by Tom Clancy
“Still eats like a soldier,” the cameraman said.
“He was a good one once,” another officer observed. “You foolish old man, how could you do it?”
Breakfast was over soon thereafter, and they watched Filitov walk toward the bathroom, where he washed and shaved. He returned to view to dress. On the videoscreen, they saw him take out a brush to polish his boots. He always wore his boots, they knew, which was unusual for Ministry officers. But so were the three gold stars on his uniform blouse. He stood before the bureau mirror, inspecting himself. The paper went into his briefcase, and Filitov walked out the door. The last noise they heard was the key setting the lock on the apartment door. The Major got on the phone.
“Subject is moving. Nothing unusual this morning. Shadow team is in place.”
“Very well,” Vatutin replied and hung up.
One of the cameramen adjusted his instrument to record Filitov’s emergence from the building. He took the salute from the driver, got into the car, and disappeared down the street. A completely unremarkable morning, they all agreed. They could afford to be patient now.
The mountains to the west were sheathed in clouds, and a fine drizzle was falling. The Archer hadn’t left yet. There were prayers to be said, people to console. Ortiz was off having his face attended to by one of the French doctors, while his friend was riffling through the CIA officer’s papers.
It made him feel guilty, but the Archer told himself that he was merely looking for records that he himself had delivered to the CIA officer. Ortiz was a compulsive note-taker, and, the Archer knew, a map fancier. The map he wanted to see was in its expected place, and clipped to it were several diagrams. These he copied by hand, quickly and accurately, before replacing all as it had been.
“You guys are so square,” Bea Taussig laughed.
“It would be a shame to spoil the image,” Al replied, a smile masking his distaste for their guest. He never understood why Candi liked this ... whatever the hell she was. Gregory didn’t know why she rang bells in the back of his head. It wasn’t the fact that she didn’t like him—Al didn’t give a damn one way or the other about that. His family and his fiancée loved him, and all his co-workers respected him. That was enough. If he didn’t fit into somebody’s notion of what an Army officer was supposed to be, screw ’em. But there was something about Bea that—
“Okay, we’ll talk business,” their guest said with amusement. “I have people from Washington asking me how soon—”
“Somebody ought to tell those bureaucrats that you don’t just turn things like this on and off,” Candi growled.
“Six weeks, tops.” Al grinned. “Maybe less.”
“When?” Candi asked.
“Soon. We haven’t had a chance to run it on the simulator yet, but it feels right. It was Bob’s idea. He was about due, and it streamlined the software package even better than what I was trying. We don’t have to use as much AI as I thought.”
“Oh?” The use of Al—artificial intelligence—was supposed to be crucial to mirror performance and target discrimination.
“Yeah, we were overengineering the problem, trying to use reason instead of instinct. We don’t have to tell the computer how to think everything out. We can reduce the command load twenty percent by putting pre-set options in the program. It turns out to be quicker and easier than making the computer make most judgments off a menu.”
“What about the anomalies?” Taussig asked.
“That’s the whole point. The AI routines were actually slowing things down more than we thought. We were trying to make the thing so flexible that it had trouble doing anything. The expected laser performance is good enough that it can take the fire-option faster than the AI program can decide whether to aim it—so why not take the shot? If it doesn’t fit the profile, we pop it anyway.”
“Your laser specs have changed,” Bea observed.
“Well, I can’t talk about that.”
Another grin from the little geek. Taussig managed to smile back. I know something you don’t know!, is it? Just looking at him made her skin crawl, but what was worse was the way Candi looked at him, like he was Paul Newman or something! Sallow complexion, even zits, and she loved this thing. Bea didn’t know whether to laugh or cry ...
“Even us admin pukes have to be able to plan ahead,” Taussig said.
“Sorry, Bea. You know the security rules.”
“Makes you wonder how we get anything done.” Candi shook her head. “If it gets any worse, Al and I won’t be able to talk to each other between ...” She smiled lecherously at her lover.
