Designated Targets

Skorzeny smiled and plucked two grenades from his webbing, pulling the pin with his teeth, and dropping them on the ground. “Until next time,” he said, spinning around as rifle fire snapped past Harry’s head again.

“Grenade!” he yelled, turning to find Churchill emerging from the car without so much as a scratch on him yet.

Harry dived at the prime minister, slamming into him like the champion rugby player he’d once been, and driving the portly old man back into the relative safety of the armored car. A curse, a tangle of arms and legs, and then two explosions that shook the Bentley and peppered the interior with shrapnel through the still-open door. Harry felt some of it hit his body armor, and a hot shooting pain in his calf told him at least one piece had struck home.

Churchill heaved him off, and Harry backed out of the car, looking for Skorzeny.

A platoon or more of real British troops had arrived from within the Ministry building, and more were running up from the Horse Guards.

“He got away,” said Draper, appearing from around the other side of the Bentley.

The familiar voice of the British prime minister rode in over the top of him. “You know, Your Highness, we once had a civil war in this country to put the royal family in its place, and that place was not on top of the prime minister . . . but thank you, anyway.”

Harry took the PM’s outstretched hand, still looking for Skorzeny.

But he was gone.

EPILOGUE

The Quiet Room had no physical presence. There was no room, as such. The Quiet Room was a set of protocols, a number of agents, and an expression of will.

Admiral Phillip Kolhammer’s will.

He was not an autocrat. He consulted with those he trusted. Men like Captain Judge and Colonel Jones, or women such as Karen Halabi. But when it came time to make a call, the responsibility fell on him alone.

Kolhammer scanned the read-once-only report from one of his best agents. They sat in a nondescript conference room on campus in the Zone. The woman was dressed in civilian clothes. An expensive suit, cut in a twenty-first style by a local tailor who was becoming rich because of his ability to reproduce the designs of Zegna, Armani, and their contemporaries from magazine photographs that came through the Transition.

The woman was wealthy in her own right now. She worked for herself, but she answered to a higher purpose.

“You’ve done excellent work, Ms. O’Brien,” said Kolhammer. And he was impressed. She effectively ran a dozen large and rapidly growing enterprises on behalf of her clients. They’d come to trust her advice without reservation, so successful had she been in advancing their interests. Some of the clients were complex entities, corporate concerns with claims over intellectual property not yet existent in this universe. Some were individuals, such as Slim Jim Davidson.

As long as their wealth continued to grow at a staggering pace, Maria O’Brien’s clients asked her very few questions about the vast and ever-growing discretionary funds she invested on their behalf.

Kolhammer grinned at the thought of what an asshole like Davidson would think of his ill-gotten gains being channeled into something like the establishment of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference fifteen years before its time. Not much, he supposed, unless he could see a dollar in it—in which case, he probably couldn’t care less.

“I see you’ve gifted Bryn Mawr’s Library fund rather generously,” he said, raising one eyebrow.

“Yes.” O’Brien nodded.

“You’re an alumna of Denbigh Hall, if I recall correctly.”

“You do, sir. So I know how much they need the money.”

Kolhammer handed her the flexipad, deleting the read-once file as he did so. “Be careful with the political donations, Ms. O’Brien. Hoover’s men are all over Congress. They’ll pick up any whiff of us playing favorites.”

“They won’t, Admiral. I know my job.”

“I believe you do,” said Kolhammer, handing her back the flexipad with a new read-once file, a list of trust funds, individuals, and organizations he wanted her to fund. O’Brien took a few minutes’ pace around the bare room, committing the list to memory before she deleted it.

“So,” he said when she had circled back to a spot in front of him. “How’s civilian life treating you?”

O’Brien relaxed a little. She was no longer in the corps, but old habits died hard. “I don’t have to get up early. That’s pretty cool,” she said. “And, you know, I’m actually loving the work. Not just for you, but for my clients. It’s exciting . . .” She seemed to falter at something.

“But?”

“But,” she said with the air of someone about to make a confession. “It’s really hard here, sir. The rednecks and the assholes I can handle, if you’ll pardon my French. A guy like Slim Jim, he’s a pussycat. But I’ll tell you what hurts. It’s the way women resent me, and everything I stand for. The way they look at me when I enter a room, or walk down the street. Like I’m some sort of five-dollar whore turning tricks at their bake-off.”

“Not all of them, surely.”