by Tom Clancy
“Yeah, well, if we’re not careful, we might just kill the whole planet,” Maclean observed next.
“That would be a crime, like the Hitlerites,” Popov said next. “It is nekulturny, the work of uncivilized barbarians. In my room, the tapes and the magazines make this clear.”
“What do you think of killing people, Dmitriy?” Killgore asked then.
“That depends on who they are. There are many people who deserve to die for one reason or another. But Western culture has this strange notion that taking life is almost always wrong—you Americans cannot even kill your criminals, murderers and such, without jumping through hoops, as you say here. I find that very curious.”
“What about crimes against Nature?” Killgore said, staring off into the distance.
“I do not understand.”
“Well, things that hurt the whole planet, killing off whole living species, polluting the land and the sea. What about that?”
“Kirk, that is also a barbaric act, and it should be punished severely. But how do you identify the criminals? Is it the industrialist who gives the order and makes the profit from it? Or is it the worker who takes his wages and does what he is told?”
“What did they say at Nuremberg?” Killgore said next.
“The war-crimes trial, you mean? It was decided that following orders is not a defense.” Not a concept he’d been taught to consider in the KGB Academy, where he’d learned that the State Was Always Right.
“Right,” the epidemiologist agreed. “But you know, nobody ever went after Harry Truman for bombing Hiroshima.”
Because he won, you fool, Popov didn’t reply. “Do you ask if this was a crime? No, it was not, because he ended a greater evil, and the sacrifice of those people was necessary to restore the peace.”
“What about saving the planet?”
“I do not understand.”
“If the planet was dying, what would one have to do—what would be right to do, to save it?”
This discussion had all the ideological and philosophical purity of a classroom discussion of the Marxist dialectic at Moscow State University—and about as much relevance to the real world. Kill the whole planet? That was not possible. A full-blown nuclear war, yes, maybe that could have such an effect, but that was no longer possible. The world had changed, and America was the nation that had made it happen. Didn’t these two druids see the wonder of that? More than once, the world had been close to loosing nuclear weapons, but today that was a thing of the past.
“I have never considered that question, my friends.”
“We have,” Maclean responded. “Dmitriy, there are people and forces at work today that could easily kill off everything here. Somebody has to stop that from happening, but how do you do it?”
“You do not mean simply political action, do you?” the former KGB spook observed.
“No, it’s too late for that, and not enough people would listen anyway.” Killgore turned his horse to the right and the others followed. “I’m afraid you have to take more drastic measures.”
“What’s that? Kill the whole world population?” Dmitriy Arkadeyevich asked, with hidden humor. But the reply to the rhetorical question was the same look in two sets of eyes. The look didn’t make his blood go cold, but it did get his brain moving off in a new and unexpected direction. These were fascisti. Worse than that, fascisti with an ethos in which they believed. But were they willing to take action on their beliefs? Could anyone take action like that? Even the worst of the Stalinists—no, they’d never been madmen, just political romantics.
Just then an aircraft’s noise disturbed the morning. It was one of Horizon’s fleet of G’s, lifting off from the complex’s runway, climbing up and turning right, looping around to the east—for New York, probably, to bring more of the “project” people in? Probably. The complex was about 80 percent full now, Popov reflected. The rate of arrivals had slowed, but people were still coming, most by private car. The cafeteria was almost full at lunch- and dinnertime, and the lights burned late in the laboratory and other work buildings. But what were those people doing?
Horizon Corporation, Popov reminded himself, was a biotech company, specializing in medicines and medical treatments, Killgore was a physician, and Maclean an engineer specializing in environmental matters. Both were druids, both nature-worshipers, the new kind of paganism spawned in the West. John Brightling seemed to be one as well, judging by that conversation they’d had in New York. That, then, was the ethos of these people and their company. Dmitriy thought about the printed matter in his room. Humans were a parasitic species doing more harm than good to the earth, and these two had just talked about sentencing the harmful people to death—then made it clear that they thought of everyone as harmful. What were they going to do, kill everyone? What rubbish. The door leading to the answer had opened further. His brain was moving far more quickly than Buttermilk was, but still not fast enough.
