by Tom Clancy
Fürchtner had gone the other way. He was a good thirty kilos overweight, his thick dark hair had either fallen out or been shaved, and the beard was gone. He looked like a banker now, fat and happy, no longer the driven, serious, committed communist he’d been in the ’70s and ’80s—at least not visibly so. They lived in a decent house in the mountains south of Munich. What neighbors they had thought them to be artists—both of them painted, a hobby unknown to their country’s police. They even sold the occasional work in small galleries, which was enough to feed them, though not to maintain their lifestyle.
They must have missed the safe houses in the old DDR and Czechoslovakia, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought. Just get off the aircraft and get taken away by car to comfortable if not quite lavish quarters, leave there to shop in the “special” stores maintained for the local Party elite, get visited frequently by serious, quiet intelligence officers who would feed them information with which to plan their next operation. Fürchtner and Dortmund had accomplished several decent operations, the best being the kidnapping and interrogation of an American sergeant who serviced nuclear artillery shells—this mission had been assigned them by the Soviet GRU. Much had been learned from that, most of it still useful, as the sergeant had been an expert on the American PAL—permissible action link—safety systems. His body had later been discovered in the snowy mid-winter mountains of southern Bavaria, apparently the result of a nasty traffic accident. Or so GRU thought, based on the reports of its agents within the NATO high command.
“So, what is it that you want to learn?” she asked.
“Electronic access codes to the international trading system.”
“So, you, too, are a common thief now?” Hans asked, before Petra could sneer.
“A very uncommon thief, my sponsor is. If we are to restore a socialist, progressive alternative to capitalism, we need both funding and to instill a certain lack of confidence in the capitalist nervous system, do we not?” Popov paused for a second. “You know who I am. You know where I worked. Do you think I have forgotten my Motherland? Do you think I have forsaken my beliefs? My father fought at Stalingrad and Kursk. He knew what it was to be pushed back, to suffer defeat—and yet not give up, ever!” Popov said heatedly. “Why do you think I risk my life here? The counterrevolutionaries in Moscow would not look kindly upon my mission . . . but they are not the only political force in Mother Russia!”
“Ahhh,” Petra Dortmund observed. Her face turned serious. “So, you think all is not lost?”
“Did you ever think the forward march of humanity would be absent of setbacks? It is true we lost our way. I saw it myself in KGB, the corruption in high places. That is what defeated us—not the West! I saw it myself as a captain, Brezhnev’s daughter—looting the Winter Palace for her wedding reception. As though she were the Grand Duchess Anastasia herself! It was my function in KGB to learn from the West, learn their plans and secrets, but our Kameraden learned only their corruption. Well, we have learned that lesson, in more ways than one, my friends. You are a communist or you are not. You believe or you do not. You act in accordance with those beliefs or you do not.”
“You ask us to give up much,” Hans Fürchtner pointed out.
“You will be properly provided for. My sponsor—”
“Who is that?” Petra asked.
“This you may not know,” Popov replied quietly. “You suppose that you take risks here? What about me? As for my sponsor, no, you may not know his identity. Operational security is paramount. You are supposed to know these things,” he reminded them. They took the mild rebuke well, as he’d expected. These two fools were true believers, as Ernst Model had been, though they were somewhat brighter and far more vicious, as that luckless American sergeant had learned, probably staring with disbelief into the still-lovely blue eyes of Petra Dortmund as she’d used the hammer on his various body parts.
“So, Iosef Andreyevich,” Hans said—they knew Popov by one of his many cover names, in this case I. A. Serov. “When do you wish us to act?”
“As quickly as possible. I will call you in a week, to see if you are indeed willing to take this mission and—”
“We are willing,” Petra assured him. “We need to make our plans.”
“Then I shall call you in a week for your schedule. I will need four days to activate my part of the operation. An additional concern, the mission depends on the placement of the American navy carrier in the Mediterranean. You may not execute the mission if it is in the western Mediterranean, because in such a case their aircraft might track your flight. We wish this mission to succeed, my friends.” Then they negotiated the price. It didn’t prove hard. Hans and Petra knew Popov from the old days and actually trusted him personally to make the delivery.
Ten minutes later, Popov shook hands and took his leave, this time driving a rented BMW south toward the Austrian border. The road was clear and smooth, the scenery beautiful, and Dmitriy Arkadeyevich wondered again about his hosts. The one bit of truth he’d given them was that his father was indeed a veteran of the Stalingrad and Kursk campaign, and had told his son much about his life as a tank commander in the Great Patriotic War. There was something odd about the Germans, he’d learned from his professional experience in the Committee for State Security. Give them a man on a horse, and they’d follow him to the death. It seemed that the Germans craved someone or something to follow. How very strange. But it served his purposes, and those of his sponsor, and if these Germans wanted to follow a red horse—a dead red horse, Popov reminded himself with a smile and a grunt—well, that was their misfortune. The only really innocent people involved were the bankers whom they would attempt to kidnap. But at least they wouldn’t be subjected to torture, as that black American sergeant had been. Popov doubted that Hans and Petra would get that far, though the capabilities of the Austrian police and military were largely unknown to him. He’d find out, he was sure, one way or another.
