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  “Nothing new out there,” he concluded.

  “Then what’s all the noise about?”

  “Warming up,” he said. “Ready to leave. Or just repositioning.” He got up quickly and went to the slit in the drapes. “Flashlights moving about,” he said. “Fog’s thicker. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were laying smoke to hide in.”

  “We’re the ones hiding,” said Margaret.

  “I have a feeling,” he mused, “I don’t know why.” He paused. “Do you ever have that feeling,” he asked her, “deep inside you, a premonition almost, that something you wouldn’t normally expect—”

  “Déjà vu?”

  “No…” He turned away from the drapes and she could see the expectation in his eyes. “I mean that you just know something is going to come along to help you out of a tight spot.”

  “Intuition,” said Margaret.

  “Yes. Intuition.”

  “Do you remember,” he continued, “when Patton was in the doghouse with Ike over slapping that soldier in Sicily?”

  “No.”

  “Well, for a while Patton thought he would be locked out of the D-Day invasion.” Freeman, still trying to ascertain whether more media were arriving, withdrawing, or repositioning, turned around and looked at Margaret. “He said, ‘God will not allow it. I must fulfill my destiny.’” Douglas Freeman paused, as if expecting his wife to agree that he, Douglas Freeman, would, like Patton, end up fulfilling his destiny, end up victorious despite the slough of despondency in which he now found himself. He could see, had known in fact for a long time, that while Margaret would comfort and support him for better or for worse, she would not lie to him.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she told him. “I don’t have such premonitions.”

  “I feel it,” he told her, turning back to spy on the media. “I know, Margaret. I’ll — my team’ll — get another chance to run those scumbags to ground!”

  It was precisely at that moment, eleven minutes after three in the morning, that the phone rang. Margaret answered, and though sure that it was yet one more reporter, tried to sound civil. “Freeman residence.” It was a woman’s voice, saying that she was calling from the Pentagon and inquiring as to whether General Freeman would be available to take a call in ten minutes from the CNO — chief of naval operations?

  “Yes,” Margaret answered her, hung up, and relayed the message to Freeman.

  “Ah,” said Freeman. “The CNO.”

  “What’s the navy got to do with it?” Margaret asked.

  Douglas smiled at her. It wasn’t a husband-to-wife expression but rather that of a patient adult to a child. “Big navy chief,” said Freeman. “Boss of DARPA ALPHA. It’s a naval base — not army.”

  “I’m not that dumb, Douglas.”

  “What—” He paused, seeing his reflection in the wall mirror. He looked like Patton, with Ike about to reinstate him. “Did I sound patronizing?” he asked Margaret.

  “Yes,” she said. “Perhaps you might try being a little less sure of yourself when this naval person calls. Pride goeth before a fall!”

  “Naval person!” he joshed. Her naïveté regarding military ranks, indeed regarding all things military, at once amused and pleased him. It meant he could always tell her something new about American defense, about a soldier’s life, discuss a fresh topic over dinner instead of sitting there boring her. Mundane table talk, and its sheer repetition, he believed, could finally be every bit as damaging to a marriage as an affair.

  “How long did the operator say?” Douglas asked. “Ten minutes?”

  “Yes,” said Margaret. “Don’t be impatient. You know how people are. Ten minutes could mean half an hour.”

  Tired of pacing back and forth past the light-suffused drapes in the living room, he decided to go to his study, switched on the computer, and called up his team’s e-mail addresses — all except Ruth’s. Margaret brought in his coffee, and the general could see that despite her overall cooler demeanor, his wife was excited, too, but worried. Hoping for him that, like Patton, he would get another chance to track down his enemies, but worried, like so many military spouses who never got used to seeing their loved ones going into harm’s way.

  The phone rang, startling her, Douglas indicating that she take the call — a little psychology in order, he thought.

  “Freeman residence.”

  A demanding voice asked, “Do you use grain-fed beef and organic vegetables?”

  For a second Margaret hesitated. Was it Aussie Lewis? she wondered. Was it code? “To whom would you like to speak?”

