by Tom Clancy
Jack didn't feel like jogging. That was what he told himself. In fact he knew that he couldn't have jogged half a mile with a gun to his head. And so he walked briskly. He soon found himself being passed by early-morning exercise nuts, many of whom had to be fighter pilots, they were so young and lean. Morning mist hung in the trees that were planted nearly to the edge of the black-topped roads. It was much cooler than at home, with the still air disturbed every few minutes by the discordant roar of jet engines—“the sound of freedom”—the audible symbol of military force that had guaranteed the peace of Europe for over forty years — now resented by the Germans, of course. Attitudes change as rapidly as the times. American power had achieved its goal and was becoming a thing of the past, at least as far as Germany was concerned. The inner-German border was gone. The fences and guard towers were down. The mines were gone. The plowed strip of dirt that had remained pristine for two generations to betray the footprints of defectors was now planted with grass and flowers. Locations in the east once examined in satellite photos or about which Western intelligence agencies had sought information at the cost of both money and blood were now walked over by camera-toting tourists, among whom were intelligence officers more shocked than bemused at the rapid changes that had come and gone like the sweep of a spring tide. I knew that was right about this place, some thought. Or, How did we ever blow that one so badly?
Ryan shook his head. It was more than amazing. The question of the two Germanys had been the centerpiece of East-West conflict since before his birth, had appeared to be the one unchanging thing in the world, the subject of enough white papers and Special National Intelligence Estimates and news stories to fill the entire Pentagon with pulp. All the effort, all the examination of minutiae, the petty disputes — gone. Soon to be forgotten. Even scholarly historians would never have the energy to look at all the data that had been thought important — crucial, vital, worthy of men's lives — and was now little more than a vast footnote to the end of the Second World War. This base had been one such item. Designed to house the aircraft whose task it was to clear the skies of Russian planes and crush a Soviet attack, it was now an expensive anachronism whose residential apartments would soon house German families. Ryan wondered what they'd do with the aircraft shelters like that one there… Wine cellars, maybe. The wine was pretty good.
“Halt!” Ryan stopped cold in his tracks and turned to see where the sound had come from. It was an Air Force security policeman — woman. Girl, actually, Ryan saw, though her M-16 rifle neither knew nor cared about plumbing fixtures.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“ID, please.” The young lady was quite attractive, and quite professional. She also had a backup in the trees. Ryan handed over his CIA credentials.
“I've never seen one of these, sir.”
“I came in last night on the VC-2o. I'm staying over at the Inn, room 109. You can check with Colonel Parker's office.”
“We're on security alert, sir,” she said next, reaching for her radio.
“Just do your job, miss — excuse me, Sergeant Wilson. My plane doesn't leave till ten.” Jack leaned against a tree to stretch. It was too nice a morning to get excited about anything, even if there were two armed people who didn't know who the hell he was.
“Roger.” Sergeant Becky Wilson switched off her radio. “The Colonel's looking for you, sir.”
“On the way back, I turn left at the Burger King?”
That's right, sir." She handed his ID back with a smile.
Thanks, Sarge. Sorry to bother you."
“You want a ride back, sir? The colonel's waiting.”
“I'd rather walk. He can wait, he's early.” Ryan walked away from a buck-sergeant who now had to ponder the importance of a man who kept her base commander sitting on the front step of the Cannon. It took ten brisk minutes, but Ryan's directional sense had not left him, despite the unfamiliar surroundings and a six-hour time differential.
“Morning, sir!” Ryan said as he vaulted the wall into the parking lot.
“I set up a little breakfast with COMUSAFE staff. We'd like your views on what's happening in Europe.”
Jack laughed. “Great! I'm interested in hearing yours.” Ryan walked off toward his room to dress. What makes them think I know anything more than they do! By the time his plane left, he'd learned four things he hadn't known. Soviet forces withdrawing from what had formerly been called East Germany were decidedly unhappy with the fact that there was no place for them to withdraw to. Elements of the former East German army were even less happy about their enforced retirement than Washington actually knew; they probably had allies among ex-members of the already de-established Stasi. Finally, though an even dozen members of the Red Army Faction had been apprehended in Eastern Germany, at least that many others had gotten the message and vanished before they, too, could be swept up by the Bundeskriminalamt, the German federal police. That explained the security alert at Ramstein, Ryan was told.
