The Devil's Footprint (5 page)

Armed with his
copy of
The World Almanac of U.S.
Politics
, bought in Sidney Kramer's Bookstore, and
The United States House of Representatives Telephone Directory
,
given to him by a friendly staffer who fancied switching to a better-paid job
as a lobbyist for Japan, Wakami had Endo line up an appointment with Lee
Cochrane's office.

Cochrane-
san
might be running the
counterterrorism Task Force with minimal staff, but he also had a demanding
political role as chief of staff for his congressman.
 
Wearing his political hat, he would see
Wakami and his team or at least have him received — if only by an intern not
yet old enough to drink legally.

The important
thing was that Wakami now had access into the subcommittee's offices, and if a
guard at the entrance called up — through that was most unlikely — their
credibility would be already established.

He and his
people could wait in the subcommittee's reception until his target came into
sight.
 
He would delay any meeting until
a mythical missing member of their group would turn up.
 
With a bit of luck they would even be given
tea.
 
He was not worried about being
recognized later.

All three
members of Osaka Industries United States Friendship Group quite deliberately
had identical haircuts, horn-rimmed glasses, and clothing.
 
To Americans, they would be like peas in a
120-million-population pod.

In Wakami's
opinion, it all said a great deal about how the
United States
regarded terrorism,
not that he was complaining.
 
Well, they
would learn the hard way.
 
He decided
they would go in the main entrance.
 
There was more traffic that way, so the guards would be busier.

That left him
with the decision as to how the actual killing of the target should be carried
out.
 
Their instructions emphasized that
he must be killed and they must be sure he was dead.
 
A dying man could still talk.

To get through
the metal detector and scanner, the killing would have to be carried out
without either firearms or event the traditional blade.
 
Yet death must be certain and immediate.

There was
really only one absolutely foolproof way Wakami could think of.

Finally,
Wakami thought about how the members of the team might escape.
 
‘Escape,’ of course, was a relative term.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The liquid
explosives came in as double-walled ampoules of insulin.

The guard at
the main entrance had spotted the two containers and the hypodermic on the
scanner through the sides of the briefcase, but his voice was sympathetic as he
routinely checked the items.

The word ‘insulin’
was printed on both labels, together with the name of the prescribing doctor
and the pharmacy.
 
In that context, the
hypodermic required no explanation.

If he had been
able to check the ampoules, it would have made no difference unless he had
spotted and opened the sealed double wall.
 
There was genuine insulin at the core.
 
It was a useful poison for some situations.
 
Injecting a large dose into a normal healthy
person was lethal and hard to detect.
 
The body naturally dispenses insulin into the bloodstream when unduly
stressed, and imminent death comes into that category.

The outer wall
of the ampoule contained enough explosive to equal the force of a hand grenade.

The guard did
not query the other items.

The killing
weapon came in as an extension cable for the camera.
 
The cable normally consisted of an outer
flexible core and a thin inner wire.
 
Pushing a release at one end pushed a plunger out the other and
activated the shutter release.
 
In this
case, the ends constituted no more than decorations.
 
The substance was the razor-sharp serrated
inner wire.

The other
weapons were short ‘punch daggers’ — ultrathin needle blades with a crosspiece
making a
T
, which were clenched in the fist and punched in when
stabbing.
 
They were built into each
man's briefcase looking like part of the reinforcing frame, with the crosspiece
being the designer handle.
 
Each man had
one.
 
The blades had no cutting edge but
were strong enough when stabbing to pierce even most body armor.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Fitzduane's
eyes caught Maury's briefly as he entered the room.
 
Maury smiled very slightly and gently, as if
it were entirely normal to greet someone while half-concealed behind a drape.

"Hugo, a
pleasure," said Cochrane.

Unlike Warner
and the other staffers, the marine-trim chief of staff was formally dressed,
his shirt white and crisp and his tie regimental.
 
The style was that of a military man in
civilian clothes, but the eyes were not just those of a direct man of action.
 
There was a look of introspection here.
 
They were the guarded eyes of a very
intelligent man who had seen much to disappoint him but still believed.
 
Fitzduane was mildly irritated at himself for
being surprised.
 
He had expected surface
polish and competence.
 
He was faced with
someone who was more substantial and decidedly more complex.

Fitzduane had
read the reports put out by the Task Force on Terrorism.
 
Those who originated them knew — really
understood — how their special world worked.
 
And Maury, from what he had heard and read, would not work with a fool.
 
Fitzduane smiled to himself.
 
He trusted he would prove up to the mark.

Maury stayed
behind his curtain and said nothing.
 
The
situation would have been unusual enough, but the chief of staff's office was
comparatively small.
 
Maury was not some
discreet watcher from a distance but stood only a few feet away, as if sheer
willpower and his very still composure would make him invisible.
 
There was room just for a desk and two
scuffed leather sofas with a small table in the middle.

This was a
functional place for meeting and talking, not designed to impress.
 
The one exception was a small case containing
medals and a photograph of two men in fatigues.

Vietnam
,
Fitzduane looked at the mementos with mixed emotions.
 