  “What — is this the Dim Sum Restaurant?”

  By then Douglas was on the line. “No,” he said emphatically. “You’ve got the wrong number.”

  There was a click and the hum of the line.

  “What a rude person,” said Margaret. “The least he could have done was apologize.”

  “Is Dim Sum open twenty-four hours?” asked Douglas.

  “Yes. I think our number must be very similar. Why, is there something wrong?”

  “No,” said Douglas tentatively, thinking it over, then more assertively, “No. But this whole business about the terrorists, I mean, puts you on edge.”

  Margaret concurred. “Everyone’s on edge. Have been since we found out our own government has been listening in on all our calls.”

  When the phone rang two minutes later, Douglas took it. It was a Pentagon operator, presumably the same one who had called Margaret. She apologized to the general, but the CNO had been delayed. He would be calling shortly, however. Douglas said that was fine and thanked her for calling. He put the phone down.

  “Godammit! He’s delayed!”

  Margaret could see that he was worried that the delay might mean he was out of the running.

  “Don’t fret,” she told him.

  Freeman nodded amicably. “You’re right. You know why?” Before she could answer, he told her, “It’s because I still have that intuition. This is no courtesy call at—” He glanced at his watch. “—0330.”

  “You’re right,” Margaret said, “unless the chief of naval operations wants to order takeout!”

  They both laughed. Margaret decided she’d now have a cup of Evening Star herbal tea. It was said to calm the nerves, creating an ambience of tranquility, an ambience that was shattered by the shrill ring of the kitchen phone. Not wishing to seem too eager, Freeman hesitated for a moment as he took the receiver from his wife, giving her a wink and a smile. She was pleased. He was ready. How often had he told her that luck is no more than being packed, ready to act on a moment’s notice?

  “General!” The drawl of hard consonants was unmistakable.

  “Aussie?”

  “The one and only, General. Sorry for calling so early but I wanted to give you a heads-up before the media get to you.”

  “Well, mate,” replied Freeman, “you’re a bit late. They’ve parked outside — en masse.”

  “So you’ve heard already?”

  “Heard what?” Freeman asked impatiently.

  “The scumbags,” said Aussie. “They’ve bought it.”

  Margaret was straining to hear what Aussie was saying, her face muscles tightening as she tried to make sense of it. Douglas, she saw, looked stricken.

  “Where?” Freeman asked Aussie.

  “On the Canadian side. Apparently the RCMP were called. Funny thing, though — I mean funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha — was that it was a coupla civilians who tipped the Mounties.”

  For Freeman the image of a scarlet-tuniced Mountie with the distinctive peaked hat, brown leather riding boots, and yellow-striped riding britches leapt to mind, even though the general knew that this was the ceremonial garb of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and not the more utilitarian khaki, yellow-banded cap, and yellow-striped navy trousers that constituted the workaday uniform of Canada’s famed federal police.

  “A firefight?” he asked Aussie.

  “No,” Aussie replied. “No
t a shot fired from what I was told. They went off the road into a great bloody ravine, snowing like crazy.”

  “Who told you this, dammit?” pressed Freeman, who was anxiously awaiting the CNO’s call and growing more tense by the second with the knowledge that because Margaret had declined to pay extra for call waiting, the CNO was probably trying to get through right now.

  “Mate o’ mine in our Mountain Division told me,” Aussie explained. “Gave me a bell.”

  “Bell” was British and Aussie slang for someone phoning you. Freeman was struck anew by how cellphone communication had revolutionized life. In this case it had allowed Aussie Lewis’s buddy in the field to effortlessly transmit the news before official channels.

  “So you’re telling me,” said the general, “that the terrorists are confirmed dead?”

  “Yeah. Thought I’d give you a bell before Marte Price and the jackals hit you with it out of the blue.”

  “Can you call your buddy back and get more details?”

  “I tried, General — knew you’d want more info, but I can’t reach the bugger.” Aussie momentarily lost his accent as he affected the neutral tone of the ubiquitous cellphone operator: “The customer you have dialed is away from the phone or temporarily out of the fucking service area. Please try again.”

