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By Root 1327 0

boring, and he would sleep through it as much as possible. He wondered if government service were really worth it, and the knowledge that Ryan would soon be gone - Arnold van Damm had gotten the word to him - didn't improve his outlook. The Director of Central Intelligence strapped himself in and started to read through his briefing documents. An Air Force non-com offered him a glass of wine, which he started on as the aircraft taxied off the ramp.

John Clark and Domingo Chavez boarded their own flight later that afternoon for Mexico City. It was better, the senior man thought, to get settled in and acclimated. Mexico City was yet another high-altitude metropolis whose thin air was made all the worse by air pollution. Their mission gear was carefully packed away, and they expected no trouble with customs clearance. Neither carried a weapon, of course, as this sort of mission did not require it.

The truck pulled off the Interstate exactly thirty-eight hours and forty minutes after leaving the cargo terminal at Norfolk. That was the easy part. It took fifteen minutes and all the driver's skill to back his rig up to the concrete loading dock outside the barn. A warm sun had thawed the ground into a six-inch-deep layer of gooey mud that almost prevented him from completing the maneuver, but on the third try he made it. The driver jumped down and walked back towards the dock.

"How do you open this thing?" Russell asked.

"I'll show you." The driver paused to scrape the mud off his boots, then worked the latch on the container. "Need help unloading?"

"No, I'll do it myself. There's coffee over in the house."

"Thank you, sir. I could use a cup."

"Well, that was easy enough," Russell said to Qati, as they watched the man go away. Marvin opened the doors and saw a single large box with 'SONY' printed on all four sides, along with arrows to show which side was up, and the image of a champagne glass to tell the illiterate it was delicate. It was also sitting on a wooden pallet. Marvin removed the fasteners that held it in place, then fired up the fork-lift. The task of removing the bomb and putting it inside the barn was completed in another minute. Russell shut the fork-lift down, then draped a tarp over the box. By the time the trucker came back, the cargo box was again closed.

"Well, you got your bonus," Marvin told him, handing over the cash.

The driver riffled through the bills. Now he got to drive the box back to Norfolk, but first he'd hit the nearest truck-stop for eight hours of sleep. "A pleasure doing business with you, sir. You said you might have another job for me in a month or so?"

"That's right."

"Here's how you reach me." The trucker handed over his card.

"Heading right back?"

"After I get some sack time. I just heard on the radio there's snow coming tomorrow night. A big one, they say."

"That time of year, isn't it?"

"Sure is. You have a good one, sir."

"Be careful, man," Russell said, shaking his hand one more time.

"It's a mistake to let him go," Ghosn observed to the Commander in Arabic.

"I think not. The only face he has really seen is Marvin's, after all."

"True."

"Have you checked it?" Qati asked.

"There is no damage to the packing box. I will do a more detailed check tomorrow. I would say that we are almost ready."

"Yes."

"You want the good news or the bad news?" Jack asked.

"Good first," Cathy said.

"They're asking me to resign my position."

"What's the bad news?"

"Well, you never really leave. They'll want me to come back occasionally. To consult, stuff like that."

"Is that what you want?"

"This work does get in your blood, Cathy. Would you like to leave Hopkins and just be a doc with an office and patients and glasses to prescribe?"

"How much?"

"Couple times a year, probably. Special areas I happen to know a lot about. Nothing regular."

"Okay, that's fair - and, no, I couldn't give up teaching young docs. How soon?"

"Well, I have two things I have to finish up with. Then we have to pick someone for the job "