by Tom Clancy
“Mr. Atkinson, if it makes you feel any better, I have gone over that again and again for the past four weeks. If I’d had more time to think, perhaps I would have done something different. But I’ll never know, because I didn’t have more time.” Jack paused. “I suppose the best thing for all concerned would be if all this had never happened. But I didn’t make it happen, sir. He did.” Jack allowed himself to look at Miller again.
Miller was sitting in a straight-back wooden chair, his arms crossed in front of him, and head cocked slightly to the left. A smile started to take shape at one corner of his mouth. It didn’t go very far, and wasn’t supposed to. It was a smile for Ryan alone ... or maybe not me alone, Jack realized. Sean Miller’s gray eyes didn’t blink—he must have practiced that—as they bored in on him from thirty feet away. Ryan returned the stare, careful to keep his face without expression, and while the court reporter finished up his transcription of Jack’s testimony, and the visitors in the overhead gallery shared whispered observations, Ryan and Miller were all alone, testing each other’s wills. What’s behind those eyes? Jack wondered again. No weakling, to be sure. This was a game—Miller’s game that he’d practiced before, Ryan thought with certainty. There was strength in there, like something one might encounter in a predatory animal. But there was nothing to mute the strength. There was none of the softness of morality or conscience, only strength and will. With four police constables around him, Sean Miller was as surely restrained as a wolf in a cage, and he looked at Ryan as a wolf might from behind the bars, without recognition of his humanity. He was a predator, looking at a ... thing—and wondering how he might reach it. The suit and the tie were camouflage, as had been his earlier smile at his friends in the gallery. He wasn’t thinking about them now. He wasn’t thinking about what the court would decide. He wasn’t thinking about prison, Jack knew. He was thinking only about something named Ryan, something he could see just out of his reach. In the witness box, Jack’s right hand flexed in his lap as though to grasp the pistol which lay in sight on the evidence table a few feet away.
This wasn’t an animal in a cage, after all. Miller had intelligence and education. He could think and plan, as a human could, but he would not be restrained by any human impulses when he decided to move. Jack’s academic investigation of terrorists for the CIA had dealt with them as abstractions, robots that moved about and did things, and had to be neutralized one way or another. He’d never expected to meet one. More important, Jack had never expected to have one look at him in this way. Didn’t he know that Jack was just doing his civic duty?
You could care less about that. I’m something that got in your way. I hurt you, killed your friend, and defeated your mission. You want to get even, don’t you? A wounded animal will always seek out its tormentor, Jack told himself. And this wounded animal has a brain. This one has a memory. Out of sight to anyone else, he wiped a sweaty hand on his pants. This one is thinking.
Ryan was frightened in a way that he’d never known before. It lasted several seconds before he reminded himself that Miller was surrounded by four cops, that the jury would find him guilty, that he would be sentenced to prison for the remainder of his natural life, and that prison life would change the person or thing that lived behind those pale gray eyes.
And I used to be a Marine, Jack told himself. I’m not afraid of you. I can handle you, punk. I took you out once, didn’t I? He smiled back at Sean Miller, just a slight curve at the corner of his own mouth. Not a wolf—a weasel. Nasty, but not that much to worry about, he told himself. Jack turned away as though from an exhibit in the zoo. He wondered if Miller had seen through his quiet bravado.
“No further questions,” Atkinson said.
“The witness may step down,” Mr. Justice Wheeler said.
Jack stood up from the stool and turned to find the way out. As he did so, his eyes swept across Miller one last time, long enough to see that the look and the smile hadn’t changed.
Jack walked back out to the grand hall as another witness passed in the other direction. He found Dan Murray waiting for him.
“Not bad,” the FBI agent observed, “but you want to be careful locking horns with a lawyer. He almost tripped you up.”
“You think it’ll matter?”
Murray shook his head. “Nah. The trial’s a formality, the case is airtight.”
“What’ll he get?”
