“Clarence House — the white building adjoining St. James’s Palace. The terrorists picked a bad time — or perhaps a bad place — for their attack. There is a guard post at the southwest corner of the building. The guard changes every two hours. When the attack took place, the change was just under way. That meant that four soldiers were there at the time, not just one. The police on duty at the Palace heard the explosion and automatic fire. The Sergeant in charge ran to the gate to see what was going on and yelled for a guardsman to follow.”
“He’s the one who sounded the alarm, right? That’s how the rest of them arrived so fast?”
“Charlie Winston,” Owens said. “The Rolls has an electronic attack alarm — you don’t need to tell anyone that. That alerted headquarters. Sergeant Price acted entirely on his own initiative. Unfortunately for him, the guardsman was a hurdler — the lad runs track and field — and vaulted the barriers there. Price tried to do it also, but he fell down and broke his nose. He had a devil of a time catching up, plus sending out his own alarm on his portable radio.”
“Well, I’m glad he caught up when he did. That trooper scared the hell out of me. I hope your Sergeant gets a pat on the head, too.”
“The Queen’s Police Medal for starters, and the thanks of Her Majesty,” Ashley said. “One thing that has confused us. Doctor Ryan. You left the military with a physical disability, yet you evidenced none of this yesterday.”
“You know that after I left the Corps, I went into the brokerage business. I made something of a name for myself, and Cathy’s father came down to talk to me. That’s when I met Cathy. I passed on the invitation to move to New York, but Cathy and I hit it right off. One thing led to another, and pretty soon we were engaged. I wore a back brace then, because every so often my back would go bad on me. Well, it happened again right after we got engaged, and Cathy took me into Johns Hopkins to have one of her teachers check me out. One was Stanley Rabinowisz, professor of neurosurgery there. He ran me through three days of tests and said he could fix me good as new.
“It turned out that the docs at Bethesda had goofed my myelogram. No reflection on them, they were sharp young docs, but Stan’s about the best there is. Good as his word, too. He opened me up that Friday, and two months later I was almost as good as new,” Ryan said. “Anyway, that’s the story of Ryan’s back. I just happened to fall in love with a pretty girl who was studying to be a surgeon.”
“Your wife is certainly a most versatile and competent woman,” Owens agreed.
“And you found her pushy,” Ryan observed.
“No, Doctor Ryan. People under stress are never at their best. Your wife also examined Their Royal Highnesses on the scene, and that was most useful to us. She refused to leave your side until you were under competent medical care; one can hardly fault her for that. She did find our identification procedures a touch longwinded, I think, and she was quite naturally anxious about you. We might have moved things along more quickly –”
“No need to apologize, sir. My dad was a cop. I know the score. I understand you had trouble identifying us.”
“Just over three hours — a timing problem, you see. We had your passport out of your coat, and your driving license, which, we were glad to see, had your photograph. Our initial request to your Legal Attache was just before five, and that made it noon in America. Lunchtime, you see. He called the FBI’s Baltimore field office, who in turn called their Annapolis office. The identification business is fairly straightforward — first they had to find some chaps at your Naval Academy who knew who you were, when you came over, and so forth. Next they found the travel agent who booked your flight and hotel. Another agent went to your motor vehicle registration agency. Many of these people were off eating lunch, and we reckon that cost us roughly an hour. Simultaneously he — the Attache — sent a query to your Marine Corps. Within three hours we had a fairly complete history on you — including fingerprints. We had your fingerprints from your travel documents and the hotel registration, and they matched your military records, of course.”
“Three hours, eh?” Dinnertime here, and lunchtime at home, and they did it all in three hours. Damn.
“While all that was going on we had to interview your wife several times to make sure that she related everything she saw –”
“And she gave it to you exactly the same way every time, right?” Ryan asked.
“Correct,” Owens said. He smiled. “That is quite remarkable, you know.”
Ryan grinned. “Not for Cathy. Some things, medicine especially, she’s a real machine. I’m surprised she didn’t hand you a roll of film.”
“She said that herself,” Owens replied. “The photographs in the paper are from a Japanese tourist — that’s a cliche, isn’t it? — half a block away with a telephoto lens. You might be interested to know that your Marine Corps thinks rather highly of you, by the way.” Owens consulted his notes. “Tied for first in your class at Quantico, and your fitness reports were excellent.”
“So, you’re satisfied I’m a good guy?”
“We were convinced of that from the first moment,” Taylor said. “One must be thorough in major felony cases, however, and this one obviously had more than its share of complications.”
“There’s one thing that bothers me,” Jack said. There was more than one, but his brain was working too slowly to classify them all.
“What’s that?” Owens asked.
“What the hell were they — the Royals, you call them? — doing out on the street with only one guard — wait a minute.” Ryan’s head cocked to one side. He went on, speaking rather slowly as his mind struggled to arrange his thoughts. “That ambush was planned — this wasn’t any accidental encounter. But the bad guys caught ’em on the fly . . . They had to hit a particular car in a particular place. Somebody timed this one out. There were some more people involved in this, weren’t there?” Ryan heard a lot of silence for a moment. It was all the answer he needed. “Somebody with a radio . . . those characters had to know that they were coming, the route they’d take, and exactly when they got into the kill zone. Even then it wouldn’t be all that easy, ’cause you have to worry about traffic . . . ”
“Just an historian. Doctor Ryan?” Ashley asked.
“They teach you how to do ambushes in the Marines. If you want to ambush a specific target . . . first, you have to have intelligence information; second, you choose your ground; third, you put your own security guys out to tell you when the target is coming — that’s just the bare-bones requirements. Why here — why St. James’s Park, The Mall?” The terrorist is a political creature. The target and the place are chosen for political effect, Ryan told himself. “You didn’t answer my question before: was this an assassination or an attempted kidnapping?”
“We are not entirely sure,” Owens answered.
Ryan looked over his guests. He’d just touched an open nerve. They disabled the car with an antitank rifle-grenade, and both of them had the hand-thrown kind, too. If they just wanted to kill . . . the grenades would defeat any armor on the car, why use guns at all? No, if this was a straight assassination attempt, they would not have taken so long, would they? You just fibbed to me, Mr. Owens. This was definitely a kidnap attempt and you know it.
“Why just the one security officer in the car, then? You have to protect your people better than that.” What was it Tony said? An unscheduled trip? The first requirement for a successful ambush is good intelligence . . . You can’t pursue this, idiot! The Commander solved the problem for Jack.
“Well, I believe we covered everything rather nicely. We’ll probably be back tomorrow,” Owens said.
“How are the terrorists — the one I wounded, I mean.”
“He has not been terribly cooperative. Won’t speak to us at all, not even to tell us his name — old story dealing with this lot. We’ve only identified him a few hours ago. No previous criminal record at all — his name appeared as a possible player in two minor cases, but nothing more than that. He is recovering quite nicely, and in three weeks or so,” Taylor said coldly, “he will be taken before the Queen’s Bench, tried before a jury of twelve good men and true, convicted, and sentenced to spend the remainder of his natural life at a secure prison.”