Leyland waved off the suggestion that he and Spider had acted heroically. “You told us where to go and what to do.”

“Bugger, all we did was pull the trigger,” Spider said.

“Of a bloody hose,” Leyland added. “It’s not like that’s going to put someone’s eye out or anything.”

“You ran down a jet,” Herbert told them. “That took guts. You prevented Darling from taking off and finishing the operation he started. That’s a hero by my yardstick.”

Leyland shrugged. “We really didn’t have much choice, did we?”

“Sure you did,” Jelbart said.

“No, I mean I don’t think Mr. Darling would have believed it if we said we needed to get a koala out of the engine.”

Herbert smiled. He had not known this man very long, but he was going to miss him. Maybe the intelligence chief would stop by and see him when he came back to visit Monica Loh, which he absolutely intended to do.

“Paul, I’ve got just one more question for you,” Herbert said.

“Ask it,” Leyland said.

“Why’d you hire the only female firefighter in the district?”

Coffey rolled his eyes.

Leyland smiled. “The truth is, she was the best firefighter in the district.”

Herbert scowled. Coffey smiled.

“That hair on your chest cost you a prime rib,” Coffey said to the intelligence chief.

Leyland leaned toward Coffey. “And frankly, I like watching her climb the ladder.”

Herbert smiled. “Dutch,” he said to Coffey.

Coffey nodded.

When the pilot said they were good to go, Lowell Coffey took the seat formerly occupied by John Hawke. The flight back was quiet and introspective. Everyone was tired. More than that, they were oddly dissatisfied. Herbert could see it in their faces. No one could call this a Pyrrhic victory. “The good guys,” as he had described the team to Loh, had not suffered any physical losses. But there was a spiritual loss. Business and government had always been closely related. Business and crime regularly crossed paths in money laundering, intelligence gathering, and other activities. Business had even encouraged wars to increase productivity and profits. But this was the first time to Herbert’s knowledge that a small band of businessmen had planned to use nuclear material to change the balance of power. The thought was as sickening as it was disquieting. They would never know if they had nabbed everyone who was part of the operation. Or every pellet of enriched uranium, or whatever substance they were shipping.

“Bob, I want to ask you something,” Monica Loh said after nearly a half hour.

“Sure.”

“Were you really going to let Hawke go before?”

“You mean on the way to Cairns, when I was asking him to rat out his boss?” Herbert asked.

“Yes,” Loh said.

Herbert’s answer was precise, if not articulate. He snickered.