The VC-2oB lifted off from the airfield just after ten in the morning, headed south. Those poor terrorists, he thought, devoting their lives and energy and intellect to something that was vanishing more swiftly than the German countryside below him. Like children whose mother had died. No friends now. They'd hidden out in Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic, blissfully unaware of the coming demise of both communist states. Where would they hide now? Russia? No chance. Poland? That was a laugh. The world had changed under them, and was about to change again, Ryan thought with a wistful smile. Some more of their friends were about to watch the world change. Maybe, he corrected himself. Maybe…
“Hello, Sergey Nikolayevich,” Ryan had said as the man had entered his office, a week before.
“Ivan Emmetovich,” the Russian had replied, holding out his hand. Ryan remembered the last time they'd been this close, on the runway of Moscow 's Sheremetyevo Airport. Golovko had held a gun in his hand then. It had not been a good day for either, but as usual, it was funny the way things had worked out. Golovko, for having nearly, but not quite, prevented the greatest defection in Soviet history, was now First Deputy Chairman of the Committee for State Security. Had he succeeded, he would not have gone quite so far, but for being very good, if not quite good enough, he'd been noticed by his own President, and his career had taken a leap upward. His security officer had camped in Nancy 's office with John Clark, as Ryan had led Golovko into his.
“I am not impressed.” Golovko looked around disapprovingly at the painted gypsum-board drywall. Ryan did have a single decent painting borrowed from a government warehouse, and, of course, the not-exactly-required photo of President Fowler over by the clothes tree on which Jack hung his coat.
“I do have a nicer view, Sergey Nikolayevich. Tell me, is the statue of Iron Feliks still in the middle of the square?”
“For the moment.” Golovko smiled. “Your Director is out of town, I gather.”
“Yes, the President decided that he needed some advice.”
“On what?” Golovko asked with a crooked smile.
“Damned if I know,” Ryan answered with a laugh. Lots of things, he didn't say.
“Difficult, is it not? For both of us.” The new KGB Chairman was not a professional spook either — in fact, that was not unusual. More often than not, the director of that grim agency had been a Party man, but the Party was becoming a thing of history also, and Narmonov had selected a computer expert who was supposed to bring new ideas into the Soviet Union 's chief spy agency. That would make it more efficient. Ryan knew that Golovko had an IBM PC behind his desk in Moscow now.
“Sergey, I always used to say that if the world made sense, I'd be out of a job. So, look what's happening. Want some coffee?”
“I would like that, Jack.” A moment later he expressed approval of the brew.
“ Nancy sets it up for me every morning. So. What can I do for you?”
“I have often heard that question, but never in such surroundings as this.”
There was a rumbling laugh from Ryan's guest. “My God, Jack, do you ever wonder if this is all the result of some drug-induced dream?”
“Can't be. I cut myself shaving the other day, and I didn't wake up.”
Golovko muttered something in Russian that Jack didn't catch, though his translators would when they went over the tapes.
“I am the one who reports to our parliamentarians on our activities. Your Director was kind enough to respond favorably to our request for advice.”
Ryan couldn't resist that opening: “No problem, Sergey Nikolayevich. You can screen all your information through me. I'd be delighted to tell you how to present it.” Golovko took it like a man.
“Thank you, but the Chairman might not understand.” With jokes aside, it was time for business.
“We want a quid pro quo.” The fencing began.
“And that is?”
“Information on the terrorists you guys used to support.”
“We cannot do that,” Golovko said flatly.
“Sure you can.”
Next Golovko waved the flag: “An intelligence service cannot betray confidences and continue to function.”
“Really? Tell Castro that next time you see him,” Ryan suggested.
“You're getting better at this, Jack.”
“Thank you, Sergey. My government is most gratified indeed for your President's recent statement on terrorism. Hell, I like the guy personally. You know that. We're changing the world, man. Let's clean a few more messes up. You never approved of your government's support for those creeps.”
“What makes you believe that?” the First Deputy Chairman asked.
