Tom Clancy - Without Remorse

'We're never going to be friends, but even enemies can agree to rules for the game. Isn't that what this is about?'

A judicious man, Voloshin thought, which pleased him. It made for predictable behavior, and that above all things was what the Russians wanted of the Americans. 'You are persuasive, Bob. You assure me that our allies do not know their man is missing?'

'Positive. My offer for you to meet your man is still open,' he added.

'Without reciprocal rights?' Voloshin tried.

'For that I need permission from upstairs. I can try if you ask me to, but that also would be something of a complication.' He dumped his empty drink cup in a bin.

'I ask.' Voloshin wanted that made clear.

'Very well. I'll call you. And in return?'

'In return I will consider your request.' Voloshin walked off without another word.

Gotcha! Ritter thought, heading towards where his car was parked. He'd played a careful but inventive game. There were three possible leaks on boxwood green. He'd visited each of them. To one he'd said that they actually had gotten a prisoner out, who had died of wounds. To another, that the Russian was badly wounded and might not survive. But Ritter had saved his best piece of bait for the most likely leak. Now he knew. That narrowed it to four suspects. Roger MacKenzie, that prep-school-reject aide, and two secretaries. This was really an FBI job, but he didn't want any additional complications, and an espionage investigation of the Office of the President of the United States was about as complicated as things could be. Back in his car, he decided to meet with a friend in the Directorate of Science and Technology. Ritter had a great deal of respect for Voloshin. A clever man, a very careful, methodical man, he'd run agents all over Western Europe before being assigned to the Washington rezidentura. He'd keep his word, and to make sure he didn't get into any trouble about it, he'd play everything strictly by the exacting rules of his parent agency. Ritter was gambling big on that. Pull this one off in addition to the other coup in the works, and how much higher might he rise? Better yet, he'd be earning his way up, not some fair-haired political payoff, but the son of a Texas Ranger who'd waited tables to get his degree at Baylor. Something Sergey would have appreciated, in good Marxist-Leninist fashion, Ritter told himself, pulling onto Connecticut Avenue. Working-class kid makes good.

It was an unusual way to gather information, something he'd never done before, and pleasant enough that he might even get used to it. He sat at a corner booth in Mama Maria's, working slowly through his second course - thank you, no wine, I'm driving. Dressed in his CIA suit, well-groomed and sporting a new businesslike haircut, he enjoyed the looks of a few unattached women, and a waitress who positively doted on him, especially with his good manners. The excellence of the food explained the crowded room, and the crowding explained why it was a convenient place for Tony Piaggi and Henry Tucker to meet here. Mike Aiello had been very forthcoming about that. Mama Maria's was, in fact, owned by the Piaggi family, now in its third generation of providing food and other, less legal, services to the local community, dating back to Prohibition. The owner was a bon vivant, greeting favored customers, guiding them to their places with Old World hospitality. Snappy dresser, too, Kelly saw, recording his face and build, gestures and mannerisms, as he ate through his calamari. A black man came in, dressed in a nicely cut suit. He looked like he knew the place, smiling at the hostess and waiting a few seconds for his reward, and Kelly's.

Piaggi looked up and headed to the front, stopping only briefly to shake hands with someone on the way. He did the same with the black man, then led him back past Kelly's table, and up the back stairs to where the private rooms were. No particular notice was taken. There were other black couples in the restaurant, treated the same as everyone else. But those others did honest work, Kelly was sure. He turned his thoughts away from his distraction. Sothat's??nr? Tucker. That's theonewho killed Pom. He didn't look like a monster. Monsters rarely did. To Kelly he looked like a target, and his particulars went into Kelly's memory, alongside Tony Piaggi's. He was surprised when he looked down and saw that the fork in his hands was bent.

'What's the problem?' Piaggi asked upstairs. He poured each of them a glass of Chianti, good host that he was, but as soon as the door had closed, Henry's face started telling him something.

'They haven't come back.'

'Phil, Mike, and Burt?'

'Yes!' Henry snarled, meaning, no.

'Okay, settle down. How much stuff did they have?'

'Twenty kees of pure, man. This was supposed to take care of me and Philly, and New York for a while.'

'Lot of stuff, Henry.' Tony nodded. 'Maybe it just took them a while, okay?'

'Shoulda been back by now.'

'Look, Phil and Mike are new, probably clumsy, like Eddie and me were out first time - hell, Henry, that was only five kees, remember?'

'I allowed for that,' he said, wondering if he'd really be right about that or not.

'Henry,' Tony said, sipping his wine and trying to appear calm and reasonable, 'look, okay? Why are you getting excited? We've taken care of all the problems, right?'

'Something's wrong, man.'

'What?'

'I don't know.'

'Want to get a boat and go down there to see?'

Tucker shook his head.'Takes too long.'

'The meet with the other guys isn't for three days. Be cool. They're probably on their way here now.'

Piaggi thought he understood Tucker's sudden case of the shakes. Now it was big-time. Twenty kilograms of pure translated into a huge quantity of street drugs, and selling it already diluted and packaged made for sufficient convenience to their customers that they were for the first time paying top dollar. This was the really big score that Tucker had been working towards for several years. Just assembling all the cash to pay for it was a major undertaking. It was an understandable case of nerves.

'Tony, what if it wasn't Eddie at all?'

Exasperation: 'You're the one who said it had to be, remember?'

Tucker couldn't pursue that. He'd merely wanted an excuse to eliminate the man as an unnecessary complication. His anxiety was partly what Tony thought it was, but something else, too. The things that had happened earlier in the summer, the things that had just started for no reason, then stopped with no reason - he had told himself that they were Eddie Morello's doing. He'd managed to convince himself of that, but only because he had wanted to believe it. Somewhere else the little voice that had brought him this far had told him otherwise, and now the voice was back, and there was no Eddie to be the focus for his anxiety and anger. A streetwise man who'd gotten this far through the complex equation of brain and guts and instinct, he trusted that last quality most. Now it was telling him things that he didn't understand, couldn't reason out. Tony was right. It could just be a matter of clumsiness in the processing. That was one reason they were setting their lab up in east Baltimore. They could afford that now, with experience behind them and a viable front business setting up in the coming week. So he drank his wine and settled down, the rich, red alcohol soothing his abraded instincts.

'Give 'em until tomorrow.'

'So how was it?' the man at the wheel asked. An hour north of Bloodsworth Island, he figured he'd waited long enough to ask the silent petty officer who stood beside him. After all, they just stood by and waited.

'They fed a guy to the fuckin' crabs!' Oreza told them. 'They took like two square yards of net and weighted it down with blocks, and just sunk his ass - practically nothing left but the damned bones!' The police lab people were still discussing how to recover the body, for all he knew. Oreza was certain it was a sight he'd take years to forget, the skull just lying there, the bones still dressed, moving because of the water currents... or maybe some crabs inside. He hadn't cared to look that closely.