Patriot games - Tom Clancy [104]
The visitor crooked a comically accusing finger. "You are a counterrevolutionary influence whose objective is to wreck the movement. The op on The Mall has had serious repercussions on the other side of the Atlantic. We'll-excuse me, they'll be sending some of their chaps to Boston in another month or so to set things right, to tell the Yanks that they had nothing to do with it," Connolly said.
"Money-we don't need their bloody money!" Miller objected. "And they can put their 'moral support' up-"
"Mustn't offend the Americans," Connolly pointed out.
O'Donnell raised his glass for a toast: "The devil with the bloody Americans."
As he drank off the last of his second whiskey. Miller's eyes snapped open sharply enough to make a click.
"Kevin, we won't be doing much in the U.K. for a while "
"Nor in the Six Counties," O'Donnell said thoughtfully. "This is a time to lie low, I think. We'll concentrate on our training for the moment and await our next opportunity."
"Shamus, how effective might Doyle's men be in Boston?"
Connolly shrugged his shoulders. "Get enough liquor into them and they'll believe anything they're told, and toss their dollars into the hat as always."
Miller smiled for a moment. He refilled his own glass this time as the other two talked on. His own mind began assembling a plan.
Murray had had a number of assignments in the Bureau over his many years of service, ranging from junior agent involved in chasing down bank robbers to instructor in investigation procedures at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. One thing he'd always told the youngsters in the classroom was the importance of intuition. Law enforcement was still as much art as science. The Bureau had immense scientific resources to process evidence, had written procedures for everything, but when you got down to it, there was never a substitute for the mind of an experienced agent. It was mostly experience, Murray knew, the way you fitted evidence together, the way you got a feel for the mind of your target and tried to predict his next move. But more than experience, there was intuition. The two qualities worked together until you couldn't separate them in your own mind.
That's the hard part, Murray told himself on the drive home from the embassy. Because intuition can run a little wild if there's not enough evidence to hold on to.
"You will learn to trust your instincts," Murray told the traffic, quoting from his memorized class notes. "Instinct is never a substitute for evidence and procedure, but it can be a very useful tool in adapting one to another-oh, Dan, you would have made a hell of a Jesuit." He chuckled to himself, oblivious of the stare he was getting from the car on his right.
If it's so damned funny, why does it bother you?
Murray 's instinct was ringing a quiet but persistent bell. Why had Jimmy said that? Obviously it was bothering him, too-but what the hell was it?
The problem was, it wasn't just one thing. He saw that now. It was several things, and they were interrelated like some kind of three-dimensional crossword puzzle. He didn't know the number of blanks, and he didn't have any of the clues to the words, but he did know roughly the way they fitted together. That was something. Given time, it might even be enough, but-
"Damn!" His hands gripped tight on the steering wheel as good humor again gave way to renewed frustration. He could talk it over with Owens tomorrow or the next day, but the bell told him that it was more urgent than that.
Why is it so damned urgent? There is no evidence of anything to get excited about.
Murray reminded himself that the first case that he'd broken more or less on his own, ten months after hitting the street as a special agent, had begun with a feeling like this one. In retrospect the evidence had seemed obvious enough once he'd put the right twist on it, but that twist hadn't occurred to anyone else. And with Murray himself it had begun as nothing more than the same sort of intellectual headache he was suffering through in his