Clear and Present Danger

brought a live American down with them. He was badly hurt, still bleeding from four wounds, and he hadn't been well handled by the Colombian gunmen. The man was young and brave, biting off his screams, shaking with the effort to control himself. Such a courageous young man, this Green Beret. Cortez would not insult his bravery with questions. Besides, he was incoherent, and Cortez had other things to do.

There was a medical team here to treat 'friendly' casualties. Cortez walked out to it and picked up a disposable syringe, filling it with morphine. He returned and stabbed the needle into a vein on the soldier's uninjured arm, pushing down on the plunger after it was in. The soldier relaxed at once, his pain extinguished by a wonderful, brief sensation of well-being. Then his breathing just stopped, and his life, too, was extinguished. Most unfortunate. Cortez could really have used men like this one, but they rarely worked for anything other than a flag. He walked over to his phone and called the proper number.

' Jefe , we eliminated one of the enemy forces last night... Yes, jefe , there were ten of them as I suspected, and we got them all. We go after another team tonight... There is one problem, jefe . The enemy fought well, and we took many casualties. I need more men for tonight's mission. S , thank you, jefe . That will do nicely. Send the men to Riosucio, and have the leaders report to me this afternoon. I will brief them here. Oh? Yes, that will be excellent. We'll be waiting for you.'

With luck, Cortez thought, the next American team would fight equally as well. With luck he could eliminate two-thirds of the Cartel's stable of gunmen in a single week. Along with their bosses, also tonight. He was on the downslope now, Cortez thought. He'd gambled dangerously and hard, but the tricky ones were behind him.

It was an early funeral. Greer had been a widower, and estranged from his wife long before that. The reason for the estrangement was next to the rectangular hole in Arlington, the simple white headstone of First Lieutenant Robert White Greer, USMC, his only son, who'd graduated from the Naval Academy and gone to Vietnam to die. Neither Moore nor Ritter had ever met the young man, and James had never kept a photo of him around the office. The former DDI had been a sentimental man but never a maudlin one. Yet he had long ago requested burial next to the grave of his son, and because of his rank and station an exception had been made and the place kept available for an event that for all men was as inevitable as it was untimely. He'd indeed been a sentimental man, but only in ways that mattered. Ritter thought that there were many explanations before his eyes. The way James had adopted several bright young people and brought them into the Agency, the interest he'd taken in their careers, the training and consideration he'd given them.

It was a small, quiet ceremony. James' few close friends were there, along with a much larger number of people from the government. Among the latter were the President - and, much to Bob Ritter's rage, Vice Admiral James A. Cutter, Jr. The President himself had spoken at the chapel service, noting the death of a man who had served his country continuously for more than fifty years, having enlisted in the U.S. Navy at seventeen, then entered the Academy, then reached two-star rank, achieving a third star for his flag after assuming his position at CIA. 'A standard of professionalism, integrity, and devotion to his country that few have equaled and none have excelled' was how the President summarized the career Vice Admiral James Greer.

And that bastard Cutter sat right there in the front row as he said it, too , Ritter told himself. He found it especially sickening as he watched the honor guard from the 3rd Infantry Regiment fold the flag that had been draped over the casket. There was no one to hand it to. Ritter had expected it to go to -

But where was Ryan? He moved his head, trying to look around. He hadn't noticed before because Jack hadn't come from Langley with the rest of the CIA delegation. The flag went to Judge Moore by default. Hands were shaken, words exchanged. Yes, it really was a mercy that he'd gone so rapidly at the end. Yes, men like this didn't appear every day. Yes, this was the end of the Greer line, and that was too bad, wasn't it? No, I never met his son, but I heard... Ritter and Moore were in the Agency Cadillac ten minutes later, heading back up the George Washington Parkway.

'Where the hell was Ryan?' the DCI asked.

'I don't know. I figured he'd drive himself in.'

Moore was not so much angered as upset by the impropriety. He still had the flag in his lap, holding it as gently as a newborn baby without knowing why - until he realized that if there really was a God, as the Baptist preachers of his youth had assured him, and if James had really had a soul, he held its best legacy in his hands. It felt warm to the touch, and though he knew that it was merely his imagination or at most the residual heat absorbed from the morning sun, the energy radiating from the flag that James had served from his teens seemed to accuse him of treachery. They had just watched a funeral this morning, but two thousand miles away there were other people whom the Agency had sent to do a job and who would not receive even the empty reward of a grave amidst others of their kind.

'Bob, what the hell have we done?' Moore asked. 'How did we ever get into this?'

'I don't know, Arthur. I just don't know.'

'James really was lucky,' the Director of Central Intelligence murmured. 'At least he went out -'

'With a clear conscience?' Ritter looked out the window, unable to bring himself to face his boss. 'Look, Arthur -' He stopped, not knowing what to say next. Ritter had been with the Agency since the fifties, had worked as a case officer, a supervisor, station chief, then head of section at Langley. He had lost case officers, had lost agents, but he'd never betrayed them. There was a first time for everything, he told himself. It had just come home to him in a very immediate way, however, that for every man there was also a first time for death, and that to meet that final accounting improperly was the ultimate cowardice, the ultimate failure of life. But what else could they do?

It was a short drive to Langley, and the car stopped before that question could be answered. They rode the elevator up. Moore walked to his office. Ritter walked to his. The secretaries hadn't returned yet. They were in a van. Ritter paced around his office until they arrived, then walked over to see Mrs. Cummings.

'Did Ryan call in or anything?'

'No, and I didn't see him at all. Do you know where he is?' Nancy asked.

'Sorry, I don't.' Ritter walked back and on impulse called Ryan's home, where all he got was an answering machine. He checked his card file for Cathy's work number and got past the secretary to her.

'This is Bob Ritter. I need to know where Jack is.'

'I don't know,' Dr. Caroline Ryan replied guardedly. 'He told me yesterday that he had to go out of town. He didn't say where.'

A chill went across Ritter's face. 'Cathy, I have to know. This is very important - I can't tell you how important. Please trust me. I have to know where he is.'

'I don't know. You mean you don't, either?' There was alarm in her voice.

Ryan knows , Ritter realized.

'Look, Cathy, I'll track him down. Don't worry or anything, okay?' The effort to calm her down was wasted, but Ritter hung up as soon as he could. The DDO walked to Judge Moore's office. The flag was centered on the DCI's desk, still folded into its triangular section, called a cocked-hat. Judge Arthur Moore, Director of Central Intelligence, was sitting quietly, staring at it.

'Jack's gone. His wife says she doesn't know where. He knows, Arthur. He knows and he's off doing something.'

'How could he have found out?'

'How the hell should I know?' Ritter thought for a moment, then waved at his boss. 'Come on.'

They walked into Ryan's office. Ritter opened the panel for Jack's wall safe and dialed in the proper combination, and nothing happened other than the fact that the warning light went on over the dial.

'Damn,' Ritter said. 'I thought that was it.'

'James's combination?'

'Yeah. You know how he was, never did like the damned things, and he probably...' Ritter looked around. He got it on the third try, pulling out the writing panel from the desk, and there it was.

'I thought I did dial the right one.' He turned and tried again. This time the light was accompanied by the goddamned beeper. Ritter turned back and checked the number again. There was some more writing on the sheet. Ritter pulled the panel farther out.

'Oh, my God.'

Moore nodded and walked to the door. 'Nancy, tell security that it's us trying to work the safe. Looks like Jack