The man clearly didnt know what to do or think. Clark was speaking in good Spanish, with a trace of accent, and talking as normally as though he were asking directions from a policeman.

Here, you see this? Clark said, pointing to the rock. That is gold. This may be the biggest find since Pizarro. I think Seor Escobedo and his friends will buy all of this land.

They did not tell me of this, the man temporized.

Of course. It is a secret. And I must warn you, seor, not to speak of it to anyone or you will surely speak to Seor Escobedo!

Bladder control was a major problem for Larson now.

When are we leaving? someone called from the truck.

Clark looked around while the two gunmen tried to decide what to do. A driver and perhaps one other in the truck. He didnt hear or see anyone else. He started walking toward it. Two more steps and he saw what hed needed and feared to see. Sticking out from under the edge of the tarp was the front sight assembly of an M-16A2 rifle. What he had to do was decided in less than a second. Even to Clark it was amazing how the old habits kept coming back.

Stop! the leader said.

Can I load my samples on your truck? Clark asked without turning. To take to Seor Escobedo? He will be very pleased to see what I have found, I promise you, Clark added.

The two men ran to catch up with him, their rifles dangling from their hands as they did so. Theyd gotten within ten feet when he turned. As he did so, his right hand remained fixed in space, and took the Beretta from his waistband while his left hand fluttered the map and photo. Neither one saw it coming, Larson realized. He was so smooth. . . .

Not this truck, seor, I It was just one more thing to surprise him, but it would be the last. Clarks hand came up and fired into the mans forehead at a range of five feet. Before the leader had even started to fall, the second was also dead from the same cause. Without pause he moved around the right side of the truck. He hopped up on the running board and saw that there was just a driver. He, too, took a silenced round in the head. By this time Larson was out of the car. Approaching Clark from the rear, he came close to getting a round for his trouble.

Dont do that! Clark said as he safed his pistol.

Christ, I just You announce your presence in a situation like this. You almost died cause you didnt. Remember that. Come on. Clark hopped onto the back of the truck and pulled back the tarp.

Most of the dead were locals, judging by their clothes, but there were two faces that Clark vaguely recognized. It took a moment for him to remember. . . .

Captain Rojas. Sorry, kid, he said quietly to the body.

Who?

He had command of Team BANNER. One of ours. These fuckers killed some of our people. His voice seemed quite tired.

Looks like our guys did all right, too Let me explain something to you about combat, kid. There are two kinds of people in the field: your people and other people. The second category can include noncombatants, and you try to avoid hurting them if you have the time, but the only ones who really matter are your own people. You got a handkerchief?

Two.

Give em to me, then load those two in the truck.

Clark pulled the cap of the gas tank that hung under the cab. He tied the handkerchiefs together and fed them in. The tank was full and the cloth was immediately saturated with gasoline.

Come on, back to the car. Clark disassembled his pistol and put it back in the rock box, then closed the back hatch and got back into the front seat. He punched the cigarette lighter. Pull up close.

Larson did so, getting there about the time the lighter popped out. Clark took it out and touched it to the soaked handkerchiefs. They ignited at once. Larson didnt have to be told to take off. They were around the next bend before the fire started in earnest.

Back to the city, fast as you can, Clark ordered next. Whats the fastest way to get to Panama?

I can have you there in a couple of hours, but it means Do you have the radio codes to get onto an Air Force base?

Yes, but You are now out of country. Your cover is completely blown, Mr. Clark said. Get a message to your girl before she gets back. Have her desert, or jump ship, or whatever you call it with an airline so that she doesnt have to come back here. Shes blown, too. Both your lives are in danger-no-shit danger. There might have been somebody watching us. Somebody might have noticed that you drove me down here. Somebody might have noticed that you borrowed this car twice. Probably not, but you dont get old in this business by taking unnecessary chances. You have nothing more to contribute to this operation, so get your asses clear.

Yes, sir. They reached the highway before Larson spoke again. What you did . . .

What about it?

You were right. We cant let people do that and Youre wrong. You dont know why I did that, do you?

Clark asked. He spoke like a man teaching a class, but gave only one of the reasons. Youre thinking like a spy, and this is no longer an intelligence operation. We have people, soldiers, running and hiding up in those hills. What I did was to create a diversion. If they think our guys came down to avenge their dead, it may pull some of the bad guys down off the mountain, get them to look in the wrong place, take some of the heat off our guys. Not much, but its the best I could do. He paused for a moment. I wont say it didnt feel good. I dont like seeing our people killed, and I fucking well dont like not being allowed to do anything about it. Thats been happening for too many yearsMiddle East, everywherewe lose people and dont do a goddamned thing about it. This time I just had an excuse. Its been a long time. And you know somethingit did feel good, Clark admitted coldly. Now shut up and drive. I have some thinking to do.

