Patriot Games by Tom Clancy

“No,” Ryan said. “The scary ones are the ones with brains, the ones who believe in it.”

“I haven’t met one of those yet,” he admitted.

“I have.” Jack walked him to the door and watched him pull away. The house was an empty, quiet place without Sally running around, without the TV on, without Cathy talking about her friends at Hopkins. For several minutes Jack wandered around aimlessly, as though expecting to find someone. He didn’t want to sit down, because that would somehow be an admission that he was all alone. He walked into the kitchen and started to fix a drink, but before he was finished, he dumped it all down the sink. He didn’t want to get drunk. It was better to keep his mind unimpaired. Finally he lifted the phone and dialed.

“Yes,” a voice answered.

“Admiral, Jack Ryan.”

“I understand that your girl’s going to be all right,” James Greer said. “I’m glad to hear that, son.”

“Thank you, sir. Is the Agency involved in this?”

“This is an unsecure line, Jack,” the Admiral replied.

“I want in,” Ryan said.

“Be here tomorrow morning.”

Ryan hung up and went looking for his briefcase. He opened it and took out the Browning automatic pistol. After setting it on the kitchen table, he got out his shotgun and cleaning kit. He spent the next hour cleaning and oiling first the pistol, then the shotgun. When he was satisfied, he loaded both.

He left for Langley at five the next morning. Ryan had managed to get four more hours of sleep before rising and going through the usual morning ritual of coffee and breakfast. His early departure allowed him to miss the worst of the traffic, though the George Washington Parkway was never really free of the government workers heading to and from the agencies that were always more or less awake. After getting into the CIA building, he reflected that he had never called here and found Admiral Greer absent. Well, he told himself, that’s one thing in this world that I can depend on. A security officer escorted him to the seventh floor.

“Good morning, sir,” Jack said on entering the room.

“You look better than I expected,” the DDI observed.

“It’s an illusion mostly, but I can’t solve my problem by hiding in a corner, can I? Can we talk about what’s going on?”

“Your Irish friends have gotten a lot of attention. The President himself wants action on this. We’ve never had international terrorists play games in our country — at least, not things that ever made the press,” Greer said cryptically. “It is now a high-priority case. It’s getting a lot of resources.”

“I want to be one of them,” Ryan said simply.

“If you think that you can be part of an operation –”

“I know better than that, Admiral.”

Greer smiled at the younger man. “That’s good to see, son. I thought you were smart. So what do you want to do for us?”

“We both know that the bad guys are part of the network. The data you let me look at was pretty limited. Obviously you’re going to be trying to collate data on all the groups, searching for leads on the ULA. Maybe I can help.”

“What about your teaching?”

“I can be here when I’m not teaching. There isn’t much to hold me at home at the moment, sir.”

“It isn’t good practice to use people who are personally involved in the investigation,” Greer pointed out.

“This isn’t the FBI, sir. I’m not going out into the field. You just told me that. I know you want me back here on a permanent basis, Admiral. If you really want me, let me start off doing something that’s important to both of us.” Jack paused, searching for another point. “If I’m good enough, let’s find out now.”

“Some people aren’t going to like it.”

“There’s things happening to me that I don’t like very much, sir, and I have to live with it. If I can’t fight back somehow, I might as well stay at home. You’re the only chance I have to do something to protect my family, sir.”

Greer turned to refill his coffee cup from the drip machine behind his desk. He’d liked Jack almost from the first moment he’d met him. This was a young man accustomed to having his way, though he was not arrogant about it. That was a point in his favor: Ryan knew what he wanted, but wasn’t overly pushy. He wasn’t a person driven by ambition, another point in his favor. Finally, he had a lot of raw talent to be shaped and trained and directed. Greer was always looking for talent. The Admiral turned back.

“Okay, you’re on the team. Marty’s coordinating the information. You’ll work directly with him. I hope you don’t talk in your sleep, son, because you’re going to see stuff that you’re not even allowed to dream about.”

“Sir, there’s only one thing that I’m going to dream about.”

