“President Cazalet will want to hear all about that. Let’s go.”

They drove along Constitution Avenue toward the White House, where as usual these days and in spite of the weather, there were demonstrators. Their driver tried the East Entrance, where they were greeted warmly by a Secret Service agent on duty, who escorted them to the President’s secretary, a pleasant and cheerful lady who admitted them to the Oval Office. There they found Jake Cazalet in shirtsleeves at his desk, as usual, working his way through a pile of documents.

“So you made it. I heard the weather wasn’t too good.” Cazalet came round the desk and shook Ferguson warmly by the hand. “Good to see you, General, as always. I think whiskey is in order, considering this damn rain. Clancy, if you’d be kind enough to do the honors.” He turned to the other two and said to Ferguson, “You took a bullet in the shoulder, I understand?”

“I was lucky, Mr. President. A bad crease, thanks to the IRA mercenaries employed by Belov’s people, but that’s all.”

Josef Belov, the billionaire head of Belov International, had once been a colonel in charge of the KGB’s old Department 3. His intentions now were as they had been then – disruption of the Western world as much as possible, encouragement and financial support for terrorism of all kinds. He had very nearly succeeded in assassinating President Cazalet, and, thwarted in that, he had been successful in injuring Ferguson and putting one of his best operatives, Superintendent Hannah Bernstein of Special Branch, in the hospital. Belov had been killed in a shoot-out in Ireland, along with his agents Yuri Ashimov and Major Greta Novikova of the GRU, as well as assorted IRA guns-for-hire. But the pain they had caused lingered on, in both the body and the soul.

“Belov was backed by the Russian government?”

“At the highest level.”

Clancy handed out the drinks, and then stood against the wall behind them, arms folded.