“Life. Normally over here ‘life’ doesn’t mean any more than it does stateside—six or eight years. For this kid, ‘life’ means life. Oh, there you are, Jimmy.”
Commander Owens came down the corridor and joined them. “How did our lad perform?”
“Not an Oscar winner, but the jury liked him,” Murray said.
“How can you tell that?”
“That’s right, you’ve never been through this, have you? They sat perfectly still, hardly even breathed while you were telling your story. They believed everything you said, especially the part about how you’ve thought and worried about it. You come across as an honest guy.”
“I am,” Ryan said. “So?”
“Not everybody is,” Owens pointed out. “And juries are actually quite good at noticing it. That is, some of the time.”
Murray nodded. “We both have some good—well, not so good—stories about what a jury can do, but when you get down to it, the system works pretty well. Commander Owens, why don’t we buy this gentleman a beer?”
“A fine idea, Agent Murray.” Owens took Ryan’s arm and led him to the staircase.
“That kid’s a scary little bastard, isn’t he?” Ryan said. He wanted a professional opinion.
“You noticed, eh?” Murray observed. “Welcome to the wonderful world of the international terrorist. Yeah, he’s a tough little son of a bitch, all right. Most of ’em are, at first.”
“A year from now he’ll have been changed a bit. He’s a hard one, mind, but the hard ones are often rather brittle,” Owens said. “They sometimes crack. Time is very much on our side, Jack. And even if he doesn’t, that’s one less to worry about.”
“A very confident witness,” the TV news commentator said. “Doctor Ryan fended off a determined attack by the defense counsel, Charles Atkinson, and identified defendant Sean Miller quite positively in the second day of The Mall Murder trial in Old Bailey Number Two.” The picture showed Ryan walking down the hill from the courthouse with two men in attendance. The American was gesturing about something, then laughed as he passed the TV news camera.
“Our old friend Owens. Who’s the other one?” O’Donnell asked.
“Daniel E. Murray, FBI representative at Grosvenor Square,” replied his intelligence officer.
“Oh. Never saw his face. So that’s what he looks like. Going out for a jar, I’ll wager. The hero and his coat-holders. Pity we couldn’t have had a man with an RPG right there....” They’d scouted James Owens once, trying to figure a way to assassinate him, but the man always had a chase car and never used the same route twice. His house was always watched. They could have killed him, but the getaway would have been too risky, and O’Donnell was not given to sending his men on suicide missions. “Ryan goes home either tomorrow or next day.”
“Oh?” The intelligence officer hadn’t learned that. Where does Kevin get all his special information ... ?
“Too bad, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be grand to send him home in a coffin, Michael?”
“I thought you said he was not a worthwhile target,” Mike McKenney said.
“Ah, but he’s a proud one, isn’t he? Crosses swords with our friend Charlie and prances out of the Bailey for a pint of beer. Bloody American, so sure of everything.” Wouldn’t it be nice to ... Kevin O’Donnell shook his head. “We have other things to plan. Sir John can wait, and so can we.”
“I practically had to hold a gun on somebody to get to do this,” Murray said over his shoulder. The FBI agent was driving his personal car, with a Diplomatic Protection Group escort on the left front seat, and a chas
e car of C-13 detectives trying to keep up.
Keep your eyes on the damned road, Ryan wished as hard as he could. His exposure to London traffic to this point had been minimal, and only now did he appreciate that the city’s speed limit was considered a matter of contempt by the drivers. Being on the wrong side of the road didn’t help either.
“Tom Hughes—he’s the Chief Warder—told me what he had planned, and I figured you might want an escort who talks right.”
And drives right, Ryan thought as they passed a truck—terry—on the wrong side. Or was it the right side? How do you tell? He could tell that they’d missed the truck’s taillights by about eighteen inches. English roads were not impressive for their width.
“Damned shame you didn’t get to see very much.”
“Well, Cathy did, and I caught a lot of TV.”
“What did you watch?”
Jack laughed. “I caught a lot of the replays of the cricket championships. ”
“Did you ever figure out the rules?” Murray asked, turning his head again.