“Sergey, you're a professional intelligence officer. There's no way you can personally approve the actions of undisciplined criminals. I feel the same way, of course, but in my case it's personal.” Ryan leaned back with a hard look. He would always remember Sean Miller and the other members of the Ulster Liberation Army who'd made two earnest attempts to kill Jack Ryan and his family. Only three weeks earlier, after years exhausting every legal opportunity, after three writs to the Supreme Court, after demonstrations and appeals to the Governor of Maryland and the President of the United States for executive clemency, Miller and his colleagues had, one by one, walked into the gas chamber in Baltimore, and been carried out half an hour later, quite dead. And may God have mercy on their souls, Ryan thought. If God has a strong enough stomach. One chapter in his life was now closed for good.
“And the recent incident…?”
“The Indians? That merely illustrates my case. Those ”revolutionaries“ were dealing drugs to make money. They're going to turn on you, the people you used to fund. In a few years, they're going to be more of a problem for you than they ever were for us.” That was entirely correct, of course, and both men knew it. The terrorist-drug connection was something the Soviets were starting to worry about. Free enterprise was starting most rapidly of all in Russia 's criminal sector. That was as troubling to Ryan as to Golovko. “What do you say?”
Golovko inclined his head to the side. “I will discuss it with the Chairman. He will approve.”
“Remember what I said over in Moscow a couple of years back? Who needs diplomats to handle negotiations when you have real people to settle things?”
“I expected a quote from Kipling or something similarly poetic,” the Russian observed dryly. “So, how do you deal with your Congress?”
Jack chuckled. “Short version is, you tell them the truth.”
“I needed to fly eleven thousand kilometers to hear you say that?”
“You select a handful of people in your parliament you can trust to keep their mouths shut, and whom the rest of parliament trust to be completely honest — that's the hard part — and you brief them into everything they need to know. You have to set up ground rules—”
“Ground rules?”
“A baseball term, Sergey. It means the special rules that apply to a specific playing field.”
Golovko's eyes lit up. “Ah, yes, that is a useful term.”
“Everyone has to agree on the rules, and you may never, ever break them.” Ryan paused. He was talking like a college lecturer again, and it wasn't fair to speak that way to a fellow professional.
Golovko frowned. That was the hard part, of course: never, ever breaking the rules. The intelligence business wasn't often that cut and dried. And conspiracy was part of the Russian soul.
“It's worked for us,” Ryan added.
Or has it? Ryan wondered. Sergey knows if it has or not… well, he knows some things that I don't. He could tell me if we've had major leaks on The Hill, since Peter Henderson… but at the same time he knows that we've penetrated so many of their operations despite their manic passion for the utmost secrecy. Even the Soviets had admitted it publicly: the hemorrhage of defectors from KGB over the years had gutted scores of exquisitely-planned operations against America and the West. In the Soviet Union as in America, secrecy was designed to shield failure as well as success.
“What it comes down to is trust,” Ryan said after another moment. “The people in your parliament are patriots. If they didn't love their country, why would they put up with all the bullshit aspects of public life? It's the same here.”
“Power,” Golovko responded at once.
“No, not the smart ones, not the ones you will be dealing with. Oh, there'll be a few idiots. We have them here. They are not an endangered species. But there are always those who're smart enough to know that the power that comes with government service is an illusion. The duty that comes along with it is always greater in magnitude. No, Sergey, for the most part you'll be dealing with people as smart and honest as you are.”
Golovko's head jerked at the compliment, one professional to another. He'd guessed right a few minutes earlier, Ryan was getting good at this. He started to think that he and Ryan were not really enemies any longer. Competitors, perhaps, but not enemies. There was more than professional respect between them now.
Ryan looked benignly at his visitor, smiling inwardly at having surprised him. And hoping that one of the people Golovko would select for oversight would be Oleg Kirilovich Kadishev, code-name SPINNAKER. Known in the media as one of the most brilliant Soviet parliamentarians in a bumptious legislative body struggling to build a new country, his reputation for intelligence and integrity belied the fact that he'd been on the CIA payroll for several years, the best of all the agents recruited by Mary Pat Foley. The game goes on, Ryan thought. The rules were different. The world was different. But the game went on. Probably always would, Jack thought, vaguely sorry it was true. But, hell, America even spied on Israel — it was called “keeping an eye on things”; it was never called “running an operation.” The oversight people in Congress would have leaked that in a minute. Oh, Sergey, do you have a lot of new things to learn about!
