waiting for help that ain't gonna come.'
'How can I reach you?' Clark gave him a number. 'Okay, I'll be back to you in a few hours.'
'Let's not screw around.' The line clicked off.
'Jesus.' Jack looked into the shadows of his library. He called his office to say that he'd drive himself into work. Then he called Dan Murray.
Ryan was back in the FBI building underpass sixty minutes later. Murray was waiting for him and took him back upstairs. Shaw was there, too, and much-needed coffee was passed out.
'Our field guy called me at home. VARIABLE has been shut down, and the helicopter crew that was supposed to bring them out has been pulled. He thinks they're going to be - hell, he thinks -'
'Yeah,' Shaw observed. 'If so, we now have a probable violation of the law. Conspiracy to commit murder. Proving it might be a little tough, though.'
'Stuff your law - what about those soldiers?'
'How do we get them out?' Murray asked. 'Get help from - no, we can't get the Colombians involved, can we?'
'How do you think they'd react to an invasion from a foreign army?' Shaw noted. 'About the same way we would.'
'What about confronting Cutter?' Jack asked. Shaw answered.
'Confront him with what? What do we have? Zip. Oh, sure, we can get those communications guys and the helicopter crews and talk to them, but they'll stonewall for a while, and then what? By the time we have a case, those soldiers are dead.'
'And if we can bring them out, then what case do we have?' Murray asked. 'Everybody runs for cover, papers get shredded...'
'If I may make a suggestion, gentlemen, why don't we forget about courtrooms for the moment and try to concentrate on getting those grunts the hell out of Indian country?'
'Getting them out is fine, but -'
'You think your case will get better with thirty or forty new victims?' Ryan snapped. 'What is the objective here?'
'That was a cheap shot, Jack,' Murray said.
'Where's your case? What if the President authorized the operation, with Cutter as his go-between, and there's no written orders? CIA acted in accordance with verbal orders, and the orders are arguably legal, except that I got told to mislead Congress if they ask,
'You left something out,' Murray observed.
'Yeah, the most obvious reply from Cutter is that this isn't a covert operation at all, but a paramilitary counterterrorist op. That evades the whole issue of intelligence-oversight. Now we come under the War Powers Resolution, which has another lead-time factor. Have any of these laws ever been tested in court?'
'Not really,' Shaw answered. 'There's been a lot of dancing around, but nothing actually on point. War-Powers especially is a constitutional question that both sides are afraid to put in front of a judge. Where are you coming from, Ryan?'
'I got an agency to protect, don't I? If this adventure goes public, the CIA reverts back to what it was in the seventies. For example, what happens to your counterterrorist programs if the info we feed you dries up?' That one scored points, Jack saw. CIA was the silent partner in the war on terrorism, feeding most of its data to the Bureau, as Shaw had every reason to know. 'On the other hand, from what we've talked about the last couple of days, what real case do you have?'
'If by withdrawing support for SHOWBOAT, Cutter made it easier for Cortez to kill them, we have a violation of the District of Columbia law against conspiracy to commit murder. In the absence of a federal law, a crime committed on federal property can be handled by the municipal law that applies to the violation. Some part of what he did was accomplished here or on other federal property, and that's where the jurisdiction comes from. That's how we investigated the cases back in the seventies.'
'What cases were they?' Jack asked Shaw.
'It spun out of the Church Committee hearings. We investigated assassination plots by CIA against Castro and some others - they never came to trial. The law we would have used was the conspiracy statute, but the constitutional issues were so murky that the investigation died a natural death, much to everyone's relief.'
'Same thing here, isn't it? Except while we fiddle...'
'You've made your point,' the acting Director said. 'Number one priority is getting them out, any way we can. Is there a way to do it covertly?'
'I don't know yet.'
'Look, for starters let's get in touch with your field officer,' Murray suggested.
'He doesn't -'
'He gets immunity, anything he wants,' Shaw said at once. 'My word on it. Hell, far as I can tell he hasn't really broken any laws anyway - because of Martinez-Barker - but you have my word, Ryan, no harm comes to him.'
'Okay.' Jack pulled the slip of paper from his shirt pocket. The number Clark had given him wasn't a real number, of course, but by adding and subtracting to the digits in a prearranged way, the call went through.
'This is Ryan. I'm calling from FBI Headquarters. Hold on and listen.' Jack handed the phone over.
'This is Bill Shaw. I'm acting Director. Number one, I just told Ryan that you are in the clear. My word: no action goes against you. Will you trust me on that? Good.' Shaw smiled in no small surprise. 'Okay, this is a secure line, and I presume that your end is the same way. I need to know what you think is going on, and what you think we can do about it. We know about the kids, and we're looking for a way to get them out. From what Jack tells us, you might have some ideas. Let's hear them.' Shaw punched the speaker button on his phone, and everyone started taking notes.
'How fast do you think we can have the radios set up?' Ryan wondered when Clark had finished.
'The technicians start getting in around seven-thirty, figure by lunch. What about transport?'
'I think I can handle that,' Jack said. 'If you want covert, I can arrange covert. It means letting somebody else in, but it's somebody we can trust.'
'No way we can talk to them?' Shaw asked Clark, whose name he didn't yet know.
'Negative,' the speaker said. 'You sure you can pull it off on your end?'
'No, but we can give it a pretty good try,' Shaw replied.
'See you tonight, then.' The line clicked off.
'Now all we have to do is steal some airplanes,' Murray thought aloud. 'Maybe a ship, too? So much the better if we bring it off covertly, right?'
'Huh?' That one threw Ryan. Murray explained.
Admiral Cutter emerged from his house at 6:15 for his daily jog. He headed downhill toward the river and chugged along the path paralleling the George Washington Parkway. Inspector O'Day followed. A reformed smoker, the inspector had no problems keeping up, and watched for anything unusual, but nothing appeared. No messages passed, no dead-drops laid, just a middle-aged man trying to keep fit. Another agent picked him up as Cutter turned for home. O'Day would change and be ready to follow Cutter into work, wondering if he'd spot some unusual behavior there.
Jack showed up for work at the usual hour, looking as tired as he felt. The morning conference in Judge Moore's office began at 8:30, and for once there was a full crew, though there might as well not have been. The DCI and DDO, he saw, were quiet, nodding but not taking very many notes.
These were - well, not friends, Ryan thought. Admiral Greer had been a friend and mentor. But Judge Moore had been a good boss, and though he and Ritter had never really gotten along, the DDO had never treated him unfairly. He had to give them one more chance, Jack told himself impulsively. When the conference ended, he was slow picking up his things while the others left. Moore caught the cue, as did Ritter.
'Jack, you want to say something?'
