Two hours later the two Gulfstreams landed back at Andrews and rolled to a halt at the VIP terminal. Clark gathered up his gear and walked out to meet another civilian who'd been aboard the other aircraft. The pair walked off to their car, already talking.

"I could understand part of what you were saying-clear, I mean," Chavez reported. "Say about a third of it, maybe a little less."

"Okay, we'll see what the techies can do with it." The drive back to Langley took thirty-five minutes, and from there Clark and Chavez drove back into Washington for a late lunch.

Bob Holtzman had gotten the call the previous evening. It had come on his unlisted home line. A curt, short message, it had also piqued his interest. At two in the afternoon he walked into a small Mexican place in Georgetown called Esteban's. Most of the business crowd had gone, leaving the place about a third full, mainly with kids from Georgetown University. A wave from the back told him where to go.

"h.e.l.lo," Holtzman said, sitting down.

"You Holtzman?"

"That's right," the reporter said. "And you are?"

"Two friendly guys," the older one said. "Join us for lunch?"

"Okay." The younger one got up and started feeding quarters into a jukebox that played Mexican music. In a moment it was certain that his tape recorder wouldn't have a chance of working.

"What do you want to see me about?"

"You've been writing some pieces on the Agency," the older one started off. "The target of your articles is the Deputy Director, Dr. John Ryan."

"I never said that," Holtzman replied.

"Whoever leaked all that s.h.i.t to you lied. It's a setup."

"Says who?"

"Just how honest a reporter are you?"

"What do you mean?" Holtzman asked.

"If I tell you something totally off the record, will you print it?"

"That depends on the nature of the information. What exactly is your intention?"

"What I mean, Mr. Holtzman, is that I can prove to you that you've been lied to, but the proof of that can never be revealed. It would endanger some people. It would also prove that somebody's been using you to grind an ax or two. I want to know who that person is."

"You know that I can never reveal a source. That violates our code of ethics."

"Ethics in a reporter," the man said just loudly enough to be heard over the music. "I like that. Do you also protect sources who lie to you?"

"No, we don't do that."

"Okay, then I'm going to tell you a little story, but the condition is that you may never, ever reveal what I am going to tell you. Will you honor such a condition?"

"What if I find out you are misleading me?"

"Then you will be free to print it. Fair enough?" Clark got a nod. "Just remember, I will be very unhappy if you ever print it, 'cuz I ain't lying. One more thing, you can't ever use what I am going to tell you as a lead to do your own digging."

"That's asking a lot."

"You make the call, Mr. Holtzman. You have the reputation of an honest reporter, and a pretty smart one. There are some things that can't be reported-well, that's going too far. Let's say that there are things that have to remain secret for a very long time. Like years. What I'm getting at is this: you've been used. You have been conned into printing lies in order to hurt someone. Now, I'm not a reporter, but if I were, that would bother me. It would bother me because it's wrong, and it would bother me because someone took me for a sucker."

"You have it figured out. Okay, I agree to your conditions."

"Fair enough." Clark told his story. It took ten minutes.

"What about the mission? Where exactly did the man die?"

"Sorry, pal. And you can forget about finding that one out. Less than ten people can answer that." Clark's lie was a clever one. "If you even manage to figure out who they are, they won't talk-they can't. Not too many people voluntarily leak information about breaking laws."

"And the Zimmer woman?"

"You can check out most of that story. Where she lives, the family business, where the kid was born, who was there, who the doctor was."

Holtzman checked his notes. "There's something really, really big behind all this, isn't there?"

Clark just stared at him. "All I want is a name."

"What will you do with it?"

"Nothing that concerns you."

"What will Ryan do with it?"

"He doesn't know we're here."

"Bulls.h.i.t."

"That, Mr. Holtzman, is the truth."

Bob Holtzman had been a reporter a very long time. He'd been lied to by experts. He'd been the target of very organized and well-planned lies, had been the instrument of political vendettas. He didn't like that part of his job, not in the least. The contempt he felt for politicians came mainly from their willingness to break any rule. Whenever a politician broke his word, told the most outrageous of lies, took money from a contributor and left the room at once to perform a service for that contributor, it was called "just politics." That was wrong, and Holtzman knew it. There was still in him something of the idealist who had graduated from Columbia's journalism school, and though life had made him a cynic, he was one of those few people in Washington who remembered his ideals and occasionally mourned for them.

"a.s.suming I can verify this story you've told, what's in it for me?"