Al laughed. “I have a headache.”
“Bea, do you believe this guy?” Candi asked.
Taussig leaned back. “I never have.”
“When are you going to let Dr. Rabb take you out? You know he’s been mooning over you for six months.”
“The only mooning I expect out of him is from a car. God, that’s a ghastly thought.” Her look at Candi masked her feelings exquisitely well. She also realized that the programming information that she’d gotten out was now invalid. Damn the little geek for changing it!
“That’s something. Question is, what?” Jones keyed his microphone. “Conn, Sonar, we have a contact bearing zero-nine-eight. Designate this contact Sierra-Four.”
“You sure it’s a contact?” the young petty officer asked.
“See this?” Jones ran his finger along the screen. The “waterfall display” was cluttered with ambient noise. “Remember that you’re looking for nonrandom data. This line ain’t random.” He typed in a command to alter the display. The computer began processing a series of discrete frequency bands. Within a minute the picture was clear. At least Mr. Jones thought so, the young sonarman noted. The stroke of light on the screen was irregularly shaped, bowing out and narrowing down, covering about five degrees of bearing. The “tech-rep” stared at the screen for several more seconds, then spoke again.
“Conn, Sonar, classify target Sierra-Four as a Krivak-class frigate, bearing zero-nine-six. Looks like he’s doing turns for fifteen or so knots.” Jones turned to the youngster. He remembered his own first cruise. This nineteen-year-old didn’t even have his dolphins yet. “See this? That’s the high-frequency signature from his turbine engines, it’s a dead give-away and you can hear it a good ways off, usually, ’cause the Krivak doesn’t have good sound-isolation.”
Mancuso came into the compartment. Dallas was a “first-flight” 688, and didn’t have direct access from the control room to sonar as the later ones did. Instead, you had to come forward and step around a hole in the deck that led below. Probably the overhaul would change that. The Captain waved his coffee mug at the screen.
“Where’s the Krivak?”
“Right here, bearing still constant. We have good water around us. He’s probably a good ways off.”
The skipper smiled. Jones was always trying to guess range. The hell of it was that in the two years that Mancuso had had him aboard as a member of the crew he’d been right more often than not. Aft in the control room, the fire-control tracking party was plotting the position of the target against Dallas’ known track to determine range and course of the Soviet frigate.
There wasn’t much activity on the surface. The other three sonar contacts plotted were all single-screw merchantmen. Though the weather was decent today, the Baltic Sea—an oversized lake to Mancuso’s way of thinking—was rarely a nice place in the winter. Intelligence reports said that most of the opposition’s ships were tied alongside for repairs. That was good news. Better still, there wasn’t much in the way of ice. A really cold season could freeze things solid, and that would put a crimp in their mission, the Captain thought.
Thus far only their other visitor, Clark, knew what that mission was.
“Captain, we have a posit on Sierra-Four,” a lieutenant called from control.
Jones folded a slip of paper and handed it to Mancuso.
“I’m waiting.”
&
nbsp; “Range thirty-six thousand, course roughly two-nine-zero.”
Mancuso unfolded the note and laughed. “Jones, you’re still a fucking witch!” He handed it back, then went aft to alter the submarine’s course to avoid the Krivak.
The sonarman at Jones’s side grabbed the note and read it aloud. “How did you know? You aren’t supposed to be able to do that.”
“Practice, m’boy, practice,” Jones replied in his best W. C. Fields accent. He noted the submarine’s course change. It wasn’t like the Mancuso he remembered. In the old days, the skipper would close to get photos through the periscope, run a few torpedo solutions, and generally treat the Soviet ship like a real target in a real war. This time they were opening the range to the Russian frigate, creeping away. Jones didn’t think Mancuso had changed all that much, and started wondering what the hell this new mission was all about.
