Tom Clancy - Red Rabbit

Oh, shit, Mary Pat thought. They have a mole somewhere, and he might be in the White House Rose Garden for all we know. Oh, shit. .

“Very well, we will take the utmost security with your case,” she promised. But that meant that there’d be a two-day minimum turnaround time for important signals. It was back to World War One procedures with this guy. Ritter would just love that. “Can you tell me what methods might be safe?”

“The British changed their cipher machines about four months ago. We have as yet had no success in cracking them. That I know. Exactly which of your signals are compromised, I do not know, but I do know that some are fully penetrated. Please keep this in mind.”

“That I will do, Oleg Ivan’ch.” This guy had information that CIA needed-big-time. Cracked communications were the most dangerous things that could happen to any covert agency. Wars had been won and lost over such things as that. The Russians lacked American computer technology, but they did have some of the world’s finest mathematicians, and the brain between a person’s ears was the most dangerous instrument of all, and a damned site more competent that the ones that sat on a desk or a floor. Did Mike Russell have any of the old one-time pads at the embassy? CIA had used them once upon a time, but their cumbersome nature had caused them to be discarded. NSA told everybody who’d listen that on his best day, Seymour Cray couldn’t brute-force their ciphers, even with his brand-new CRAY-2 supercomputer on amphetamines. If they were wrong, it could hurt America in ways too vast to comprehend. But there were many cipher systems, and those who cracked one could not necessarily crack another. Or so everybody said. . but communications security was not her area of expertise. Even she had to trust someone and something once in a while. But this was like being shot in the back by the starting gun in a hundred-meter race and having to run for the tape anyway. Damn.

“It is an inconvenience, but we will do what is necessary to protect you. You want to be taken out soon.”

“This week would be very helpful-not so much for my needs as for the needs of a man whose life is in danger.”

“I see,” she said, not quite seeing. This guy might be laying a line on her, but if so, he was doing it like a real pro, and she wasn’t getting that signal from this guy. No, he didn’t read like an experienced field spook. He was a player, but not her kind of player.

“Very well. When you get to work tomorrow, make a contact report,” she told him.

That one surprised him: “Are you serious?”

“Of course. Tell your supervisor that you met an American, the wife of a minor embassy official. Describe me and my son-”

“And tell them you are a pretty but shallow American female who has a handsome and polite little boy,” he surmised. “And your Russian needs a little work, shall we say?”

“You learn quickly, Oleg Ivan’ch. I bet you play a good game of chess.”

“Not good enough. I will never be a Grand Master.”

“We all have our limitations, but in America you will find them far more distant than they are in the Soviet Union.”

“By the end of the week?”

“When my husband wears his bright red tie, you set the time and place for a meeting. Possibly by tomorrow afternoon you will get your signal, and we will make the arrangements.”

“Good day to you, then. Where did you learn your Russian?”

“My grandfather was equerry to Aleksey Nikolayevich Romanov,” she explained. “In my childhood, he told me many stories about the young man and his untimely death.”

“So, your hatred for the Soviet Union runs deep, eh?”

“Only for your government, Oleg. Not for the people of this country. I would see you free.”

“Someday, perhaps, but not soon.”

“History, Oleg Ivan’ch, is made not of a few big things but of many small things.” That was one of her core beliefs. Again, for the cameras that might be there or not, she shook his hand and called her son. They walked around the park for another hour before heading back home for lunch.

But for lunch instead they all drove to the embassy, talking on the way about nothing more sensitive than the admirably clear weather. Once there, they all had hot dogs in the embassy canteen, and then Eddie went to the day-care room. Ed and Mary Pat went to his office.

“He said what?” the Chief of Station snapped.

“He said his wife-named Irina, by the way-doesn’t know his plans,” Mary Pat repeated.

“Son of a bitch! ” her husband observed at once.

“Well, it does simplify some of our exposure. At least she can’t let anything slip.” His wife was always the optimist, Ed saw.

“Yeah, baby, until we try to make the exfiltration, and she decides not to go anywhere.”

“He says she’ll do what he says. You know, the men here like to rule the roost.”

“That wouldn’t work with you,” the Chief of Station pointed out. For several reasons, not the least of which was that her balls were every bit as big as his.

“I’m not Russian, Eddie.”

“Okay, what else did he say?”

“He doesn’t trust our comms. He thinks some of our systems are compromised.”

“Jesus!” He paused. “Any other good news?”

“The reason he’s skipping town is that KGB wants to kill somebody who, he says, doesn’t deserve to be killed.”

“Did he say who?”

“Not until he breathes free air. But there is good news. His wife is a classical music buff. We need to find a good conductor in Hungary.”

“Hungary?”

“I was thinking last night. Best place to get him out from. That’s Jimmy Szell’s station, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” They both knew Szell from time at The Farm, CIA’s training installation in Tidewater, Virginia, off Interstate 64, a few miles from Colonial Williamsburg. “I always thought he deserved something bigger.” Ed took a second to think. “So, out of Hungary via Yugoslavia, you’re thinking?”

“I always knew you were smart.”

“Okay. .” His eyes fixed on a blank part of the wall while his brain went to work. “Okay, we can make that work.”

“Your flag signal’s a red tie on the metro. Then he slips you the meeting arrangement, we do that, and the Rabbit skips out of town, along with Mrs. Rabbit and the Bunny-oh, you’ll love this, he already calls his daughter zaichik.”

“Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail?” Ed exercised his sense of humor.

“I like that. Call it Operation BEATRIX,” she suggested. Both of them had read Mrs. Potter’s Peter Rabbit as kids. Who hadn’t?

“The problem’s going to be getting Langley’s approval. If we can’t use normal comm channels, coordinating everything is going to be a major pain in the ass.”

“They never told us at The Farm that this job was easy. So remember what John Clark told us. Be flexible.”

“Yeah, like linguine.” He let out a long breath. “With the communications limitations, it essentially means we plan it and run it out of this office, with no help from the Home Office.”

“Ed, that’s the way it’s supposed to be anyway. All Langley does is tell us we can’t do what we want to do”-which was, after all, the function of every home office in every business in the world.

“Whose comms can we trust?”

“The Rabbit says the Brits just set up a new system they can’t crack-yet, anyway. Do we have any one-time pads left here?”

The COS shook his head. “Not that I know of.” Foley lifted his phone and punched the right numbers. “Mike? You’re in today? Want to come over here? Thanks.”

Russell arrived in a couple minutes. “Hey, Ed-hello, Mary. What are you doing in the shop today?”