Early the next morning Jack borrowed Kathy’s car and left for an 8:30 a.m. appointment with Lee Jensen. Kathy and Anita were already working on the DVDs found in Yuri’s basement. After meeting with Lee, Jack drove over to see Shadow. Shadow was making wonderful progress. When Shadow saw him, he stood up and howled in recognition, almost as if saying, “Get me out of here, the food is terrible!”

Jack rubbed Shadow’s head and talked to him. The veterinarian on duty told Jack, Dr. Green had noted on Shadow’s chart he could go home tomorrow but needed to stay on his antibiotics for the next five days. Jack said goodbye to Shadow and told the staff he would pick up Shadow tomorrow morning.

His meeting with Lee Jensen dealt mostly with implementing his father’s will. Jack signed document after document, counting on Lee to be sure what he was signing was okay. Jack asked Lee to arrange to have his father’s body picked up and cremated.

After leaving Lee’s office, Jack went by the police station. The police had told him it may be better if he did not see his father’s body. But Jack knew he had to say goodbye to his father, and Lt. Gallagher took him to the morgue and left him alone with his father. Jack wept for the last time. He had a perfect place to scatter his father’s ashes after Yuri’s whole network and financiers were finished. It would be a very private service. Except for Lee Jensen and Frank, his father had no close social or business friends. He never attended a church nor joined any organizations.

While Jack was executing his father’s will and visiting Shadow, the off-duty firemen he had hired to recover the two safes were in the process of going through the ruins of the Brandon house. They showed up with a rented crane strong enough to pick up a gun safe and move it to the garage under the apartment. Jack drove directly from seeing his father to the burned house. When he arrived, the firemen had already located the two-drawer safe and were transporting it to the garage. Jack put on some coveralls and boots and went over to poke around the ruins of the house. It was chilly but no rain was falling. A 15 mph wind had come up, enough to stir up ashes. The space over the burned remains of the house was filled with drifting flakes of his father’s life.

Two hours of carefully searching in the ruins produced little of value. Jack hoped he would find some salvageable books from the library, but nothing was left. The fire, water, and the force of the collapse followed by hours of a smoldering burn had finished the Brandon library.

Jack found his father’s PC and carried the CPU out of the wreckage to make sure the hard drive was destroyed. In the end only some antique tools without handles were left. Jack gave those to one of the firemen who said he had a woodworking shop and could restore them. Jack paid off the firemen just before lunch and quiet descended over the home his father had loved. The flower beds were burned and trampled. His father’s prized rose bushes died with their keeper. The firemen gave him the name and phone number of a local salvage business to come in and haul away some of the appliances, brass hardware and other fixtures.

The space above a four-bay car garage made for a nice sized apartment of three bedrooms and two baths plus a large sitting room and Pullman-type kitchen. Since the garage itself was heated, Jack was planning to sleep down there with Shadow when he came home tomorrow. For some reason known only to the original builder, the garage was on a completely separate utilities system.

Kathy made lunch of tuna sandwiches and tomato soup. After a quick lunch they went down to the safes in the garage. The firemen had already sluiced them off. They opened the gun safe first. The dial mechanism was filled with ashes and particulate matter from the fire so the numbers were barely visible. Rather tentatively, Jack sprayed the mechanism with WD-40, spun the dial until it moved more freely, then dialed the combination. Moving the dial back to zero he turned the knob, heard the satisfying sound of the last tumbler falling, and tugged the door open.

The gun safe was found in a pool of water on the ground level. In fact, both safes were in the same room. The firemen told Jack the water had pooled in the low part of the ground floor with no way for it to drain out. Since the safe was watertight, they found the weapons, and aside from some heat damage to one fiberglass stock on a .22 caliber rifle and some apparent scorching of a few polished rifle stocks, the guns stored in the safe looked not too much the worse for wear. The small amount of ammunition kept in the house was consumed by the fire.

Anita said, “YES!” And gave Jack a high five when she saw the three nine-millimeter handguns. “Now we’re back in business. We’ll have to test fire all weapons just to be sure they’re okay.”

