Dead or Alive Read online

  It was dark in Paris, and there was a chill in the air that affected the two Arabs more than the Parisians. But that was an excuse for more wine, which was welcome. And the sidewalk tables had thinned out enough that they could talk more openly. If anyone was observing them, then he was being very careful about it. And you couldn’t be afraid of everything all the time, even in this business.

  “You’re waiting for another communication?” Fa’ad asked.

  Ibrahim nodded. “It’s supposed to be en route. A good courier. Very reliable.”

  “What do you expect?”

  “I’ve learned not to speculate,” Ibrahim said. “I take my directions as they come. The Emir knows what to do, doesn’t he?”

  “So far he has been effective, but sometimes I think he’s an old woman,” Fa’ad groused. “If you plan your operation intelligently, then it will work. We are the Emir’s hands and eyes in the field. He picked us. He should trust us more.”

  “Yes, but he sees things which we do not see. Never forget that,” Ibrahim reminded his guest. “That is why he decides on all the operations.”

  “Yes, he is very wise,” Fa’ad conceded, not entirely meaning it but having to talk that way even so. He had sworn his allegiance to the Emir, and that, really, was that, even though he’d done it five years before, still in his enthusiastic teens. People believed much at that age, and swore loyalty easily. And it took years for that sort of oath to wear off. If ever.

  But that didn’t entirely stop doubts. He’d met the Emir only once, while Ibrahim could claim to know the man. Such was the nature of their work. Neither Ibrahim nor Fa’ad knew where their leader was living. They were familiar with just one end of a lengthy electronic trail. That was a sensible security precaution: American police were probably as efficient as the European sort, and European police were men to be feared. Even so, there was much old woman in the Emir. He didn’t even trust those who had sworn to die in his place. Whom, then, did he trust? Why them and not . . . him? Fa’ad asked himself. Fundamentally, Fa’ad was too bright to accept things “because I said so,” as every mother in the world said to every five-year-old son. Even more frustratingly, he could not even ask certain questions, because they would imply disloyalty to certain others. And disloyalty in the organization was tantamount to a request for self-immolation. But Fa’ad knew that this actually made sense, both from the Emir’s point of view and for the organization as a whole.

  It wasn’t easy doing Allah’s work, but Fa’ad had known that going in. Or so he told himself. Well, at least in Paris you could look at the passing women, dressed as whores, most of them, showing their bodies off as though advertising their business. It was good, Fa’ad thought, that Ibrahim had chosen to live in this area. At least the scenery was pretty.

  “That’s a pretty one,” Ibrahim said in agreement to the unspoken observation. “She’s a doctor’s wife, and sadly she does not commit adultery, in my experience.”

  “Mind reading.” Fa’ad laughed. “French women are open to advances?”

  “Some are. The hard part is reading their minds. Few men have that ability, even here.” And he had a good laugh. “In that sense, French women are no different from our own. Some things are universal.”

  Fa’ad took a sip of coffee and leaned closer. “Will it work?” he asked, meaning their planned operation.

  “I see no reason why it would not, and the effects will be noteworthy. The one drawback is that it will give us new enemies, but how will we notice the difference? We have no friends among the infidels. For us, now, it’s just a matter of getting the tools in place for our strike.”

  “Inshallah,” Fa’ad replied.

  And both clicked their glasses, just like Frenchmen after an agreement is reached.

  There was nothing like home court advantage, former President Ryan thought. He’d gotten his doctorate in history at Georgetown University, so he knew the campus almost as well as he did his own home. All in all, he’d found the lecture circuit surprisingly agreeable. It was easy duty, being paid an embarrassing amount of money to talk about a subject he knew well: his time in the White House. So far there’d been only a smattering of audience loonies, eighty percent of them conspiracy nuts who’d been quickly shouted down by the other attendees. The other twenty percent were lefties who held the opinion that Edward Kealty had pulled the country back from an abyss Ryan had created. It was nonsense, of course, but there was no doubting their sincerity, a reminder Ryan took to heart: There was reality, and then there was perception, and rarely the two shall meet. It was a lesson Arnie van Damm had tried—mostly in vain—to pound into Ryan’s head during his presidency, and a lesson Ryan’s stubborn pride did not allow him to swallow easily. Some things were just true. Perception be damned. The fact that a majority of the American electorate seemed to have forgotten this fact by electing Kealty still boggled Ryan’s mind, but then again, he was no objective observer. Should have been Robby in the Oval Office. The trick was to not let this disappointment taint his speech. As much as he might like to, criticizing a sitting President—even a jackass—was bad form.

