Day of Wrath

Oh, hell. Her blood ran cold. They’d been assuming they were chasing after one stolen nuclear weapon. What if there were more?

There was a second note on the same sheet, “Drei zusaetzlichen Wache von Deutschland nach JFK Flughafen.” Three cities — Los Angeles, Charleston, and Washington, D.C. — were listed below with an arrow pointing to each. More flipping to and fro in the dictionary supplied the information that Wolf had ordered three additional guards deployed from Germany through JFK International in New York to unnamed locations in each of those three cities.

And the word “additional” implied that he already had forces stationed at those locations. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

The second sheet didn’t have a heading — just a set of what looked like five underlined place names with other words beneath them. She studied the first set:

Berkeley Adler Fuchs Katze Baeren Hase Eagle, Fox, Cat, Bear, and Hare. All were clearly code names of some kind, Helen decided. But code names for what? For people?

For places? Stages in Wolf’s operation? “Katze” had been crossed out and the German word for cow, “Kuh,” had been written in beside it — with a further notation, “Wetter,” or weather.

There were more animal code words beneath each of the other four underlined locations five more under two, three under a third, and two under the last. A total of twenty then. With one more code word crossed out and another substituted — this one with the German words “Eine Obung,” or “an exercise,” as an explanatory note.

Helen frowned. Without more than this, it was going to be impossible to decipher much about Ibrahim’s real intentions. She showed the second sheet to Peter and Farrell. “Can either of you guys make heads or tails out of this stuff?”

The two men studied it for a few seconds.

Peter read the apparent place names out loud. “Berkeley. Godfrey.

Page. Nampa. And Shafter-Minter.” He raised an eyebrow.

“Sounds like a bunch of small towns. Or suburbs, maybe.”

He flipped open the appointment book Brandt had carried and showed them one page after another. “I think that bastard Wolf may have visited all of those places over the past couple of weeks. He’s been flitting across the whole country on a Caraco corporate jet. See?” His finger stabbed each name as he read it out. “On June 11 he was in South Carolina. The next day, the twelfth, he was out in California — at this Shafter-Minter place.”

Helen glanced ahead at the listing for June 13. Her eyes widened.

“Look where he went next … Galveston.”

Peter nodded. “Yeah. No wonder the FBI didn’t find anything in that warehouse. The son of a bitch was a step ahead of us all the way.”

“True. But we’re still left in the goddamned dark about exactly what’s going on here,” Farrell pointed out. He shook his head.

“Let me check out these towns or whatever they are at the local library. I’ll see if I can dig anything up about them that would appeal to a nasty piece of work like Wolf.”

“How are you planning to do that, Sam?” Helen asked. “Guide books?

Atlases? It’ll take you hours.” Still jotting the place names onto a piece of scrap paper, Farrell grinned back at her. “Helen, someday you and Pete are gonna have to spend less time learning how to kill people and more time dragging yourselves into the modern age.” He waggled a finger.

“All I need to do is find the nearest computer connected to the Internet, input this stuff, do a little word search, filter out the meaningless garbage, and bingo, I’ve got my data.”

Middleburg, Virginia (D MINUS 3)

Out of the corner of his eye, Prince Ibrahim al Saud saw his chief of security, Talal, appear at the door to his study. At a glance, the former Saudi paratroop captain stopped motionless and stood silently, waiting for permission to speak.

With a superficial calm he no longer felt inwardly, Ibrahim finished his prayers, carefully rolled up the prayer mat, and rose to his feet.

It was ordinarily his custom to lead the five daily prayers of all the faithful in his household, but the press of events had forced him into these less fulfilling private observances.

It was a pity, but he felt confident God would understand his need.

He crooked a finger at Talal.

The man stepped closer and stiffened to attention. “Highness.”

Ibrahim crossed to his desk and sat down. “Yes, Captain.”

“There is still no sign of Herr Reichardt, Highness. Or of the American, Mcdowell.”

Ibrahim frowned. When Reichardt hadn’t shown up on time for their scheduled meeting, he’d immediately dispatched Talal and a section of his security force to backtrack along the route the German would have taken. To his dismay, they’d found only an empty, abandoned car pockmarked with bullet holes — a car with U.S. government-issued license plates. A car that had been assigned to Reichardt’s mole inside the FBI–Lawrence Mcdowell.

Minutes later, his men had discovered the corpse of Johann Brandt just inside the forest. But both Reichardt and Mcdowell were gone. The German’s corporate car had also vanished without a trace.