Even the phone had an irritated ring to it when the Big Man called. Lt. Commander Ramshawe picked it up, and the rasping tones of Admiral Morgan snapped down the line. “JIMMY! Just give me one straight, no-bullshit assessment of our actions this morning.”

“Sorry, sir. What’s that you need?”

“I want to know your degree of certainty on the correctness of our actions.”

“One hundred percent.”

“REASON?”

“Sir, the CIA picked up a one-way transmission to Damascus that started off by correctly revealing the bomb at Logan International, time and place, plus operatives. Secondly, it confirmed that some kind of terror operation was happening with a Flight 62.

“Next thing we know, some fucking nutcase is driving a bloody great Boeing passenger jet straight at the city of Washington, D.C. Diving low, directly at the buildings, in defiance of our air traffic orders. What was its flight number? Sixty-two. As forecast. That’s game, set, and match, old mate. Game, set, and match.”

“Thank you, Jimmy,” replied the admiral. “Just wanted to hear the reason again. I must be getting old.”

“Not you, Arnie…” replied the lieutenant commander. But he was too late. The admiral had already rung off and was staring into the log fire in his study at the big house in Chevy Chase. He was staring at the flames, and thinking of the bomb, and the Boeing, and the endless evil these Middle Eastern fanatics were capable of visiting upon the United States of America.

“Fucking towelheads,” he grunted. “But today belonged to us. We blew out their kamikaze airliner, and we screwed up their airport plan, captured the lead man. And the quicker we get him into Guantánamo Bay, the better I’m going to like it.”

The Sikorsky Sea King, a Navy search-and-rescue helicopter from New London, Connecticut, came clattering north up the Charles River. It came in a hundred feet above the Longfellow Bridge, banked right over the impressive edifice of Mass General, and landed with polished dexterity on the great hospital’s sixteenth-floor rooftop helipad, atop the Ellison Building.

Commander John Fallon stared out at the assembled crowd that awaited him-six orderlies, six Boston cops, one white-coated doctor, two nurses, and three very obvious CIA men, big tough characters dressed in dark overcoats, narrow-brimmed hats, and thick scarves.

They all surrounded one medical gurney upon which was a tightly strapped hospital patient, lashed to the safety rails with the kind of wide security belts normally associated with the criminally insane, psychopaths like Hannibal Lecter. King Kong would have been hard-pressed to break free.

“Who the hell’s that, the guy on the gurney?” Commander Fallon asked his loadmaster.

“Search me, just so long as he doesn’t get loose with us.”

“No chance of that,” replied Fallon. “Those three CIA guys over there are coming with us.”

The loadmaster opened the door and jumped down onto the roof. The gurney was wheeled over, and the stretcher that rested between the rails was lifted up by the orderlies and the patient carried into the helicopter.

The CIA agents climbed in, the doors were slammed tight, seatbelts buckled, and the Sea King lifted off from the roof. Not a word was spoken, especially by the patient, who had, incidentally, remained totally mute since five minutes past eight that morning, since Pete and Danny had hauled him out of the burning limo.

The helicopter immediately turned southwest, but within minutes came thirty-five degrees left, banking around onto a more southerly course, heading straight for the clear skies above the icy waters of Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound.

The CIA guys sat stone-faced next to the patient as the Navy pilot and his navigator headed out to sea, clattering down the East Coast, exchanging friendly information with the control tower at Groton while they crossed the submarine roads off Block Island.

Commander Fallon again swung the Sea King south, heading out into the Atlantic, leaving Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island to starboard, and staying out to sea all the way down the long New Jersey coastline.

The Sea King made its westerly turn as it reached the wide waters of Delaware Bay and flew swiftly over the eastern shore, making a beeline for Annapolis and then the northern suburbs of Washington, D.C. It flew low directly toward Bethesda, Maryland, and circled the extensive grounds of the National Naval Medical Center.

Commander Fallon could see that the wide concrete helipad below was surrounded by the type of guard strength you might expect for the arrival of a stricken U.S. president, for this place would be his first stop. Indeed, the body of the slain John F. Kennedy had been brought here immediately after Air Force One returned from Dallas.

The great tower of the hospital was Fallon’s landmark, as it had been to generations of Navy pilots ever since its completion a little more than a year after President Roosevelt had laid its cornerstone on Armistice Day, November 11, 1941.

Commander Fallon made his approach into the midst of Navy staff vehicles and police cruisers. He had no idea of the identity of his wounded passenger, but he understood one thing: someone believed this guy was of serious importance. If he’d recognized the big black Humvee parked in a strictly no-go area right at the hospital entrance, he’d have understood better just how important.

Admiral Arnold Morgan was already in residence, sipping black coffee in the private office of the hospital commander, Rear Admiral Adam Roberts. Also in attendance were Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe and Professor Alan Brett. That was the measure of importance concerning Mr. Reza Aghani, currently under arrest, shot, burned, strapped down, and interrogated after a busy morning at Logan.

Aghani entered the hospital on the double, six orderlies running the wheeled gurney through the automatic doors. They were surrounded by three Secret Service agents from the White House, four armed Navy guards, four Washington cops, two nurses, and two doctors.

Once inside, they headed directly toward the section reserved for the President of the United States: five darkened rooms, quivering with ultrasensitive pressure plates on the floor all along the approach. At the entrance to the suite stood two White House agents, direct from the Secret Service Command Post immediately below the Oval Office. They alone knew the numbers that would open the industrial-strength cipher locks which guarded the gateway to the presidential quarters.

And here, in this rarefied interrogation center, as designated by Paul Bedford and Arnold Morgan this very morning, the first-ever non-president of the USA would become a resident. Only briefly. But nonetheless a resident. Mind you, if President Bedford as much as complained of a head cold, Reza Aghani would have been outta there in about one minute, dispatched immediately to some kind of basement lockup. Right now, however, he was in the relative comfort, but high security, of the Presidential Rooms.

As Arnold Morgan had stated earlier today, “I can put up with damn near anything except someone silences this guy with a bullet or a bomb. He’s all we got, and this is a day which someone planned to be another 9/11.”

The orderlies placed Aghani in a bedroom normally reserved for Secret Service agents who might be guarding a sick president. Two armed Navy guards were posted in the room, with two more outside. The terrorist’s first visitor was Admiral Morgan himself, who was immediately followed by Lt. Commander Ramshawe. Instantly, Aghani closed his eyes and sank back into the pillow, as if aware that no one had yet told him this was going to be unpleasant.