They rode in silence for a few minutes. Then a shadow crossed the ground, and Popov looked up.
“What is that?”
“Red-tail hawk,” Maclean answered, after a look. “Cruising for some breakfast.”
As they watched, the raptor climbed to five hundred feet or so, then spread his wings to ride the thermal air currents, his head down, examining the surface of the land for an unwary rodent through his impossibly sharp eyes. By unspoken consent the three men stopped their horses to watch. It took several minutes and then it was both beautiful and terrible to behold. The hawk folded its wings back and dropped rapidly, then flapped to accelerate like a feathered bullet, then spread its wings wide, nosing up, its yellow talons leading the descent now—
“Yes!” Maclean hooted.
Like a child stomping on an anthill, the hawk used its talons to kill its prey, twisting and crushing, then, holding the limp tubular body in them, flapped laboriously into the sky, heading off to the north to its nest or home, or whatever you called it, Popov thought. The prairie dog it killed had enjoyed no chance, Dmitriy thought, but nature was like that, as were people. No soldier willingly gave his foe a fair chance on any battlefield. It was neither safe nor intelligent to do so. You struck with total fury and as little warning as possible, the better to take his life quickly and easily—and safely—and if he lacked the wit to protect himself properly, well, that was his problem, not yours. In the case of the hawk, it had swooped down from above and down-sun, not even its shadow warning the prairie dog sitting at the entrance to its home, and killed without pity. The hawk had to eat, he supposed. Perhaps it had young to feed, or maybe it was just hunting for its own needs. In either case, the prairie dog hung limp in its claws, like an empty brown sock, soon to be ripped apart and eaten by its killer.
“Damn, I love watching that,” Maclean said.
“It is cruel, but beautiful,” Popov said.
“Mother Nature is like that, pal. Cruel but beautiful.” Killgore watched the hawk vanish in the distance. “That was something to see.”
“I have to capture one and train it,” Maclean announced. “Train it to kill off my fist.”
“Are the prairie dogs endangered?”
“No, no way,” Killgore answered. “Predators can control their numbers, but never entirely eliminate them. Nature maintains a balance.”
“How do men fit into that balance?” Popov asked.
“They don’t,” Kirk Maclean answered. “People just screw it up, ’cuz they’re too dumb to see what works and what doesn’t. And they don’t care about the harm they do. That’s the problem.”
“And what is the solution?” Dmitriy asked. Killgore turned to look him right in the eyes.
“Why, we are.”
“Ed, the cover name must be one he’s used for a long time,” Clark argued. “The IRA guys hadn’t seen him in years, but that’s the name they knew him by.”
“Makes sense,” Ed Foley had to admit over the phone. “So, you really want to talk to him, eh?”
“Well,
it’s no big thing, Ed. He just turned people loose to kill my wife, daughter, and grandson, you know? And they did kill two of my men. Now, do I have permission to contact him or not?” Rainbow Six demanded from his desk.
In his seventh-floor office atop CIA Headquarters, Director of Central Intelligence Edward Foley uncharacteristically wavered. If he let Clark do it, and Clark got what he wanted, reciprocity rules would then apply. Sergey Nikolay’ch would someday call CIA and request information of a delicate nature, and he, Foley, would have to provide it, else the veneer of amity within the international intelligence community would crumble away. But Foley could not predict what the Russians would ask about, and both sides were still spying on each other, and so the friendly rules of modern life in the spook business both did and did not apply. You pretended that they did, but you remembered and acted as though they did not. Such contacts were rare, and Golovko had been very helpful twice in real-world operations. And he’d never requested a return favor, perhaps because the operations had been of direct or indirect benefit to his own country. But Sergey wasn’t one to forget a debt and—
“I know what you’re thinking, Ed, but I’ve lost people because of this guy, and I want his ass, and Sergey can help us identify the fuck.”
