by Tom Clancy
Father and daughter were facedown on the bare concrete floor, and the blood from their head wounds had pooled together on the uneven surface. The horror was immediate and overwhelming. His mouth dropped open with a sudden intake of breath as he looked down at two parishioners whose funeral he would officiate in two days’ time. They were holding hands, he saw, father and daughter. They’d died together, but the consolation that this tragically afflicted family was now united with their God could not stop a scream of fury at those who had been in this home only ten minutes earlier. Meyer recovered after a few seconds, continued down the stairs and knelt, reaching down to touch the intertwined hands and entreating God to have mercy on their souls. Of that he had confidence. Perhaps she’d lost her life, but not her soul, Meyer would say over the bodies, and her father had reclaimed his daughter’s love. He’d let his parishioners know that both had been saved, Meyer promised himself. Then it was time to call his son.
The stolen flower truck was left in a supermarket parking lot. Two men got out and walked into the store, just to be careful, and out the back door, where their car was parked. They drove southeast onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike for the three-hour trip back to Philadelphia. Maybe longer, the driver thought. They didn’t want a state cop to stop them. Both men were ten thousand dollars richer. They didn’t know the story. They had no need to know.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Brown?”
“No. Who’s this?”
“This is Sandy. Is Mr. Brown there?”
“How do you know the Brown family?”
“Who is this?” Sandy asked, looking out her kitchen window with alarm.
“This is Sergeant Peter Meyer, Pittsburgh Police Department. Now, who are you?”
“I’m the one who drove Doris back—what’s the matter?”
“Your name, please?”
“Are they okay?”
“They appear to have been murdered,” Meyer replied in a harshly patient way. “Now, I need to know your name and—”
Sandy brought her finger down on the switch, cutting the circuit before she could hear more. To hear more might force her to answer questions. Her legs were shaking, but there was a chair close by. Her eyes were wide. It wasn’t possible, she told herself. How could anyone know where she was? Surely she hadn’t called the people who—no, not possible, the nurse thought.
“Why?” she whispered the question aloud. “Why, why, why?” She couldn’t hurt anyone-yes, she could . . . but how did they find out?
They have the police infiltrated. She remembered the words from John’s mouth. He was right, wasn’t he?
But that was a side issue.
“Damn it, we saved her!” Sandy told the kitchen. Sandy could remember every minute of that nearly sleepless first week, and then the progress, the elation, the purest and best kind of professional satisfaction for a job well done, the joy of seeing the look in her dad’s face. Gone. A waste of her time.
No.
Not a waste of time. That was her task in life, to make sick people well. She’d done that. She was proud of that. It was not wasted time. It was stolen time. Stolen time. two stolen lives. She started crying and had to go to the downstairs bathroom, grabbing tissue to wipe her eyes. Then she looked in the mirror, seeing eyes that she’d never beheld before. And seeing that, she truly understood.
Disease was a dragon that she fought forty hours or more per week. A skilled nurse and teacher who worked well with the surgeons on her unit. Sandra O’Toole fought those dragons in her way, with professionalism and kindness and intelligence, more often winning than losing. And every year things got better. Progress was never fast enough, but it was real and could be measured, and perhaps she’d live long enough to see the last dragon on her unit die once and for all.
But there was more than one kind of dragon, wasn’t there? Some couldn’t be killed with kindness and medications and skilled nursing care. She’d defeated one, but another had killed Doris anyway. That dragon needed the sword, in the hands of a warrior. The sword was a tool, wasn’t it? A necessary tool, if you wanted to slay that particular dragon. Perhaps it was one she could never use herself, but necessary nonetheless. Someone had to hold that sword. John wasn’t a bad man at all, just realistic.
She fought her dragons. He fought his. It was the same fight. She’d been wrong to judge him. Now she understood, seeing in her eyes the same emotion that she’d beheld months earlier in his, as her rage passed, but not very far, and the determination set in.
“Well, everybody lucked out,” Hicks said, handing over a beer.
“How so, Wally?” Peter Henderson asked.
“The mission was a washout. It aborted just in time. Didn’t even get anyone hurt in the process, thank God. Everyone’s flying home right now.”
“Good news, Wally!” Henderson said, meaning it. He didn’t want to kill anybody either. He just wanted the damned war to end, the same as Wally did. It was a shame about the men in that camp, but some things couldn’t be helped. “What happened exactly?”
“Nobody knows yet. You want me to find out?”
Peter nodded. “Carefully. It’s something the Intelligence Committee ought to know about, when the Agency fucks up like that. I can get the information to them. But you have to be careful.”
“No problem. I’m learning how to stroke Roger.” Hicks lit up his first joint of the evening, annoying his guest.
“You Could lose your clearance that way, you know?”
“Well, gee, then I’ll have to join Dad and make a few mill’ on The Street, eh?”
“Wally, do you want to change the system or do you want to let other people keep it the same?”
Hicks nodded. “Yeah, I suppose.”
The following winds had allowed the KC-135 to make the hop in from Hawaii without a refueling stop, and the landing was a gentle one. Remarkably, Kelly’s sleep cycle was about right now. It was five in the afternoon, and in another six or seven hours he’d be ready for more sleep.