It was odd the way it worked. Team-1 was now the Go-Team, ready to depart Hereford at a moment’s notice while Chavez’s Team-2 stood down, but it was the latter that was running complex exercises while the former did little but morning PT and routine marksmanship training. Technically, they were worried about a training accident that could hurt or even cripple a team member, thus breaking up a field team at a delicate moment.
Master Chief Machinist’s Mate Miguel Chin belonged to Peter Covington’s team. A former U.S. Navy SEAL, he’d been taken from Norfolk-based SEAL Team Six for Rainbow. The son of a Latino mother and a Chinese father, he, like Chavez, had grown up in East L.A. Ding spotted him smoking a cigar outside the Team-1 building and walked over.
“Hey, Chief,” Chavez said from ten feet away.
“Master Chief,” Chin corrected. “Like being a CSM in the army, sir.”
“Name’s Ding, ’mano.”
“Mike.” Chin extended a hand. Chin’s face could have passed for damned near anything. He was an iron-pumper like Oso Vega, and his rep was of a guy who’d been around the block about a hundred times. Expert with all types of weapons, his handshake announced his further ability to tear a man’s head right off his shoulders.
“Those are bad for you,” Chavez noted.
“So’s what we do for a livin’, Ding. What part of L.A.?”
Ding told him.
“No kiddin’? Hell, I grew up half a mile from there. You were Banditos country.”
“Don’t tell me—”
The master chief nodded. “Piscadores, till I grew out of it. A judge suggested that I might like enlisting better ’n jail, and so I tried for the Marines, but they didn’t want me. Pussies,” Chin commented, spitting some tobacco off his cigar. “So, went through Great Lakes, they made me a machinist . . . but then I heard about the SEALs, an’, well, ain’t a bad life, y’know? You’re Agency, I hear.”
“Started off as an Eleven-Bravo. Took a little trip to South America that went totally to shit, but I met our Six on the job and he kinda recruited me. N
ever looked back.”
“Agency send you to school?”
“George Mason, just got my master’s. International relations,” Chavez replied with a nod. “You?”
“Yeah, shows, I guess. Psychology, just a bachelor’s, Old Dominion University. The doc on the team, Bellow. Smart son of a bitch. Mind-reader. I got three of his books at my place.”
“How’s Covington to work for?”
“Good. He’s been there before. Listens good. Thoughtful kinda guy. Good team here, but as usual, not a hell of a lot to do. Liked your takedown at the bank, Chavez. Fast and clean.” Chin blew smoke into the sky.
“Well, thank you, Master Chief.”
“Chavez!” Peter Covington came out the door just then. “Trying to steal my number-one?”
“Just found out we grew up a few blocks apart, Peter.”
“Indeed? That’s remarkable,” the Team-1 commander said.
“Harry’s aggravated his ankle some this morning. No big deal, he’s chewing some aspirin,” Chin told his boss. “He banged it up two weeks ago zip-lining down from the helo,” he added for Ding’s benefit.
Damn training accidents, the chief didn’t have to add. That was the problem with this sort of work, they all knew. The Rainbow members had been selected for many reasons, not the least of which was their brutally competitive nature. Every man deemed himself to be in competition with every other, and each one of them pushed himself to the limit in everything. It made for injuries and training accidents—and the miracle was that they’d yet to place one of the team into the base hospital. It was sure to happen soon. The Rainbow members could no more turn that aspect of their personalities off than they could stop breathing. Olympic team members hardly had a tougher outlook on what they did. Either you were the very best, or you were nothing. And so every man could run a mile within thirty or forty seconds of the world record, wearing boots instead of track shoes. It did make sense in the abstract. Half a second could easily be the difference between life and death in a combat situation—worse, not the death of one of their own, but of an innocent party, a hostage, the person whom they were sworn to protect and rescue. But the really ironic part was that the Go-Team was not allowed heavy training for fear of a training accident, and so their skills degraded slightly over time—in this case, the two weeks of being stood-to. Three more days to go for Covington’s Team-1, and then, Chavez knew, it would be his turn.
“I hear you don’t like the SWAT program,” Chin said next.
“Not all that much. It’s good for planning movement and stuff, but not so good for the takedowns.”
“We’ve been using it for years,” Covington said. “Much better than it used to be.”
“I’d prefer live targets and MILES gear,” Chavez persisted. He referred to the training system the U.S. military often used, in which every soldier had laser-receivers mounted on his body.
“Not as good at close range as at long,” Peter informed his colleague.
“Oh, never used it that way,” Ding had to admit. “But as a practical matter, once we get close, it’s decided. Our people don’t miss many targets.”
