Politika pp-1

by Tom Clancy

  Delacroix stalked over to the bear now, grabbed it by the shoulders.

  “Well, I’m not going to let that happen. Decide who to root for, everyone, make up your minds, because I’m getting in the ring with Boris. I’m taking a piece of him. I’m going to show him that his days of feeding off Uncle Sam are through, and that he’d better get on his way once and for all!”

  Gordian had thought he was prepared for anything, anything at all, but what he saw next made his eyes open wide.

  “Come on, Boris, wrestle me, take me if you can!” Delacroix frothed.

  Then, the tails of his suit jacket flying out behind him, the tongue of his necktie whipping back over his shoulder, Delacroix took a running leap at the bear, knocking it down, locking his arms around it, tumbling around there before the eyes of the assembled senators, and the astonished observers in the public galleries, and the television cameras, until he’d rolled on top of the stuffed animal and pinned it to the floor.

  “It’s over, Boris!” he shouted. “It’s over!”

  And watching from the gallery, looking at the rapt faces of the senators, thinking about how Delacroix’s antics would play with public opinion once they made it to the nightly news, Gordian had the sinking feeling that it very well might be.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  NEW YORK CITY JANUARY 29, 2000

  Come on, Boris. Wrestle me. Take me if you can!

  Almost twenty-four hours after he had watched Delacroix’s antics on the floor of the Capitol building, Gordian could not get the scene out of his head. This was in part because it had been precisely the sort of sensational media lure he had expected it would be. Every network nightly news broadcast had led off with the story. CNN had done the same, and also made it their topic of discussion on Inside Politics, Crossfire, and Larry King Live, as well as their regular ten P.M. update on the Times Square bombing investigation. And this morning it was the lead story above the fold in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

  He had to hand it to Delacroix, who had served two terms as mayor of New Orleans before making a successful bid for the Senate — he had brought a big, glittery suitcase full of Mardi Gras pizzazz to Washington with him, combined it with a sharp instinct for public relations, and turned it into a unique, and perhaps unmatchable, political asset.

  Now Gordian tried to make himself comfortable in a commercial airline seat that even in first class wasn’t as comfortable as his own desk chair, and tried to take his mind off the possible ramifications of yesterday’s congressional session. But there was no retreat from his difficulties. What was the line in that poem? Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. He thought about the conversation he’d had with Ashley before leaving for Washington. She had been staying in their San Francisco apartment for the past month and wanted to take steps to “fix” their marriage. Until she left him on New Year’s Eve, he hadn’t realized it was broken. In need of a minor tune-up, maybe, but that was about it. And then she had gone away. And now he faced the prospect of sharing their deepest intimacies with a third party whose profession he mistrusted. Of laying himself open to a perfect stranger.

  It all seemed to Gordian a painful and distracting waste of time. He and his wife had been married for nearly twenty years. They had raised a wonderful daughter. If they couldn’t make sense of their own lives, how could they expect someone else to do it for them? He recalled the therapists he’d seen after being freed from the Hanoi Hilton, the endless, unendurable decompression program he’d been required to undergo by the Air Force. It wasn’t a memory that gave him confidence. He supposed it had done a lot of good for some men, had little doubt it had, but he’d gotten nothing out of it. Zero.

  Still, he needed to make a decision. And knew that the wrong one could result in Ashley leaving him forever.

  The voice of the stewardess intruded on his reverie. “Ten minutes until takeoff, make sure your carry-on baggage is stored in the overhead compartment or under the seat in front of you.” Where the hell was Nimec? After receiving Pete’s late-night phone call in his hotel room, Gordian had exchanged his ticket for a nonstop return flight from D.C. to San Francisco, and gotten booked aboard a connecting red-eye at Kennedy Airport, in New York City. The same plane Nimec was flying on. Or was supposed to be, anyway. Pete had said he had something important for him, and wanted to present it in person. And as soon as possible. Had he always been this damned cryptic? Or, Gordian wondered, could it be that he himself had never felt so jangled and impatient? He knew Pete had been making tremendous progress in New York, and could hardly—

  A plain manila envelope dropped onto Gordian’s lap and he once again lost his train of thought. He looked up and saw Nimec standing there in the aisle.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Airport traffic.”

  “I wasn’t concerned,” Gordian replied, poker-faced. He lifted the envelope. “This what you said you had for me?”

  Nimec nodded, pushed his bag into the overhead compartment.

  “Can I open it now, or do I wait for next Christmas?” Gordian asked.

  Nimec sat down. He had a local tabloid in his hand. There was a photo of Delacroix under the front-page headline.

  “Not that long,” he said. “But I’d hold off till you’re back in your office.”

  Gordian tapped the envelope against his knees. Took a deep breath.

  “Okay, enough suspense, tell me what’s in it.”

  Nimec smiled.