He had been young then, too, and in some ways
it had been the best of times.
 
But too
many friends had died there.

Cochrane saw
Fitzduane's glance.
 
"Not
mine," he said.
 
"They belong
to the man who inspired all this.
 
His
widow wanted me to have them."

"I'm sure
you have your own, Lee," said Fitzduane.

Cochrane
nodded somewhat stiffly.
 
"The
military give them out by the shitload.
 
They're not what counts.
 
It's
what you stand for and what you do.
 
All
I did was show up."

Fitzduane
nodded.
 
More than many, he reflected.

Standing to
one side of Fitzduane, Warner was suddenly struck by the fanciful notion that
he was watching the meeting of two knights from the
Middle
Ages.

Both had
warrior stamped all over them.
 
Both were
being friendly enough on the face of it, and on the face of it had similar values,
but there was still an unspoken competitive element between them.
 
On second thought, the competitive factor
probably emanated from Lee.
 
Hugo
Fitzduane had actually done the kind of things that Lee merely aspired to
do.
 
Of course, Lee had certainly served
his time, but that was many years ago.
 
Fitzduane had also been in
Vietnam
but had had major
encounters with terrorism twice —the latter as recently as a year ago.

Lee, the paper
pusher, was encountering the adventurer.
 
The chief of staff was competitive from gullet to zatch.
 
It could not be easy for him.
 
Worse, he had to behave himself.

He wanted to
enlist the Irishman's help, and Colonel Hugo Fitzduane did not look someone you
could lead by the nose.
 
Warner was
silently amused.
 
This was going to be
fun.

Of course,
what two gallant knights like Cochrane and Fitzduane were doing within the
confines of Congress was another matter entirely.
 
The Hill was not about daring deeds and
gallantry.
 
It was about politics, and
that was a cold, reality-based world.

"Lee?"
 
Tanya, one of the full-time receptionists,
put her head around the door.
 
"Before you get comfortable...
 
There is that Japanese delegation, and Patricio has just arrived."

Cochrane
gestured at Fitzduane.
 
"Take a
seat, Hugo, and I'll be back in a moment.
 
Dan can introduce you to our friend from
Mexico
while I exchange
pleasantries with our Japanese friends.
 
I gather it is just a courtesy call."

He looked back
at Tanya.
 
"Show
Patricio in here.
 
I'll see our
Japanese visitors in the congressman's office.
 
Have they had tea?"

Tanya
nodded.
 
Cochrane grinned.
 
Tanya knew the drill.

"So let's
do it," he said.
 
The receptionist
backed away and Lee headed toward the door,
then
waited inside to give Patricio a quick greeting before temporarily ducking
out.
 
There were always too many people
to see, never enough time, and certainly not enough space.
 
Juggling all the elements was like playing
with a Rubik's Cube.

There was no
warning.

"What are
you
...
 
Aaagh!
 
My God!
 
My God!
 
They're killing us.
 
They're
kill
—"

The shouts and
short piercing screams were truncated before their full dreadful meaning was
understood.

The sounds of
people dying belonged to other worlds, not to the paper and verbal wars on the
Hill.

They looked at
each other uncertainly.
 
There were TV
sets everywhere, monitoring Congress on C-Span.
 
Someone had switched into a drama and turned the volume up too
loud.
 
It was not real.

The door
crashed wide open, forcing Cochrane backward and he tripped over the small
table in the confined space and then collapsed onto the floor with it upended
in front of him.

Warner stood
up to help and Fitzduane was blocked.

"Huh-huh-huh-huh-haaaaa..."

The sound of dying.

Patricio
Nicanor stood in the open doorway, the expression on his face compounded of
shock and horror and fear and pain and something much worse.

It was the
look of a fellow human animal
knowing
he was losing his life — and that was elemental and singularly disturbing to
behold.

Even as they
watched, and that brief moment seemed to take an eternity, his eyes bulged and
his throat gaped open in a wet crimson smile.

There was a
loud cry of triumph and effort from behind him, and then blood spurted from his
torso and his head toppled from his body and rolled toward them.

Patricio's headless
body was still erect, his heart still pumping blood, crimson spewing from the
bloody stump.
 
Then the corpse was
released and slid to the ground.

The killer was
suddenly revealed.
 
He stood there for an
infinitesimal moment with the bloody steel garrote in his hands and a look of
triumph on his face.

Shouts came
from the general office, and Fitzduane saw the terrorist begin to turn while
letting one end of the garrote fall from his right hand and then reaching into
the side pocket of his jacket.

There was the
whumph
of an explosion closely followed
by screams of pain that were all the more disturbing for being muted.

Fitzduane's
brain fought to process competing messages.

Logic dictated
that what he was seeing could not be happening.
 
He was in a safeguarded environment.

Instinct,
brutally reinforced by the odors of death, told him that if he did not do
something quickly he would be joining Patricio Nicanor.

Survival more
than logic was the dominant force on this occasion.

Desperately,
he looked around Cochrane's office for a weapon — anything, even a paper knife
or an unloaded war souvenir.