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detect any hint that he was under suspicion himself.
    And if this infestation is swarming beyond Ranold’s backyard, I want to be an exterminator. And not just for national security.

4
    MIDMORNING MONDAY, Paul dropped by to see his boss, Robert Koontz, the National Peace Organization’s Chicago bureau chief. Standing in the doorway, Paul recognized that, frankly, it was Koontz’s office he aspired to more than his job. Large and handsomely appointed with a nautical theme, the office had banks of windows on two walls, offering sweeping views of both the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.
    Koontz at sixty was a big man with a shiny pate and a rim of salt-and-pepper hair. He was fiddling with his computer but gestured for Paul to take a seat. “So how were the holidays?” he asked, eyes still on the screen.
    “The usual. Except for Andrew Pass.”
    Koontz stiffened but didn’t turn. “You knew him?”
    “Bob, you know I did. I saw the NPO guys at his funeral. They had to tell you I was there.”
    Koontz spun in his chair and held up both hands. “You’re right, Paul. Yeah, I know. You spoke. You served under him. I’m sorry for your loss.”
    “Thanks. But why the agency presence?”
    Koontz sighed. “Pass was a Christian fanatic.”
    So the word is out.
    “That’s incredible. What about his family?”
    “We think his brother, John—goes by Jack—is in deep too, but he’s not shown himself enough to be vulnerable.”
    “Anyone else? Wife, kids?”
    “Apparently his wife divorced him over it. So we don’t think so, but we don’t know.”
    “Bob, did we take him out?”
    “What did your father-in-law tell you?”
    “Nobody stonewalls like an old spymaster. So that’s a yes?”
    “Well—”
    “Why—he resisted?”
    “You bet he did. I hear we confiscated an arsenal out of his car, and he tried to take a few of our guys down with him. One tough hombre—but you knew that.”
    “So the story about the warehouse fire—?”
    “Strictly press fodder. His confederates got the message loud and clear, but we kept the public’s nose out of our business. It starts getting out that this cult exists, it will only grow. And with martyrs? Don’t get me started. Listen to this.” He turned back to his computer and scrolled. “Over a hundred years ago Russia closed almost all its churches and disposed of more than forty thousand clergy. They turned city churches into museums and country churches into barns or apartments.”
    “Like we did.”
    “But get this. By the turn of the century—of course this is after the fall of communism—two-thirds of all Russians identified themselves as Christians.”
    “So insurrection was brewing underground.”
    “Bingo. Can’t let that happen here. What happened in Russia and China and Romania decades ago could reemerge here, right under our noses. We haven’t really eradicated religion unless we can contain the fanatics. If we let them get a foothold, we could see a full-blown religious uprising.”
    “Is there really an armed Christian cult?”
    “There’s a lot we’re just learning now, Paul. We’re putting together a task force to determine the extent of the problem—whether we have just a few isolated cells, or worse.”
    “It’s a disease,” Paul said. “An addiction. Religion gets hold of people, and they can’t seem to keep it to themselves—they spread it and get other people hooked. Makes me sick—the waste of a guy like Andy Pass.”
    “Exactly,” Koontz said. “And that’s why we have to treat this like the war on drugs—expose the threat, flush it out, eliminate it.” He shook his head. “This has the potential to destroy everything this country has worked for since the war. I’m old enough to remember how things were. It was religious extremists who persecuted homosexuals, assassinated abortion doctors—before we had childbirth grants to promote repopulation—and bombed stem-cell research labs that yielded most of our cures for