This would be a merry day for all involved, the "Six" man thought. The motorway was closed with the two car smashes, and there were enough police constables about to blacken the landscape with their uniforms, plus the SAS and Rainbow people. Soon to be added were a joint mob of "Five" and "Six" people en route from London, all of whom would be claiming jurisdiction, and that would be quite a mess, since there was a written agreement between the U.S. and U.K. governments on the status of Rainbow, which hadn't been drafted with this situation in mind, but which guaranteed that the CIA Station Chief London would soon be here as well to officiate. Tawney figured he'd be the ringmaster for this particular circus and that maybe a whip, chair, and pistol might be needed.
Tawney tempered his good humor with the knowledge that two Rainbow troopers were dead, with four more wounded and being treated in this same hospital. People he vaguely knew, whose faces had been familiar, two of which he'd never see again, but the profit of that was Sean Grady, one of the most extreme PIRA members, now beginning what would surely be a lifetime of custody by Her Majesty's Government. He would have a wealth of good information, and his job would be to start extracting it.
"Where's the bloody bus?"
"Tim, I've talked to my superiors, and they're thinking about it."
"What's to think about?" ONeil demanded.
"You know the answer to that, Tim. We're dealing with government bureaucrats, and they never take action without covering their own backsides first."
"Paul, I have six hostages here and I can-"
"Yes, you can, but you really can't, can you? Timothy, if you do that, then the soldiers outside come storming in here, and that ends the situation, and you will be remembered forever as a killer of innocent people, a murderer. You want that, Tim? Do you really want that?" Bellow paused. "What about your families? Hell, what about how your political movement is perceived? Killing these people is a hard thing to justify, isn't it? You're not Muslim extremists, are you? You're Christians, remember? Christians aren't supposed to do things like that. Anyway, that threat is useful as a threat, but it's not very useful as a tool. You can't do that, Tim. It would only result in your death and your political damnation. Oh, by the way, we have Sean Grady in custody," Bellow added, with careful timing.
"What?" That, he saw, shook Timothy.
"He was captured trying to escape. He was shot in the process, but he'll survive. They're operating on him right now."
It was like pricking a large balloon, the psychiatrist saw. He'd just let some air out of his antagonist. This was how it was done, a little at a time. Too fast and he might react violently, but wear them down bit by bit, and they were yours. Bellow had written a book on the subject. First establish physical control, which meant containment. Then establish information control. Then feed them information, bit by precious bit, in a manner as carefully orchestrated as a Broadway musical. Then you had them. "You will release Sean to us. He goes on the bus with us!"
"Timothy, he's on an operating table right now, and he's going to be there for hours. If they even attempted to move him now, the results could be lethal-they could kill the man, Tim. So, much as you might want it, that's just not possible. It can't happen. I'm sorry about that, but nobody can change it."
His leader was a prisoner now? Tim O'Neil thought. Sean was captured? Strangely that seemed worse than his own situation. Even if he were in prison, Sean might come up with a way of freeing him, but with Sean on the Isle of Wight… all was lost, wasn't it? But-
"How do I know you're telling the truth?"
"Tim, in a situation like this, I can't lie. I'd just screw up. It's too hard to be a good liar, and if you caught me in a lie, you'd never believe me again, and that would end my usefulness to my bosses and to you, too, wouldn't it?" Again the voice of quiet reason.
"You said you're a doctor?"
"That's right." Bellow nodded.
"Where do you practice?"
"Mainly here now, but I did my residency at Harvard. I've worked at four different places, and taught some."
"So, your job is to get people like me to surrender, isn't it?" Anger, finally, at the obvious.
Bellow shook his head. "No, I think of my job as keeping people alive. I'm a physician, Tim. I am not allowed to kill people or to help others to kill people. I swore an oath on that one a long time ago. You have guns. Other people around that corner have guns. I don't want any of you to get killed. There's been enough of that today, hasn't there? Tim, do you enjoy killing people?"
"Why-no, of course not, who does?"