  The door to the greenroom—in this case a small lounge adjoining McNeir Auditorium—opened, and Andrea Price-O’Day, his principal Secret Service agent, stepped past the agents at the door.

  “Five minutes, sir.”

  “How’s the crowd?” Ryan said.

  “Full house. No torches and pitchforks.”

  Ryan laughed at this. “Always a good sign. How’s my tie?”

  He’d learned early on that Andrea was far handier with a Windsor knot than he was—almost as good as Cathy, but the good doctor had left early for the hospital that morning, so he’d tied the knot himself. A mistake.

  Andrea cocked her head and appraised it. “Not bad, sir.” She made a slight adjustment and gave a curt nod of approval. “I feel my job security slipping away.”

  “Not gonna happen, Andrea.” Price-O’Day had been with the Ryan family a long time, so long, in fact, that most of them rarely remembered she was armed and ready to kill and die for their safety.

  There came a knock on the door, and one of the agents poked his head through the gap. “SHORTSTOP,” he announced, then opened the door to admit Jack Junior.

  “Jack!” the elder Ryan said, walking over.

  “Hey, Andrea,” Jack Junior said.

  “Mr. Ryan.”

  “Nice surprise,” said the former President.

  “Yeah, well, my date canceled on me, so ...”

  Ryan laughed. “Man’s gotta have his priorities.”

  “Hell, I didn’t mean it like that—”

  “Forget it. Glad you came. You got a seat?”

  Jack Junior nodded. “Front row.”

  “Good. If I get into trouble you can throw me a softball.”

  Jack left his father, walked down the hall, took the stairs down one level, then headed toward the auditorium. Ahead, the hall was mostly dark, every other fluorescent ceiling fixture turned off. Like most educational institutions, Georgetown was trying to be more “green.” As he passed a conference room he heard a metallic scraping sound from within, like a chair being dragged across a floor. He stepped back and peeked through the slit window. Inside, a janitor in blue coveralls was kneeling down beside an upturned floor buffer, poking at the polishing pad with a screwdriver. On impulse, Jack pushed open the door and poked his head inside. The janitor looked up.

  “Hi,” Jack said.

  “Hello.” The man appeared to be Hispanic and spoke with a heavy accent. “Change pad,” he said.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Jack said, then shut the door behind him. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Andrea’s number. She picked up on the first ring. Jack said, “Hey, I was on my way to the auditorium. . . . There’s a janitor down here—”

  “Conference room two-b?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We cleared him, and we’ll sweep again. We’re taking the basement route anyway.”


  “Okay, just checking.”

  “You looking for a second job?” Price-O’Day asked.

  Jack chuckled. “How’s the pay?”

  “Lot less than you make. And the hours are hell. See you later.”

  Andrea disconnected. Jack headed toward the auditorium.

  Showtime, sir,” she told former President Ryan, who stood up and shot his cuffs; the gesture was uniquely Jack Ryan Sr., but Price-O’Day saw a bit of the son in the father, and SHORTSTOP’s call about the janitor had told her something more: The son hadn’t fallen far from the intellectual tree, either. Was there such a thing as a spook gene? she wondered. If so, Jack Junior probably had it. Like his father, he was intensely curious and took few things on face. Of course they’d swept the building, and of course Jack knew this. Even so, he’d spotted the janitor and immediately thought, Anomaly. It had been a false alarm, but the question had been valid—something Secret Service agents learned to ask through training and experience.

