In Paris, in the Chambre des Députés de la République Française, a deputy, Balder, was called off the floor and arrested by the DGSE.
In the parliament building in New Delhi, the speaker of the Lok Sabha, Vishnu, was bundled into a limousine and taken to jail.
In Rome, the deputy of the Camera dei Deputati, Tyr, was in a Turkish bath when he was arrested.
The sweep went on:
In Mexico and Albania and Japan, high officials were arrested and held in jails. A member of the Bundestag in West Germany, a deputy in the Nationalrat in Austria, the vicechairman of the Presidium of the Soviet Union.
The arrests included the president of a large shipping company and a powerful union leader, a television evangelist and the head of an oil cartel.
Eddie Maltz was shot while trying to escape.
Pete Connors committed suicide while FBI agents were breaking down the door to his office.
Mary and Mike Slade were seated in the Bubble Room, receiving reports from around the world.
Mike was on the telephone. “Vreeland,” he said. “He’s an MP in the South African government.” He replaced the receiver and turned to Mary. “They’ve got most of them. Except for the Controller and Neusa Muñez—Angel.”
“No one knew that Angel was a woman?” Mary marveled.
“No. She had all of us fooled. Lantz described her to the Patriots for Freedom Committee as a fat, ugly moron.”
“What about the Controller?” Mary asked.
“No one ever saw him. He gave orders by telephone. He was a brilliant organizer. The Committee was broken up into small cells, so that one group never knew what the other was doing.”
Angel was furious. In fact, she was more than furious. She was like an enraged animal. The contract had gone wrong somehow, but she had been prepared to make up for it.
She had called the private number in Washington, and, using her dull, listless voice, had said, “Angel say to tell you not to worry. There was som’ mistake, but he weel take care of it, mester. They will all die nex’ time, and—”
“There won’t be a next time,” the voice had exploded. “Angel bungled it. He’s worse than an amateur.”
“Angel tol’ me—”
“I don’t give a damn what he told you. He’s finished. He won’t get a cent. Just tell the son of a bitch to keep away. I’ll find someone else who knows how to do the job.”
And he had slammed the phone down.
The gringo bastard. No one had ever treated Angel like that and lived to talk about it. Pride was at stake. The man was going to pay. Oh, how he would pay!
The private phone in the Bubble Room rang. Mary picked it up. It was Stanton Rogers.
“Mary! You’re safe! Are the children all right?”
“We’re all fine, Stan.”
“Thank God it’s over. Tell me exactly what happened.”
“It was Angel. She tried to blow up the residence and—”
“You mean he.”
“No. Angel is a woman. Her name is Neusa Muñez.”
There was a long, stunned silence. “Neusa Muñez? That fat, ugly moron was Angel?”
Mary felt a sudden chill go through her. She said slowly, “That’s right, Stan.”
“Is there anything I can do for you, Mary?”
“No. I’m on my way to see the children. I’ll talk to you later.”
She replaced the receiver and sat there, dazed.
Mike looked at her. “What’s the matter?”
She turned to him. “You said that Harry Lantz told only some Committee members what Neusa Muñez looked like.”
“Yes.”
Mary said, “Stanton Rogers just described her.”
When Angel’s plane landed at Dulles Airport, she went to a telephone booth and dialed the Controller’s private number.
The familiar voice said, “Stanton Rogers.”
Two days later, Mike, Colonel McKinney, and Mary were seated in the embassy conference room. An electronics expert had just finished debugging it.
“It all fits now,” Mike said. “The Controller had to be Stanton Rogers, but none of us could see it.”
“But why would he want to kill me?” Mary asked. “In the beginning, he was against my being appointed ambassador. He told me so himself.”
Mike explained. “He hadn’t completely formulated his plan then. But once he realized what you and the children symbolized, everything clicked. After that, he fought for you to get the nomination. That’s what threw us off the track. He was behind you all the way, seeing to it that you got a buildup in the press, making sure that you were seen in all the right places by the right people.”