"Maybe just satisfaction. Maybe nothing more than that. I honestly doubt there will be any more, but if there is, I'll let you know."

"Just satisfaction?" Holtzman asked.

"Ever want to get even with a bully?" Clark asked lightly.

The reporter brushed that aside. "What do you do at the Agency?"

Clark smiled. "I'm really not supposed to talk about that."

"Once upon a time, the story goes, a very senior Soviet official defected, right off the tarmac at Moscow airport."

"I've heard that story. If you ever printed it ..."

"Yes, it would f.u.c.k up relations, wouldn't it?" Holtzman observed.

"How long have you had it?"

"Since right before the last election. The President asked me not to run it."

"Fowler, you mean?"

"No, the one Fowler beat."

"And you played ball." Clark was impressed.

"The man had a family, a wife and a daughter. Were they killed in a plane crash, like the press release said?"

"You ever going to print this?"

"I can't, not for a lot of years, but someday I'm going to do a book...."

"They got out, too," Clark said. "You're looking at the guy who got them out of the country."

"I don't believe in coincidences."

"The wife's name is Maria. The daughter's name is Katryn."

Holtzman didn't react, but he knew that only a handful of people in the Agency could possibly have known the details to that one. He'd just asked his own trick question and gotten the right answer.

"Five years from today I want the details of the bust-out."

Clark was quiet for a moment. Well, if the reporter was willing to break a rule, then Clark had to play ball, too. "That's fair. Okay, you have a deal."

"Jesus Christ, John!" Chavez said.

"The man needs a quid pro quo. quid pro quo. " "

"How many people inside know the details?"

"Of the operation? Not many. My end ... if you mean all the details, maybe twenty, and only five of them are still in the Agency. Ten of them are not Agency employees."

"Then who?"

"That would give too much away."

"Air Force Special Ops," Holtzman said. "Or maybe the Army, Task Force 160, those crazy guys at Fort Campbell, the ones who went into Iraq the first night-"

"You can speculate all you want, but I'm not going to say anything. I will say this, when I tell you my end, I want to know how the h.e.l.l you figured out that we even had this operation."

"People like to talk," Holtzman said simply.

"True enough. Do we have a deal, sir?"

"If I can verify what you've told me, if I'm sure I've been lied to, yes, I will reveal the source. You have to promise that it will never get to the press."

Jesus, this is like diplomacy, Clark reflected. "Agreed. I'll call you in two days. For what it's worth, you're the first reporter I've ever talked to." Clark reflected. "Agreed. I'll call you in two days. For what it's worth, you're the first reporter I've ever talked to."

"So, what do you think?" Holtzman asked with a grin.

"I think I ought to stick with spooks." John paused. "You might have been a pretty good one."

"I am a pretty good one."

"Just how heavy is this thing?" Russell asked.

"Seven hundred kilos." Ghosn did the mental arithmetic. "Three quarters of a ton-your ton, that is."

"Okay," Russell said. "The truck'll handle that. How do we get it from the truck into my truck?" The question turned Ghosn pale.

"I had not considered that."

"How was it loaded on?"

"The box is set on a wooden ... platform?"

"You mean a pallet? They put it in with a forklift?"

"Yes," Ghosn said, "that is correct,"

"You're lucky. Come on, I'll show you." Russell led the man out into the cold. Two minutes later he saw that one of the barns had a concrete loading dock and a rusty, propane-powered forklift. The only bad news was that the dirt path leading up to it was covered with snow and frozen mud. "How delicate is the bomb?"

"Bombs can be very delicate, Marvin," Ghosn pointed out.

Russell had a good laugh at that one. "Yeah, I guess so."

It was fully ten hours earlier in Syria. Dr. Vladimir Moiseyevich Kaminiskiy had just started work, early as was his custom. A professor at Moscow State University, he'd been sent to Syria to teach in his specialty, which was respiratory problems. It was not a specialty to make a man an optimist. Much of what he saw in the Soviet Union and also here in Syria was lung cancer, a disease as preventable as it was lethal.

His first case of the day had been referred by a Syrian pract.i.tioner whom he admired-the man was French-trained and very thorough-and also one who only referred interesting cases.

On entering the examining room, Kaminiskiy found a fit-looking man in his early thirties. A closer look showed someone with a gray, drawn face. His first impression was, cancer, but Kaminiskiy was a careful man. It could be something else, something contagious. His examination took longer than he'd expected, necessitating several X-ray films, and some additional tests, but he was called back to the Soviet Emba.s.sy before the results arrived.