George seemed to be reading my mind. "Son, do I need to worry about you?"

"No, George," I said. "I know what I've got to do."

"Good. Tell them about the device. We'll meet soon."

The phone went dead and I gave Nisha back the receiver. "There's an explosive device on board."

She turned to Grayhead. "Simon, we definitely have a device on board."

He looked up sharply from his desk.

"On the top deck, a plastic cylinder tucked into the couch behind the wheel. There's no antihandling device...just twist the cylinder, take the two AA batteries out, and it's safe. I'll draw a picture."

Nisha was already fetching me paper as the information was pa.s.sed down to the red room via one of the radio operators.

One of the medics arrived as I started sketching a diagram of the device and its location, trying not to smear it with too much blood.

Grayhead had other things on his mind. "Stand to, the crews. The Ninth of May... Ninth of May... Looks like they've stopped hugging the coast and are heading out to sea. Should be over the line in twenty-five." Looks like they've stopped hugging the coast and are heading out to sea. Should be over the line in twenty-five."

The red room would be a hive of activity now as the crews pulled on their chest harnesses, made ready their weapons, and finally put on their Protects and life-preservers.

As I sat there, trying to cut away from my anger, the theme tune to Mission Impossible Mission Impossible struck up. Heads spun to see which s.h.i.t-for-brains had brought a cell phone into the ops center. struck up. Heads spun to see which s.h.i.t-for-brains had brought a cell phone into the ops center.

I pressed the green b.u.t.ton and immediately got Thackery hollering in my ear. "It's gone, the boat left!" I heard the kids from the Lee Lee in the background. "There were two on board, the guy who owns the boat, and his friend...." in the background. "There were two on board, the guy who owns the boat, and his friend...."

I looked around me as things started getting more intense. The crews were in the boats, ready to go. "Stand down, mate, it's all been taken care of."

"What?"

"It's all been taken care of, stand down. Thanks, mate, thanks." I hit the end-of-call b.u.t.ton, then finished the drawing and handed it to Nisha.

I sat in the swivel chair as Grayhead confirmed the crews were ready in their boats. As soon as they had the drawing, he'd give them the go. "Contact thirty-three minutes." He wanted to make sure they were in international waters.

George was right, of course. This was going to be a long war, and Greaseball would be even more useful in future. Now they'd stolen from al-Qaeda, George had both of them tightly by the b.a.l.l.s, and could point them in whatever direction he pleased, as long as HIV didn't get them first.

"Contact twenty-nine minutes," a voice called out from the radar screen.

I wondered what was happening on the Ninth of May Ninth of May. Curly would probably be doing the driving, leaving Greaseball to pull the cork on a bottle of good champagne. Next stop, maybe, some boy-town Greek island and the start of their own big-bang theory.

The ops room continued to follow the progress of their two crews.

"Same heading. Contact twenty-one minutes."

But then my smile disappeared. So what if they lost the money? They'd still be alive: they'd still get to go wherever it was they were heading.

As the medic lifted my sweatshirt and started to have a good look at what was left of my rib cage, I pictured Lotfi and Hubba-Hubba in their Rubbermaids at the safe house, having a good laugh as I gave them my jester impression. They had saved my life, and kept their promise to each other. Now it was time for me to keep mine to them.

I started pressing the b.u.t.tons with my right thumb as the medic dug into his bag. A gentle beep sounded each time I hit another digit of the pager number, willing it still to be in range.

Suddenly the answering service was yammering off to me in French. I didn't understand a word it was saying, but I knew what it meant: "Wait for the tone, then tap in the number that you want the pager to display. After that just hit the star b.u.t.ton."

I waited for the tone, and did exactly that, just hitting the eight b.u.t.ton a few times, then the star. I pushed the phone against my ear and held my breath.

We had done our job, and done it well; so f.u.c.k George, and f.u.c.k everything he had for me.

A few seconds later the answering service came back to me, and this time I understood every word.

"Message bien recu."

Epilogue.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 10:28 HRS.

T he coast road north ran parallel with the train track out of Boston. I watched from the train as it cut through the icy marshland. The day was dull and gray, the only burst of color a huge Stars and Stripes in the distance, fluttering from a flagpole at the point where the earth met the sky. I wondered how cold my reception was going to be at Wonderland-or if I was going to get one at all. he coast road north ran parallel with the train track out of Boston. I watched from the train as it cut through the icy marshland. The day was dull and gray, the only burst of color a huge Stars and Stripes in the distance, fluttering from a flagpole at the point where the earth met the sky. I wondered how cold my reception was going to be at Wonderland-or if I was going to get one at all.

The other pa.s.sengers on the silver commuter train still looked at me as if I'd just escaped from the local nuthouse, maybe because I was in the same greasy, unshaven state as last time, maybe because I still had traces of bruising, and the cuts on my hands and head had not yet healed. I was too exhausted to worry.

The front pages of their papers still carried pictures of troops in Afghanistan, where the Taliban were now on the run. "Inside the Manhunt" read the cover of Time Time magazine, and Bin Laden's face stared out at me through the crosshairs of the art department's sniper rifle. magazine, and Bin Laden's face stared out at me through the crosshairs of the art department's sniper rifle.

I hadn't seen George yet, and still didn't know what was going to happen to me. My big hope was that I'd find a pa.s.sport in my Christmas stocking, but I wasn't holding my breath.

The train rattled on across Revere. Every time I did this journey I felt as though I was in the middle of an American history lesson: everywhere you looked there was something to remind you that the Brits had had their a.s.ses kicked here a couple of hundred years ago. I remembered telling Carrie, "We'll be back as soon as the lease runs out." It had seemed quite funny at the time, but I couldn't raise much of a smile right now: I was too busy wondering how much Brit a.s.s was going to get kicked today.