Jack said, “I hope we have the same luck for the contents of the two-drawer safe. I want to find some of my father’s personal papers.”

Jack pulled out his wallet and extracted a business card where he had jotted down the combination and began to work the combination on the small safe. Here the sequence of dialing the three-number combination was different: Turn counter-clockwise for the first number, spin past it twice, stop on the third time, spin past the third number once and stop on the second time, and then spin back to zero. After three tries, he turned to Kathy and asked for help.

She laughed and in ten seconds had the door open. There were brown crinkled edges to some of the files but most looked to be in readable condition. Inside was an old metal framed green glass box. The box had an intricate-appearing lock. The antique key was taped to the top of the box. Jack opened the box. He found more detailed notes on the management of the overseas accounts and a number of priceless old photographs. A few were of him at a very young age. In one he was held by his mother. The one he treasured most was of the whole family together when he was about three. There was also a gold necklace and a locket containing a small picture of Jack as an infant. A note on the bottom of the box said the box once belonged to his grandfather. The box also contained a safety deposit box key for a local bank. Jack put the key in his pocket, thinking he would check it out as soon as he could.

The lower drawer contained a water-tight aluminum attaché case. The case held a number of letter-sized brown envelopes, one bulging with diamonds of various sizes. Another larger brown envelope contained bundles of currency in large denominations and two passports, one in the name of Peter Brandon. The other one showed his father’s slightly altered image with the name Joseph L. Black. There were also a few file folders containing information on people.

Kathy and Anita left Jack with his papers and went upstairs, talking about diamonds. Before Jack finished with sorting out the contents of the safe, Anita called down and asked him to come up and look at the printout from Yuri’s DVD. When he got upstairs, Kathy handed him the printout. He was astounded by the detail. Every person in Yuri’s network was identified with a name, picture, address, contact arrangements and the mission they had been given.

Jack wondered if they could turn this all over to the FBI. Nothing they gave to the FBI could provide any chance of leading back to them. Could the FBI be convinced this astounding data was authentic? It could just as well end up in the nut basket file. He had seen plenty of clues called or sent in to help the police solve real and imagined crimes, end up in the dead file folder. If they just sat on the information and played it safe, more people would die. Doing nothing was not really an option. One point seemed certain, the people in Yuri’s network were isolated from each other, so each cell of the network could be treated in isolation. The cell on Tilghman Island had the mission of killing local mayors. Were the two shooters on the hillside part of the same group who killed the mayors of Richmond and Leesburg? Following this line of thought led Jack to the conclusion they had better deal with the Tilghman Island cell themselves.

There just wasn’t time to get their information to the Bureau. First, Jack had to call Frank at the CIA. After dark Jack left the apartment to take a long walk. In back of the McLean Library, he took out a throwaway cell and dialed Frank’s number. Frank picked up on the second ring. Jack identified himself as Nick and said he had some information to pass on. Frank said, “Let’s have it.”

“We killed Yuri and two of his shooters yesterday. The killing site was cleaned up but the bodies are still there. We recovered a DVD concealed in his house describing his entire network, communications, addresses, names, missions and payments. Two of the missions recorded in the DVD point to planned car bombings in New York and the further killing of mayors in Virginia and Maryland. When we can separate the data on the DVD, we will send it to the FBI in time for them to deal with the New York cell. We will have to take care of the cell killing mayors ourselves. I assume you saw the news of the attack on my dad’s house and his death, along with his Vietnamese friends. We’ve confirmed Yuri and his crew were responsible. That’s all I have for now. Your turn.”

“Good work, Nick! You’ve given me all I need for now. If you have any trouble getting the FBI to act, call me again. Remember, don’t hesitate to take action, if it looks like it’s the only way or the best way.”

After silence for a few seconds, the line went dead leaving Jack with the dial tone. Jack looked at the phone and thought, Frank doesn’t have much of a bedside manner. That’s okay. He had done what was required. Anyway he felt much less like a vigilante on the vengeance trail. Now they had to get on with a plan to take out the Tilghman Island cell.