First Daughter

"Did I say something-?"

"That name." Paull snapped his fingers impatiently. "Give me that name again."

"What? Ian Brady?"

"That's the fucking one."

Beside her, Paull stared off into the distance, his eyes seeing nothing. Brady was the key, the lynchpin to events unfolding all too rapidly. A serial murderer, a schemer, most probably a psychopath-this was the asset Paull had inherited. The most important intelligence asset stretching back twenty-five years. This was the monster he was forced to protect, whose whereabouts he no longer knew. Who did, then? His mind snapped into perfect focus. "Get Jack McClure," he said to Nina. "Bring him to me ASAP."

Nina took out her cell phone. "I'll call him right now."

"No," Paull said. "It's all too likely that our cell conversations are being monitored. I don't even want to use mine without prearranged coded signals."

"I'll find another way," Nina said.

Paull nodded gravely. "I know you will."

FORTY

GET IT into your head, Jack," Sharon had said in the ER. "We all have a secret life, not just you." Now Jack knew the real truth of her words. His daughter was living a secret life right under his nose. It was as if he'd never known her at all-which was, of course, a deficiency that Sharon had accused him of repeatedly. But, given what she'd said to him, he determined that he had to know whether or not she knew about Emma's radicalization, her secret life.

"If she felt so strongly about the blurring of religion and government," Jack said, "why didn't she join a peaceful organization like the First American Secular Revivalists?"

"Because she was Emma," Alli said. "Because she never did things halfway, because she was strong and sure of herself. Above all, because she felt that the pack of evangelicals who had invaded the federal government were warmongers, that the only way to get their attention, to attack them, to expose them was with a radical response."

"She hated the warmongers so she became one herself?" Jack shook his head. "Isn't that counterintuitive?"

"The philosophers say fighting fire with fire is a legitimate response as old as time."

They were walking in the tangle of trees and underbrush behind the house. The sky was turning black, as if with soot, and a cold wind shivered the tallest branches. Jack was turning over what Alli had said because there was something about it that stuck in his mind, that seemed to loom large on the playing field he'd been thrust onto.

He stopped them at the bole of a gigantic oak. "Let's back this up a minute. Emma knew that your father would win the election, or at least that this current administration was on its last legs. Why not simply wait until the new regime came in?"

Alli shook her head. "I don't know, but there was an urgency in what she had to do."

"All right, let's put that aside for the moment. You said that she wanted to expose the Administration with a radical response."

"That's right."

"Did she tell you what she meant by that?"

"Sure. E-Two wants to provoke an extreme response from the Administration."

"But there's sure to be bloodshed."

"That's the whole point." Alli licked her lips. "See, the bloodier, the more militant, the more brutal the response, the better. Because E-Two is out to show the entire country what this Administration really is. They won't be able to round up the E-Two members easily. From what Emma said, they're all young people our age-no one over thirty. When there's blood on the streets, when America sees their own sons and daughters slaughtered, they'll finally understand the nature of the people who are exporting war and death to the world."

Jack was rocked to his core. "They're pla

"They're soldiers," Alli said. "They're laying down their lives for what they believe in."

"But what they're pla

"As our foreign policy has been for eight years."

"But this isn't the way."

"Why not? Sitting on their hands hasn't worked so well, has it? Anyone who has said or tried to do anything to protest faith-based initiatives has been ridiculed or, worse, branded a traitor by the talking heads controlled by the Administration. God, look at what wimps members of the opposite party have been through an illegal war, scandals, evidence that the government muzzles its scientists and specialists on the topics of WMDs and global warming. If the parties were reversed, you can bet this president would've been impeached by now."

Why was it, Jack thought, that he felt as if he were listening to Emma and not Alli? A strange thing was happening to him. It had begun when he and Alli entered the house and now had continued as they moved out into woods. There was the very curious sensation of the world finally starting to make sense to him-well, if not the whole world, then his world, the one he'd kept hidden from others and which kept him apart from them. Like his ability to sense Emma, though she was no longer in this world, at least by the limited understanding of man-made science, he felt as if his world and the one that had always been closed to him were begi

This gift he very badly wanted to bestow on Alli. To this end, he said, "There's someone I'd like you to meet."

Alli regarded him with skepticism. "Not another shrink. I've had my fill of probing and prodding."

"Not another shrink," Jack promised.

Rather than return to the front of the house where he'd parked, he took her through the underbrush. On the other side was parked Gus's white Continental, which Jack kept in pristine condition.

Alli laughed in delight as she climbed into it. Behind the wheel, Jack turned the key in the ignition, and the huge engine purred to life. With the lights extinguished, he rolled away without the Secret Service detail parked on Westmoreland being any the wiser.

He turned on the tape player, and James Brown took up "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" in midsong.

"Wow!" Alli said.

Yeah, thought Jack. Wow.

Ten minutes later, when they arrived at Kansas Avenue NE, they couldn't get near the old Renaissance Mission Church building. Barriers had been erected on the street and sidewalks on either side of it. There must have been more than a dozen unmarked cars and anti-terrorist vans drawn up on the street within the barriers.

Jack's heart seemed to plummet in his chest. Telling Alli to wait in the car, he got out, flashed his credentials to one of the twenty or so suits milling around. Then he saw Hugh Garner, who was spearheading the operation, and put away his ID.

"Hello, McClure," Garner said. "What brings you here?"

"I have an appointment with Chris Armitage of FASR," Jack lied.

Garner pulled a face. "So do we, McClure. Trouble is, we can't find him, or his pal Peter Link." Garner inclined his head. "You wouldn't know where they've got to?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be here talking to you," Jack said. "I'd like to speak to someone else in the FASR offices."

"I'm afraid that's impossible." Garner looked smug. Hailed by one of his detail, he turned, gave a couple of orders, turned back to Jack. "No one's here. This office has been shut down."

Jack thought of all the busy, dedicated men and women he'd seen on his way into Armitage's office. "Where is everyone else?"

"In federal custody." Garner gri

Jack rocked back on his heels as if struck a blow. "What the hell are you talking about?"