Patriot games - Tom Clancy [77]
"Difficult, isn't it, Mike?"
"Yes, sir, it is," McKenney admitted with a smile.
"Just keep in mind where impatience has gotten us," the leader said.
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guess that about covers it, Jimmy. Thanks from the Bureau for tracking that guy down."
"I really don't think he's the sort of tourist we need, Dan," Owens replied. A Floridian who'd embezzled three million dollars from an Orlando bank had made the mistake of stopping off in Britain on his way to another European country, one with slightly different banking laws. "I think the next time we'll let him do some shopping on Bond Street before we arrest him, though. You can call that a fee-a fee for apprehending him."
"Ha!" The FBI representative closed the last folder. It was six o'clock local time. Dan Murray leaned back in his chair. Behind him, the brick Georgian buildings across the street paled in the dusk. Men were discreetly patrolling the roofs there, as with all the buildings on Grosvenor Square. The American Embassy was not so much heavily guarded as minorly fortified, so many terrorist threat warnings had come and gone over the past six years. Uniformed police officers stood in front of the building, where North Audley Street was closed off to traffic. The sidewalk was decorated with concrete "flowerpots" that a tank could surmount only with difficulty, and the rest of the building had a sloped concrete glacis to fend off car bombs. Inside, behind bullet-resistant glass, a Marine corporal stood guard beside a wall safe containing a.357 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver. A hell of a thing, Murray thought. A hell of a thing. The wonderful world of the international terrorist. Murray hated working in a building that seemed part of the Maginot Line, hated wondering if there might be some Iranian, or Palestinian, or Libyan, or whatever madman of a terrorist, with an RPG-7 rocket launcher in a building across the street from his office. It wasn't fear for his life. Murray had put his life at risk more than once. He hated the injustice, the insult to his profession, that there were people who would kill their fellow men as a part of some form of political expression. But they're not madmen at all, are they? The behavioral specialists say that they're not. They're romantics-believers, people willing to commit themselves to an ideal, and to commit any crime to further it. Romantics!
"Jimmy, remember the good old days when we hunted bank bandits who were just in the business for a fast buck?"
"I've never done any of those. I was mainly concerned with ordinary thievery until they sent me to handling murders. But terrorism does make one nostalgic for the day of the common thug. I can even remember when they were fairly civilized." Owens refilled his glass with port. A growing problem for the Metropolitan Police was that the criminal use of firearms was no longer so rare as it had once been, this new tool made more popular by the evening news reports on terrorism within the U.K. And while the streets and parks of London were far safer than their American counterparts, they were not as safe as they'd only recently been. The times were changing in London, too, and Owens didn't like it at all.
The phone rang. Murray 's secretary had just left for the night, and the agent lifted it.
" Murray. Hi, Bob. Yeah, he's right here. Bob Highland for you, Jimmy." He handed the phone over.
"Commander Owens here." The officer sipped at his port, then set the glass down abruptly and waved for a pen and pad. "Where exactly? And you've already-good, excellent. I'm coming straightaway."
"What gives?" Murray asked quickly.
"We've just had a tip on a certain Dwyer. Bomb factory in a flat on Tooley Street."
"Isn't that right across from the river from the Tower?"
"Too bloody right. I'm off." Owens rose and grabbed for his coat.
"You mind if I tag along?"
"Dan, you must remember-"