.' Ryan looked down at the floor. It was the first time he'd said it aloud.

'How do you know that?'

'Because I saw his face, Cathy. I saw it, and I'm scared—not just for me.'

'But Sally and I—'

'Do you really think he cares about that?' Ryan snapped angrily. 'These bastards kill people they don't even know. They almost do it for fun. They want to change the world into something they like, and they don't give a damn who's in the way. They just don't care.'

'So why go to the CIA? Can they protect you—us—I mean…'

'I want a better feel for what these guys are all about.'

'But the FBI knows that, don't they?'

'I want to see the information for myself. I did pretty good when I worked there,' Jack explained. 'They even