If it’s so damned funny, why does it bother you?
Murray’s instinct was ringing a quiet but persistent bell. Why had Jimmy said that? Obviously it was bothering him, too — but what the hell was it?
The problem was, it wasn’t just one thing. He saw that now. It was several things, and they were interrelated like some kind of three-dimensional crossword puzzle. He didn’t know the number of blanks, and he didn’t have any of the clues to the words, but he did know roughly the way they fitted together. That was something. Given time, it might even be enough, but —
“Damn!” His hands gripped tight on the steering wheel as good humor again gave way to renewed frustration. He could talk it over with Owens tomorrow or the next day, but the bell told him that it was more urgent than that.
Why is it so damned urgent? There is no evidence of anything to get excited about.
Murray reminded himself that the first case that he’d broken more or less on his own, ten months after hitting the street as a special agent, had begun with a feeling like this one. In retrospect the evidence had seemed obvious enough once he’d put the right twist on it, but that twist hadn’t occurred to anyone else. And with Murray himself it had begun as nothing more than the same sort of intellectual headache he was suffering through in his car. Now he was really mad at himself.
Fact: The ULA broke all the rules. Fact: No Irish terrorist organization had ever run an operation in the U.S. There were no more Facts. If they ran an op in America . . . well, they were undoubtedly mad at Ryan, but they hadn’t made a move against him over here, and that would have been a hell of a lot easier than staging one in the U.S. What if Miller really was their chief of operations — no, Murray told himself, terrorists don’t usually take things personally. It’s unprofessional, and the bastards are professional. They’d have to have a better reason than that.
Just because you don’t know what the reason is doesn’t mean they don’t have one, Danny. Murray found himself wondering if his intuition hadn’t transformed itself into paranoia with increasing age. What if there’s more than one reason to do it?
“There’s a thought,” he said to himself. One could be an excuse for the other — but what’s the it that they want to do? Motive, all the police procedure manuals said, was the main thing to look for. Murray didn’t have a clue on their motive. “I could go crazy doing this.”
Murray turned left off Kensington Road, into the upscale neighborhood of flats where he had his official residence. Parking was the usual problem. Even when he’d been assigned to the counterespionage section of the New York City Field Office, parking hadn’t been this bad. He found a space perhaps two feet longer than his car and spent nearly five minutes fitting the vehicle into it.
Murray hung his coat on the peg beside the door and walked right into the living room. His wife found him dialing the phone, a ferocious scowl on his face. She wondered what was wrong.
It took a few seconds for the overseas call to go into the proper office.
“Bill, this is Dan Murray . . . we’re fine,” his wife heard him say. “I want you to do something. You know that guy Jack Ryan? Yeah, that’s the one. Tell him — hell, how do I say this? Tell him that maybe he should watch his back . . . I know that. Bill . . . I can’t say, something’s bothering me, and I can’t — something like that, yeah . . . I know they’ve never done it before. Bill, but it’s still bothering me . . . No, nothing specific that I can point to, but Jimmy Owens brought it up, and now he’s got me worrying about it. Oh, you got the report already? Good, then you know what I mean.”
Murray leaned back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. “Call it feeling, or instinct — call it anything you want, it’s bothering me. I want somebody to act on it . . . Good man. How’s the family? Oh, yeah? Great! Well, I guess it’ll be a happy new year for you. Okay. Take care. ‘Bye.” He set the phone down. “Well, that feels a little better,” he said quietly to himself.
“The party starts at nine,” his wife said. She was used to his bringing work home. He was used to having her remind him of his social obligations.
“I guess I better get dressed, then.” Murray rose and kissed his wife. He did feel better now. He’d done something — probably no more than having people in the Bureau wonder what was happening to him over here, but he could live with that. “Bill’s oldest is engaged. He’s going to marry her off to a young agent in the D.C. Field Office.”
“Anyone we know?”
“New kid.”
“We have to leave soon.”
“Okay, okay.” He walked to the master bedroom and started to change for the big embassy party.
Chapter 11
Warnings
“As you see, ladies and gentlemen, the decision Nelson made in this case had the long-term effect of finally putting an end to the stultifying influence of the Royal Navy’s formal tactics.” Ryan closed his note folder. “There is nothing like a decisive victory to teach people a lesson. Questions?”
It was Jack’s first day back at teaching class. The room had forty students, all third classmen (that title included the six female mids in the class), or sophomores in civilian terms, taking Ryan’s introductory course in naval history. There were no questions. He was surprised. Jack knew he was a pretty good teacher, but not that good. After a moment, one of the students stood up. It was George Winton, a football player from Pittsburgh.
“Doctor Ryan,” he said stiffly, “I’ve been asked to make a presentation on behalf of the class.”
“Uh-oh.” Jack took half a step backward and scanned the body of students theatrically for the advancing threat.
Mid/3 Winton walked forward and produced a small box from behind his back. There was a typed sheet on the top. The young man stood at attention.
“Attention to orders; For service above and beyond the duty of a tourist — even a brainless Marine — the class awards Doctor John Ryan the Order of the Purple Target, in the hope that he will duck the next time, lest he become a part of history rather than a teacher of it. ”
Winton opened the box and produced a purple ribbon three inches across on which was inscribed in gold: SHOOT ME. Below it was a brass bull’s-eye of equal size. The mid pinned it to Ryan’s shoulder so that the target portion almost covered where he’d been shot. The class stood and applauded as Ryan shook hands with the class spokesman.
Jack fingered the “decoration” and looked up at his class. “Did my wife put you up to this?” They started converging on him.
“Way to go, Doc!” said an aspiring submarine driver.
“Semper fi!” echoed a would-be Marine.
Ryan held up his hands. He was still getting used to the idea of having his left arm back. The shoulder ached now that he was really using it, but the surgeon at Hopkins had told him that the stiffness would gradually fade away, and the net impairment to his left shoulder would be less than five percent.
“Thank you, people, but you still have to take the exam next week!”
There was general laughter as the kids filed out of the room to their next class. This was Ryan’s last for the day. He gathered up his books and notes and trailed out of the room for the walk uphill to his office in Leahy Hall.
There was snow on the ground this frigid January day. Jack had to watch for patches of ice on the brick sidewalk. Around him the campus of the Naval Academy was a beautiful place. The immense quadrangle bordered by the chapel to the south, Bancroft Hall to the east, and classroom buildings on the other sides, was a glistening white blanket with pathways shoveled from one place to another. The kids — Ryan thought of them as kids — marched about as they always did, a little too earnest and serious for Jack’s liking. They saved their smiles for places where no outsiders might notice. Each of them had his (or her) shoes spit-shined, and they moved about with straight backs, books tucked under the left arm so as not to interfere with saluting. There was a lot of that here. At the top of the hill, at Gate #3, a Marine lance corporal stood with the “Jimmy Legs” civilian guard. A normal day at the office, Jack told himself. It was a good place to work. The mids were easily the equal of the students of any school in the country, always ready with questions, and, once you earned their trust, capable of some astonishing horseplay. This was something a visitor to the Academy might never suspect, so serious was the kids’ public demeanor.