  “Very good news about very bad people,” he said.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  KALININGRAD, RUSSIA JANUARY 30, 2000

  Max Blackburn’s affair with Megan Breen had caught him totally by surprise; it wasn’t quite as though he’d opened his eyes one night and found himself between the sheets with her, but it wasn’t really so different from that either. If he’d been told a month ago, hell, even a week ago, that he’d be lying naked in bed right now, watching her stride across his room in nothing but a short kimono-style robe, admiring her long, coltish legs, thinking about the things they’d done the night before, thinking about how much he wanted to feel her body pressing against him that very minute, he’d surely have laughed. There couldn’t have been a more unlikely pairing — the battle-scarred former Special Air Service officer and the Ivy League intellectual.

  They had never been friends in the past, and the damnedest thing was that he wasn’t sure they were now. Wasn’t even sure they had much in common besides a die-hard loyalty to Roger Gordian, jobs that had required them to be sent thousands of miles from home to a country neither particularly wanted to be in, and a physical attraction that had seized them both fiercely from the moment they had realized it was there. They hardly knew each other, hardly knew what to say to each other when they weren’t discussing professional matters, and yet they were passionate, almost insatiable, lovers. No ambiguity on that account.

  “I have to get going, Max,” she said, sitting down at the edge of the bed. “Scully wanted to meet me over at the communications center this morning.”

  He sat up against his headboard. “It’s only seven o’clock.”

  “Early this morning,” she said. “What can I tell you? Scull’s got a way of making people humor him.”

  “What’s the fire?”

  “Depends on when you’re asking.” She shrugged. His eye caught how the material pulled slightly over the curve of her breast. “A couple days ago he was concerned that we had too many of the technicians involved in reconfiguring the mainframe software for the Politika databases. Feels the operation’s draining manpower and technical resources away from completion of the satellite facilities… which, in his opinion, ought to be our foremost priority here.”

  “And his latest worry?”

  “It builds on the first. He says that the security detail’s stretched thin, given that we’ve shifted our emphasis toward intelligence gathering, and inserted ourselves into a volatile international situation. My guess is he’s going to give me a grand tour to pro
ve his point, then push for me to expand the force.”

  “I didn’t know that sort of thing fell within his bailiwick.” Max smiled. “Actually, it occurs to me that it ought to be in mine. Last anyone told me, I was assistant director of Sword.”

  She put a hand on his chest. It felt cool where it touched his skin, yet oddly made him warm at the same time. He supposed that was a rough but adequate metaphor for their relationship.

  No, he thought. Not relationship. Involvement. That was a much better word.

  “Scull has problems recognizing that his authority has limits. And because he’s been giving orders to people for so long, so does everybody else,” she said.

  “I wonder if he’s gotten wind that we’re sleeping together,” Max said. “That’s just the sort of thing that would piss him off.”

  She looked amused. “You really think so?”

  “Scull hasn’t been having a good time of it being stuck in the middle of nowhere. And when he’s miserable, he doesn’t want to know about anyone else enjoying himself.”

  “Or herself.”

  “Glad to know it’s mutual.”

  “Exceedingly, and perhaps even multiply on occasion.” She glanced down at the sheet over his waist, saw the response her touch had elicited in him, and gave him a look of mild but unblushing surprise.

  “Dear me,” she said. “I didn’t mean to distract you from our conversation.”

  He looked down at himself.

  “Semper fi,” he said.

  “Spoken like a true ex-marine.” She was still smiling like that cat that ate the canary. “Uh, if I may get back to the previous subject a moment, how do you think I should address Scull’s concerns? His stated ones, that is.”

  Blackburn was thinking he didn’t want to talk about that now. Didn’t want to talk, period. As she obviously was well aware.

  He traced a finger lightly up her thigh, reached the hem of her robe, considered venturing higher.

  “I think I’d like to persuade you to give him a buzz and advise him you’ll be a half hour late.”

  “I think I’d like that, too, which is why I’m not going to let you get any further.” Her hand clamped his wrist. “Seriously, how do you feel?”

  He sighed, frustrated but trying not to show it.

  “I couldn’t tell you whether the timetable for getting the station fully operational’s been thrown off. Unlike Scull, I stick with what I know. But he’s right about security needing to be cranked. There’s no way we can kid ourselves that Sword’s mission is strictly business.”

  “Which, I assume, means you agree that we need additional personnel,” she said.

  “Not necessarily. I’d prefer to keep it lean and mean for the present, concentrate on reorganizing and tightening up procedures. Plenty can be accomplished by—”

  The chirping of the bedside phone caused him to abort his sentence.

  Megan looked at him.

  “You don’t suppose that’s Scull, do you? I mean, would he have the nerve to call your place trying to get hold of me?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him.” Blackburn shrugged, reached for the phone, then let his hand rest on the receiver a moment. “If it is Scull, you want me to curse him out?”

  “If it’s him, I’ll be the one to do the cursing,” she said.

  He smiled a little and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Max, sorry to disturb you, I know it’s early in Kaliningrad. But this is very important,” a voice said at the other end of the line.

  “No, no, it’s okay.” Blackburn turned to Megan, covered the receiver, mouthed the word “Gordian.”