He hadn’t seen much of Mr. Clark. He spent a lot of time aft in the engine room, where the ship’s fitness center was—a treadmill jammed between two machine tools. The crew was already murmuring that he didn’t talk very much. He just smiled and nodded and went on his way. One of the chiefs noted the tattoo on Clark’s forearm and was whispering some stuff about the meaning of the red seal, specifically that it stood for the real SEALs. Dallas had never had one of those aboard, though other boats had, and the stories, told quietly except for the occasional “no shit!” interruptions, had circulated throughout the submarine community but nowhere else. If there was anything submariners knew how to do, it was keeping secrets.
Jones stood and walked aft. He figured he’d taught enough lessons for one day, and his status as a civilian technical representative allowed him to wander about at will. He noted that Dallas was taking her own sweet time, heading east at nine knots. A look at the chart told him where they were, and the way the navigator was tapping his pencil on it told him how much farther they’d be going. Jones started to do some serious thinking as he went below for a Coke. He’d come back for a really tense one after all.
“Yes, Mr. President?” Judge Moore answered the phone with his own tense look. Decision time?
“That thing we talked about in here the other day ...”
“Yes, sir.” Moore looked at the phone. Aside from the handset that he held, the “secure” phone system was a three-foot cube, cunningly hidden in his desk. It took words, broke them into digital bits, scrambled them beyond recognition, and sent them out to another similar box which put them back together. One interesting sidelight of this was that it made for very clear conversations, since the encoding system eliminated all the random noise on the line.
“You may go ahead. We can’t—well, I decided last night that we can’t just leave him.” This had to be his first call of the morning, and the emotional content came through, too. Moore wondered if he’d lost sleep over the life of the faceless agent. Probably he had. The President was that sort of man. He was also the sort, Moore knew, to stick with a decision once made. Pelt would try to change it all day, but the President was getting it out at eight in the morning and would have to stick with it.
“Thank you, Mr. President. I’ll set things in motion.” Moore had Bob Ritter in his office two minutes later:
“The CARDINAL extraction is a ‘go’!”
“Makes me glad I voted for the man,” Ritter said as he smacked one hand into the other. “Ten days from now we’ll have him in a nice safehouse. Jesus, the debrief’ll take years!” Then came the sober pause. “It’s a shame to lose his services, but we owe it to him. Besides, Mary Pat has recruited a couple of real live ones for us. She made the film pass last night. No details, but I gather that it was a hairy one.”
“She always was a little too—”
“More than a little, Arthur, but all field officers have some cowboy in them.” The two Texas natives shared a look. “Even the ones from New York.”
“Some team. With those genes, you gotta wonder what their kids’ll be like,” Moore observed with a chuckle. “Bob, you got your wish. Run with it.”
“Yes, sir.” Ritter went off to send his message, then informed Admiral Greer.
The telex went via satellite and arrived in Moscow only fifteen minutes later: TRAVEL ORDERS APPROVED. KEEP ALL RECEIPTS FOR ROUTINE REIMBURSEMENT.
Ed Foley took the decrypted message into his office. So, whatever desk-sitter got cold feet on us found his socks after all, he thought. Thank God.
Only one more transfer to go! We’ll pass the message at the same time, and Misha’ll catch a flight to Leningrad, then just follow the plan. One good thing about CARDINAL was that he’d practiced his escape routine at least once a year. His old tank outfit was now assigned to the Leningrad Military District, and the Russians understood that kind of sentiment. Misha had also seen to it over the years that his regiment was the first to get new equipment and to train in new tactics. After his death, it would be designated the Filitov Guards—or at least that’s what the Soviet Army was planning to do. It was too bad, Foley thought, that they’d have to change that plan. On the other hand, maybe CIA would make some other sort of memorial to the man ...
But there was still that one more transfer to make, and it would not be an easy one. One step at a time, he told himself. First we have to alert him.
