Day of Wrath

Five minutes later, Mcdowell closed the door to his own office and moved to the window — staring blindly down at Washington’s bustling streets while pondering his situation. He was uncomfortably aware that his neck was in a noose — a noose largely of his own making.

He scowled. It had seemed so easy back in the 1980s. His salary as a field agent hadn’t been high enough to match his expensive tastes.

After all, why drive a Chevrolet when you could take a spin in your very own Porsche or BMW? So he’d gone looking for a little extra something to pad his paycheck. And he’d found it.

Mcdowell found himself wanting a drink. He turned away from the window and found the bottle of bourbon he had stashed in his bottom desk drawer. He poured a generous dollop into a water glass and downed it in one go.

When East Germany’s secret intelligence service, the Stasi, offered him fifty thousand dollars — as a simple retainer, but with the promise of more to follow — he’d jumped at the money. And.why not? Pure patriotism was for suckers, the kind of all-American idiots he’d left gasping in his tracks ever since entering the FBI Academy. East.

West. Communism. Capitalism. None of the grand causes mattered much.

Not when you were looking out for the only interests that were really important in the end — your own.

Besides, Mcdowell thought angrily, he’d never done a damn thing wrong for the money. Since the East Germans hadn’t contacted him again before the Wall came tumbling down, he’d never actually betrayed his country. All he’d done was redistribute a little wealth from an enemy spy agency into his own back pocket. And where was the real harm in that?

He grimaced, pouring another slug of bourbon. But now this ex-Stasi son of a bitch Heinrich Wolf, or whatever his real name was, had come crawling back from the shadows to blackmail him. The man’s confident use of the code name the East Germans had assigned Mcdowell, PEREGRINE, proved he had access to their secret files. He swallowed the liquor, feeling the warm glow burn down his throat and into his stomach.

His orders from Wolf were clean-report back on the movements of Helen Gray and deflect her inquiries whenever possible.

Mcdowell shook his head. He certainly didn’t mind throwing a stick into that bitch Gray’s spokes. And he didn’t give a damn about the heroin Wolf and his men must be smuggling inside those Russian jet engines — although he wouldn’t have minded a cut of the money they were likely to make. Let the dope addicts drip the goddamned poison into their veins. It was no skin off his nose.

But what he really didn’t like was the knowledge that an ex-Stasi drug trafficker had him by the balls. Mcdowell was under no illusions. No matter what happened to Helen Gray or Peter Thorn, Wolf wasn’t going to back off not now. The bastard too clearly enjoyed having a senior FBI official at his beck and call.

Mcdowell shoved the bourbon bottle back into his desk.

Maybe he should start asking a few questions of his own about this Baltic Venturer and its mysterious cargo. The more he knew about Wolf’s covert business arrangements, the more chance he might be able to figure out some way to turn the tables on the double-dealing German.

Near Middleburg, Virginia (D MINUS 10)

Prince Ibrahim al Saud glanced out the window of his speeding limousine. They were still several minutes away from his estate deep in the heart of Virginia’s hunt country — a lush green landscape of rolling hills, woods, horse farms, quaint historical towns, and luxury homes. It was an alien vista to one raised in the vast, arid reaches of the Arabian Peninsula. All the land around him was a single, all-encompassing oasis of peace and plenty. But it was a soft, weak land — without the harsh, intervening stretches of rock and sand that tempered a man’s soul and taught him endurance and faith in God.

His eyes fell on a group of horses contentedly cropping grass in a field by the side of the road. What magnificent beasts, he thought, admiring their proud profiles. Once again he regretted the march of time and technology that had rendered the horse a luxury — a plaything for the idle rich, instead of a weapon of war.

Images of the Prophet’s cavalry galloping to victory over the infidel floated across his mind — the green banners of Islam fluttering in the wind, scimitars flashing in the sun, the clatter of hooves, the dust rising heavenward in great billowing clouds.

With regret, Ibrahim pushed those heady images back into his subconscious. Wars were waged with other weapons now — explosives, automatic rifles, rocket launchers, and, most of all, with the money that purchased those weapons. The funds and the orders he dispatched could hatch plans to blow up an Israeli school bus one day, and to down an American airliner the next.

Ibrahim leaned forward and poured himself a glass of mineral water from a carafe kept carefully chilled and waiting for him whenever he used this car.