  An odd expression came onto her face. Was it his imagination, or did the unflappable Megan Breen look flustered? He suddenly recalled water-cooler rumors that she’d been pining for Roger since she joined the firm. Could they have been true? And if so, what business was it of his? And why should he feel bruised?

  “Max, you know the crew Pete’s been tracking down?” Gordian said guardedly. “The ones who crashed the New Year’s Eve party?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We’ve got descriptions, points of exit, and points of entry for them,” Gordian said.

  Blackburn straightened.

  “I should really take this in my office, it’s got a more secure line,” he said. “I’ll hang up and get right back to you.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” Gordian said, and hung up.

  Blackburn tore off his sheets, threw his legs over the side of the bed, and hurried to his clothing closet.

  “Now what’s your fire?” Megan said, perplexed.

  “Better get dressed,” he said, slipping on his pants. “I’ll tell you on the way out.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW FEBRUARY 1, 2000

  His back to the door, hands clasped behind him, Starinov was standing by the window, watching the sun leap at severe angles off the golden helmet domes of the Assumption Cathedral, when Yeni Bashkir entered his office.

  On Starinov’s large mahogany pedestal desk was a bound report. Printed on its first page in Cyrillic were the words “CLASSIFIED MATERIAL.”

  Letting the door close softly behind him, Bashkir grunted to himself and took two steps forward over the medallion-patterned Caucasian rug. He was reminded, as always, of the rich history of his surroundings. Going back through the centuries, how many tsars and ministers must have stood just as he and Starinov were now?

  “Yeni,” Starinov said without turning to face him. “Right on time, as always. You’re the only man I know whose obsession with punctuality equals my own.”

  “Old military habits die hard,” Bashkir said.

  Starinov nodded. He was wringing his hands.

  “The report,” he said in a heavy tone. “Have you read the copy I had delivered to you?”

  “I have.”

  “There is more besides. A bill has been introduced in the American legislature. It would force the President to discontinue all agricultural aid to our country and result in a complete economic embargo. Business enterprises between our nations would be suspended.”

  “I know.”

  “These sanctions can be avoided, I am told, if I prosecute a man the Americans have implicated as the originator of a heinous conspiracy and act of destruction. A man who would surely deserve the harshest of punishments should the accusations against him be proven.”

  There was silence in the room for perhaps two full minutes. Bashkir didn’t move. Starinov’s eyes didn’t leave the great crownlike cathedral domes.

  “Just once,” he resumed finally, lowering his head, “I would like to feel as sure of myself as I remember being in my younger days. Does everything sooner or later cloud with uncertainty, so that we go to our graves knowing less than we did as children?”

  Bashkir waited a moment, staring at Starinov’s back. Then he said, “Let’s get this over with. If you need to ask me, then do it.”

  Starinov shook his bowed head. “Yeni—”

  “Ask me.”

  Starinov expelled his breath in a massive sigh. Then he turned and looked sadly at Bashkir.

  “I want to know if the report the Americans have given me is true. If you are responsible for the bombing in New York,” he said. “I need to hear it from your lips, on your honor.”

  “The truth,” Bashkir echoed.

  Starinov nodded again.

  Something turned in Bashkir’s eyes. “If I were the sort of man who would slaughter thousands of human beings in a cowardly terrorist attack, the sort who believed that a political agenda would be worth spilling the blood of helpless women and children — be they Americans, Russians, or innocent citizens of any nation — then what trust could you place in my word of honor? And what value would our friendship have? Would a man behind such a deceitful coup against you, a man capable of betraying you so completely, have trouble answering you with a lie?”

  Starinov smiled ruefully. “I thought I was
the one with questions here,” he said.

  Bashkir had remained rigid and motionless. His cheek quivered a little, but that was all. After a moment he spoke again.

  “Here is truth for you, Vladimir. I have been clear about my mistrust of the American government. I have dissented with your open-door policies to American investors. I still subscribe to the basic ideals of Communism and am convinced we must build closer ties to China, a nation with which we share a four-thousand-mile frontier. I am open about all these things. But I also openly abhor terrorism. And as a sworn member of your cabinet, I have always acted in what I believe to be your best interests. Dissect me if you will, discard the parts that conflict with those that have cast my loyalty and integrity in doubt. That is the easy way out for you, I think. But I would have expected you to look at the whole of who I am. Who I have been for as long as we have known each other.” He paused. His eyes bored into Starinov from under his shaggy eyebrows. “I did not have anything to do with the bombing. I would never become involved in creating such horror. You speak of my honor? I will never again be dishonored by responding to such a question as you have asked me. Lock me away in prison, execute me… or better yet, have the Americans do it. I have spoken my piece.”

  Silence.

  Starinov regarded him steadily from across the room, his outline framed in the hard winter sunlight flooding in the window.

  “I will be leaving for my dacha on the coast next week,” he said. “I need to be alone and think. The pressure from the United States will be intense, and will be joined by those here at home who want us to cave in to them, but we will find a way to stand against it all. No matter what they do, we will stand.”