by Tom Clancy
"THIS IS RON Jones."
"This is Tom Donner at NEC News."
"That's nice," Jonesy said diffidently. "I watch CNN myself."
"Well, maybe you want to watch our show tonight. I'd like to talk to you about—"
"I read the Times this morning. It's delivered up here. No comment," he added.
"But—"
"But, yes, I used to be a submariner, and they call us the Silent Service. Besides, that was a long time ago. I run my own business now. Married, kids, the whole nine yards, y'know?"
"You were lead sonar man aboard USS Dallas when—"
"Mr. Donner, I signed a secrecy agreement when I left the Navy. I don't talk about the things we did, okay?" It was his first encounter with a reporter, and it was living up to everything he'd ever been told to expect.
"Then all you have to do is tell us that it never happened."
"That what never happened?" Jones asked.
"The defection of a Russian sub named Red October."
"You know the craziest thing I ever heard as a sonar man?"
"What's that?"
"Elvis." He hung up. Then he called Pearl Harbor.
WITH DAYLIGHT, THE TV trucks rolled through Winchester, Virginia, rather like the Civil War armies that had exchanged possession of the town over forty times.
He didn't actually own the house. It could not even be said that CIA did. The land title was in the name of a paper corporation, in turn owned by a foundation whose directors were obscure, but since real-property ownership in America is a matter of public record, and since all corporations and foundations were also, that data would be run down in less than two days, despite the tag on the files which told the clerks in the county courthouse to be creatively incompetent in finding the documents.
The reporters who showed up had still photos and taped file footage of Nikolay Gerasimov, and long lenses were set up on tripods to aim at the windows, a quarter mile away, past a few grazing horses which made for a nice touch on the story: CIA TREATS RUSSIAN SPYMASTER LIKE VISITING KING.
The two security guards at the house were going ape, calling Langley for instructions, but the CIA's public affairs office—itself rather an odd institution—didn't have a clue on this one, other than falling back on the stance that this was private property (whether or not that was legally correct under the circumstances was something CIA's lawyers were checking out) and that, therefore, the reporters couldn't trespass.
It had been years since he'd had much to laugh about. Sure, there had been the occasional light moment, but this was something so special that he'd never even considered its possibility. He'd always thought himself an expert on America. Gerasimov had run numerous spy operations against the "Main Enemy," as the United States had once been called in the nonexistent country he'd once served, but he admitted to himself that you had to come here and live here for a few years to understand how incomprehensible America was, how nothing made sense, how literally anything could happen, and the madder it was, the more likely it seemed. No imagination was sufficient to predict what would happen in a day, much less a year. And here was the proof of it.
Poor Ryan, he thought, standing by the window and sipping his coffee. In his country—for him it would always be the Soviet Union—this would never have happened. A few uniformed guards and a hard look would have driven people off, or if the look alone didn't, then there were other options. But not in America, where the media had all the freedom of a wolf in the Siberian pines—he nearly laughed at that thought, too. In America, wolves were a protected species. Didn't these fools know that wolves killed people?
"Perhaps they will go away," Maria said, appearing at his side.
"I think not."
"Then we must stay inside until they do," his wife said, terrified at the development.
He shook his head. "No, Maria."
"But what if they send us back?"
"They won't. They can't. One doesn't do that with defectors. It's a rule," he explained. "We never sent Philby, or Burgess, or MacLean back—drunks and degenerates. Oh, no, we protected them, bought them their liquor, and let them diddle with their perversions, because that's the rule." He finished his coffee and walked back to the kitchen to put the cup and saucer in the dishwasher. He looked at it with a grimace. His apartment in Moscow and his dacha in the Lenin Hills—probably renamed since his departure—hadn't had an appliance like that one. He'd had servants to do such things. No more. In America convenience was a substitute for power, and comfort the substitute for status.
