“That’s all?” Ashley inquired with a friendly smile — or was it friendly? Ryan asked himself. Jack wondered just how much they’d managed to find out about him in the past — what? fifteen hours or so — and exactly what Ashley was hinting at. You’re no cop, Ryan thought. What exactly are you? Regardless, he had to stick to his cover story, that he was a part-time consultant to the Mitre Corporation.
“And the purpose of your visit to this country?” Owens went on.
“Combination vacation and research trip. I’m gathering data for a new book, and Cathy needed some time off. Sally is still a preschooler, so we decided to head over now and miss the tourist season.” Ryan took a cigarette from the pack Wilson had left behind. Ashley lit it from a gold lighter. “In my coat — wherever that is — you’ll find letters of introduction to your Admiralty and the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth.”
“We have the letters,” Owens replied. “Quite illegible. I’m afraid, and I fear your suit is a total loss also. What the blood did not ruin, your wife and our sergeant finished off with a knife. So when did you arrive in Britain?”
“It’s still Thursday, right? Well, we got in Tuesday night from Dulles International outside Washington. Arrived about seven-thirty, got to the hotel about nine-thirty or so, had a snack sent up, and went right to sleep. Flying always messes me up — jet lag, whatever. I conked right out.” That was not exactly true, but Ryan didn’t think they needed to know everything.
Owens nodded. They had already learned why Ryan hated flying. “And yesterday?”
“I woke up about seven, I guess, had breakfast and a paper sent up, then just kinda lazed around until about eight-thirty. I arranged to meet Cathy and Sally in the park around four, then caught a cab to the Admiralty building — close, as it turned out, I could have walked it. As I said, I had a letter of introduction to see Admiral Sir Alexander Woodson, the man in charge of your naval archives — he’s retired, actually. He took me down to a musty sub-sub-basement. He had the stuff I wanted all ready for me.
“I came over to look at some signal digests. Admiralty signals between London and Admiral Sir James Somerville. He was commander of your Indian Ocean fleet in the early months of 1942, and that’s one of the things I’m writing about. So I spend the next three hours reading over faded carbon copies of naval dispatches and taking notes.”
“On this?” Ashley held up Ryan’s clipboard. Jack snatched it from his hands.
“Thank God!” Ryan exclaimed. “I was sure it got lost.” He opened it and set it up on the bedstand, then typed in some instructions. “Ha! It still works!”
“What exactly is that thing?” Ashley wanted to know. All three got out of their chairs to look at it.
“This is my baby.” Ryan grinned. On opening the clipboard he revealed a typewriter-style keyboard and a yellow Liquid Crystal Diode display. Outwardly it looked like an expensive clipboard, about an inch thick and bound in leather. “It’s a Cambridge Datamaster Model-C Field Computer. A friend of mine makes them. It has an MC-68000 microprocessor, and two megabytes of bubble memory.”
“Care to translate that?” Taylor asked.
“Sorry. It’s a portable computer. The microprocessor is what does the actual work. Two megabytes means that the memory stores up to two million characters — enough for a whole book — and since it uses bubble memory, you don’t lose the information when you switch it off. A guy I went to school with set up a company to make these little darlings. He hit on me for some start-up capital. I use an Apple at home, this one’s just for carrying around.”
“We knew it was some sort of computer, but our chaps couldn’t make it work,” Ashley said.
“Security device. The first time you use it, you input your user’s code and activate the lockout. Afterward, unless you type in the code, it doesn’t work — period.”
“Indeed?” Ashley observed. “How foolproof?”
“You’d have to ask Fred. Maybe you could read the data right off the bubble chips. I don’t know how computers work. I just use ’em,” Ryan explained. “Anyway, here are my notes.”
“Getting back to your activities of yesterday,” Owens said, giving Ashley a cool look. “We now have you to noon.”