Ryan was in his office, still quiet, still thinking. Judge Moore was finding all sorts of excuses to be away. Ritter was spending a lot of time out of the office. Jack couldnt ask questions and demand answers if they werent here. That also made Ryan the senior executive present, and gave him all sorts of extraneous paper to shuffle and telephone calls to return. Maybe he could make that work for him. Of one thing he was certain. He had to find out what the hell was happening. It was also plain that Moore and Ritter had made two mistakes of their own. First, they thought that Ryan didnt know anything. They ought to have known better. Hed only gotten this far in the Agency because he was good at figuring things out. Their second mistake was in their likely assumption that his inexperience would prevent him from pressing too hard even if he did start figuring things out. Fundamentally they were both thinking like bureaucrats. People who spent their lives in bureaucracies were typically afraid of breaking rules. That was a sure way to get fired, and it cowed people to think of tossing their careers away. But that was an issue Jack had decided on long before. He didnt know what his profession was. Hed been a Marine, a stockbroker, an assistant professor of history, and then joined CIA. He could always go back to teaching. The University of Virginia had already talked to Cathy about becoming a full professor at their medical school, and even Jeff Pelt wanted Ryan to come and liven up the history department as a visiting lecturer. It would be nice to teach again, Jack thought. It would certainly be easier than what he was doing here. Whatever he saw in his future, he didnt feel trapped by his job. And James Greer had given him all the guidance he needed: Do what you think is right.

Nancy. Jack keyed his intercom. When is Mr. Ritter going to be back?

Tomorrow morning. He had to meet with somebody down at The Farm.

Okay, thanks. Could you call my wife and leave a message that Im going to be pretty late tonight?

Surely, Doctor.

Thanks. I need the file on INF verification, the OSWR preliminary report.

Dr. Molina is out at Sunnyvale with the Judge, Nancy said. Tom Molina was the head of the Office of Strategic Weapons Research, which was back-checking two other departments on the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty verification procedures.

I know. I just want to look the report over so I can discuss it with him when he gets back.

Take about fifteen minutes to get it.

No rush, Jack replied and killed the intercom. That document could tie up King Solomon himself for three days, and it gave him a wholly plausible excuse for staying late. Congress had gotten antsy about some technical issues as both sides worked to destroy the last of their launchers. Ryan and Molina would have to testify there in the next week. Jack pulled the writing panel out from the side of his desk, knowing what hed do after Nancy and the other clerical people left.

Cortez was a very sophisticated political observer. That was one reason hed made colonel so young in an organization as bureaucratized as the DGI. Based on the Soviet KGB model, it had already grown a collection of clerks and inspectors and security officers to make the American CIA look like a mom-and-pop operationwhich made the relative efficiencies of the agencies all the more surprising. For all their advantages, the Americans lacked political will, always fighting over issues that ought to have been quite clear. At the KGB Academy, one instructor had compared them to the Polish parliament of old, a collection of over five hundred barons, all of whom had had to agree before anything happenedand because of which nothing ever happened, allowing Poland to be raped by anyone with the ability to make a simple decision.

The Americans had acted in this case, however, acted decisively and well. What had changed?

What had changedwhat had to have changed in this casewas that the Americans were breaking their own laws. They had responded emotionally . . . no, that wasnt fair, Flix told himself. They had responded forcefully to a direct and arrogant challenge, just as the Soviets would have reacted, though with minor tactical differences. The emotional aspect to the reaction was that they had done the proper thing only by violating their incredible intelligence-oversight laws. And it was an election year in America. . . .

Ah, Cortez said aloud. It really was that simple, wasnt it? The Americans, who had already helped him, would do so again. He just had to identify the proper target. That took only ten minutes more. So fitting, he thought, that his military rank had been that of colonel. For a century of Latin American history, it was always the colonels who did this sort of thing.

What would Fidel say? Cortez nearly laughed out loud at the thought. For as long as that bearded ideologue had breathed, hed hated the norteamericanos as an evangelist hated sin, enjoyed every small sting hed been able to inflict on them, dumped his criminals and lunatics on the unsuspecting CarterAnyone could have taken advantage of that fool, Cortez thought with amusementplayed every possible gambit of guerrilla diplomacy against them. He really would have enjoyed this one. Now Flix just had to figure a way to pass the message along. It was a high-risk play on his part, but hed won every toss to this point, and the dice were hot in his hand.

