Eric Lustbader - First Daughter

"We've interviewed the security personnel." Nina took the file from him. "No one called in sick, there were no sudden personnel substitutions. Neither the men on duty nor the tapes showed anything out of the ordinary."

Had Nina read off sections of the report to help him? Had she somehow found out about his secret? Bennett wouldn't have given him up, no matter the pressure, so how?

Garner said, "Edward Carson prevailed on the president to have you reassigned to us. I'm not one to beat around the bush, McClure. I think his interference is a mistake."

"A moron could understand president-elect Carson's line of reasoning," Jack said with a deliberate lack of edge to his voice. "I'm intimately familiar with the college grounds and the surrounding area. And because my daughter was Alli Carson's roommate, I'm familiar with her in ways you or your people can't be."

"Oh, yes," Garner sneered. "I have no doubt Carson considers those assets, but I have another take. I think this intimacy is a personalization, and will play as a detriment. It will distort your thinking, blur your objectivity. You see where I'm going?"

Jack glanced briefly at Nina, but her face was as closed as a fist.

"Everyone's entitled to his opinion," Jack said carefully.

The narrow smile appeared like a wound. "As the head of this task force, my opinion is the one that counts."

"So, what?" Jack spread his hands. "Have you brought me here to fire me?"

"Have you ever heard of 'missionary secularism'?" Garner continued as if Jack hadn't spoken.

"No. I haven't."

"I rest my case." Garner flipped the file onto the carpet. "That's about all those reports are good for-floor covering. Because they're built on old-school assumptions, we have to give those assumptions the boot or we'll never get anywhere on this case." He perched on the edge of the sofa again, linked his fingers, pressed the pads of his thumbs together as if they were sparring partners about to go at it. "It can be no surprise even to you that for the past eight years the Administration has been guiding the country along a new path of faith-based initiatives. Religion-the belief in God, in America's God-given place in the world-is what makes this country strong, what can unite it. Move it into a new golden age of global influence and power.

"But then there are the naysayers: the far-left liberals, the gays, the fringe elements of society, the disenfranchised, the deviants, the weak-willed, the criminal."

"The criminal-?"

"The abortionists, McClure. The baby killers, the family destroyers, the sodomites."

Again, Jack glanced at Nina, who was flicking what appeared to be a non ex is tent piece of lint off her skirt. Jack said nothing because this argument-if you could call it that-was nonrational, and therefore not open to debate.

"There's a Frog by the name of Michel Infra. This bastard is the self-proclaimed leader of a movement of militant atheists. He's on record as claiming that atheism is in a final battle with what he terms 'theological hocus-pocus.' He's far from the only one. In Germany, a so-called think tank of Enlightenment, made up of Godless scientists and the like-the same dangerous alarmists proclaiming that global warming is the end of the world-are promulgating the devilish notion that the world would be better off without religion. The president is beside himself. And then there's the British, who haven't had a God-driven thought in their heads in centuries. The God Delusion is a book written by one of them." He snapped his fingers. "What's his name, Nina?"

"Richard Dawkins," Nina said, emerging from her near-coma. "An Oxford professor."

Garner waved away her words. "Who cares where he's from? The point is, we're under attack."

"What's further aggravated the Administration," Nina continued blandly, "is a recent European Union survey asking its citizens to rank their life values. Religion came in last, far behind human rights, peace, democracy, individual freedom, and the like."

Garner shook his head. "Don't they know we're in a religious war for our very way of life? Faith-based policy is the only way to fight it."

"Which is why this Administration is hostile to the incoming one." Having awoken, Nina now seemed on a roll. "Moderate Republicanism as represented by Edward Carson and his people is a step backward, as far as the president is concerned."

"Okay, this is all very enlightening," Jack said, "but what the hell does it have to do with the kidnapping of Alli Carson?"

"Everything," Garner said, scowling. "We have reason to believe that the people who planned and carried out the kidnapping are missionary secularists, a group calling itself E-Two, the Second Enlightenment."

"That refers to the ongoing-often violent-conflict originating in Europe's eighteenth-century Enlightenment," Nina said.

"A so-called intellectual movement," Garner sneered, making the word synonymous with criminal .

"Reason over superstition, that was the Enlightenment's battle cry, led by George Berkeley, Thomas Paine, who returned to the pioneering work of Pascal, Leibniz, Galileo, and Isaac Newton," Nina said. "And it's E-Two's credo as well."

"I never heard of them," Jack said before he could stop himself.

"No?" Garner cocked his head. "Your ATF office was forwarded the official memos Homeland Security sent around. The last one was-what? — but three months ago." He leered like a pornographer. "If you didn't see it, either you're negligent or you can't read."

"What makes you think this organization is involved?" Jack, the bile of anger feeding the heat of his shame, asked. "The most likely suspects are Al-Qaeda or a homegrown derivative."

Garner shook his head. "First off, the terrorist chatter's been elevated for about ten days now, but you know that ebbs and flows, and a lot of it is just trying to play with our minds. There's nothing there for us. Second, there have been no unusual movements in the suspected cells we have under surveillance."

"What about the cells you know nothing about?" Jack said.

Nina looked at Garner, who nodded.

"Show him," he assented.

Nina fanned out a handful of forensic photos of two men, naked from the waist up, with fatal wounds on their backs.

Jack studied the visuals with a relief only he could fully comprehend. "Who are they?"

"The Secret Service personnel assigned to guard Alli Carson," Garner said while Nina's lips were still opening.

Jack felt an unpleasant prickling at the back of his neck. The news just got worse and worse. The photos showed the respective bodies in situ.

"The killers are professionals," Garner said with an unforgivable degree of condescension. "They know how to kill quickly, cleanly, and efficiently." He pointed. "They took their wallets, keys, pads, cell phones. Just to rub our noses in it, I guess, because we've locked down everything belonging to or attached to these two individuals, so there's nothing the perps can do with the personal items. And see here."

Beside each body, partially wedged beneath their left sides, were what appeared to be playing cards.

He peered more closely. "What are those?"

Garner dropped two clear plastic evidence bags onto the photos. Each one contained a playing card. Drawn in the center of each card was a circle with a familiar three-pronged symbol: a stylized peace sign. "During the war in Nam, U.S. soldiers used to leave an ace of spades on the bodies of their victims. These E-Two sonsabitches are doing the same thing, leaving their logo on their victims."

Reaching down to his feet, he pulled a document out of a briefcase, read it out loud. "Faith-based initiatives and policies are spreading from America to Europe, where faith-based reasoning is taking root in the burgeoning Islamic populations of France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, et cetera. All too soon, Muslims will be running for office in these countries, and faith-based initiatives will begin there…" There followed a list of statistics showing the alarming rise of Muslims into Europe, as well as increasing militance of certain sections.