THE REST OF the day, they all played tourist and tested their radios. It turned out that the radios worked both inside and outside the basilica, and, better yet, inside to outside the immense stone structure. Each man would use his own name as an identifier. It made more sense than setting up numbers or code names that they'd all have to remember—one more confusing factor that they wouldn't need if the shit hit the fan. All the while, they looked around for the face of Boris Strokov, hoping for a miracle, and reminding themselves that miracles did occasionally happen. People really did hit the lottery—they had one in Italy, too—and the football pools every week, and so it was possible, just damned unlikely, and this day, it did not happen.

Nor did they find a better or more likely place from which to take a shot at a man in a slow-moving vehicle. It seemed to them all that Ryan's first impression of the tactical realities of the place was correct. That felt good to Jack until he realized that if he'd blown it, then it was his fault, not theirs.

"You know," Ryan said to Mick King—Sharp was back doing Deputy-Chief-of-Mission business for the British ambassador—"more than half the crowd is going to be in the middle there."

"Works for us, Jack. Only a fool would take the shot from in there, unless he plans to have Scotty beam him up to the starship Enterprise. No escape possible from that place."

"True," Jack agreed. "What about inside somewhere, get the Pope on the way to the car?"

"Possible," Mick agreed. "But that would mean that somehow Strokov or someone under his control is already inside the Papal administration—household, whatever one calls it—and is thus free to make his killing whenever he wishes. Somehow I think that infiltrating that organization would be difficult. It would mean maintaining a difficult psychological disguise for an extended period of time. No." He shook his head. "I would discount that possibility."

"Hope you're right, man."

"So do I, Jack."

They all left at about four, each catching a separate cab to within a few blocks of the Brit Embassy and walking the rest of the way.

Dinner was quiet that night. Each of them had his own worries, and everyone hoped that whatever the hell Colonel Strokov of the DS had in mind, it wasn't for this week, and that they could all fly back to London the following evening none the worse off for the experience. One thing Ryan had learned: Experienced field spooks that they were, they were no more comfortable with this mission than he was. It was good not to be alone in his anxiety. Or was that just schadenfreude? What the hell, was this how it felt the night before D-Day? No, there was no German Army waiting for them. Their job was to prevent a possible murder, and the danger was not even to themselves. It was to someone else who either didn't know or didn't care about the danger to himself, and so they had assumed responsibility for his life. Mick King had gotten it right from his first impression the day before. It was a pig of a mission.