Servants. It could all have been his. The status, the servants, the power. The Soviet Union could still have been a great nation, respected and admired across the world. He would have become General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He could then have initiated the needed reforms to clear out the corruption and get the country moving again. He would probably have made a full rapprochement with the West, and made a peace, but a peace of equals it would have been, not a total collapse. He'd never been an ideologue, after all, though poor old Alexandrov had thought him so, since Gerasi-mov had always been a Party man—well, what else could you be in a one-party state? Especially if you knew that destiny had selected you for power.
But, no. Destiny had betrayed him, in the person of John Patrick Ryan, on a cold, snowy Moscow night, sitting, he recalled, in a streetcar barn, sitting in a resting tram. And so now he had comfort and security. His daughter would soon be married to what the Americans called "old money," what other countries called the nobility, and what he called worthless drones—the very reason the Communist Party had won its revolution. His wife was content with her appliances and her small circle of friends. And his own anger had never died.
Ryan had robbed him of his destiny, of the sheer joy of power and responsibility, of being the arbiter of his nation's path—and then Ryan had taken to himself that same destiny, and the fool didn't know how to make use of it. The real disgrace was to have been done in by such a person. Well, there was one thing to be done, wasn't there? Gerasimov walked into the mud room that led out the back, selected a leather jacket, and walked outside. He thought for a moment. Yes, he'd light a cigarette, and just walk up the driveway to where they were, four hundred meters away. Along the way he would consider how to couch his remarks, and his gratitude to President Ryan. He'd never stopped studying America, and his observations on how the media thought would now stand him in good stead, he thought.
"DID I WAKE you up, Skipper?" Jones asked. It was about four in the morning at Pearl Harbor.
"Not hardly. You know, my PAO is a woman, and she's pregnant. I hope all this crap doesn't put her into early labor." Rear Admiral (Vice Admiral selectee, now) Mancuso was at his desk, and his phone, on his instructions, wasn't ringing without a good reason. An old shipmate was such a reason.
"I got a call from NEC, asking about a little job we did in the Atlantic."
"What did you say?"
"What do you think, Skipper? Zip." In addition to the honor of the situation, there was also the fact that Jones did most of his work with the Navy. "But—"
"Yeah, but somebody is gonna talk. Somebody always does."
"They know too much already. The Today Show is doing a live shot from Norfolk, the Eight-Ten Dock. You can guess what they're saying."
Mancuso thought about flipping his office TV on, but it was still too early for the NBC morning news show— no. He did flip it on and selected CNN. They were doing sports now, and the top of the hour was coming.
"Next they might ask about another job we did, the one involving a swimmer."
"Open line, Dr. Jones," CoMSuePAC warned.
"I didn't say where, Skipper. It's just something you'll want to think about."
"Yeah," Mancuso agreed. "Maybe you can tell me one thine."
"What's that, Ron?"
"What's the big deal? I mean, sure, I won't talk and neither will you, but somebody will, sure as hell. Too good a sea story not to tell. But what's the
big deal, Bart? Didn't we do the right thing?"
"I think so," the admiral replied. "But I guess people just like a story."
"You know, I hope Ryan runs. I'll vote for him. Pretty cool stuff, bagging the head of the KGB and—"
"Ron!"
"Skipper, I'm just repeating what they're saying on TV, right? I have no personal knowledge of that at all." Damn, Jonesy thought, what a sea story this one is. And it's all true. At the other end of the line the "Breaking News" graphic came up on Mancuso's TV screen.
"YES, I AM Nikolay Gerasimov," the face said on screens all over the world. There were at least twenty reporters clustered on the other side of the stone fence, and the hard part was hearing one of the shouted questions.
"Is it true that you were—"
"Are you—"
"Were you—"
"Is it true that—"
"Silence, please." He held up his hand. It took fifteen seconds or so. "Yes, I was at one time the chairman of KGB. Your President Ryan induced me to defect, and I have lived in America ever since, along with my family."
"How did he get you to defect?" a reporter shouted.