  Andrea now checked her watch and replayed their route in her mind, seeing the map in her head, timing the turns and distances. Satisfied, she knocked twice on the door, signaling to the agents there that SWORDSMAN was ready to move. She waited a moment for the cordon to form up, then opened the door, checked the hall, and stepped out, signaling for Ryan to follow.

  In his auditorium seat, Jack Junior absently flipped through the night’s program, his eyes taking in the words but his brain failing to register them. Something was itching at his subconscious, that nebulous feeling of something left undone. . . . Something he’d meant to do before leaving The Campus, perhaps?

  The president of Georgetown appeared on the stage and walked to the podium, accompanied by polite applause. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. As we have only one item on tonight’s program, I’ll be brief with my introductions. Former President John Patrick Ryan has a long history of government service—”

  Janitor. The word popped, unbidden, into Jack’s mind. He’d been cleared, Andrea had said. Even so . . . He reached for his cell phone, then stopped. What would he say? That he had a feeling? From his seat, he could see the left side of the stage. Two black-suited Secret Service agents appeared; behind them, Andrea and his dad.

  Before he realized what he was doing, Jack was on his feet and headed for the side exit. He trotted up the stairs, turned left, headed down the hall, counting conference room doors as he went.

  Screwdriver, he thought, and suddenly the subconsious itch he’d felt two minutes earlier snapped into focus. The janitor had been using a screwdriver to remove a pad that had been secured to the buffer by a center locknut.

  Chest now pounding, Jack reached the correct conference room and stopped a few feet short. He saw light coming through the slit window but could hear no sounds from within. He took a break, walked to the door, and tried the knob. Locked. He peeked through the window. The buffer was still there. The janitor was gone. The flathead screwdriver lay on the floor.

  Jack turned and started jogging back to the auditorium. He stopped at the door, collected himself, then gently pushed open the door and eased it shut. A few people looked up as he entered, as did one of Andrea’s agents standing in the center aisle. He gave Jack a nod of recognition, then returned to his scan of the auditorium.

  Jack started his own scan, looking first for any sign of blue coveralls but quickly abandoning this; the janitor wouldn’t have gotten into the auditorium. Backstage would be clear as well, locked down by Andrea’s team. Who else? he thought, picking through the sea of faces. Audience members, agents, campus security . . .

  Standing beside the east wall, his face partially in shadow and his hands clasped before him, was a rent-a-cop. Like the agents, he, too, was scanning the crowd. Like the agents . . . Jack kept scanning, counting campus security officers. Five in total. And none of them scanning the crowd. Untrained in personal protection, their attention was not focused on the audience— the most likely area of threat—but rather on the stage. Except for the guard on the east wall. The man turned his head, and his face passed briefly into the light.

  Jack pulled out his cell phone and texted Andrea: GUARD, EAST WALL = JANITOR.

  Onstage, Andrea was standing ten feet behind and to the left of the podium. Jack saw her pull out her cell phone, check the screen, then return it to her pocket. Her reaction was immediate. Her cuff mike came up to her mouth, then down again. The agent in the center aisle casually headed back up the aisle steps, then turned right at the carpeted intersection, heading toward the east wall. Now Jack saw Andrea sidestep behind his dad, moving into what he assumed was an intercept angle between his dad and the guard.

  The center-aisle agent had reached the east wall’s aisle. Thirty feet away, the guard rotated his head in that direction, paused ever so briefly on the agent, then rotated back to the stage, where Andrea had moved into blocking position. His dad, noticing this, cast a brief glance in her direction but kept talking. He would know, of course, what Andrea was doing, Jack reasoned, but not whether there was a specific threat.

  On the east wall, the guard also noticed Andrea’s movement. Casually, he took two steps down the aisle and bent over to whisper in an audience member’s ear. The woman looked up at the guard, surprise on her face, then stood up. Now smiling, the guard took her by the elbow and, stepping around to her right side, guided her down the aisle toward the exit by the stage. As they passed the fourth row, Andrea took another step forward, maintaining her blocking position.

  She unbuttoned her suit coat.

