O'Connor nodded. "That's exactly what Bert said, Chuck."
"So, nothing happening yet?"
"Nothing worthwhile. We have a few more of Mary's friends to interview-five are set up for tomorrow, but if anything breaks loose, my bet's on New York. Somebody must have known her. Somebody must have dated her. But not here, Chuck. She left Gary and didn't look back."
Ussery frowned, but there was no fault to be found with O'Connor's investigative procedures, and there was a total of twelve agents working the Bannister case. Such cases ran and broke at their own speed. If James Bannister called, as he did every day, he'd just have to tell him that the Bureau was still working on it, then ask him for any additional friends he might have forgotten to list for the Gary team of agents.
"You didn't stay very long, sir," the immigration inspector observed, looking at Popov's passport.
"A quick business meeting," the Russian said, in his best American accent. "I'll be back again soon." He smiled at the functionary.
"Well, do hurry back, sir." Another stamp on the well worn passport, and Popov headed into the first-class lounge.
Grady would do it. He was sure of that. The challenge was too great for one of his ego to walk away, and the same was true of the reward. Six million dollars was more than the IRA had ever seen in one lump sum, even when Libya's Muammar Qaddafi had bankrolled them in the early 1980s. The funding of terrorist organizations was always a practical problem. The Russians had historically given them some arms, but more valuably to the IRA, places to train, and operational intelligence against the British security services, but never very much money. The Soviet Union had never possessed a very large quantity of foreign exchange, and mainly used it to purchase technology with military applications. Besides, it had turned out, the elderly married couple they'd used as couriers to the West, delivering cash to Soviet agents in America and Canada, had been under FBI control almost the entire time! Popov had to shake his head. Excellent as the KGB had been, the FBI was just as good. It had a long-standing institutional brilliance at false-flag operations, which, in the case of the couriers, had compromised a large number of sensitive operations run by the "Active Measures" people in KGB's Service A. The Americans had had the good sense not to burn the operations, but rather use them as expanding resources in order to gain a systematic picture of what KGB was doing-targets and objectives-and so learn what the Russians hadn't already penetrated.
He shook his head again, as he walked off to the gate.
And he was still in the dark, wasn't he? The questions continued to swarm: Exactly what was he doing? What did Brightling want? Why attack this Rainbow group?
Chavez decided to set his MP-10 submachine gun aside today and concentrate instead on his Beretta.45. He hadn't missed a shot with the Heckler amp; Koch weapon in weeks-in this context, a "miss" meant not hitting within an inch of the ideal bullet placement, between and slightly above the eyes on the silhouette target. The H amp;K's diopter sights were so perfectly designed that if you could see the target through the sights, you hit the target. It was that simple.
But pistols were not that simple, and he needed the practice. He drew the weapon from the green Gore-Tex holster and brought it up fast, his left hand joining the right on the grip as his right foot took half a step back, and he turned his body, adopting the Weaver stance that he'd been taught years before at The Farm in the Virginia Tidewater. His eyes looked down, off the target, acquiring the pistol's sights as it came up to eye level, and when it did, his right index finger pulled back evenly on the trigger
–not quite evenly enough. The shot would have shattered the target's jaw, and maybe severed a major blood vessel, but it would not have been instantly fatal. The second shot, delivered about half a second later, would have been. Ding grunted, annoyed with himself. He dropped the hammer with the safety-decock lever and reholstered the pistol. Again. He looked down, away from the target, then looked up. There he was, a terrorist with his weapon to the head of a child. Like lightning, the Beretta came up again, the sights matched up and Chavez pulled back his linger. Better. That one would have gone through the bastard's left eye, and the second round, again half a second later, made the first between-the-eyes hole into a cute little figure-eight.
"Excellent double-tap, Mr. Chavez."
Ding turned to see Dave Woods, the range master.
"Yeah, my first was wide and low," Ding admitted.
That it would have blown half the bastard's face right off was not good enough.
"Less wrist, more finger," Woods advised. "And let me see your grip again." Ding did that. "Ah, yes, I see." His hands adjusted Chavez's left hand somewhat. "More like that, sir."
