Tom Clancy - Red Rabbit

But what would happen in Hungary? He’d just be a watcher, the semi-official CIA officer overseeing the evacuation of some fool Russian who wanted to move out of his place in Moscow. Damn, why the hell does this sort of thing always seem to happen to me? Jack wondered. It was like hitting the devil’s lottery, and his number kept coming up. Would that ever stop? He was paid to look into the future and make his predictions, but inside he knew that he couldn’t do it worth a damn. He needed other people to tell him what was happening, so that then he could compare it with things that everyone knew had happened, and then combine the two into a wild-ass guess on what somebody might do. And, sure, he’d done okay at that in the trading business, but nobody ever got killed over a few shares of common stock. And now, maybe, his cute little ass would be on the line. Great. Just fucking great. He stared at the ceiling. Why were they always white? Wouldn’t black be a better color for sleeping? You could always see white ceilings, even in a darkened room. Was there a reason for that?

Was there a reason why he couldn’t sleep? Why was he asking damned-fool questions with no answers? However this played out, he’d almost certainly be okay. Basil wouldn’t let anything happen to him. It would look very bad to Langley, and the Brits couldn’t afford that-too embarrassing. Judge Moore wouldn’t forget, and it would become part of CIA’s institutional memory, and that would be bad for the next ten years or more. So, no, SIS wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him.

On the other hand, they wouldn’t be the only players on the field and, as in baseball, the problem was that both teams played to win, and you needed the right timing to send that 95-mph fastball out to the cheap seats.

But you can’t wimp out, Jack, he told himself. Others, whose opinions he valued, would be ashamed of him-worse, he’d be ashamed of himself. So, like it or not, he had to suit up and go out on the field and hope he didn’t drop the damned ball.

Or just go back to Merrill Lynch, but, no, he’d rather face bayonets than do that. I really would, Ryan realized, in considerable surprise. Did that make him brave, or just hardheaded? There’s a question, he thought. And the only answer had to come from someone else, someone who would only see one side of the equation. You could only see the physical part, never the thought that went into it. And that wasn’t enough to judge from, much as newsmen and historians tried to shape reality in that way, as though they really understood such things at a distance of miles or years. Yeah, sure.

In any case, his bags were packed, and with luck the worst part of this trip would be the airplane ride. Much as he hated it, it was fairly predictable. . unless a wing fell off.

“WHAT THE FUCK is this all about?” John Tyler asked nobody in particular. The telex in his hand only gave orders, not the reasons behind them.

The bodies had been transported to the city coroner, with a request for no action to be taken with them. Tyler thought for a moment and then called the Assistant U.S. Attorney he usually worked with.

“You want what ?” Peter Mayfair asked in some incredulity. He’d graduated third in his Harvard Law School class three years before and was racing up the career ladder at the U.S. Attorney’s office. People called him Max.

“You heard me.”

“What is this all about?”

“I don’t know. I just know it comes straight from Emil’s office. It sounds like stuff from the other side of the river, but the telex doesn’t say beans. How do we do it?”

“Where are the bodies?”

“Coroner’s office, I guess. There’s a note on them-mother and daughter-that says don’t post them. So I suppose they’re in the freezer.”

“And you want them raw, like?”

“Frozen, I suppose, but yeah, raw.” What a hell of a way to put it, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge thought.

“Any families involved?”

“The police haven’t located any yet that I know of.”

“Okay, we hope it stays that way. If there’s no family to say no, we declare them indigent and get the coroner to release them to federal custody, you know, like a dead drunk on the street. They just put them in a cheap box and bury them in Potter’s Field. Where you going to take them?”

“Max, I don’t know. Guess I send a reply telex to Emil and he’ll tell me.”

“Fast?” Mayfair asked, wondering what priority went on this.

“Last week, Max.”

“Okay, if you want, I’ll drive down to the coroner’s right now.”

“Meet you there, Max. Thanks.”

“You owe me a beer and dinner at Legal Seafood,” the U.S. Attorney told him.

“Done.” He’d have to deliver on this one.

THE BODIES WERE LOADEDin cheap aluminum boxes, the sort used for transporting bodies by air, and then loaded on a van used by the FBI and driven to Logan International Airport. Special Agent Tyler called Washington to ask what came next, and fortunately his car radio was encrypted.

FBI Director Emil Jacobs, it turned out, hadn’t thought things all the way through quite yet either, and he had to call Judge Moore at CIA, where more rapid dancing was done, until it was decided to load them on the British Airways 747 scheduled to leave Boston for London Heathrow, so that Basil’s people could collect them. This was done with alacrity because BA cooperated readily with American police agencies, and Flight 214 rolled away from the gate on time at 8:10 and soon thereafter climbed to altitude for the three-thousand-mile hop to Heathrow’s Terminal Four.

IT WAS APPROACHING five in the morning when Zaitzev awoke in his upper bunk, not sure why he had done so. He rolled a little to look out the window when it hit him: The train was stopped at a station. He didn’t know which one-he didn’t have the schedule memorized-and he felt a sudden chill. What if some Second Chief Directorate men had just boarded? In the daylight, he might have shaken it off, but KGB had the reputation of arresting people in the middle of the night, when they’d be less likely to resist effectively, and suddenly the fear came back. Then he heard feet walking down the corridor. . but they passed him by, and moments later the train started moving again, pulling away from the wooden station building, and presently the view outside was just darkness again. Why did this frighten me? Zaitzev asked himself. Why now? Wasn’t he safe now? Or almost so, he corrected himself. The answer was, no, not until his feet stood on foreign soil. He had to remind himself of that fact, until he stood on foreign, nonsocialist soil. And he wasn’t there yet. With that reminder refixed in his mind, he rolled back and tried to get back to sleep. The motion of the train eventually overcame his anxiety, and he returned to dreams that were not the least bit reassuring.

THE BRITISH AIRWAYS 747 also flew through darkness, its passengers mainly asleep while the flight crew monitored its numerous instruments and sipped their coffee, taking time to enjoy the night stars, and watched the horizon for the first hint of dawn. That usually came over the west coast of Ireland.

RYAN AWOKE EARLIER than usual. He slipped out of bed without disturbing his wife, dressed casually, and went outside. The milkman was driving into the cul-de-sac at the end of Grizedale Close. He stopped his truck and got out with the half-gallon of whole milk his kids drank like a Pratt amp; Whitney engine guzzled jet fuel, and a loaf of bread. He was halfway to the house before he noticed his customer.