“What if he’s still inside?” Foley temporized.
“Do you believe that?” Clark snorted.
“Well, no, I think we’re past that.”
“So do I, Ed. So, if he’s a friend, let’s ask him a friendly question. Maybe we’ll get a friendly answer. The quid pro quo on this could be to let Russian special-operations people train a few weeks with us. That’s a price I’m willing to pay.”
It was ultimately a futile exercise to argue with John, who’d been the training officer to him and his wife, Mary Pat, now Deputy Director (Operations). “Okay, John, it’s approved. Who handles the contact?”
“I have his number,” Clark assured the DCI.
“Then call it, John. Approved,” the DCI concluded, not without reluctance. “Anything else?”
“No, sir, and thank you. How are Mary Pat and the kids?”
“They’re fine. How’s your grandson?”
“Not too bad at all. Patsy is doing fine, and Sandy’s taken over the job with JC.”
“JC?”
“John Conor Chavez,” Clark clarified.
That was a complex name, Foley thought, without saying so. “Well, okay. Go ahead, John. See ya.”
“Thanks, Ed. Bye.” Clark switched buttons on his phone. “Bill, we got approval.”
“Excellent,” Tawney replied. “When will you call?”
“How’s right now grab you?”
“Set things up properly,” Tawney warned.
“Fear not.” Clark killed that line and punched another button. That one activated a cassette-tape recorder before he punched yet another and dialed Moscow.
“Six-Six-Zero,” a female voice answered in Russian.
“I need to speak personally with Sergey Nikolayevich. Please tell him that this is Ivan Timofeyevich calling,” Clark said in his most literate Russian.
“Da,” the secretary replied, wondering how this person had gotten the Chairman’s direct line.
“Clark!” a man’s voice boomed onto the line. “You are well there in England?” And already it started. The Chairman of the reconfigured Russian foreign-intelligence service wanted him to know that he knew where he was and what he was doing, and it wouldn’t do to ask how he’d found out.
“I find the climate agreeable, Chairman Golovko.”
“This new unit you head has been rather busy. The attack on your wife and daughter—they are well?”
“It was rather unpleasant, but yes, thank you, they are quite well.” The conversation was in Russian, a language Clark spoke like a native of Leningrad—St. Petersburg, John corrected himself. That was another old habit that died hard. “And I am now a grandfather.”
“Indeed, Vanya? Congratulations! That is splendid news. I was not pleased to learn of the attack on you,” Golovko went on sincerely. Russians have always been very sentimental people, especially where small children are concerned.
“Neither was I,” Clark said next. “But it worked out, as we say. I captured one of the bastards myself.”
“That I did not know, Vanya,” the Chairman went on—lying or not, John couldn’t tell. “So, what is the purpose of your call?”
“I need your assistance with a name.”
“What name is that?”
“It is a cover identity: Serov, Iosef Andreyevich. The officer in question—former officer, I should think—works with progressive elements in the West. We have reason to believe he has instigated operations in which people were killed, including the attack on my people here in Hereford.”
“We had nothing at all to do with that, Vanya,” Golovko said at once, in a very serious voice.
“I have no reason to think that you did, Sergey, but a man with this name, and identified as a Russian national, handed over money and drugs to the Irish terrorists. He was known to the Irishmen from years of experience, including in the Bekaa Valley. So, I think he was KGB at one time. I also have a physical description,” Clark said, and gave it.
“ ‘Serov,’ you said. That’s an odd—”
“Da, I know that.”
“This is important to you?”
“Sergey, in addition to killing two of my people, this operation threatened my wife and daughter directly. Yes, my friend, this is very important to me.”