  “Do you know where the ravine is?” the general asked Aussie.

  “Somewhere near Ripple Mountain, Mike said, just north nor’west of the border corner area between Idaho and British Columbia. Mike — my buddy — said the Mounties had to chopper in to retrieve the bodies.”

  “An accident?” said Freeman.

  “Looks like it. Minibus they were in went off the road on a curve. Black ice all over, apparently. The weather channel’s been telling people to stay off the roads up there. Hell, General, they are—were—towelheads. Desert guys. It’s a sure bet that they knew squat ’bout driving in snow.”

  “Towelheads,” said Freeman. “All of them?”

  “Not all. Two were Brit Muslims, I think. You know, British citizens.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Well, that’s what Mike told me. His Mountain Division company was sent up to help the Mounties. Intel section took mug shots. Bingo! For every one of the pricks there was a match either on Interpol’s or our Homeland Security’s wanted-terrorist list.”

  Freeman sat down hard at the kitchen table, holding the phone in a peculiarly disembodied way, as if he’d had the wind punched out of him. By now Margaret had the gist of Aussie’s call, and whereas her husband seemed undone by the news of the terrorists’ demise, Margaret struggled to contain her delight. He wouldn’t have to leave her, or put himself in harm’s way, now, if she had heard correctly, that the DARPA ALPHA murderers were dead. She heard her husband’s urgent, almost desperate, tone as he pressed Aussie Lewis, “Are you positive that they’re all dead? Did your buddy, Mike, actually see them in the ravine?”

  For the first time Margaret thought she detected a hesitancy in Aussie’s voice and strained to hear, helped by the fact that Aussie’s voice was loud to begin with. “Well, General, I’m not sure whether he personally saw the scumbags, but he’s a trustworthy bloke. Doesn’t bullshit. Anyway, the jackals’ll soon know, I guess. Marte Price and her wannabes in the press will be in a race to get it on the air. Big story. I reckon they’ll be coming to you for your reaction anytime now.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up, Aussie. I ’preciate it.”

  Freeman gently returned the phone to its cradle, and sat in silence. He could hear the kitchen clock. He dropped a lump of sugar into his black coffee, stirring it for what to Margaret seemed like an inordinately long time until she couldn’t bear it any longer. “What are you worrying about now?”

  “Have you ever heard or read a news story that got all the facts straight? I haven’t. They always get something wrong, particularly body counts.” He sipped the coffee while looking through the living room at the drapes. It seemed as if the glare had abated. He turned to Margaret. “Do you remember 9/11? How the number of dead was always wrong? Incomplete? And that big mine disaster in ’06, down in West Virginia? CNN said all the church bells were ringing, all the miners safe. Then we heard, no, there had been a mix-up in communications. They were all dead except one man who survived.”

  “Douglas, you seem disappointed they were found. I mean, I would have thought that grisly as it all is, you must be—” She stopped, unsure of what word she should use.

  “Happy,” he said, “that they’ve been found? I suppose so, but that note the creeps left for me makes it personal. Besides, Aussie’s information isn’t something I’d take to the bank. It’s secondhand info that Aussie’s buddy in the Mountain Division got from somebody else, and where did they get it from? First thing you learn in this trade, Margaret, is that the first reports are invariably wrong.”

  “I take it then that you think there’s a possibility that not all of those horrible people are dead?”

  “Yes, and what irks me—” He was interrupted by the guttural sound of trucks and vans starting up outside, headlight beams lighting up the kitchen blinds.

  Margaret walked over to her husband. “Douglas, I don’t want you to be irked by anyone. The disk those people stole has been destroyed, hasn’t it? I mean CNN is saying what you said, that the terrorists must have transmitted the information via hilltop modem, or whatever those things are called, and then the disk was smashed.”

  “So?” he asked sharply.

  “Then they’ve won, haven’t they?” She regretted her words the moment she’d uttered them. “I mean,” she added quickly, “you did your best, darling, and it’s over.”

