Tom Clancy - Red Rabbit

The DDI nodded. “Agreed. I think he’s going to resign his chairmanship soon. Has to. They wouldn’t even let him jump from KGB boss to the General Secretaryship. That’s a little too sinister even for them. They still remember Beria-the ones who sit around that table do, anyway.”

“That’s a good point, James,” Moore said, turning back from the window. “I wonder how much longer Leonid Illyich has.” Ascertaining Brezhnev’s health was a constant CIA interest-hell, it was a matter of interest to everyone in Washington.

“Andropov is our best indicator on that. We’re pretty sure he’s Brezhnev’s replacement. When it looks like Leonid Illyich is heading for the last roundup, then Yuriy Vladimirovich changes jobs.”

“Good point, James. I’ll float that to State and the White House.”

Admiral Greer nodded. “It’s what they pay us for. Back to the Pope,” he suggested.

“The President is still asking questions,” Moore confirmed.

“If they do anything, it won’t be a Russian. Too many political pitfalls, Arthur.”

“Again, I agree. But what the hell does that leave us?”

“They use the Bulgarians for wet work,” Greer pointed out.

“So, look for a Bulgarian shooter?”

“How many Bulgars make pilgrimages to Rome, you suppose?”

“We can’t tell the Italians to look into that, can we? It would leak sure as hell, and we can’t have that. It would look pretty stupid in the press. It’s just something we can’t do, James.”

Greer let out a long breath. “Yeah, I know, not without something firm.”

“Firmer than what we have now-and that’s air, James, just plain damned air.” It would be nice, Judge Moore thought, if CIA were as powerful as the movies and the critics think we are. Not all the time. Just once in a while. But they weren’t, and that was a fact.

THE NEXT DAY started in Moscow before it started anywhere else. Zaitzev awoke at the ringing of his windup alarm clock, grumbled and cursed like every workingman in the world, then stumbled off to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, he was drinking his morning tea and eating his black bread and butter.

Less than a mile away, the Foley family was doing much the same thing. Ed decided on an English muffin and grape jelly with his coffee for a change, joined by Little Eddie, who took a break from Worker Woman and his Transformers tapes. He was looking forward to the preschool that had been set up for Western children right there in the ghetto, where he showed great promise with crayons and the newly arrived Hot Wheels tricycles, plus being champion at the Sit ’n Spin.

He told himself that he could relax today. The meeting would be in the evening, and MP would handle that. In another week or so. . maybe. . BEATRIX would be all over, and he could relax again, letting his field officers do the running around this damned ugly city. Sure enough, the goddamned Baltimore Orioles were in the playoffs, and looking to go head to head with the Philadelphia Phillies, relegating his Bronx Bombers to the Hot Stove League yet again. What was with the new ownership, anyway? How could rich people be so stupid?

He’d have to keep to his metro routine. If KGB had him shadowed, it would be unusual-or would it? — for them to mark the specific train he was getting on. There was a question for him. If they did a one-two tail, the number two guy would stay on the platform and, after the train left, write down the time off the clock in the station-that was the only one that made sense, since it was the one that governed the trains themselves. KGB was thorough and professional, but would they be that good? That sort of precision was positively Germanic, but if the bastards could make the trains run that precisely, then probably KGB could take note of it, and the precise timing was what had enabled him to contact the Rabbit.

God damn this life, anyway! Foley raged briefly. But he’d known that before he’d accepted the posting to Moscow, and it was exciting here, wasn’t it? Yeah, like Louis XVI was probably excited on the cart ride to the guillotine, Ed Sr. thought.

Someday he’d lecture on this down at The Farm. He hoped they’d appreciate just how hard it had been to write the lesson plan for his Operation BEATRIX lecture. Well, they might be a little impressed.

Forty minutes later, he purchased his copy of Izvestia and rode down the interminable escalator to the platform, as usual not noting the sideways looks of Russians looking at a real, live American as though he were a creature in the zoo. It would never have happened to a Russian in New York, where every ethnic group could be found, especially behind the wheel of a yellow cab.

THE MORNING ROUTINE was set in concrete by now. Miss Margaret was hovering over the kids, and Eddie Beaverton was outside the door. The kids were duly hugged and kissed, and the parents headed off to work. If there was anything Ryan hated, it was this routine. If only he’d been able to persuade Cathy to buy a flat in London, then every work day would have been a good two hours shorter-but, no, Cathy wanted green stuff around for the kids to play on. And soon they wouldn’t see the sun until they got to work, and soon thereafter, hardly even then.

Ten minutes later, they were in their first-class compartment rolling northwest for London, Cathy in her medical journal and Jack in his Daily Telegraph. There was an article about Poland, and this reporter was unusually well-informed, Ryan saw at once. The articles in Britain tended to be a lot less long-winded than in The Washington Post , and for once Jack found himself regretting that. This guy had been well-briefed and/or he was pretty good at analysis. The Polish government was really caught between a rock and a hard place, and was getting squeezed, and there was talk, he saw, that the Pope was making some rumbles about the welfare of his homeland and his people, and that, the reporter noted, could upset a lot of apple carts.

Ain’t that the truth, Jack thought. The really bad news was that it was in the open now. Who’d leaked it? He knew the reporter’s name. He was a specialist in foreign affairs, mainly European. So, who’d leaked this? Somebody in the Foreign Office? Those people were, on the whole, pretty smart, but, like their American counterparts at Foggy Bottom, they occasionally spoke without thinking, and over here that could happen over a friendly pint in one of the thousands of comfortable pubs, maybe in a quiet corner booth, with a government employee paying off a marker or just wanting to show the media how smart he was. Would a head roll over this one? he wondered. Something to talk about with Simon.

Unless Simon had been the leaker. He was senior enough and well liked by his boss. Maybe Basil had authorized the leak? Or maybe they both knew a guy in Whitehall and had authorized him to have a friendly pint with a guy from Fleet Street.

Or maybe the reporter was smart enough to put two and two together all by himself. Not all the smart guys worked at Century House. Damned sure not all the smart ones in America worked at Langley. Generally speaking, talent went to where the money was, because smart people wanted large houses and nice vacations just like everyone else did. Those who went into government service knew that they could live comfortably, but not lavishly-but the best of them also knew that they had a mission to fulfill in life, and that was why you found very good people wearing uniforms or carrying guns and badges. In his own case, Ryan had done well in the trading business, but he finally found it unsatisfying. And so not all talented people sought after money. Some found themselves on some sort of quest.