Perhaps it had been a mistake, Chavez reflected. Perhaps leaving the head on the mans chest had merely enraged them. Whatever the cause, the Colombians were prowling the woods with gusto now. They hadnt caught Team KNIFES trail, and the soldiers were working very hard not to leave one, but one thing was clear to him: there would be a knock-down, drag-out firefight, and it wouldnt be long in coming.

But that wasnt clear to Captain Ramirez. His orders were still to evade and avoid, and he was following them. Most of the men didnt question that, but Chavez didor more precisely, wanted to. But sergeants dont question captains, at least not very often, and then only if you were a first sergeant and had the opportunity to take the man aside. If there was going to be a fight, and it sure as hell looked that way, why not set it up on favorable terms? Ten good men, armed with automatic weapons and grenades, plus two SAWs, made for one hell of an ambush. Give them a trail to follow, lead them right into the killzone. They were still carrying a couple of claymores. With luck, theyd drop ten or fifteen men in the first three seconds. Then the other sidethose few who ran away fast enoughwouldnt be pissed. Theyd be pissing in their pants. Nobody would be crazy about hot pursuit then. Why didnt Ramirez see that? Instead he was keeping everyone on the move, wearing them out, not looking for a good place to rest up, prepare a major ambush, duke it out, and then take off again. There was a time for caution. There was a time to fight. What that most favored word in any military lexicon, initiative, meant was who did the deciding on which time was which. Chavez knew it on instinct. Ramirez, he suspected, was thinking too much. About what, Chavez didnt know, but the captains thinking was starting to worry the sergeant.

Larson returned the car and drove Clark to the airport in his own BMW. Hed miss the car, he realized, as they walked to his aircraft. Clark was carrying all of his classified or sensitive equipment out with him, and nothing else. He hadnt stopped to pack, not even his razor, though his Beretta 92-F, with silencer, was again tucked into the small of his back. He walked coolly and normally, but Larson now knew what tension looked like in Mr. Clark. He appeared even more relaxed than usual, even more offhand, even more absentminded, all the more to appear harmless to the people around him. This, Larson told himself, was one very dangerous cat. The pilot played back the shooting at the truck, the way hed put the two gunmen at ease, confused them, asked for their help. Hed never known that the Agency had people like this, not after the Church Committee hearings.

Clark climbed up into the aircraft, tossing his gear in the back, and managed to look a little impatient as Larson ran through his preflight procedures. He didnt return to normal until the wheels were retracted.

How long to Panama?

Two hours.

Take us out over the water as soon as you can.

Youre nervous?

Nowonly about your flying, Clark said over his headset. He looked over and smiled. What Im worried about is thirty or so kids who may just be hung out to dry.

Forty minutes later they left Colombian airspace. Once over the Bay of Panama, Clark reached back for his gear, then forced open the door and dumped it into the sea.

You mind if I ask . . . ?

Lets assume for the moment that this whole operation is coming apart. Just how much evidence do you want to be carrying into the Senate hearing room? Clark paused. Not much danger of that, of course, but what if people see us carrying stuff and wonder what it is and why were carrying it?

Oh. Okay.

Keep thinking, Larson. Henry Kissinger said it: Even paranoids have enemies. If theyre willing to hang those soldiers out, what about us?

But . . . Mr. Ritter Ive known Bob Ritter for quite a while. I have a few questions for him. I want to see if he has good enough answers. Its for goddamned sure he didnt keep us informed of things we needed to know. Maybe thats just another example of D.C. perspective. Then again, maybe its not.

You dont really think I dont know what to think. Call in, Clark ordered. There was no sense getting Larson thinking about it. He hadnt been in the Agency long enough to understand the issues.

The pilot nodded and did what he was told. He switched his radio over to a seldom-used frequency and began transmitting. Howard Approach, this is special flight X-Ray Golf Whiskey Delta, requesting permission to land, over.

Whiskey Delta, this is Howard Approach, stand by, replied some faceless tower controller, who then checked his radio codes. He didnt know who XGWD was, but those letters were on his hot list. CIA, he thought, or some other agency that put people where they didnt belong, which was all he needed to know. Whiskey Delta, squawk one-three-one-seven. You are cleared for a direct visual approach. Winds are one-nine-five at ten knots.

Roger, thank you. Out. At least one thing had gone well today, Larson thought. Ten minutes later he put the Beech on the ground and followed a jeep to a parking place on the ramp. Air Force Security Police were waiting for them there, and whisked both officers over to Base Operations. The base was on security-alert drill; everyone was wearing green and most had sidearms. This included the operations staff, most of whom were in flight suits to look militant.