“Can I get a day or two off?”
“We’ll want you back to Quantico for an extended debrief,” Ritter told him, stiff and sore from the extended flight.
“Fine, just so I’m not in custody or anything. I could use a lift up to Baltimore.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Greer said as the plane came to a halt.
Two security officers from the Agency were the first up the mobile stairs, even before the oversized cargo hatch swung up. Ritter woke the Russian up.
“Welcome to Washington.”
“Take me to my embassy?” he asked hopefully. Ritter almost laughed.
“Not quite yet. We’ll find you a nice, comfortable place, though.”
Grishanov was too groggy to object, rubbing his head and needing something for the pain. He went with the security officers, down the steps to their waiting car. It left at once for a safe house near Winchester, Virginia.
“Thanks for the try, John,” Admiral Maxwell said, taking the younger man’s hand.
“I’m sorry for what I said before,” Cas said, doing the same. “You were right.” They, too, had a car waiting. Kelly watched them enter it from the hatch.
“So what happens to them?” he asked Greer.
James shrugged, leading Kelly out and down the stairs. Noise from other aircraft made his voice hard to hear. “Dutch was in line for a fleet, and maybe the CNO’s job. I don’t suppose that’ll happen now. The operation—well, it was his baby, and it didn’t get born. That’ll finish him.”
“That’s not fair,” Kelly said loudly. Greer turned.
“No, it isn’t, but that’s the way things are.” Greer, too, had a ride waiting. He directed his driver to head to the wing-headquarters building, where he arranged a car to take Kelly to Baltimore. “Get some rest and call me when you’re ready. Bob was serious about what he said. Think it over.”
“Yes, sir,” Kelly replied, heading to the blue Air Force sedan.
It was amazing, Kelly th
ought, the way life was. Within five minutes the sergeant drove onto an interstate highway. Scarcely twenty-four hours earlier he’d been on a ship approaching Subic Bay. Thirty-six hours prior to that he’d been on the soil of an enemy country—and now here he was in the backseat of a government Chevy, and the only dangers to which he was exposed came from other drivers. At least for a little while. All the familiar things, the highway exit signs painted that pleasant shade of green, traveling in the last half of the local rush hour. Everything about him proclaimed the normality of life, when three days earlier everything had been alien and hostile. Most amazing of all, he’d adjusted to it.
The driver didn’t speak a word except to inquire about directions, though he must have wondered who the man was that had arrived on a special flight. Perhaps he had many such jobs, Kelly mused as the car pulled off Loch Raven Boulevard, enough that he’d stopped wondering about things he’d never be told.
“Thanks for the lift,” Kelly told him.
“Yes, sir, you’re welcome.” The car pulled away and Kelly walked to his apartment, amused that he’d taken his keys all the way to Vietnam and back. Did the keys know how far they had come? Five minutes later he was in the shower, the quintessentially American experience, changing from one reality into another. Another five and he was dressed in slacks and a short-sleeve shirt, and headed out the door to his Scout, parked a block away. Another ten and he’d parked the car within sight of Sandy’s bungalow. The walk from his Scout to her door was yet another transition. He’d come home to something, Kelly told himself. For the first time.
“John!” He hadn’t expected the hug. Even less so the tears in her eyes.
“It’s okay, Sandy. I’m fine. No holes or scratches or anything.” He was slow to grasp the desperation of her hold on him, pleasant as it was. But then the face against his chest started sobbing, and he knew that this event was not for him at all. “What’s wrong?”
“They killed Doris.”
Time stopped again. It seemed to split into many pieces. Kelly closed his eyes, in pain at first, and in that instant he was back on his hilltop overlooking SENDER GREEN, watching the NVA troops arrive; he was in his hospital bed looking at a photograph; he was outside some nameless village listening to the screams of children. He’d come home, all right, but to the same thing he’d left. No, he realized, to the thing that he had never left, which followed him everywhere he went. He’d never get away from it because he’d never really finished it, not even once. Not even once.
And yet there was a new element as well, this woman holding him and feeling the same blazing pain that sliced through his chest.
“What happened, Sandy?”
“We got her well, John. We took her home, and then I called today like you told me to, and a policeman answered. Doris and her father, too, both murdered.”
“Okay.” He moved her to the sofa. He wanted at first to let her calm down, not to hold her too close, but that didn’t work. She clung to him, letting out the feelings that she’d closeted off, along with worry for his safety, and he held Sandy’s head to his shoulder for several minutes. “Sam and Sarah?”
“I haven’t told them yet.” Her face came up, and she looked across the room, her gaze unfocused. Then the nurse in her came out, as it had to. “How are you?”
“A little frazzled from all the traveling,” he said, just to put words after her question. Then he had to tell the truth. “It was a washout. The mission didn’t work. They’re still there.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We were trying to get some people out of North Vietnam, prisoners—but something went wrong. Failed again,” he added quietly.
“Was it dangerous?”
Kelly managed a grunt. “Yeah, Sandy, you might say that, but I came out okay.”
Sandy set that one aside. “Doris said there were others, other girls, they still have ’em.”
