Tom Clancy - Red Rabbit

But he couldn’t entirely discount that possibility. For sure, NSA would be taking steps right now to examine their KH-7 and other cipher machines, but Fort Meade had a very active Red Team whose only job was to crack their own systems, and while Russian mathematicians were pretty smart-always had been-they weren’t aliens from another planet. . unless they had an agent of their own deep inside Fort Meade, and that was a worry that everyone had. How much would KGB pay for that sort of information? Millions, perhaps. They didn’t have all that much cash to pay their people and, in addition to being niggardly, KGB was singularly disloyal to its people, regarding them all as expendable assets. Oh, sure, they got Kim Philby out and safely ensconced in Moscow. The Western spy agencies knew where he lived and had even photographed the turncoat bastard. They even knew how much he drank-a lot, even by Russian standards. But when the Russians lost an agent to arrest, did they ever try to bargain for him, do a trade? No, not since CIA had bargained for Francis Gary Powers, the unlucky U-2 pilot whom they’d shot down in 1961 and then traded for Rudolf Abel, but Abel had been one of their own officers, a colonel and a pretty good one, operating in New York. That had to be a deterrent to any American national in the spook business who had illusions of getting rich off Mother Russia’s bank account. And traitors did hard time in the federal prison system, which had to be one hell of a deterrent.

But traitors were real, however misguided they were. At least the age of the ideological spy was largely ended. Those had been the most productive and the most dedicated, back when people really had believed that communism was the leading wave of human evolution, but even Russians no longer believed in Marxism-Leninism, except for Suslov-who was just about dead-and his successor-to-be, Alexandrov. So, no, KGB agents in the West were almost entirely mercenary bastards. Not the freedom fighters Ed Foley ran on the streets of Moscow, the COS told himself. That was an illusion all CIA officers held dearly, even his wife.

And the Rabbit? He was mad about something. A murder, he said, a proposed killing. Something that offended the sense of an honorable and decent man. So, yes, the Rabbit was honorable in his motivations, and therefore worthy of CIA’s attention and solicitude.

Jesus, Ed Foley thought, the illusions you have to have to carry on this stupid fucking business. You had to be psychiatrist, loving mother, stern father, close friend, and father confessor to the idealistic, confused, angry, or just plain greedy individuals who chose to betray their country. Some of them drank too much; some of them were so enraged that they endangered themselves by taking grotesque risks. Some were just plain mad, demented, clinically disturbed. Some became sexual deviants-hell, some started off that way and just got worse. But Ed Foley had to be their social worker, which was such an odd job description for someone who thought of himself as a warrior against the Big Ugly Bear. Well, he told himself, one thing at a time. He’d knowingly chosen a profession with barely adequate pay, virtually no credit ever to be awarded, and no recognition for the dangers, physical and psychological, that attended it, serving his country in a way that would never be appreciated by the millions of citizens he helped to protect, despised by the news media-whom he in turn despised-and never being able to defend himself with the truth of what he did. What a hell of a life.

But it did have its satisfactions, like getting the Rabbit the hell out of Dodge City.

If BEATRIX worked.

Foley told himself that now, once more, he knew what it was like to pitch in the World Series.

ISTVAN KOVACS LIVED a few blocks from the Hungarian parliamentary palace, an ornate building reminiscent of the Palace of Westminster, on the third floor of a turn-of-the-century tenement, whose four toilets were on the first floor of a singularly dreary courtyard. Hudson took the local metro over to the government palace and walked the rest of the way, making sure that he didn’t have a tail. He’d called ahead-remarkably, the city’s phone lines were secure, uncontrolled mainly because of the inefficiency of the local phone systems.

Kovacs was so typically Hungarian as to deserve a photo in the nonexistent tourist brochures: five-eight, swarthy, a mainly circular face with brown eyes and black hair. But he dressed rather better than the average citizen because of his profession. Kovacs was a smuggler. It was almost an honored livelihood in this country, since he traded across the border to a putatively Marxist country to the south, Yugoslavia, whose borders were open enough that a clever man could purchase Western goods there and sell them in Hungary and the rest of Eastern Europe. The border controls on Yugoslavia were fairly loose, especially for those who had an understanding with the border guards. Kovacs was one such person.

“Hello, Istvan,” Andy Hudson said, with a smile. “Istvan” was the local version of Steven, and “Kovacs” the local version of Smith, for its ubiquity.

“Andy, good day to you,” Kovacs replied in greeting. He opened a bottle of Tokaji, the local tawny wine made of grapes with the noble rot, which afflicted them every few years. Hudson had come to enjoy it as the local variant of sherry, with a different taste but an identical purpose.

“Thank you, Istvan.” Hudson took a sip. This was good stuff, with six baskets of nobly rotten grapes on the label, indicating the very best. “So, how is business?”

“Excellent. Our VCRs are popular with the Yugoslavs, and the tapes they sell me are popular with everyone. Oh, to have such a prick as those actors do!” He laughed.

“The women aren’t bad, either,” Hudson noted. He’d seen his share of such tapes.

“How can a kurva be so beautiful?”

“The Americans pay their whores more than we do in Europe, I suppose. But, Istvan, they have no heart, those women.” Hudson had never paid for it in his life-at least not up front.

“It’s not their hearts that I want.” Kovacs had himself another hearty laugh. He’d been hitting the Tokaji already this day, so he wasn’t making a run tonight. Well, nobody worked all the time.

“I may have a task for you.”

“Bringing what in?”

“Nothing. Bringing something out,” Hudson clarified.

“That is simple. What trouble the határ rség give us is when we come in, and then not much.” He held up his right hand, rubbing thumb and forefinger together in the universal gesture for what the border guards wanted-money or something negotiable.

“Well, this package might be bulky,” Hudson warned.

“How bulky? A tank you want to take out?” The Hungarian army had just taken delivery of new Russian T-72s, and that had made the TV, in an attempt to buck up the fighting spirit of the troops. A waste of time, Hudson thought. “That might be hard, but it can be done, for a price.” But the Poles had already given one of those to SIS, a fact not widely known.

“No, Istvan, smaller than that. About my size, but three packages.”

“Three people?” Kovacs asked, getting a dull stare in return. He got the message. “Bah, a simple task- baszd meg !” he concluded: Fuck it.

“I thought I could count on you, Istvan,” Hudson said with a smile. “How much?”

“For three people into Yugoslavia. .” Kovacs pondered that for a moment. “Oh. Five thousand d-mark.”

“Ez kurva drága!” Hudson objected, or ostensibly so. It was cheap at the price, hardly a thousand quid. “Very well, you thief! I’ll pay it because you are my friend-but just this one time.” He finished his drink. “You know, I could just fly the packages out,” Hudson suggested.