  The guard suddenly switched his left hand from the woman’s elbow to her collar, then sidestepped, moving sideways past the front row. The woman let out a yelp. Heads turned. The guard’s right hand slipped into the front waistband of his pants. He jerked the woman around, using her as a shield. Andrea’s gun came out and up.

  “Freeze, Secret Service!”

  Behind her, the other agents were already moving, swarming the former President, pushing him down and hurrying him toward the opposite side of the stage.

  The guard’s hand emerged from his waistband with a semiautomatic 9-millimeter. Seeing his target moving out of range, the guard made the mistake for which Andrea was waiting. Gun coming level with the stage, he took a step forward. And a half-foot beyond the protection of his human shield.

  Andrea fired once. At fifteen feet, the low-velocity hollow-point bullet struck home, punching into the guard’s head between his left eye and his ear. Designed for close-quarters, crowd-dense firing, the round worked as advertised, mushrooming inside the guard’s brain, expending all its energy in a thousandth of a second and stopping, as the autopsy would later show, three inches from the opposite side of the skull.

  The guard dropped straight down, dead before he reached the carpet.

  Andrea tells me you saved the day,” former President Ryan said twenty minutes later in the limousine.

  “Just sent up the flare,” Jack replied.

  The whole thing had been a surreal experience, Jack thought, but somehow less surreal than its aftermath. Though the series of events had been brief—five seconds from the time the guard had gotten the woman from her seat to when Andrea’s head shot had dropped him—the mental replay in Jack’s mind moved, predictably, he supposed, in slow motion. So shocked by the shooting was the audience that it had emitted only a few screams, all of those from the attendees before whom the assassin had fallen dead.

  For his part, Jack had known better than to move, so he remained standing against the west wall as campus security and Andrea’s agents cleared the auditorium. His dad, at the center of the Secret Service scrum, had been offstage before Andrea had fired the killing shot.

  “Even so,” Ryan said. “Thanks.”

  It was an awkward moment that drifted into an even more uncomfortable silence. Jack Junior broke it. “Scary shit, huh?”

  Former President Ryan nodded at this. “What made you go back there—to check on the janitor, I mean?”

  “W
hen I saw him, he was trying to take off the buffer pad with a screwdriver. He needed a crescent wrench.”

  “Impressive, Jack.”

  “Because of the screwdriver—”

  “Partially that. Partially because you didn’t panic. And you let the professionals do their job. Eight outta ten people wouldn’t have noticed the buffer thing. Most of those would have panicked, frozen up. The others would’ve tried to move on the guy themselves. You did it right, from soup to nuts.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ryan Senior smiled. “Now let’s talk about how to break this to your mother. ...”

  15

  THEY DIDN’T get far before the plane returned to the gate, the front wheels having never even begun their rotation onto the tarmac proper. There was no explanation offered, only a fixed smile and a curt “Will you come with me, please?” to himself and Chavez, followed by the fixed and firm smile that only a professional flight attendant can mount—and one that told Clark the request wasn’t open to discussion.

  “You forget to pay a parking ticket, Ding?” Clark asked his son-in-law.

  “Not me, mano. I’m a straight arrow.”

  Each of them gave his wife a quick kiss and a “Don’t worry,” then followed the flight attendant up the aisle to the already open door. Waiting for them in the jet bridge was a London Metropolitan Police Service officer. The black-and-white checkerboard pattern on the man’s cap told Clark he wasn’t your run-of-the-mill bobby, and the patch on his sweater told him he belonged to SCD11—intelligence—part of the Specialist Crime Directorate.

  “Sorry to interrupt your jaunt home, gentlemen,” the cop said, “but your presence has been requested. If you’ll follow me, please.”

  British manners—along with driving on the wrong side of the road and french fries being called “chips”—was one of the things Clark had never quite gotten used to—especially among the upper echelons of the Army. Polite was always better than rude, mind you, but there was something unnerving about being talked to oh, so civilly by a guy who had probably killed more bad guys than most people would ever see in their lifetime. Clark had met some folks here who could explain in detail how they planned to kill you with a fork, drink your blood, then skin you, all the while making it sound like an invitation to afternoon tea.