“Yeah. Billy said the same thing. I’m going to try and get them out.” Kelly noticed she didn’t react to his mention of Billy’s name.
“It won’t matter—getting them out, unless . . . ”
“I know.” The thing that kept following him around, Kelly thought. There was only one way to make it stop. Running couldn’t distance him from it. He had to turn and face it.
“Well, Henry, that little job was taken care of this morning,” Piaggi told him. “Nice and clean.”
“They didn’t leave—”
“Henry, they were two pros, okay? They did the job and now they’re back home. couple hundred miles away. They didn’t leave anything behind except for the two bodies.” The phone report had been very clear on that. It had been an easy job. since neither target had expected anything.
“Then that’s that,” Tucker observed with satisfaction. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a fat envelope. He handed it to Piaggi, who had fronted the money himself, good partner that he was.
“With Eddie out of the way, and with that leak plugged, things ought to go back to normal.” Best twenty grand I ever spent, Henry thought.
“Henry, the other girls?” Piaggi pointed out. “You’ve got a real business now. People inside like them are dangerous. Take care of it, okay?” He pocketed the envelope and left the table.
“Twenty-two‘s, back of the head, both of ’em,” the Pittsburgh detective reported over the phone. “We’ve dusted the whole house—nothing. The flower box—nothing. The truck—nothing. The truck was stolen sometime last night—this morning, whatever. The florist has eight of them. Hell, we recovered it before the all-points was on the air. It was wise guys, had to be. Too smooth, too clean for local talent. No word on the street. They’re probably out of town already. Two people saw the truck. One woman saw two guys walking to the door. She figured it was a flower delivery, and besides she was across the street half a block away. No description, nothing. She doesn’t even remember what color they were.”
Ryan and Douglas were listening on the same line, and their eyes met every few seconds. They knew it all from the tone of the man’s voice. The sort of case that policemen hate and fear. No immediately apparent motive, no witnesses. no usable evidence. Nowhere to start and nowhere to go. The routine was as predictable as it was futile. They’d pump the neighbors for information, but it was a working-class neighborhood, and few had been at home at the time. People noticed mainly the unusual, and a flower truck wasn’t unusual enough to attract the inquiring look that developed into a physical description. Committing the perfect murder wasn’t really all that demanding, a secret known within the fraternity of detectives and belied by a whole body of literature that made them into superhuman beings they never claimed to be, even among themselves in a cop bar. Someday the case might be broken. One of the killers might be caught for something else and cop to this one in order to get a deal. Less likely, someone would talk about it, bragging in front of an informant who’d pass it along to someone else, but in either case it would take time and the trail, cold as it already was, would grow colder still. It was the most frustrating part of the business of police work. Truly innocent people had died, and there was no one to speak for them, to avenge their deaths, and other cases would come up, and the cops would set this one aside for something fresher, and from time to time someone would reopen the file and look things over, then put it back in the Unsolved drawer, where it would grow thicker only because of the forms that announced that there was still nothing new on the case.
It was even worse for Ryan and Douglas. Yet again there had been a possible link that might open up two of their Unsolved files. Everyone would care about Raymond and Doris Brown. They’d had friends and neighbors, evidently a good minister. They’d be missed, and people would think what a shame it was . . . But the files on Ryan’s desk were for people about whom no one but police officers cared, and somehow that only made it worse because someone should mourn for the dead, not just cops who were paid to do so. Worse still, it was yet another MO in a string of homicides that were so
mehow linked, but not in a way that made any sense. This was not their Invisible Man. Yes, the weapon had been a 22, but he’d had a chance to kill the innocent twice. He’d spared Virginia Charles, and he had somehow gone dangerously far out of his way to spare Doris Brown. He had saved her from Farmer and Grayson, probably, and someone else. . . .
“Detective,” Ryan asked, “what was the condition of Doris’s body?”
“What do you mean?”
It seemed an absurd question even as his mind formed it. but the man on the other end of the line would understand. “What was her physical condition?”
“The autopsy is tomorrow, Lieutenant. She was neatly dressed, all cleaned up, hair was nice. she looked pretty decent.” Except for the two holes in the back of her head, the man didn’t have to add.
Douglas read his lieutenant’s mind and nodded. Somebody took the time to get her well. That was a starting place.
“I’d appreciate it if you could send me anything that might be useful. It’ll work both ways,” Ryan assured him.
“Some guy went way out of his way to murder them. We don’t see many like this. I don’t like it very much,” the detective added. It was a puerile conclusion, but Ryan fully understood. How else did you say it, after all?
It was called a safe house, and it was indeed safe. Located on a hundred rolling acres in the Virginia hills, there was on the estate a stately house and a twelve-stall stable half-occupied with hunter-jumpers. The title for the house showed a name, but that person owned another place nearby and leased this one to the Central Intelligence Agency—actually to a shadow corporation that existed only as a piece of paper and a post-office box—because he’d served his time in OSS, and besides, the money was right. Nothing unusual from the outside, but a more careful inspection might show that the doors and doorframes were steel, the windows unusually thick and strong, and sealed. It was as secure from outside assault and from an internal attempt at escape as a maximum-security prison, just a lot more pleasant to behold.
