'It's not fun,' Clark agreed.
'Ever run in a race like this?'
'No.' John shook his head. 'But I've had to run away from things in my time, mainly Vietnam. It was pretty hot there, too.'
'You were there?' Popov asked.
'A year and a half's worth. Third SOG-Special Operations Group.'
'Doing what?'
'Mainly looking and reporting. Some real operations, raids, assassinations, that sort of thing, taking out people we really didn't like.' Thirty years ago, John thought. Thirtyyears. He'd given his youth to one conflict, and his manhood to another, and now, in his approaching golden years, what would he be doing? Was it really possible, what Popov had told him? It seemed so unreal, but the Ebola scare had been real as hell. He remembered flying all over the world about that one, and he remembered the news coverage that had shaken his country to its very foundations-and he remembered the terrible revenge that America had taken as a result. Most of all, he remembered lying with Ding Chavez on the flat roof of a Tehran dwelling and guiding two smart-bombs in to take the life of the man responsible for it all, in the first application of the president's new doctrine. But if this were real, if this 'project' that Popov had told them about were what he said it was, then what would his country do? Was it a matter for law enforcement or something else? Would you put people like this on trial? If not, then-what? Laws hadn't been written for crimes of this magnitude, and the trial would be a horrid circus, spreading news that would shake the foundations of the entire world. That one corporation could have the power to do such a thing as this…
Clark had to admit to himself that his mind hadn't expanded enough to enclose theentire thought. He'd acted upon it, but not really accepted it. It was too big a concept for that.
'Dmitriy, why did you say they are doing this?'
'John Clark, they are druids, they are people who worship nature as though it were a god. They say that the animals belong in places, but people do not. They say they want to restore nature-and to do that they are willing to kill all of mankind. This is madness, I know, but it is what they told me. In my room in Kansas, they have videotapes and magazines that proclaim these beliefs. I never knew such people existed. They say that nature hates us, that the planet hates us for what we-all men-have done. But the planet has no mind, and nature has no voice with which to speak. Yet they believe that they do have these things. It's amazing,' the Russian concluded. 'It is as if I have found a new, mad religious movement whose god requires our deaths, human sacrifice, whatever you wish to call it.' He waved his hands in frustration at his inability to understand it.
'Do we know what this guy Gearing looks like?' Noonan asked.'No,' Chavez said. 'Nobody told me. I suppose Colonel Wilkerson knows, but I didn't want to ask him.'
'Christ, Ding, is this whole thing possible?' the FBI agent asked next.
'I guess we'll know in a few hours, man. I know something like this happened once before, and I know John and I helped take out the bastard who did it to us. On the technical side, I'd have to ask Patsy about it. I don't know biology. She does.'
'Jesus,' Noonan concluded, looking over at the entrance to the pump room. The three of them headed over to a concession area and got half-liter cups of Coca-Cola, then sat down to watch the blue-painted door. People walked past it, but nobody actually approached it.
'Tim?'
'Yeah, Ding?'
'Do you have arrest powers for this?'
The FBI agent nodded. 'I think so, conspiracy to commit murder, the crime originated in America, and the subject is an American citizen, so, yes, that should hold up. I can take it a step further. If we kidnap his ass and bring him to America, the courts don't care how somebody got there. Once he's in front of a United States District Court judge, how he came to be there doesn't interest the court at all.'
'How the hell do we get him out of the country?' Chavez wondered next. He activated his cell phone.
Clark picked up the STU-4's receiver. It took five seconds for Ding's encryption system to handshake with his. A computerized voice finally said Line is secure, followed by two beeps. 'Yeah?'
'John, it's Ding. I got a question.'
'Shoot.'
'If we bag this Gearing guy, then what? How the hell do we get him back to America?'
'Good question. Let me work on that.'
'Right.' And the line went dead. The logical place to call was Langley, but, as it turned out, the DCI was not in his office. The call was routed to his home.
'John, what the hell is going on down there, anyway?' Ed Foley asked from his bed.
Clark told the DCI what he knew. That took about five minutes. 'I have Ding staking out the only place this can be done, and-'
'Jesus Christ, John, is this for real?' Ed Foley asked, somewhat breathlessly.
'We'll know if this Gearing guy shows up with a package containing the bug, I suppose,' Clark replied. 'If he does, how do we get Ding, his people, and this Gearing guy back to the States?'
'Let me work on that. What's your number?' John gave it to him and Ed Foley wrote it down on a pad. 'How long have you known about this?'
'Less than two hours. The Russian guy is right here with me. We're in an FBI safe house in New York City.'
'Is Carol Brightling implicated in this?'
'I'm not sure. Her ex-husband sure as hell is,' Clark answered.
Foley closed his eyes and thought. 'You know, she called me about you guys a while back, asked a couple of questions. She's the one who shook the new radios loose from E-Systems. She talked to me as though she was briefed in on Rainbow.'
'She's not on my list, Ed,' John pointed out. He'd personally approved all of the people cleared into the Rainbow compartment.
'Yeah, I'll look at that, too. Okay, let me check around and get back to you.'
'Right.' Clark replaced the receiver. 'We have an FBI guy with the Sydney team,' he told the others.
'Who?' Sullivan asked.'Tim Noonan. Know him?'
'Used to be tech support with HRT?'
Clark nodded. 'That's the guy.'
'I've heard about him. Supposed to be pretty smart.'
'He is. He saved our ass in Hereford, probably my wife and daughter, too.'
'So, he can arrest this Gearing mutt, nice and legal.'
'You know, I've never worried all that much about enforcing the law-mainly I enforce policy, but not law.'
'I suppose things are a little different with the Agency, eh?' Sullivan asked, with a smile. The James Bond factor never really goes away, even with people who are supposed to know better.
'Yeah, some.'
Gearing left his hotel, carrying a backpack like many of the other people on the street, and flagged a cab just outside. The marathon was about half an hour from its conclusion. He found himself looking around at the crowded sidewalks and all the people on them. The Australians seemed a friendly people, and what he'd seen of their country was pleasant enough. He wondered about the aborigines, and what might happen to them, and the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, and other such tribal groupings around the world, so removed from normal life that they wouldn't be exposed to Shiva in any way. If fate smiled upon them, well, he decided, that was okay with him. These kinds of people didn't harm Nature in any way, and they were insufficiently numerous to do harm even if they wanted to, which they didn't, worshipping the trees and the thunder as the Project members did. Were there enough of them to be a problem? Probably not. The Bushmen might spread out, but their folkways wouldn't allow them to change their tribal character very much, and though they'd increase somewhat in number, they'd probably not even do much of that. The same with the 'abos' of Australia. There hadn't been many of them before the Europeans had arrived, after all, and they'd had millennia to sweep over the continent. So the Project would spare many people, wouldn't it? It was vaguely comforting to the retired colonel that Shiva would kill only those whose