The warship had weighed anchor within hours of the Ninth of May Ninth of May exploding, after Grayhead's boat teams had finished trying to make sense of the fireball they'd seen in the distance as they closed in. Once we were within reach of the western Italian coast, I was shoved on a helicopter. exploding, after Grayhead's boat teams had finished trying to make sense of the fireball they'd seen in the distance as they closed in. Once we were within reach of the western Italian coast, I was shoved on a helicopter.

The headquarters of the U.S. 16th Air Force, based at Aviano, was about an hour and a half from Venice, but I missed out on the sightseeing. My three days there were spent in a featureless office building, getting debriefed by two men and a woman to the roar of F-16 fighters and a coffeemaker whose power kept going off. At least the coffee was hotter on the flight back to the States, courtesy of the USAF.

They told me George had gone ballistic about Greaseball getting the good news. I spent a bit of time describing how the device worked, but couldn't for the life of me explain what had caused the detonation. Maybe a wrong number? That had always been a worry.

They nodded, then moved on, but I wondered how long it would be before George took a long, hard look at Thackery's phone records. Whatever, I would just have to play dumb: it was one of the things I was really good at.

Being holed up at Aviano at least gave me time to rest my two broken ribs, with some help from a truckload of codeine and sleeping upright on a couch.

Gumaa and Goatee hadn't been so lucky. They'd wasted no time in telling the interrogation team who their contacts were in the U.S., and a bunch of six-man ASUs, one living in the Detroit area, had already been covertly rendered. There would be more to come: the two hawallada hawallada were giving out information faster than Bloomberg. were giving out information faster than Bloomberg.

The Detroit ASU had planned to drive to the Mall of America in Minnesota. Seven times larger than a baseball stadium, with more than forty-two million visitors every year, it was the perfect target for a dirty-bomb attack. Their plan was pretty much along the lines George had feared. All six were going to move into the mall at different times, through different entrances, onto different floors in different sections. They had aimed to detonate themselves at exactly two P.M. P.M. on December 24. The place would have been filled with tens of thousands of shoppers, kids in line for Santa, all that sort of Christmas stuff. on December 24. The place would have been filled with tens of thousands of shoppers, kids in line for Santa, all that sort of Christmas stuff.

I thought Lotfi and Hubba-Hubba would have been pretty pleased to have gotten in the way of that. I just wished they'd been here to celebrate.

Their bodies were probably still in a morgue in Nice. No one was going to come forward to claim them; they'd probably be burned, or buried by the French in paupers' graves. I hoped that they'd both be getting their little bit of the Paradise Lotfi had spent so much time talking to G.o.d about, and that they'd been able to look down on the Ninth of May Ninth of May with a big smile on their faces as it got its own. with a big smile on their faces as it got its own.

I thought about the three of us messing around with the hats in the safe house, and Hubba-Hubba with that evil eye thing around his neck, and couldn't help but smile. Then, from nowhere, I could hear his voice as clearly as if he were sitting next to me: "He hates this. He says I will not go to Paradise...But he is wrong, I think. I hope..."

I hadn't been able to stop thinking about their sister, Khalisah. What would she and their families do now? They'd be needing money. I didn't know how these things were done: would George see to it that they were looked after? He'd have to, surely-he'd have a h.e.l.l of a job recruiting more Lotfis and Hubba-Hubbas if they discovered their families wouldn't be taken care of if everything went to rat s.h.i.t. But there was no way I could trust him, even if he said he would. I'd do something about it myself. The Megane would have been towed from the square in Antibes by now, but with luck the money we'd taken off Gumaa would still be under the seat. It wouldn't be much, but it would be a start....

The bridge over the Saugus River took us into Lynn. We were nearly at Wonderland. Last time I'd come up this track I'd looked forward to a new job, a new life. But what now?

I didn't even know if she was going to take the day off work to meet me. But if she didn't, I'd just go and sit on the doorstep until she came home. There were some things I needed to say, and thought she needed to hear.

Hubba-Hubba had helped make my mind up.

He'd been sitting in the front of the Scudo, repairing his evil eye.

"We are a family first, no matter what disagreements we may have, no matter what pain we may suffer.... We learned long ago to meet in the middle, because otherwise the family is lost."

I couldn't be a student or a bartender-or anything else, for that matter. I couldn't do anything other than what I did. Sure, I didn't much like a lot of the stuff that went with it. But she had once said to me that she didn't care what I did, as long as I was good at it. Well, this was what I did, and I was good at it. And, thanks to my two friends with the Rubbermaids and the shower cap fetish, I'd realized I was working for something I believed in. The people I cared for lived in the country I had played a small part in protecting, and for once in my life I felt good about what I had done. And if the angels did come down and weigh my book of destiny for a laugh, then maybe there'd be a page or two of good stuff for them to read.

Maybe Carrie would read it too. Maybe I could tell her about Lotfi and Hubba-Hubba and Khalisah, and we could take a few steps toward the middle. People can stay together if they really want to, even if there's a whole lot of s.h.i.t going on around them. I knew that now: I'd seen it happen.

The train came to a halt and people stood and reached for their hats and coats, and gathered up their bags of Christmas shopping. The automatic doors drew back to reveal the signs for Wonderland station.

I stepped out of the train. It was as cold as it ever was, and the wind was bitter. I zipped up my fleece jacket, and joined the throng heading for the barrier.

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