“Okay. I broke for lunch. A guy on the ground floor directed me to a — a pub, I guess, two blocks away. I don’t remember the name of the place. I had a sandwich and a beer while I played with this thing. That took about half an hour. I spent another hour at the Admiralty building before I checked out. Left about quarter of two, I suppose. I thanked Admiral Woodson — very good man. I caught a cab to — don’t remember the address, it was on one of my letters. North of — Regent’s Park, I think. Admiral Sir Roger DeVere. He served under Somerville. He wasn’t there. His housekeeper said he got called out of town suddenly due to a death in the family. So I left a message that I’d been there and flagged another cab back downtown. I decided to get out a few blocks early and walk the rest of the way.”
“Why?” Taylor asked.
“Mainly I was stiff from all the sitting — in the Admiralty building, the flight, the cab. I needed a stretch. I usually jog every day, and I get restless when I miss it.”
“Where did you get out?” Owens asked.
“I don’t know the name of the street. If you show me a map I can probably point it out.” Owens nodded for him to go on. “Anyway, I nearly got run over by a double-decker bus, and one of your uniformed cops told me not to jaywalk –” Owens looked surprised at that and scribbled some notes. Perhaps they hadn’t learned of that encounter. “I picked up a magazine at a street stand and met Cathy about, oh, three-forty or so. They were early, too.”
“And how had she spent her day?” Ashley inquired. Ryan was certain that they had this information already.
“Shopping, mainly. Cathy’s been over here a few times, and likes to shop in London. She was last here about three years ago for a surgical convention, but I couldn’t make the trip.”
“Left you with the little one?” Ashley smiled thinly again. Ryan sensed that Owens was annoyed with him.
“Grandparents. That was before her mom died. I was doing comps for my doctorate at Georgetown, couldn’t get out of it. As it was I got my degree in two and a half years, and I sweated blood that last year between the university and seminars at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This was supposed to be a vacation.” Ryan grimaced. “The first real vacation since our honeymoon.”
“What were you doing when the attack took place?” Owens got things back on track. All three inquisitors seemed to lean forward in their seats.
“Looking the wrong way. We were talking about what we’d do for dinner when the grenade went off.”
“You knew it was a grenade?” Taylor asked.
Ryan nodded. “Yeah. They make a distinctive sound. I hate the damned things, but that’s one of the little toys the Marines trained me to use at Quantico. Same thing with the machine-gunner. At Quantico we were exposed to East Bloc weapons. I’ve handled the AK-47. The sound it makes is different from our stuff, and that’s a useful thing to know in combat. How come they didn’t both have AKs?”
“As near as we can determine,” Owens said, “the man you wounded disabled the car with a rifle-launched antitank grenade. Forensic evidence points to this. His rifle, therefore, was probably one of the new AK-74s, the small-caliber one, fitted to launch grenades. Evidently he didn’t have time to remove the grenade-launcher assembly and decided to press on with his pistol. He had a stick grenade also, you know.” Jack didn’t know about the rifle grenade, but the type of hand grenade he’d seen suddenly leaped out of his memory.
“The antitank kind?” Ryan asked.
“You know about that, do you?” Ashley responded.
“I used to be a Marine, remember? Called the RKG-something, isn’t it? Supposed to be able to punch a hole in a light armored vehicle or rip up a truck pretty good.” Where the hell did they get those little rascals — and why didn’t they use them . . .? You’re missing something. Jack.
“Then what?” Owens asked.
“First thing, I got my wife and kid down on the deck. The traffic stopped pretty quick. I kept my head up to see what was happening.”
“Why?” Taylor inquired.
“I don’t know,” Ryan said slowly. “Training, maybe. I wanted to see what the hell was going on — call it stupid curiosity. I saw the one guy hosing down the Rolls and the other one hustling around the back, like he was trying to bag anyone who tried to jump out of the car. I saw that if I moved to my left I could get closer. I was screened by the stopped cars. All of a sudden I was within fifty feet or so. The AK gunner was screened behind the Rolls, and the pistolero had his back to me. I saw that I had a chance, and I guess I took it.”