In Moscow, Golovko wondered about that. He knew Clark, having met him eighteen months before. A field officer of unusual talent and amazing luck, John Clark had been a dangerous enemy, a quintessential professional intelligence officer, along with his younger colleague, Domingo Estebanovich Chavez, if he remembered right. And Golovko knew that his daughter was married to this Chavez boy—he’d just found that out, in fact. Someone had given that information to Kirilenko in London, though he couldn’t remember who.
But if it were a Russian, a former chekist no less, who was stirring up the terrorist pot, well, that was not good news for his country. Should he cooperate? the Chairman asked himself. What was the upside and what might be the downside? If he agreed now, he’d have to follow through on it, else CIA and other Western services might not cooperate with him. Was it in his country’s interest? Was it in his institution’s interest?
“I will see what I can do, Vanya, but I can make no promises,” Clark heard. Okay, that meant he was thinking about it at least.
“I would deem it a personal favor, Sergey Nikolay’ch.”
“I understand. Allow me to see what information I can find.”
“Very well. Good day, my friend.”
“Dosvidaniya.”
Clark punched out the tape and put it in his desk drawer. “Okay, pal, let’s see if you can deliver.”
The computer system in the Russian intelligence service was not as advanced as its Western counterparts, but the technical differences were mainly lost on human users, whose brains moved at slower speed than even the most backward computer. Golovko had learned to make use of it because he didn’t always like to have people doing things for him, and in a minute he had a screenful of data tracked down by the cover name.
POPOV, DMITRIY ARKADEYEVICH, the screen read, giving service number, date of birth, and time of employment. He’d retired as a colonel near the end of the first big RIF that had cut the former KGB by nearly a third. Good evaluations by his superiors, Golovko saw, but he’d specialized in a field in which the agency no longer had great interest. Virtually everyone in that sub-department had been terminated, pensioned off in a land where pensions could feed one for perhaps as much as five days out of a month. Well, there wasn’t much he could do about that, Golovko told himself. It was hard enough to get enough funding out of the Duma to keep his downsized agency operating, despite the fact that the downsized nation needed it more than ever before . . . and this Clark had performed tw
o services that had benefited his nation, Golovko reminded himself—in addition, of course, to previous actions that had caused the Soviet Union no small harm . . . but again, those acts had helped elevate himself to the chairmanship of his agency.
Yes, he had to help. It would be a good bargaining chip to acquire for later requests to be made of the Americans. Moreover, Clark had dealt honorably with him, Sergey reminded himself, and it was distantly troubling to him that a former KGB officer had helped attack the man’s family—attacks on non-combatants were forbidden in the intelligence business. Oh, occasionally the wife of a CIA officer might have been slightly roughed up in the old days of the East-West Cold War, but serious harm? Never. In addition to being nekulturny, it would only have started vendettas that would only have interfered with the conduct of real business, the gathering of information. From the 1950s on, the business of intelligence had become a civilized, predictable one. Predictability was always the one thing the Russians had wanted from the West, and that had to go both ways. Clark was predictable.
With that decision made, Golovko printed up the information on his screen.
“So?” Clark asked Bill Tawney.
“The Swiss were a little slow. It turns out that the account number Grady gave us was real enough—”
“Was?” John said, thinking that he could hear the bad-news “but” coming.
“Well, actually it’s still an active account. It began with about six million U.S. dollars deposited, then several hundred thousand withdrawn—and then, the very day of the attack at the hospital, all but a hundred thousand was withdrawn and redeposited elsewhere, another account in yet another bank.”
“Where?”
“They say they cannot tell us.”
“Oh, well, you tell their fucking Justice Minister that the next time he needs our help, we’ll fuckin’ let the terrorists kill off their citizens!” Clark snarled.
“They do have laws, John,” Tawney pointed out. “What if this chap had an attorney do the transfer? The attorney-client privilege applies, and no country can break that barrier. The Swiss do have laws that govern funds thought to have been generated by criminal means, but we have no proof of that, do we? I suppose we could gin something up to get around the law, but that will take time, old man.”