It had been a very busy month for Dennis Cooley. The death of an earl in East Anglia had forced his heirs to sell off a massive collection of books to pay the death duties, and Cooley had used up nearly all of his available capital to secure no less than twenty-one items for his shop. But it was worth it: among them was a rare first-folio of Marlowe’s plays. Better still, the dead earl had been assiduous in protecting his treasures. The books had been deep-frozen several times to kill off the insects that desecrated these priceless relics of the past. The Marlowe was in remarkably good shape, despite the waterstained cover that had put off a number of less perceptive buyers. Cooley was stooped over his desk, reading the first act of The Jew of Malta, when the bell rang.

“Is that the one I heard about?” his visitor asked at once.

“Indeed.” Cooley smiled to cover his surprise. He hadn’t seen this particular visitor for some time, and was somewhat disturbed that he’d come back so soon. “Printed in 1633, forty years after Marlowe’s death. Some parts of the text are suspect, of course, but this is one of the few surviving copies of the first printed edition.”

“It’s quite authentic?”

“Of course,” Cooley replied, slightly put off at the question. “In addition to my own humble expertise, it has authentication papers from Sir Edmund Grey of the British Museum.”

“One cannot argue with that,” the customer agreed.

“I’m afraid I have not yet decided upon a price for it.” Why are you here?

“Price is not an object. I understand that you may wish to enjoy it for yourself, but I must have it.” This told Cooley why he was here. He leaned to look over Cooley’s shoulder at the book. “Magnificent,” he said, placing a small envelope in the book dealer’s pocket.

“Perhaps we can work something out,” Cooley allowed. “In a few weeks, perhaps.” He looked out the window. A man was window-shopping at the jewelry store on the opposite side of the arcade. After a moment he straightened up and walked away.

“Sooner than that, please,” the man insisted.

Cooley sighed. “Come see me next week and we may be able to discuss it. I do have other customers, you know.”

“But none more important, I hope.”

Cooley blinked twice. “Very well.”

Geoffrey Watkins continued to browse the store for another few minutes. He selected a Keats that had also come from the dead earl’s estate and paid six hundred pounds for it before leaving. On leaving the arcade he failed to notice a young lady at the newsstand outside and could not have known that another was waiting at the arcade’s other end. The one who followed him was dressed in a manner guaranteed to garner attention, including orange hair that would have fluoresced if the sun had been out. She followed him west for two blocks and kept going in that direction when he crossed the street. Another police officer was on the walk down Green Park.

That night the daily surveillance reports came to Scotland Yard where, as always, they were put on computer. The operation being run was a joint venture between the Metropolitan Police and the Security Service, once known as MI-5. Unlike the American FBI, the people at “Five” did not have the authority to arrest suspects, and had to work through the police to bring a case to a conclusion. The marriage was not entirely a happy one. It meant that James Owens had to work closely with David Ashley. Owens entirely concurred with his FBI colleague’s assessment of the younger man: “a snotty bastard.”

“Patterns, patterns, patterns,” Ashley said, sipping his tea while he looked at the printout. They had identified a total of thirty-nine people who knew, or might have known, information common to the ambush on The Mall and Miller’s transport to the Isle of Wight. One of them had leaked the information. Every one of them was being watched. Thus far they had discovered a closet homosexual, two men and one woman who were having affairs not of state, and a man who got considerable enjoyment watching pornographic movies in the Soho theaters. Financial records gotten from Inland Revenue showed nothing particularly interesting, nor did living habits. There was the usual spread of hobbies, taste in theatrical plays, and television shows. Several of the people had wide collections of friends. A few had none at all. The investigators were grateful for these sad, lonely people — many of the other people’s friends had to be checked out, too, and this took time and manpower. Owens viewed the entire operation as something necessary but rather distasteful. It was the police equivalent of peering through windows. The tapes of telephone conversations — especially those between lovers — made him squirm on occasion. Owens was a man who appreciated the individual’s need for privacy. No one’s life could survive this sort of scrutiny. He told himself that one person’s life wouldn’t, and that was the point of the exercise.