Day of Wrath

“Our social calendar is completely open, Sam,” Thorn said dryly. “Come by at your convenience. Will Louisa be with you?”

“Not this time,” Farrell said. “I’m an acting bachelor just now.”

He’d put his wife, Louisa, on a plane to visit their son and daughter-in-law as soon as he’d realized how many rules and regulations he was going to have to break to get Peter and Helen home safely and not in handcuffs. While he doubted the military or the administration would be too eager to try a highly decorated retired general for obstruction of justice and aiding fugitives, he didn’t see any point in making his wife an accessory to the crimes he’d committed.

“You take it easy now,” Farrell warned. “It’s real hot out there right now. Real hot. Sunstroke weather, if you ask me.”

There was a pause while Thorn digested the renewed warning.

“Understood, Sam,” he said finally. “We’ll lie up here in the shade until the heat dies down.”

“Smart move.” Farrell stood up. “I’m heading out the door now.”

After hanging up, he went into the master bedroom and pulled open the nightstand drawer closest to his side of the bed.

Inside lay a 9mm Beretta, a spare magazine, and a Milt Sparks holster that fit inside the waistband of his pants. As a former commander of all the U.S. military’s counterterrorist units, he’d found it remarkably easy to obtain a special federal concealed weapons permit.

Sam Farrell strongly doubted he’d need the pistol, but he’d listened too closely to Peter Thorn’s accounts of the nightmare ambushes at Pechenga and Wilhelmshaven to take anything for granted. And more than three decades of active Army service had taught him the wisdom of the old Boy Scout motto—“Be Prepared.” Hand-to-hand combat might work out okay for Peter and Helen in a pinch, but he preferred to be ready to meet trouble with three or four steeljacketed slugs.

Planning Cell, Caraco Complex, Chantilly, Virginia (D MINUS 4)

Rolf Ulrich Reichardt listened intently, trying to ferret out the hidden subtext from the welter of moronic American banalities and idioms. He turned to Jopp. “Rewind the tape.”

The wiry sound specialist nodded and flipped another series of switches on his equipment.

Reichardt heard the conversation begin. Halfway through he saw Ibrahim appear at the door. The Saudi prince spent two or three hours each day at the complex now — monitoring each phase as the Operation came ever closer to fruition.

The German said nothing and kept listening, letting the voices play their childish dance of secret codes all over again.

When the tape ended he pulled off the headphones.

“Well, Herr Reichardt, what is your report?” Ibrahim asked sharply.

“Hashemi said you had news of our friend, General Farrell.”

“Yes, Highness,” Reichardt said. He offered the other man the headphones and signaled Jopp to recue the phone intercept. “We picked up this telephone call on the American’s private line an hour or so ago.”

Ibrahim heard it through himself in growing impatience. He looked up.

“What of it? Farrell arranges dinner with this man Carlson and his wife?

Of what possible significance is that?”

“That is what we are meant to think, Highness,” Reichardt said calmly.

He nodded at Jopp. “But then our clever friend here ran the conversation through his little black boxes — as a precaution.”

“And?”

“Both men are lying,” Reichardt answered.

“To each other?” Ibrahim sounded surprised.

The ex-Stasi officer shook his head. “To any potential eavesdroppers.”

He smiled, a hunter’s grim smile. “General Farrell knows that the FBI wishes to arrest his two friends. Given that, he must suspect his telephones have been tapped by the authorities.

These cheerful idiocies are obviously a rough, shorthand code to arrange a rendezvous.”

“You believe this Carlson is actually Colonel Thorn? And that he and the woman Gray are now quartered in a safe house somewhere in this area?”

“Yes, Highness, that is what I believe,” Reichardt said. Nothing else made sense. Somehow Farrell had smuggled his proteges back into the United States — evading the arrest order issued by the FBI.

“And their intentions?”

“I cannot predict precisely what they will do next,” Reichardt admitted. “We can hope that your assurances to General Farrell will delay any further effort on their part. But prudence demands we assume they will again try to contact those with power in their own government — undoubtedly using Farrell as a go-between” Ibrahim shook his head. “I find that possibility unacceptable, Herr Reichardt.

There is an old proverb, “News shouted loudly enough from the rooftops will not always fall on deaf ears.”” The ex-Stasi officer nodded grimly. “True, Highness. And General Farrell’s evident ability to smuggle these two back into the United States, right under the nose of the FBI, testifies both to his persistence and his residual power.

Such a man is very dangerous.”’

He turned as Johann Brandt approached. “Well?”