Raymond Gillette, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, raised his head, arched his neck, and again pressed his fingers against his temples. Gillettes Razor had opened the corporate world for him at the expense of a young pilots life as well as that of his Vietnamese companion. Was he doing it again? With Hawthorne? Was it possible that there was another ORyan in the upper echelons of the CIA?

Anything was possible, concluded Raymond Gillette as he got out of his chair and walked to his office door. He was going to talk personally to every man and woman in the transmission unit, staring into their eyes and using the expertise of a lifetime to find a flaw in any of them. He owed that much to a dead air force officer and his Vietnamese scout from many years ago. He owed that much to Tyrell Hawthorne, to whom he had given his word only minutes before. He had to do better than that; he had to study each man and each woman in whose hands Hawthornes life would rest. He opened the door and spoke to his secretary.

"Helen, I want you to alert the Little Girl unit. All personnel are to meet me in Operations, room five, in twenty minutes."

"Yes, sir," said the gray-haired, middle-aged woman, rising from her chair and walking around her desk. "But first, I promised Mrs. Gillette that Id make sure you had your afternoon pill." The secretary extracted a tablet from a small plastic box, poured water from a Thermos into a paper cup, and handed both to the impatient director of the Central Intelligence Agency. "Mrs. Gillette insists you use the bottled water, sir. Its salt-free."

"Mrs. Gillette can be d.a.m.ned annoying, Helen," said the DCI, throwing the pill in his mouth and drinking the water.

"She wants to keep you around, sir. She also insists, as you well know, that you sit down for a minute or two until the medication is digested. Please, sit down, Mr. Director."

"You two are in cahoots, Helen, and I wont have it," said Gillette, smiling and sitting down in a straight-backed chair in front of his secretarys desk. "I hate these d.a.m.n things; they make me feel like Ive had three bourbons without the pleasure of drinking them."

Suddenly, without any indication of being in discomfort, Raymond Gillette lurched out of the chair, grimaced, and choked as he spread his fingers over his face and fell forward on the floor, his head angled into the front of his secretarys desk, his mouth agape, his eyes wide. He was dead.

The secretary rushed to the office door, locked it, and returned to the corpse. She pulled the body away from the desk, dragged it into the directors office, and placed it in front of the couch beneath the north window. She returned to the anteroom, closing her employers door behind her, and slowly, breathing steadily, picked up her secure telephone. She pressed the interagency extension for the officer heading up Task Force, Communications, Little Girl Blood.

"Yes?" said the male voice on the line.

"This is Helen in the DCIs office. He asked that I call you and tell you to start testing your units equipment as soon as you hear from Commander Hawthorne that hes in place."

"We know that; we all agreed fifteen minutes ago."

"I imagine he didnt want you to think you had to wait for him. h.e.l.l be tied up in conferences most of the afternoon."

"No problem. Its a go as soon as we get the word."

"Thank you," said Scorpio 17, hanging up the phone.

27.

It was 4:35 in the afternoon and Andrew Jackson Poole V was impressed as he sat at the desk in the Shenandoah Lodge in front of the equipment supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency. He had received the two components he had insisted upon: a reverse noninterceptor line to Hawthorne that bypa.s.sed the CIA traffic, a single yellow X on his screen indicating invasion; and a second miniature screen whose movable blip confirmed Hawthornes operating transponder. The personnel at Langley were outraged, believing their integrity was being challenged, but as Tye had made clear to the DCI, there could be another ORyan, whether Gillette wanted to consider it or not.

"You read me, Tye?" said Poole, flipping the switch on the small console to the isolated line that connected him to Hawthornes frequency.

"Yes, I do," replied Tyrell in the car, his voice echoing over the speaker. "Are we alone?"

"Totally dedicated," replied the lieutenant. "I can read these scans like findin honey in a biscuit. Were one on one, no intercepts."

"Anything from the hospital?"

"Nothing one way or another. All theyll say is that Cath is stable, whatever the G.o.dd.a.m.n h.e.l.l that means."

"Its better than the alternative, Jackson."

"Man, youre one cold p.r.i.c.k."

"Im sorry you think that.... Where do the grids put me?"

"Oh, yeah, Ive got you in operation and Langley has you southeast on Route 270, approaching a local intersection that branches off into 301. The girl on the map-screen says she knows it. Theres a run-down, third-rate amus.e.m.e.nt park on your left, where the Ferris wheel gets stuck, and you cant win anything at the shooting gallery because the sights are fixed."