Next flight stateside? Clark asked a young female captain. Her uniform poopy suit bore the silver wings of a pilot, and Clark wondered what she flew.

We have a -141 inbound to Charleston, she replied. But if you want to get on it Young lady, check your ops orders for this. Clark handed over his J. T. Williams passport. In the SI section, he added helpfully.

The captain rose from her seat and pulled open the top drawer of her classified file cabinet, the one with the double combination lock. She extracted a red-bordered ring binder and flipped to the last divider. This was the Special Intelligence section, which identified certain things and people that were more closely guarded than mere top secrets. It took only a couple of seconds before she returned.

Thank you, Colonel Williams. The flight leaves in twenty minutes. Is there anything that you and your aide require, sir?

Have Charleston arrange to have a puddle-jumper standing by to take us to D.C., if you would, please, Captain. Sorry to have to drop in on you so unexpectedly. Thank you for your assistance.

Any time, sir, she replied, smiling at this polite colonel.

Colonel? Larson asked on the way out the door.

Special Ops, no less. Pretty good for a beat-up old chief bosuns mate, isnt it? A jeep had them to the Lockheed Starlifter in five minutes. The tunnel-like cargo compartment was empty. This was an Air Force Reserve flight, the loadmaster explained. They dropped some cargo off but were deadheading back home. That was fine with Clark, who stretched out as soon as the bird lifted off. It was amazing, he thought as he dozed off, all the things his countrymen did well. You could transition from being in mortal danger to being totally safe in a matter of hours. The same country that put people into the field and failed to support them properly treated them like VIPsso long as they had the right ID notification in the right book, as though that could make it all better. It was crazy, the things we could do, and the things we couldnt. A moment later he was snoring next to an amazed Carlos Larson. He didnt wake until just before the landing, five hours later.

As with any other government agency, CIA had regular business hours. By 3:30, those who came in early on flex-time were already filing out to beat the traffic, and by 5:30 even the seventh floor was quiet. Outside Jacks office, Nancy Cummings put the cover over her IBM typewritershe used a word processor, too, but Nancy still liked typewritersand hit a button on her intercom.

Anything else you need me for, Dr. Ryan?

No, thank you. See you in the morning.

Okay. Good night, Dr. Ryan.

Jack turned in his chair, back to staring out at the trees that walled the complex off from outside view. He was trying to think, but his mind was a blank void. He didnt know what hed find. Part of him hoped that hed find nothing. He knew that what he would do was going to cost him his career at the Agency, but he didnt really give much of a damn anymore. If this was what his job required, then the job wasnt really worth having, was it?

But what would the Admiral say about that?

Jack didnt have that answer. He pulled a paperback out of his desk drawer and started reading. A few hundred pages later it was seven oclock.

Time. Ryan lifted his phone and called the floor security desk. When the secretaries were gone home, it was the security guys who ran errands.

This is Dr. Ryan. I need some documents from central files. He read off three numbers. Theyre big ones, he warned the desk man. Better take somebody else to help.

Yes, sir. Well head down in a minute.

Not that much of a hurry, Ryan said as he hung up. He already had a reputation as an easygoing boss. As soon as the phone was back in its cradle, he jumped to his feet and switched on his personal Xerox machine. Then he walked out his door to Nancys outer office space, listening for the diminishing sound of the two security officers walking out to the main corridor.

They didnt lock office doors up here. There was no point. You had to pass through about ten security zones to get here, each guarded by armed officers, each supervised by a separate central security office on the first floor. There were also roving patrols. Security at CIA was tighter than at a federal prison, and about as oppressive. But it didnt really apply to the senior executives, and all Jack had to do was walk across the corridor and open the door to Bob Ritters office.

The DDOs office safevault was a better termwas set up the same way as Ryans, behind a false panel in the wall. It was less for secrecyany competent burglar would find it in under a minutethan for aesthetics. Jack opened the panel and dialed the combination for the safe. He wondered if Ritter knew that Greer had the combination. Perhaps he did, but certainly he didnt know that the Admiral had written it down. It was so odd a thing for the Agency, so odd that no one had ever considered the possibility. The smartest people in the world still had blind spots.

The safe doors were all alarmed, of course. The alarm systems were foolproof, and worked the same way as the safety locks on nuclear weaponsand they were the best kind available, werent they? You dialed in the right combination or the alarm went off. If you goofed doing it the first time, a light would go on above the dial, indicating that you had ten seconds to get it right or another light would go on at two separate security desks. A second goof would set off more alarms. A third would put the safe in lock-down for two hours. Several CIA executives had learned to curse the system and become the subject of jokes in the security department. But not Ryan, who was not intimidated by combination locks. The computer that kept track of such things decided that, well, it must be Mr. Ritter, and that was that.