Half an hour later, a nondescript embassy staffer left the building. At a certain time he’d be standing at a certain place. The “signal” was picked up by someone else who was not likely to be shadowed by “Two.” This person did something else. He didn’t know the reason, only where and how the mark was to be made. He found that very frustrating. Spy work was supposed to be exciting, wasn’t it?
“There’s our friend.” Vatutin was riding in the car, wanting to see for himself that things were going properly. Filitov entered his car, and the driver took him off. Vatutin’s car followed for half a kilometer, then turned off as a second car took over, racing over to a parallel street to keep pace.
He kept track of events by radio. The transmissions were crisp and businesslike as the six cars rotated on and off surveillance, generally with one ahead of the target vehicle and one behind. Filitov’s car stopped at a grocery store that catered to senior Defense Ministry officials. Vatutin had a man inside—Filitov was known to stop there two or three times per week—to see what he bought and whom he talked to.
He could tell that things were going perfectly, as was not unexpected once he’d explained to everybody on the case that the Chairman had personal interest in this one. Vatutin’s driver raced ahead of their quarry, depositing the Colonel across the street from Filitov’s apartment building. Vatutin walked inside and went up to the apartment that they had taken over.
“Good timing,” the senior officer said as Vatutin came in the door.
The “Two” man looked discreetly out the window and saw Filitov’s car come to a halt. The trailing car motored past without a pause as the Army Colonel walked into the building.
“Subject just entered the building,” a communications specialist said. Inside, a woman with a string-bag full of apples would get on the elevator with Filitov. Up on Filitov’s floor, two people who looked young enough to be teenagers would stroll past the elevator as he got out, continuing down the corridor with overly loud whispers of undying love. The surveillance mikes caught the end of that as Filitov opened the door.
“Got him,” the cameraman said.
“Let’s keep away from the windows,” Vatutin said unnecessarily. The men with binoculars stood well back from them, and so long as the lights in the apartment were left off—the bulbs had been removed from the fixtures—no one could tell that the rooms were occupied.
One thing they liked about the man was his aversion to pulling down the shades. They followed him into the bedroom, where they watched him change into casual clothes and slippers. He returned to the kitchen and fixed himself a simple meal. They watched him tear the foil top off a half-liter bottle of vodka. The man was sitting and staring out the window.
“One way or another, we’ll find out.”
Why is it that the State can betray us? Misha asked Corporal Romanov two hours later.
Because we are soldiers, I suppose. Misha noted that the corporal was avoiding the question, and the issue. Did he know what his Captain was trying to ask?
But if we betray the State ... ?
Then we die, Comrade Captain. That is simple enough. We earn the hatred and contempt of the peasants and workers, and we die. Romanov stared across time into his officer’s eyes. The corporal now had his own question. He lacked the will to ask it, but his eyes seemed to proclaim: What have you done, my Captain?
Across the street, the man on the recording equipment noted sobbing, and wondered what caused it.
“What’re you doing, honey?” Ed Foley asked, and the microphones heard.
“Starting to make lists for when we leave. So many things to remember, I’d better start now.”
Foley bent over her shoulder. She had a pad and a pencil, but she was writing on a plastic sheet with a marker pen. It was the sort of arrangement that hung on many refrigerators, and could be wiped clean with a swipe of a damp cloth.
I’LL DO IT, she’d written. I HAVE A PERFECT DODGE. Mary Pat smiled and held up a team photo of Eddie’s hockey squad. Each player had signed it, and at the top in scrawling Russian, Eddie had put, with his mother’s coaching: “To the man who brings us luck. Thanks, Eddie Foley.”
Her husband frowned. It was typical of his wife to use the bold approach, and he knew that she’d used her cover with consummate skill. But ... he shook his head. But what? The only man in the CARDINAL chain who could identify him had never seen his face. Ed may have lacked her panache, but he was more circumspect. He felt that he was better than his wife at countersurveillance. He acknowledged Mary Pat’s passion for the work, and her acting skill, but—damn it, she was just too bold sometimes. Fine-why don’t you tell her? he asked himself.