"I just pa.s.sed it. Were in good shape."

The console telephone erupted, its ring continuous. "Hold it, Tye, my emergency Langley connections blowin smoke. Ill get back to you."

Inside the car with the State Department plates, Hawthorne kept his eye on the road and the late afternoon traffic, but his mind was elsewhere. What could have happened at CIA headquarters that caused the emergency? Any and all emergencies should be coming from him, not from anything at Langley. He was within perhaps forty-five minutes of Chesapeake Beach and the ORyans summer house; if there was going to be an emergency, it would happen there. Tyrell felt the plastic lighter in his shirt pocket that emitted electrical impulses when he was out of the car and was being called. Poole had tested it; it worked, but it was weak, perhaps too weak. Had Langley found the malfunction? That could be an emergency.

"Good Lord, its terrible!" came Jacksons excited voice, "but nothings changed. We go on!"

"For Christs sake, whats terrible?"

"Director Gillette was found dead in his office. It was his heart; he had a history of cardiac problems and was on medication."

"Who says so?" demanded Hawthorne.

"His doctor, Tye," replied Poole. "He told the CIA medics that one day it was inevitable, but he didnt expect it so soon."

"You listen to me, Lieutenant, and listen hard. I want an immediate-and I mean immediate-independent autopsy on Gillette, concentrating on substances from the trachea to the bronchi and into the stomach. Its got to be done within a couple of hours. Have it done now!"

"What are you talkin about ...?" stammered Poole. "I told you what his own doctor said."

"And Ill tell you what Gillette told me barely three hours ago! 'Coincidence is rarely, if ever, a factor. And the death of the director of Central Intelligence, whos ultimately responsible for this operation, is just too G.o.dd.a.m.ned coincidental! Tell them to look for evidence of digitalis!" he went on. "Its as old as scopolamine before the Amytals, and every bit as effective. You dont need a heart condition to blow a person into arrhythmia, and even with a mild dysfunction, a short dose will do it. It also disappears in the blood quickly."

"How do you know that ...?"

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," Hawthorne swore, "because I just know it! Now, move, and until you have an outside a.n.a.lysis with a lab that will go on record that he was clean, these communications are shut down. If and when you get such a report, give me five shocks on your transmitter. I wont answer otherwise, and I dont care if it takes all night!"

"Tye, you dont understand. Gillette was found roughly two and a half hours ago. His body was taken to Walter Reed emergency-"

"A government-operated hospital!" exploded Hawthorne. "Were shut down."

"Thats just plain dumb," Poole broke in. "I know this equipment, and Langley knows I know it. Theres no one tapping into us. I ran two invasives and both showed up. Were one on one, n.o.body else here."

"Ive got a long litany of Washington double-crosses, Jackson. I say we could be."

"Okay, lets go bayou and say youre right, which is impossible, and there are other nasty people in Langley like Mr. ORyan, who figure to follow you and treat you poorly. We cut the grids off, not communications."

"I take off my belt with the transponder in the buckle and throw it out the window," said Tyrell, no question in his words.

"May I suggest, sir, that you take the next U-turn, go back to that amus.e.m.e.nt park, and leave the goldarned thing near the fun house? Or maybe that Ferris wheel?"

"Poole, you really do have possibilities. Im heading back to the fun house. I cant wait till I hear about a team of deep-cover CIA agents a.s.saulting the tunnel of love."

"Or maybe, with luck, stuck on top of that Ferris wheel."

The flagstone path led to the colonnaded entrance, the home a huge replica of a pre-Civil War plantations great house. Bajaratt walked up the steps to the thick, carved double doors, the bas-reliefs depicting the journeys of Mohammed as he came to understand the teachings of the Koran as shown to him by the mountain prophets. "Rubbish!" she whispered to herself. There were no exalted mountains, no Mohammed, and the prophets were ignorant goatherds! There was no Christ either. He was a radical Jew troublemaker manufactured by the semiliterate Essenes, who hadnt the ability to cultivate their land. There was no G.o.d but the voice within the aroused individual, the inner commands that made a man or woman do what he or she had to do to fight for justice-for all who were oppressed. What else was there? The Baj spat on the flagstone porch, then composed herself, raised a ladylike hand, and pressed the bell.

Moments later the door was opened by a caftanned Arab, his robes gliding over the parquet floor. "You are expected, madame, and you are late."