"You must understand that the intelligence business is, as you say, rough. Mr. Ryan plays the game well. At the time there was ongoing power struggle. CIA opposed my faction in favor of Andrey Il'ych Narmonov. So, he came to Moscow under cover of advisor to START talks. He claimed that he wanted to give me information to make the meeting happen, yes?" Gerasimov had decided that downgrading his English skills would make him seem more credible to the cameras and microphones. "Actually, you can say he trap me with accusation that I was going to create, how you say, treason? Not true, but effective, and so I decide to come to America with my family. I come by airplane. My family come by submarine."
"What? Submarine?"
"Yes, was submarine Dallas." He paused and smiled rather grimly. "Why are you so hard on President Ryan? He serve his country well. A master spy," Gerasimov said admiringly.
"WELL, THERE GOES that story." Bob Holtzman muted his television and turned to his managing editor.
"Sorry, Bob." The editor handed the copy back. It was to have run in three days. Holtzman had done a masterful job of assembling his information, and then taken the time to integrate it all into a cohesive and flattering picture of the man whose office was only five blocks from his own. It was about spin, that most favored of Washington words. Somebody had changed the spin, and that was that. Once the initial story went out, it was impossible even for an experienced journalist like Holtzman to change it, especially if his own paper didn't support him.
"Bob," the editor said with a measure of embarrassment, "your take on this is different than mine. What if this guy's a cowboy? I mean, okay, getting the submarine was one thing, Cold War and all that, but tampering with internal Soviet politics—isn't that close to an act of war?"
"That's not what it was really about. He was trying to get an agent out, code name CARDINAL. Gerasimov and Aleksandrov were using that spy case to topple Narmonov and kill off the reforms he was trying to initiate."
"Well, Ryan can say that all day if he wants. That's not how it's going to come across. 'Master spy'? Just what we need to run the country, hmph?"
"Ryan isn't like that, God damn it!" Holtzman swore. "He's a straight shooter right out of—"
"Yeah, he shoots straight, all right. He's killed at least three people. Killed, Bob! How the hell did Roger Durling ever get it into his head that this was the right guy to be Vice President. I mean, Ed Kealty isn't much of a prize, but at least—"
"At least he knows how to manipulate us, Ben. He suckered that airhead on TV, and then he suckered the rest of us into following the story his way."
"Well…" Ben Saddler ran out of things to say at that point. "It's factual, isn't it?"
"That isn't the same as 'true, Ben, and you know it."
"This is going to have to be looked into. Ryan looks like a guy who's played fast and loose with everything he's touched. Next, I want this Colombian story run down. Now, can you do it? Your contacts at the Agency are pretty good, but I have to tell you, I worry about your objectivity on this."
"You don't have a choice, Ben. If you want to keep up, it's my story—course you can always just reword what the Times says," Holtzman added, making his editor flush. Life could be tough in the media, too.
"Your story, Bob. Just make sure you deliver. Somebody broke the law, and Ryan's the one who covered everything up and came out smelling like a rose. I want that story." Saddler stood. "I have an editorial to write."
DARYAEI COULD SCARCELY believe it. The timing could scarcely have been better. He was days away from his next goal, and his target was about to descend into the abyss entirely without his help. With his help, of course, the fall would be farther still.
"Is that what it appears to be?"
"It would seem so," Badrayn replied. "I can do some quick research and be back to you in the morning."
"Is it truly possible?" the Ayatollah persisted.
"Remember what I told you about lions and hyenas? For America it is a national sport. It is no trick. They don't do such tricks. However, let me make sure. I have my methods."
"Tomorrow morning, then."
