Tom Clancy - Red Rabbit

With dinner finished, Oleg left the kitchen to his wife and took his little girl into the living room and the TV set. The TV news announced that the harvest was under way, as it was every year, with the heroic laborers on the collective farms bringing in the first crop of summer wheat in the northern areas, where they had to grow and harvest it quickly. A fine crop, the TV said. Good, Oleg thought, no bread shortages this winter. . probably. You could never really be sure about what was said on the TV. Next, some complaining coverage of the American nuclear weapons being deployed in the NATO countries, despite the reasonable Soviet requests that the West forgo such unnecessary, destabilizing, and provocative actions. Zaitzev knew that the Soviet SS-20s were going into place elsewhere, and they, of course, were in no way destabilizing. The big show on TV tonight was We Serve the Soviet Union, about military operations, fine young Soviet men serving their country. Today would be rare coverage of men doing their “international duty” in Afghanistan. The Soviet media didn’t often cover that, and Oleg was curious as to what they’d show. There were occasional discussions over lunch at work about the war in Afghanistan. He tended to listen rather than talk, because he’d been excused from military service, something he didn’t regret one little bit. He’d heard too many stories about the casual brutality in the infantry units, and besides, the uniforms were not attractive to wear. His rarely worn KGB uniform was bad enough. Still, pictures told stories that mere words did not, and he had the keen eye for detail that his job required.

“YOU KNOW, every year they harvest wheat in Kansas, and it never makes the NBC Nightly News,” Ed Foley said to his wife.

“I suppose feeding themselves is a major accomplishment,” Mary Pat observed. “How’s the office?”

“Small.” Then he waved his hands in such a way as to say that nothing interesting had happened.

Soon she’d have to drive their car around to check for alert signals. They were working Agent CARDINAL here in Moscow, and he was their most important assignment. The colonel knew that he’d have new handlers here. Setting that arrangement up would be touchy, but Mary Pat was accustomed to handling the touchy ones.

IT WAS FIVE IN THE EVENINGin London, and noon in Langley, when Ryan lit up his secure phone to call home. He’d have to get used to the time zones. Like a lot of people, he found that his creative times of day tended to divide themselves into two parts. Mornings were best for digesting information, but later afternoons were better for contemplation. Admiral Greer tended to be the same way, and so Jack would find himself disconnected from his boss’s work routine, which wasn’t good. He also had to get used to the mechanics of handling documents. He’d been in government service long enough to know that it would never be as easy as he expected, nor as simple as it ought to be.

“Greer,” a voice said, after the secure link was established.

“Ryan here, sir.”

“How’s England, Jack?”

“Haven’t seen it rain yet. Cathy starts her new job tomorrow morning.”

“How’s Basil?”

“I can’t complain about the hospitality, sir.”

“Where are you now?”

“Century House. They gave me an office on the top floor with a guy in their Russian section.”

“I bet you want an STU for your home.”

“Good call, sir.” The old bastard was pretty good at reading minds.

“What else?”

“Nothing comes immediately to mind, Admiral.”

“Anything interesting yet?”

“Just settling in, sir. Their Russian section looks smart. The guy I’m working with, Simon Harding, reads the tea leaves pretty well,” Ryan said, glad that Simon was off at the moment. Of course, maybe the phone was bugged. . nah. . not for a Knight Commander of the Victorian Order. . or would they?

“Kids okay?”

“Yes, sir. Sally’s trying to figure out the local TV.”

“Kids adapt pretty well.”

Better than adults do. “I’ll let you know, Admiral.”

“The Hopkins document ought to be on your desk tomorrow.”

“Thanks. I think they’ll like it. Bernie said some interesting things. This other thing with the Pope. .”

“What are our cousins saying?”

“They’re concerned. So am I. I think His Holiness has rattled their cage pretty hard, and I think Ivan’s going to notice.”

“What’s Basil saying?”

“Not much. I do not know what assets they have on site. I imagine they’re waiting to see what they can find out.” Jack paused. “Anything from our end?”

“Not yet” was the terse reply. It was a step up from nothing I can talk to you about. Does Admiral Greer really trust me now? Jack wondered. Sure, Greer liked him, but did he really trust him to be a good analyst? Perhaps this London sojourn was, if not boot camp, then maybe a second trip through the Basic School. That was where the Marine Corps made sure that young men with lieutenant’s bars really had the right stuff to lead Marines in the field. It was reputed to be the hardest school in the Corps. It hadn’t been especially easy for Ryan, but he had graduated at the top of his class. Maybe he’d just been lucky. .? He hadn’t served long enough to find out, courtesy of a broken CH-46 over the island of Crete, an event that still visited him in the occasional nightmare. Fortunately, his gunnery sergeant and a navy corpsman had stabilized him, but Jack still got a chill even thinking about helicopters. “Tell me what you think, Jack.”

“If my job were to keep the Pope alive, I’d be a little nervous. The Russians can play rough when they want to. What I cannot evaluate is how the Politburo might react-I mean, how much starch they might have in their backbone. When I talked to Basil, I said it comes down to how scared they are by his threat, if you call it a threat.”

“What would you call it, Jack?” the DDI asked from 3,400 miles away.

“Yes, sir, you have me there. I suppose it is a threat of sorts to their way of thinking.”

“Of sorts? How does it look to them?” Jim Greer would have been one tough son of a bitch teaching graduate-level history or political science. Right up there with Father Tim at Georgetown.

“Noted, Admiral. It’s a threat. And they will see it as such. I am not sure, however, how serious a threat they will take it to be. It’s not as though they believe in God. To them, ‘God’ is politics, and politics is just a process, not a belief system as we understand the term.”

“Jack, you need to learn to see reality through the eyes of your adversary. Your analytical ability is first-rate, but you have to work on perception. This isn’t stocks and bonds, where you dealt with hard numbers, not perceptions of numbers. They say El Greco had a stigmatism in his eyes that gave everything a visual slant. They see reality through a different lens, too. If you can replicate that, you’ll be one of the best around, but you have to make that leap of imagination. Harding’s pretty good at that. Learn from him to see the inside of their heads.”

“You know Simon?” Jack asked.

“I’ve been reading his analyses for years.”

None of this is an accident, Jack, he told himself, with more surprise than there ought to have been. His second important lesson of the day. “Understood, sir.”

“Don’t sound too surprised, my boy.”