"If I were later still, would you have denied me entrance?"

"It is possible-"

"Then I shall leave-now," said Bajaratt. "How dare you?"

A female voice came from within. "Please permit the lady to come inside, Ahmet Ashad, and do put away your weapon, its most discourteous."

"It is not in evidence, madame," the servant called out.

"That is even more discourteous. Show our visitor in."

The room was a perfectly normal suburban living room in terms of its windows, curtains, and wallpaper, but that was where the ordinariness ended. There were no chairs, only enormous cushions placed around the floor with miniature tables in front of each. And reclining on one such hill of scarlet satin was a dark-skinned woman of extraordinary beauty and indeterminate age, her face a supple mask of cla.s.sic features, yet warm, somehow not rigid or masklike at all. When she smiled, her eyes lit up like opals, communicating interest and genuine curiosity.

"Sit down, Amaya Aquirre," she said in a soft, mellifluous voice that belonged to the emerald-green silk pantsuit she wore. "You see, I know your name and something more than that about you. As you can also see, I subscribe to the Arabic custom that we be on the same level-for us, the floor, as it is with the Bedouin sand-so that no individual has a symbolic position over the other. I find it one of the more attractive Arab concessions; we treat even our inferiors with equal eye contact."

"Are you saying that Im inferior?"

"No, not at all, but you are not an Arab."

"I have fought for your cause-my husband died for your cause!"

"In a foolish expedition that served neither the Jew nor the Arab."

"The Baaka permitted it, gave us its blessing!"

"The Baaka conceded because your husband was a firebrand, a hero of the people, and his death-which was a foregone conclusion-would make him a symbol, a battle cry. Remember Ashkelon! I think youve heard the phrase. It was all nonsense, except for the emotional appeal."

"What are you saying to me? My life, my husband, we are nothing?" The Baj sprang off the cushion as the robed Ahmet appeared in the doorway. "Im willing to die for the greatest cause in history! Death to the pigs of authority!"

"Thats what we must talk about, Amaya.... Leave us, Ahmet, she has no weapon.... Your willingness to die is not terribly important, my dear. There are men and women all over the world willing to die for what they believe in, and the vast majority are never heard of, either before or after the act.... No, I want more than that for you, for us."

"What do you want from me?" asked Bajaratt, slowly lowering herself to the cushion, her eyes locked with the beautiful, aging, yet ageless woman across the room.

"Youve come this far brilliantly, with certain a.s.sistance, of course, but basically because of your own extraordinary talents. In a matter of mere days youve become an influential force, a behind-the-scenes power whom powerful men seek out for what they believe you can deliver. None of us could have done that for you; it had to spring from the idea, the concept you created, and it was absolutely brilliant. The young man, a baron in training, no less, and a family in Ravello with millions to invest. Even the child actress-such an appealing sideshow, so genuinely touching. You deserve 'the Bajs reputation."

"I do what I do, and let others judge. Their judgments, frankly, are insignificant to me. I ask again, what do you want from me? I was told by the Baaka Councils to reach you prior to my last days here-quite possibly my last days alive. Either way, they are approaching."

"You understand that we-I-have no authority over you. That is reserved for the High Councils alone."

"I understand that. However, I am to render you the respect due a true friend, an ally of our cause, and listen to your words.... Im listening."

"Friend, yes, Amaya, but an ally only up to a point, my dear. We are no part of Van Nostrands Scorpions, that group of underground opportunists whose only aim is to profitably serve the Providers, whose only cause is wealth and power. I-we-have enough of both over here."

"Who are you, then? You know a great deal."

"Its our job to know."

"But who are you?"

"The Germans had an applicable term during the Second World War. Der Nachrichtendienst. An elite intelligence unit that even the Third Reichs High Command knew little or nothing about. It was comprised of fewer than a dozen elderly members, Prussians mainly, aristocrats all, who collectively brought nearly eight hundred years of expertise and influence to the table. They were German to the core, but they operated above the fray, above the pa.s.sions of war, seeking only what was best for the Fatherland, realizing the disadvantages of their nation being led by Adolf Hitler and his thugs.... As we recognize the disadvantages we face with terrorists murdering women and children in Israel. Its simply counterproductive."

"I think this conversation has gone far enough!" said the Baj, rising to her feet. "Have you and your elitists considered the displacement of an entire people? Have you been to the refugee camps? Have you watched the Israeli bulldozers plow down your own homes on mere suspicions? Have you forgotten the bloodbaths of Shatila and Sabra?"