Lunch followed. Ryan took his guest to the executive dining room, where Golovko found the food somewhat better than KGB standards — something Ryan would not have believed. He also found that the top CIA executives wanted to meet him. The Directorate chiefs and their principal deputies all stood in line to shake his hand and be photographed. Finally there was a group photo before Golovko had taken the executive elevator back to his car. Then the people from Science and Technology, and security, had swept every inch of every corridor and room Golovko and his bodyguard had traveled. Finding nothing, they had swept again. And again. And once more, until it was decided that he had not availed himself of the opportunity to play his own games. One of the S&.T people had lamented the fact that it just wasn't the same anymore.
Ryan smiled, remembering the remark. Things were happening so goddamned fast. He settled back into the chair and tightened his seatbelt. The VC-2O was approaching the Alps, and the air might be bumpy there.
“Want a paper, sir?” the attendant asked. It was a girl for a change, and a pretty one. Also married and pregnant. A pregnant staff sergeant. It made Ryan uneasy to be served b
y someone like that.
“What d'you have?”
“International Trib.”
“Great!” Ryan took the paper — and nearly gasped. There it was, right on the front page. Some bonehead had leaked one of the photos. Golovko, Ryan, the directors of S&.T, Ops, Admin, Records, and Intelligence, plunging through their lunches. None of the American identities were secret, of course, but even so…
“Not a real good picture, sir,” the sergeant noted with a grin. Ryan was unable to be unhappy.
“When are you due, Sarge?”
“Five more months, sir.”
“Well, you'll be bringing your child into a much better world than the one either one of us was stuck with. Why don't you sit down and relax? I'm not liberated enough to be waited on by a pregnant lady.”
* * *
The International Herald Tribune is a joint venture of the New York Times and the Washington Post. The one sure way for Americans traveling in Europe to keep track of the ball scores and important comic strips, it had already broadened its distribution into what had been the Eastern Bloc, to serve American businessmen and tourists who were flooding the former communist nations. The locals also used it, both as a way to hone their English skills and to keep track of what was happening in America, more than ever a fascination to people learning how to emulate something they'd been raised to hate. In addition it was as fine an information source as had ever been available in those countries. Soon everyone was buying it, and the American management of the paper was expanding operations to broaden its readership still further.
One such regular reader was Günther Bock. He lived in Sofia, Bulgaria, having left Germany — the eastern part — rather hurriedly some months before, after a warning tip from a former friend in the Stasi. With his wife, Petra, Bock had been a unit leader in the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and after that had been crushed by the West German police, in the Red Army Faction. Two near arrests by the Bundeskriminalamt had frightened him across the Czech border, and thence on to the DDR, where he had settled into a quiet semi-retirement. With a new identity, new papers, a regular job — he never showed up, but the employment records were completely in Ordnung — he deemed himself safe. Neither he nor Petra had reckoned with the popular revolt that had overturned the government of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, but they both decided that they could survive that change in anonymity. They'd never counted on a popular riot storming into Stasi headquarters, either. That event had resulted in the destruction of literally millions of documents. Many of the documents had not been destroyed, however. Many of the rioters had been agents of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the West German intelligence agency, who'd been in the front ranks of the intruders, and known exactly which rooms to savage. Within days, people from the RAF had started disappearing. It had been hard to tell at first. The DDR. telephone system was so decrepit that getting phone calls through had never been easy, and for obvious security reasons the former associates had not lived in the same areas, but when another married couple had failed to make a rendezvous for dinner, Günther and Petra had sensed trouble. Too late. While the husband made rapid plans to leave the country, five heavily armed GSG-9 commandos had kicked down the flimsy door of the Bock apartment in East Berlin. They'd found Petra nursing one of her twin daughters, but whatever sympathy they might have felt at so touching a scene had been mitigated by the fact that Petra Bock had murdered three West German citizens, one quite brutally. Petra was now in a maximum-security prison, serving a life sentence in a country where “life” meant that you left prison in a casket or not at all. The twin daughters were the adopted children of a Munich police captain and his barren wife.