Jacks heart beat faster now. There were over twenty files in here, and his time was measured in minutes. But again Agency procedures came to his rescue. Inside the front cover of each file was a summary sheet telling what Operation WHATEVER was all about. He didnt really pay attention to what they said, but used the summary sheets only to identify items of interest. In less than two minutes, Jack had files labeled EAGLE EYE, SHOWBOAT-I and SHOWBOAT-II, CAPER, and RECIPROCITY. The total stack was nearly eighteen inches high. Jack made careful note of where the folders went, then closed the safe door without locking it. Next he returned to his office, setting the papers on the floor behind his desk. He started reading EAGLE EYE first of all.

Holy Christ! Detection and interdiction of incoming drug flight, he saw, meant . . . shooting them down. Someone knocked on his door.

Come on in. It was the security guys with the files hed requested. Ryan had them set the files on a chair and dismissed them.

Jack figured he had an hour, two at most, to do what he had to do. That meant he had time to scan, not to read. Each operation had a more detailed summary of objectives and methods plus an event log and daily progress report. Jacks personal Xerox machine was a big, sophisticated one that organized and collated sheets, and most importantly, zipped them through very rapidly. He started feeding sheets into the hopper. The automatic feed allowed him to read and copy at the same time. Ninety minutes later he had copied over six hundred sheets, maybe a quarter of what hed taken. It wasnt enough, but it would have to do. He summoned the security guards to return the files theyd brought uphe took the time to ruffle them up first. As soon as they were gone, he assembled the files hed . . .

. . . stolen? Jack asked himself. It suddenly dawned on him that hed just violated the law. He hadnt thought of that. He really hadnt. As he loaded the files back in the safe, Ryan told himself that really he hadnt violated anything. As a senior executive, he was entitled to know these things, and the rules didnt really apply to him . . . but that, he remembered, was a dangerous way to think. He was serving a higher cause. He was doing What Was Right. He wasShit! Ryan said aloud when he closed the safe door. You dont know what the hell youre doing. He was back in his office a minute later.

It was time to leave. First he made a notation on the Xerox count sheet. You didnt make Xerox copies anywhere in this building without signing off for them, but hed thought ahead on that. Roughly the right number of sheets were assembled in a pile and placed in his safe, ostensibly a copy of the OSWR report that Nancy had retrieved. Making such copies was something that directorate chiefs were allowed to do fairly freely. Inside his safe, he found, was the manual for its operation. The copies hed made went into his briefcase. The last thing Ryan did before leaving was to change his combination to something nobody would ever guess. He nodded to the security officer at the desk next to the elevator on his way out. The Agency Buick was waiting when he got to the basement garage.

Sorry to make you stay in so late, Fred, Jack said as he got in. Fred was his evening driver.

No problem, sir. Home?

Right. It required all of his discipline not to start reading on the way. Instead he leaned back and commanded himself to take a nap. It would be the only sleep he would get tonight, he was sure.

Clark got into Andrews just after eight. His first call was to Ritters office, but it was shortstopped elsewhere and he learned that the DDO was unavailable until morning. With nothing better to do, Clark and Larson checked into a motel near the Pentagon. After picking up shaving gear and a toothbrush from the Marriotts gift shop, Clark again went to sleep, again surprising the younger officer, who was far too keyed up to do so.

How bad is it? the President asked.

Weve lost nine people, Cutter replied. It was inevitable, sir. We knew going in that this was a dangerous operation. So did they. What we can do What we can do is shut this operation down, and do it at once. And keep a nice tight lid on it forever. This one never happened. I didnt bargain for any of this, not for the civilian casualties, and sure as hell not for losing nine of our own people. Damn it, Admiral, you told me that these kids were so good Mr. President, I never The hell you didnt! the President said loudly enough to startle the Secret Service agent outside his upstairs office. How the hell did you get me into this mess?

Cutters patrician face went pale as a corpse. Everything hed worked for, the action hed been proposing for three years. . . . Ritter was proclaiming success. That was the maddest part of all.

Sir, our objective was to hurt the Cartel. We have accomplished that. The CIA officer whos running RECIPROCITY, in Colombia, right now, said that he could start a gang war within the Carteland we have done just that! They just tried to assassinate one of their own peopleEscobedo. Drug shipments coming in are down. We havent announced it yet, but the papers are already talking about how prices are going up on the street. Were winning.