Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

Then he saw it. It was well done. They could have been more patient, but they probably both discounted the importance of the American, and both were trained professionals. They scarcely touched each other, and what touching and bumping there was happened below the waist and out of sight to the casual observer. Reilly wasn’t a casual observer, however, and even out of the corner of his eyes, it was obvious to the initiated. It was a classic brush-pass, so well done that even Reilly’s experience couldn’t determine who had passed what to whom. The FBI agent continued out, heading back to his seat at the bar, where he waved to the bar-keep for the drink he figured he’d just earned.

“Yes?”

“You want to identify that Chinaman. He and our friend traded something in the shitter. Brush-pass, and nicely done,” Reilly said, with a smile and a gesture at the brunette down the bar. Good enough, in fact, that had Reilly been forced to sit in a witness stand and describe it to a jury, a week-old law-school graduate could make him admit that he hadn’t actually seen anything at all. But that told him much. That degree of skill was either the result of a totally chance encounter between two entirely innocent people-the purest of coincidences-or it had been the effort of two trained intelligence officers applying their craft at a perfect place in a perfect way. Provalov was turned the right way to see the two individuals leave the men’s room. They didn’t even notice each other, or didn’t appear to acknowledge the presence of the other any more than they would have greeted a stray dog-exactly as two unrelated people would act after a happenstance encounter with a total stranger in any men’s room anywhere. But this time as Koniev/Suvorov resumed his seat at the bar, he tended to his drink and didn’t have his eyes interrogate the mirror regularly. In fact, he turned and greeted the girl to his left, then waved for the bartender to get her another drink, which she accepted with a warm, commercial smile. Her face proclaimed the fact that she’d found her trick for the night. The girl could act, Reilly thought.

“Well, our friend’s going to get laid tonight,” he told his Russian colleague.

“She is pretty,” Provalov agreed. “Twenty-three, you think?”

“Thereabouts, maybe a little younger. Nice hooters.”

“Hooters?” the Russian asked.

“Tits, Oleg, tits,” the FBI agent clarified. “That Chinaman’s a spook. See any coverage on him around?”

“No one I know,” the lieutenant replied. “Perhaps he is not known to be an intelligence officer.”

“Yeah, sure, your counterintelligence people have all retired to Sochi, right? Hell, guy, they trail me every so often.”

“That means I am one of your agents, then?” Provalov asked.

A chuckle. “Let me know if you want to defect, Oleg Gregoriyevich.”

“The Chinese in the light blue suit?”

“That’s the one. Short, about five-four, one fifty-five, pudgy, short hair, about forty-five or so.”

Provalov translated that to about 163 centimeters and seventy kilos, and made a mental note as he turned to look at the face, about thirty meters away. He looked entirely ordinary, as most spies did. With that done, he headed back to the men’s room to make a phone call to his agents outside.

And that pretty much ended the evening. Koniev/Suvorov left the restaurant about twenty minutes later with the girl on his arm, and drove straight back to his apartment. One of the men who’d stayed behind walked with the Chinese to his car, which had diplomatic plates. Notes were written down, and the cops all headed home after an overtime day, wondering what they’d turned up and how important it might be.

Well?" Rutledge took his notes back from Secretary Adler.

“It looks okay, Cliff, assuming that you can deliver the message in an appropriate way,” SecState told his subordinate.

“Process is something I understand.” Then he paused. “The President wants this message delivered in unequivocal terms, correct?”

Secretary Adler nodded. “Yep.”

“You know, Scott, I’ve never really landed on people this hard before.”

“Ever want to?”

“The Israelis a few times. South Africa,” he added thoughtfully.

“But never the Chinese or Japanese?”

“Scott, I’ve never been a trade guy before, remember?” But he was this time, because the mission to Beijing was supposed to be high-profile, requiring a higher-level diplomat instead of someone of mere ambassadorial rank. The Chinese knew this already. In their case negotiations would be handled publicly by their Foreign Minister, though they would actually be run by a lesser-ranked diplomat who was a foreign-trade specialist, and who had experienced a good run of luck dealing with America. Secretary Adler, with President Ryan’s permission, was slowly leaking to the press that the times and the rules might have changed a little bit. He worried that Cliff Rutledge wasn’t exactly the right guy to deliver the message, but Cliff was the on-deck batter.

“How are you working out with this Gant guy from Treasury?”

“If he were a diplomat, we’d be at war with the whole damned world, but I suppose he does know numbers and computers, probably,” Rutledge allowed, not troubling to hide his distaste for the Chicago-born Jew with his nouveau-riche ways. That Rutledge had been of modest origins himself was long forgotten. A Harvard education and a diplomatic passport help one forget such distasteful things as having grown up in a row house, eating leftovers.

“Remember that Winston likes him, and Ryan likes Winston, okay?” Adler warned his subordinate gently. He decided not to concern himself with Cliff’s WASP-ish anti-Semitism. Life was too short for trivialities, and Rutledge knew that his career rested in Scott Adler’s hands. He might make more money as a consultant after leaving the State Department, but being fired out of Foggy Bottom would not enhance his value on the free-agent market.

“Okay, Scott, and, yeah, I need backup on the monetary aspects of this trade stuff.” The accompanying nod was almost respectful. Good. He did know how to grovel when required. Adler didn’t even consider telling Rutledge about the intelligence source in his pocket, courtesy of POTUS. There was something about the career diplomat that failed to inspire trust in his superior.

“What about communications?”

“The Embassy in Beijing has TAPDANCE capability. Even the new phone kind, same as the airplane.” But there were problems with it, recently fielded by Fort Meade. The instruments had trouble linking up with each other, and using a satellite lash-up didn’t help at all. Like most diplomats, Rutledge rarely troubled himself with such trivialities. He often expected the intelligence to appear as if by magic, rarely wondering how it had been obtained, but always questioning the motives of the source, whoever that might be. All in all, Clifford Rutledge II was the perfect diplomat. He believed in little beyond his own career, some vague notions of international amity, and his personal ability to make it come about and to avoid war through the sheer force of his brilliance.

But on the plus side, Adler admitted to himself, Rutledge was a competent diplomatic technician who knew how the banter worked, and how to present a position in the gentlest possible but still firm terms. The State Department never had enough of those. As someone had once remarked of Theodore Roosevelt, “The nicest gentleman who ever slit a throat.” But Cliff would never do that, even to advance his own career. He probably shaved with an electric razor, not for fear of cutting himself so much as fear of actually seeing blood.