34 WWW.TERROR.ORG
HE HAD MUCH WORK TO do along those lines anyway. Back in his office, Badrayn activated his desktop computer. This had a high-speed modem and a dedicated fiber-optic telephone line that ran to an Iranian—UIR, now—embassy in Pakistan, and from there another line to London, where he could link into the World Wide Web without fear of a trace. What had once been a fairly simple exercise for police agencies—that's what counterespionage and counterterrorism was, after all—was now virtually impossible. Literally millions of people could access all the information mankind had ever developed, and more quickly than one could walk to one's car for a trip to the local library. Badrayn started by hitting press areas, major newspapers from the Times in Los Angeles to the Times in London, with Washington and New York in between. The major papers all presented much the same basic story—quicker on the Web than in the printed editions, in fact—though the initial editorial comment differed somewhat from one to another. The stories were vague on dates, and he had to remind himself that the mere repetition of the content didn't guarantee accuracy, but it jelt real. He knew Ryan had been an intelligence officer, knew that the British, the Russians, and the Israelis respected him. Surely stories such as these would explain that respect. They also made him slightly uneasy, a fact which would have surprised his master. Ryan was potentially a more formidable adversary than Daryaei appreciated. He knew how to take decisive action in difficult circumstances, and such people were not to be underestimated.
It was just that Ryan was out of his element now, and that was plain from the news coverage. As he changed from one home page to another, a brand-new editorial came up. It called for a congressional inquiry into Ryan's activities at CIA. A statement from the Colombian goveminent asked in clipped diplomatic terms for an explanation of the allegations—and that would start another firestorm. How would Ryan respond to the charges and the demands? An open question, Badrayn judged. He was an unknown quantity. That was disturbing. He printed up the more important articles and editorials for later use, and then went on with his real business.
There was a dedicated home page for conventions and trade shows in America. Probably for the use of travel agents, he thought. Well, that wasn't far off. Then it was just a matter of selecting them by city. That told him the identity of the convention centers, typically large barnlike buildings. Each of those had a home page as well, to boast of their capabilities. Many showed diagrams and travel directions. All gave phone and fax numbers. These he collected as well until he had twenty-four, a few extra, just in case. One could not send one of his travelers to a ladies' underwear show, for example—although… he chuckled to himself. Fashion and fabric shows — these would be for the winter season, though summer had not yet come even
to Iran. Automobile shows. These, he saw, traced across America as the various car and truck manufacturers showed their wares like a traveling circus… so much the better.
Circus, he thought, and punched up another home page—but, no, it was just a few weeks too early in the year for that. Too bad. Too bad indeed! Badrayn groused. Didn't the big circuses travel in private trains? Damn. But that was just bad timing, and bad timing could not be helped. The auto show would have to do.
And all the others.
GROUP TWO'S MEMBERS were all fatally ill now, and it was time to end their suffering. It wasn't so much mercy as efficiency. There was no point at all in risking the lives of the medical corpsmen by treating people condemned to death by law and science both, and so like the first group they were dispatched by large injections of Dilaudid, as Moudi watched the TV. The relief for the medics was visible, even through the cumbersome plastic suits. In just a few minutes all of the test subjects were dead. The same procedures as before would be exercised, and the doctor congratulated himself that they'd worked so well, and no extraneous personnel had been infected. That was mainly because of their ruthlessness. Other places—proper hospitals—would not be so lucky, he knew, already mourning the loss of fellow practitioners.
It was a strange truism of life that second thoughts came only when it was too late for them. He could no more stop what was to come than he could stop the turning of the earth.
The medics started loading the infected bodies on the gurneys, and he turned away. He didn't need to see it again. Moudi walked into the lab.
Another set of technicians was now loading the "soup" into containers known as flasks. They had a thousand times more than was needed for the operations, but the nature of the exercise was such that it was actually easier to make too much than it was to make just enough and, the director had explained offhandedly, one never knew when more might be needed. The flasks were all made of stainless steel, actually a specialized alloy that didn't lose its strength in extreme cold. Each was three-quarters filled and sealed. Then it would be sprayed with a caustic chemical to make certain the outside was clean. Next it would be placed on a cart and rolled to the cold-storage locker in the building's basement, there to be immersed in liquid nitrogen. The Ebola virus particles could stay there for decades, too cold to die, completely inert, waiting for their next exposure to warmth and humidity, and a chance to reproduce and kill. One of the flasks stayed in the lab, sitting in a smaller cryogenic container, about the size of an oil drum but somewhat taller, with an LED display showing the interior temperature.