Tom Clancy - Red Rabbit

SIR BASIL CHARLESTON lived in an expensive townhouse in London’s posh Belgravia district south of Knightsbridge. A widower whose grown children had long since moved away, he was accustomed to living alone, though he had a discreet security detail in attendance at all times. He also had a maid service which came in three times a week to straighten up, though he didn’t bother with a cook, preferring to dine out or even fix small meals for himself. He had, of course, the usual accoutrements of a king spook: three different sorts of secure phones, a secure telex, and a new secure fax machine. There was no live-in secretary, but when the office was busy and he wasn’t there, a courier service kept him apprised of the printed material circulating in Century House. Indeed, since he had to assume that the “opposition” kept an eye on his home, he deemed it smarter to remain at home in time of crisis, the better to project the image of calmness. It really didn’t matter. He was firmly tied to the SIS by an electronic umbilical cord.

And so it was this morning. Someone at Century House had decided to let him know that SIS had an adult male body to use in Operation BEATRIX: just the sort of thing he needed with breakfast, Basil noted, with a twisted expression. They needed three, though, one of them a female child, which was really not something to contemplate with his morning tea and Scottish oatmeal.

However, it was hard not to get excited about this BEATRIX operation. If their Rabbit was speaking the truth-not all of them did-this chap would have all manner of useful information in his head. The most useful of all, of course, would be if he could identify Soviet agents within Her Majesty’s government. That was properly the job of the Security Service-erroneously called MI-5-but the two agencies cooperated closely, more closely than CIA and FBI did in America, or so it appeared to Charleston. Sir Basil and his people had long suspected a high-level leak somewhere in the Foreign Office, but they’d been unable to close in on him or her. So, if they got their Rabbit out-it wasn’t done until it was done, he reminded himself-that was certainly one question his people would be asking in the safe house they used outside of Taunton in the rolling hills of Somerset.

“NOT GOING TO work today?” Irina asked her husband. He ought to have left for the office by now, surely.

“No, and I have a surprise for you,” Oleg announced.

“What is that?”

“We’re going to Budapest tomorrow.”

That snapped her head around. “What?”

“I decided to take my vacation days, and there’s a new conductor in Budapest now, Jozsef Rozsa. I knew you liked classical music, and I decided to take you and zaichik there, dear.”

“Oh,” was all she had to say. “But what about my job at GUM?”

“Can’t you get free of that?”

“Well, yes, I suppose,” Irina admitted. “But why Budapest?”

“Well, the music, and we can buy some things there. I have a list of items to get for people at The Centre,” he told her.

“Ah, yes. . we can get some nice things for Svetlana,” she thought out loud on reflection. Working at GUM, she knew what was available in Hungary that she’d never get in Moscow, even in the “closed” stores. “Who is this Rozsa, anyway?”

“He’s a young Hungarian conductor touring Eastern Europe. He has a fine reputation, darling. The program is supposed to be Brahms and Bach, I think-one of the Hungarian state orchestras and,” he added, “a lot of good shopping.” There wasn’t a woman in all the world who wouldn’t respond favorably to that opportunity, Oleg judged. He waited patiently for the next objection:

“I don’t have anything to wear.”

“My dear, that is why we’re going to Budapest. You will be able to buy anything you need there.”

“Well. .”

“And remember to pack everything you need in one bag. We’ll take empty bags for all the things we’re buying for ourselves and our friends.”

“But-”

“Irina, think of Budapest as one big consumer-goods store. Hungarian VCRs, Western jeans and pantyhose, real perfume. You will be the envy of your office at GUM,” he promised her.

“Well. .”

“I thought so. My darling, we are going on vacation!” he told her, a little manly force in his voice.

“If you say so,” she responded, with the hint of an avaricious smile. “I will call in to the office later and let them know. I suppose they won’t miss me too badly.”

“The only people they miss in Moscow are the Politburo members, and they only miss them for the day and a half it takes to replace them,” he announced.

And so that was settled. They were taking the train to Hungary. Irina started thinking about what to pack. Oleg would leave that to her. Inside a week or ten days, we will all have much better clothes, the KGB communications officer told himself. And maybe in a month or two, they would go to that Disney Planet place in the American province of Florida. .

He wondered if CIA knew how much trust he was putting in them, and he prayed-an unusual activity for a KGB officer-that they would perform as well as he hoped.

“GOOD MORNING, JACK.”

“Hey, Simon. What’s new in the world?” Jack set his coffee down before taking his coat off.

“Suslov died last night,” Harding announced. “It will be in their afternoon papers.”

“What a pity. Another bat found his way back into hell, eh?” At least he died with good eyesight, thanks to Bernie Katz and the guys from Johns Hopkins, Ryan thought. “Complications of diabetes?”

Harding shrugged. “Plus being old, I should imagine. Heart attack, our sources tell us. Amazing that the nasty old bugger actually had a heart. In any case, his replacement will be Mikhail Yevgeniyevich Alexandrov.”

“And he’s not exactly a day at the beach. When will they plant Suslov?”

“He’s a senior Politburo member. I would expect a full state funeral, marching band, the lot, then cremation and a slot in the Kremlin wall.”

“You know, I’ve always wondered, what does a real communist think about when he knows he’s dying? You suppose they wonder if it was all a great big fucking mistake?”

“I have no idea. But Suslov was evidently a true believer. He probably thought of all the good he’d done in his life, leading humanity to the ‘Radiant Future’ they like to talk about.”

Nobody’s that dumb, Ryan wanted to retort, but Simon was probably right. Nothing lingered longer in a man’s mind than a bad idea, and certainly Red Mike had held his bad ideas close to whatever heart had finally cashed in. But a communist’s best-case scenario for after death corresponded with Ryan’s worst, and if the communist was wrong, then, quite literally, there was hell to pay. Tough luck, Mishka, hope you took some sunblock with you.

“Okay, what’s up for today?”

“The PM wants to know if this will have any effect on Politburo policy.”

“Tell her no, it won’t. In political terms, Alexandrov might as well be Suslov’s twin brother. He thinks Marx is God, and Lenin is his prophet, and Stalin was mostly right, just a little too nekulturniy in his application of political theory. The rest of the Politburo doesn’t really believe that stuff anymore, but they have to pretend that they do. So call Alexandrov the new conductor of the ideological symphony orchestra. They don’t much like the music anymore, but they dance to it anyway, ’cause it’s the only dance they know. I don’t think he will affect their policy decisions a dot. I bet they listen when he talks, but they let it go in one ear and out the other; they pretend to respect him, but they really don’t.”