"Were told your appointment with the President is tomorrow night, approximately eight oclock," said the woman quietly, resting farther back on the satin pillows.

"It is tomorrow, then? Eight oclock?"

"It was originally scheduled for three oclock in the afternoon, but considering the nature of the 'contessas American visit, which is to further foreign investment-a delicate subject these days for a proud country-it was suggested to the White House that perhaps a later hour, an evening hour, might be more appropriate. Thered be less chance of the press learning that the President was giving preferential treatment to an ambitious foreign aristocrat taking advantage of the economy here."

"Their reaction ...?" asked a bewildered Bajaratt.

"The Chief of Staff instantly and enthusiastically approved. He hates accommodating senators and congressmen, but the President equally loathes offending anyone politically. Also, youll have a far better chance to escape-escape and fight again-if you strike at eight oclock. The White House guard details change then, which means theres a degree of relaxation at their posts as up-to-the-minute records and instructions are given to the relief contingents. You will be aided by three men, one in a chauffeurs uniform, who will guide you, under the pretense of protecting you from the press, through backstairs corridors that lead to another limousine. Ours. They will use a name to identify themselves. Ashkelon. I trust you approve."

"I dont understand," said Bajaratt. "Why would you do this? You just led me to believe that you disapproved-"

"Of your other intentions," the Arab woman interrupted sharply. "However, for your life, we have something to ask of you, demand of you if you wish. You see, we have no objective disagreement, geopolitically or specifically, with the a.s.sa.s.sination of the American President; hes ruled by polls, not principle, and therefore expendable. The people sense it; he arouses no pa.s.sion. Oh, therell be outrage and endless investigations, but it will all dwindle. The Vice President is extremely popular. And although we think its melodramatic, we can even accept the killings in England and France if you insist. They are sophisticated governments-European governments-who dont make idols of their political leaders. Instead, they face harsh realities and negotiate. Frankly, with the chaos of an American power vacuum, we can further escalate our influence here, but more to the point, a message will be sent to this Presidents successors and their Cabinets. We may not have the Jewish vote or its money, but we have something else, something worthy of the celebrated Mossad. We are not a myth or a fantasy of the lunatic fringe. We are real. As you said only minutes ago, we have men and women who will die to cut off the head of a snake. Thats visceral, my child, and as you have proved with your brilliant strategy, theyll never know where were coming from or when, and in the back corridors of power theyll think twice before constantly kissing the Israeli boot. Then in a word, America, too, will become sophisticated."

"What do you ask of me, demand of me, for my life, which is of no great consequence?"

"Dont kill the Jew. Call off your people in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv."

"How can you say that? Its our final statement, the vengeance of Ashkelon!"

"And the death of thousands upon thousands of our people, Amaya. Israel acts unilaterally, personally if you like. She really doesnt care what happens beyond her borders, unless it threatens her; and if any other small country had gone through the German Holocaust, that country wouldnt either. I told you, we are coldly objective. You a.s.sa.s.sinate a Jewish leader, sorties of Jewish planes day and night will fly over and bomb our camps and settlements for weeks on end until theyre utterly destroyed, reduced to rubble and burning flesh. Consider recent history-the Jews released twelve hundred prisoners for six Israeli soldiers, and later exiled more than four hundred Palestinians over the death of one soldier. Their leader is the equivalent of ten thousand Jewish soldiers, for he is more than a man, he is the living symbol of their nation."

"You ask a terrible price of me," said Bajaratt barely above a whisper. "One Im not prepared to pay. Ive waited all my life for this moment, this one magnificent moment that will justify so much of my having lived at all."

"My child-" the woman began.

"No! I am not your child or anyones child," said Bajaratt, her voice distant, frozen. "I was never a child. Muerte a toda autoridad."

"I dont understand you-"

"It is not your business to understand me. As you yourself said, you have no authority over me."

"Certainly not, I agree. Im only trying to reason with you, protect you."

"Reason?" whispered the Baj. "Where has reason gotten your people, or my people? Yours are at least in camps, no matter how filthy, but mine are hunted like animals in the mountains, executed, slaughtered on sight-beheaded. Muerte a toda autoridad! Everywhere they must die."

"Please, my dear," said the ageless dark-skinned woman, her expression conveying her alarm at the sight of the mesmerizing figure in front of her. "Please, I am not your enemy, Amaya."