“True,” Covington conceded. Just then came the crack of a sniper rifle. Rainbow’s long-riflemen were practicing over on the thousand-yard range, competing to see who could fire the smallest group. The current leader was Homer Johnston, Ding’s Rifle Two-One, an eighth of an inch better than Sam Houston, Covington’s leading long-rifleman, at five hundred yards—at which range either could put ten consecutive shots inside a two-inch circle, which was considerably smaller than the human head both men practiced exploding with their hollow-point match rounds. The fact of the matter was that two misses from any of the Rainbow shooters in a given week of drills was remarkable, and usually explained by tripping on something in the shooting house. The riflemen had yet to miss anything, of course. The problem with their mission wasn’t shooting. It was getting in close enough—more than that, making a well-timed decision to move and take down the subjects, for which they most often depended on Dr. Paul Bellow. The shooting part, which they practiced daily, was the tensest part, to be sure, but also technically and operationally the easiest. It seemed perverse in that respect, but theirs was a perverse business.
“Anything on the threat board?” Covington asked.
“I was just heading over, but I doubt it, Peter.” Whatever bad guys were still thinking about making mischief somewhere in Europe had seen TV coverage of the Bern bank, and that would have calmed them down some, both team leaders thought.
“Very good, Ding. I have some paperwork to do,” Covington said, heading back inside his building. On that cue, Chin tossed his cigar into the smokers’ bucket and did the same.
Chavez continued his walk to the headquarters building, returning the salute of the door guard as he went inside. The Brits sure saluted funny, he thought. Once inside, he found Major Bennett at his desk.
“Hey, Sam,”
“Good morning, Ding. Coffee?” The Air Force officer gestured to his urn.
“No, thanks. Anything happening anywhere?”
A shake of the head. “Quiet day. Not even much in the way of crime.”
Bennett’s primary sources for normal criminal activity were the teleprinters for the various European news services. Experience showed that the services notified those who were interested about illegal activity more quickly than the official channels, which generally sent information via secure fax from the American or British embassies across Europe. With that input source quiet, Bennett was working on his computerized list of known terrorists, shifting through the photos and written summaries of what was positively known about these people (generally not much) and what was suspected (not much more).
“What’s this? Who’s that?” Ding asked, pointing at the computer.
“A new toy we’re using. Got it from the FBI. It ages the subject photos. This one is Petra Dortmund. We only have two photos of her, both almost fifteen years old. So, I’m aging her by fifteen years, playing with hair color, too. Nice thing about women—no beards,” Bennett observed with a chuckle. “And they’re usually too vain to pork up, like our pal Carlos did. This one, check out the eyes.”
“Not a girl I’d try to pick up in a bar,” Chavez observed.
“Probably a bad lay anyway, Domingo,” Clark said from behind. “That’s impressive stuff, Sam.”
“Yes, sir. Just set it up this morning. Noonan got it for me from Headquarters Division Technical Services. They invented it to help ID kidnap victims years after they disappeared. It’s been pretty useful for that. Then somebody figured that if it worked on children growing up, why not try it on grown-up hoods. Helped ’em find a top-ten bank robber earlier this year. Anyhow, here’s what Fräulein Dortmund probably looks like now.”
“What’s the name of her significant other?”
“Hans Fürchtner.” Bennett played with his computer mouse to bring up that photo. “Christ, this must be his high-school yearbook pictorial.” Then he scanned the words accompanying the photo. “Okay, likes to drink beer . . . so, let’s give him another fifteen pounds.” In seconds, the photo changed. “Mustache . . . beard . . .” And then there were four photos for this one.
“These two must get along just great,” Chavez noted, remembering his file on the pair. “Assuming they’re still together.” That started a thought moving, and Chavez walked over to Dr. Bellow’s office.
“Hey, doc.”
Bellow looked up from his computer. “Good morning, Ding. What can I do for you?”
“We were just looking at photos of two bad guys, Petra von Dortmund and Hans Fürchtner. I got a question for you.”
“Shoot,” Bellow replied.
“How likely are people like that to stay together?”
Bellow blinked a little, then leaned back in his chair. “Not a bad question at all. Those two . . . I did the evaluation for their active files. . . . They’re probably still together. Their political ideology is
probably a unifying factor, an important part of their commitment to each other. Their belief system is what brought them together in the first place, and in a psychological sense they took their wedding vows when they acted out on it—their terrorist jobs. As I recall, they are suspected to have kidnapped and killed a soldier, among other things, and activity like that creates a strong interpersonal bond.”
“But most of the people, you say, are sociopaths,” Ding objected. “And sociopaths don’t—”
“Been reading my books?” Bellow asked with a smile. “Ever hear the one about how when two people marry they become as one?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So in a case like this, it’s real. They are sociopaths, but ideology gives their deviance an ethos—and that makes it important. Because of that, sharing the ideology makes them one, and their sociopathic tendencies merge. For those two, I would suspect a fairly stable married relationship. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they were formally married, in fact, but probably not in a church,” he added with a smile.
“Stable marriage . . . kids?”
Bellow nodded. “Possible. Abortion is illegal in Germany—the Western part, I think, still. Would they choose to have kids? . . . That’s a good question. I need to think about that.”
“I need to learn more about these people. How they think, how they see the world, that sort of thing.”
Bellow smiled again, rose from his chair, and walked to his bookcase. He took one of his own books and tossed it to Chavez. “Try that for starters. It’s a text at the FBI academy, and it got me over here a few years ago to lecture to the SAS. I guess it got me into this business.”