  “That, Margaret, is what sticks in my craw. Can’t you understand?”

  “So it’s a matter of hubris,” she retorted.

  “And murder,” he shot back. “Cold, premeditated murder of Americans. Civilians.”

  “My point is, Douglas, what can you do? The damage has already been—”

  The phone rang and the CNO, having no way of knowing that General Freeman had been informally briefed by Aussie Lewis, informed Freeman that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had retrieved bodies thought to be those of the terrorists from a ravine not far from the U.S.-Canadian border.

  Douglas now understood why all the media vans and satellite dish trucks were leaving. For the media it was over, the gaggle of reporters no longer interested in Freeman’s thoughts on the subject. He asked the CNO how many bodies had been found.

  “There’s some confusion about that,” the CNO replied. “As there often is in these kinds of situations, General. If it’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to be circumspect about giving out precise numbers. Mounties inform me the snow was deep, some of the bodies almost entirely buried in the drifts. I think it’ll take a day or two to know for certain. They were all in U.S. Army uniforms, though, and no dog tags, so there’s no doubt about them being the terrorists. I’d say it was a lucky break for us except that I think we have to assume the DARPA ALPHA data have been transmitted. I’ve forwarded the information you got up there from your interview with Dr.—”

  Freeman heard the rustle of paper, then the clack of computer keys on the other end, and guessed that the CNO was trying to retrieve the head scientist’s name.

  “Moffat,” Freeman suggested. “Richard Moffat.”

  “Yes, that’s it. I’ve sent the information to the DI.” He meant the director of intelligence. “Meanwhile the bodies are being flown to Vancouver to see whether we can get any leads from them: Who they were, where they were from, et cetera. I’ll let you know. I apologize for calling you at such an ungodly hour, but I wanted to thank you for your—” There was an awkward pause. “Ah — for your getting right onto it.”

  Freeman thanked him for his courtesy.

  “You did your best,” Margaret told him. Her comfort did nothing to assuage his feeling that he’d failed. If only he and the team had caught the bastards before they had a chance to burst
-transmit the data. If only the prick’s vehicle had plunged into a ravine before they’d had a chance to transmit the information that would change the world. If only. Ah, he was thinking too much about himself. By way of an antidote for his futile brooding, he e-mailed Choir Williams about Prince. That beloved spaniel was the best damn tracker dog in America. In the world!

  At dawn his computer signaled he had mail. Prince was dead.

  That was the most savage, the single most demoralizing hit he’d taken in the whole business. It wasn’t that he was uncaring about Tony Ruth’s death. The decapitation of anyone was as grim a sight as any combat soldier has to look at, but human beings bore their own responsibility, and in this case Tony had gone willingly, like his team members, following the general as they had before into what Freeman’s soldiers knew, despite what the relativist moralists of academe might say, were crucial battles against evil. A job for which they volunteered. Not so the likes of Prince, Freeman mused, an animal that had no choice but that was nevertheless with them in harm’s way. And anyone who thought a canine wasn’t conscious of fear was a fool. And while there was no animal-human bond stronger than that between Choir and Prince, it would affect the whole team. In a moment of self-doubt, Douglas Freeman wondered whether they would ever volunteer to follow him again. Of course they would, and he jettisoned the doubt almost as quickly as it had assailed him, kicked it out in disgust, for it was nothing more than self-pity in disguise. There was no room for self-pity in a world in which hundreds of thousands of children perished each year of starvation and preventable diseases, and where there were breeding grounds for teenagers who would blow themselves up in the insane terrorism waged against the West.

  He recalled what Margaret had said regarding the futility of worrying about the possibility that one of the terrorists might still be on the loose. The data — she was right — were almost certainly in the hands of whoever had paid enough to get them who had financed the attack.

  The phone rang. “Hello,” said Margaret in her usual courteous manner, then suddenly her tone turned icy. Covering the mouthpiece, she hissed, “It’s that tart of yours.”