“It has rules?” Ryan asked incredulously. “Why spoil it with rules?”
“They say it does, but damn if I ever figured them out. But we’re getting even now.”
“How’s that?”
“Football is becoming pretty popular over here. Our kind, I mean. I gave Jimmy Owens a big runaround last year on the difference between offside and illegal procedure.”
“You mean encroachment and false start, don’t you?” the DPG man inquired.
“See? They’re catching on.”
“You mean I could have gotten football on TV, and nobody told me!”
“Too bad, Jack,” Cathy observed.
“Well, here we are.” Murray stood on the brakes as he turned downhill toward the river. Jack noticed that he seemed to be heading the wrong way down a one-way street, but at least he was going more slowly now. Finally the car stopped. It was dark. The sunset came early this time of year.
“Here’s your surprise.” Murray jumped out and got the door, allowing Ryan to repeat his imitation of a fiddler crab exiting from a car. “Hi, there, Tom!”
Two men approached, both in Tudor uniforms of blue and red. The one in the lead, a man in his late fifties, came directly to Ryan.
“Sir John, Lady Ryan, welcome to Her Majesty’s Tower of London. I am Thomas Hughes, this is Joseph Evans. I see that Dan managed to get you here on time.” Everyone shook hands.
“Yeah, we didn’t even have to break mach-1. May I ask what the surprise is?”
“But then it wouldn’t be a surprise,” Hughes pointed out. “I had hoped to conduct you around the grounds myself, but there’s something I must attend to. Joe will see to your needs, and I will rejoin you shortly. The Chief Warder walked off with Dan Murray in his wake.
“Have you been to the Tower before?” Evans asked. Jack shook his head.
“I have, when I was nine,” Cathy said. “I don’t remember very much.”
Evans motioned for them to come along with him. “Well, we’ll try to implant the knowledge more permanently this time. ”
“You guys are all soldiers, right?”
“Actually, Sir John, we are all ex-sergeant majors—well, two of us were warrant officers. I was sergeant major in 1 Para when I retired. I had to wait four years to get accepted here. There is quite a bit of interest in this job, as you might imagine. The competition is very keen.”
“So, you were what we call a command sergeant-major, sir?”
“Yes, I think that’s right.”
Ryan gave a quick look to the decorations on Evans’ coat—it looked more like a dress, but he had no plans to say that. Those ribbons didn’t mean that Evans had come out of the dentist’s office with no cavities. It didn’t take much imagination to figure what sort of men got appointed to this job. Evans didn’t walk; he marched with the sort of pride that took thirty years of soldiering to acquire.
“Is your arm troubling you, sir?”
“My name’s Jack, and my arm’s okay.”
“I had a cast just like that one back in sixty-eight, I think it was. Training accident,” Evans said with a rueful shake of his head. “Landed on a stone fence. Hurt like the very devil for weeks. ”
“But you kept jumping.” And did your push-ups one-handed, didn’t you?
“Of course.” Evans stopped. “Right, now this imposing edifice is the Middle Tower. There used to be an outer structure right there where the souvenir shop is. They called it the Lion Tower, because that’s where the royal menagerie was kept until 1834.”
The speech was delivered as perfectly as Evans had done, several times per day, for the past four years. My first castle, Jack thought, looking at the stone walls.
“Was the moat for-real?”
“Oh, yes, and a very unpleasant one at that. The problem, you see, was that it was designed so that the river would wash in and out every day, thereby keeping it fresh and clean. Unfortunately the engineer didn’t do his sums quite right, and once the water came in, it stayed in. Even worse, everything that got thrown away by the people living here was naturally enough thrown into the moat—and stayed there, and rotted. I suppose it served a tactical purpose, though. The smell of the moat alone must have been sufficient to keep all but the most adventurous chaps away. It was finally drained in 1843, and now it serves a really useful purpose—the children can play football there. On the far side are swings and jungle gyms. Do you have children?”
“One and a ninth,” Cathy answered.
“Really?” Evans smiled in the darkness. “Bloody marvelous! I suppose that’s one Yank who will be forever—at least a little—British! Moira and I have two, both of them born overseas. Now this is the Byward Tower.”
“These things all had drawbridges, right?” Jack asked.
“Yes, the Lion and Middle towers were essentially islands with twenty or so feet of smelly water around them. You’ll also notice that the path into the grounds has a right-angle turn. The purpose of that, of course, was to make life difficult for the chaps with the battering ram.”
Jack looked at the width of the moat and the height of the walls as they passed into the Tower grounds proper. “So nobody ever took this place?”
Evans shook his head. “There has never been a serious attempt, and I wouldn’t much fancy trying today.”
“Yeah,” Ryan agreed. “You sweat having somebody come in and bomb the place?”
“That’s happened, I am sorry to say, in the White Tower, over ten years ago—terrorists. Security is somewhat tighter now,” Evans said.
In addition to the Yeoman Warders there were uniformed guards like those Ryan had encountered on The Mall, wearing the same red tunics and bearskin hats, and carrying the same kind of modem rifle. It was rather an odd contrast to Evans’ period uniform, but no one seemed to notice.
“You know, of course, that this facility served many purposes over the years. It was the royal prison, and as late as World War Two, Rudolf Hess was kept here. Now, do you know who was the first Queen of England to be executed here?”
“Anne Boleyn,” Cathy answered.
“Very good. They teach our history in America?” Evans asked.
“Masterpiece Theater,” Cathy explained. “I saw the TV show. ”
“Well, then you know that all the private executions were carried out with an ax—except hers. King Henry had a special executioner imported from France; he used a sword instead of an ax.”
“He didn’t want it to hurt?” Cathy asked with a twisted smile. “Nice of him.”
“Yes, he was a considerate chap, wasn’t he? And this is Traitor’s Gate. You might be interested to know that it was originally called the Water Gate.”
Ryan laughed. “Lucky for you guys too, eh?”
“Indeed. Prisoners were taken through this gate by boat to Westminster for trial. ”
“Then back here for their haircuts?”
“Only the really important ones. Those ex
ecutions—they were private instead of pubtic—were done on the Tower Green. The public executions were carried out elsewhere.” Evans led them through the gate in the Bloody Tower, after explaining its history. Ryan wondered if anyone had ever put all this place’s history into one book, and if so, how many volumes it required.
The Tower Green was far too pleasant to be the site of executions. Even the signs to keep people off the grass said Please. Two sides were lined with Tudor-style (of course) houses, but the northern edge was the site where the scaffolding was erected for the high-society executions. Evans went through the procedure, which included having the executionee pay the headsman—in advance—in the hope that he’d do a proper job.
“The last woman to be executed here,” Evans went on, “was Jane, Viscountess Rochford, 13 February, 1542.”
“What did she do?” Cathy asked.
“What she didn’t do, actually. She neglected to tell King Henry the Eighth that his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was, uh, amorously engaged with someone other than her husband,” Evans said delicately.
“That was a real historic moment,” Jack chuckled. “That’s the last time a woman was ever executed for keeping her mouth shut. ”
Cathy smiled at her husband. “Jack, how about I break your other arm?”
“And what would Sally say?”
“She’d understand,” his wife assured him.
“Sergeant major, isn’t it amazing how women stick together?”
“I did not survive thirty-one years as a professional soldier by being so foolish as to get involved in domestic disputes,” Evans said sensibly.
I lose, Ryan told himself. The remainder of the tour lasted about twenty minutes. The Yeoman led them downhill past the White Tower, then left toward an area roped off from the public. A moment later Ryan and his wife found themselves in another of the reasons that men applied for the job.
The Yeoman Warders had their own little pub hidden away in the 14th-century stonework. Plaques from every regiment in the British Army—and probably gifts from many others—lined the walls. Evans handed them off to yet another man. Dan Murray reappeared, a glass in his hand.
