by Tom Clancy
When they were gone and the door closed, the DCI asked, “SORGE?”
Mary Pat just nodded and handed the folder across, taking a seat on the couch. Sears remained standing. It was only then that he realized his hands were a little moist. That hadn’t happened to him before. Sears, as head of the DI’s Office of China Assessments, worked mainly on political evaluations: who was who in the PRC’s political hierarchy, what economic policies were being pursued—the Society Page for the People’s Republic, as he and his people thought of it, and joked about it over lunch in the cafeteria. He’d never seen anything like this, nothing hotter than handling internal dissent, and while their methods for handling such things tended to be a little on the rough side, as he often put it—mainly it meant summary execution, which was more than a little on the rough side for those affected—the distances involved helped him to take a more detached perspective. But not on this.
“Is this for real?” the DC asked.
“Dr. Sears thinks so. He also thinks we need to get Weaver down from Brown University.”
Ed Foley looked over at Sears. “Call him. Right now.”
“Yes, sir.” Sears left the room to make the call.
“Jack has to see this. What’s he doing now?”
“He’s leaving for Warsaw in eight hours, remember? The NATO meeting, the photo opportunity at Auschwitz, stopping off at London on the way home for dinner at Buckingham Palace. Shopping on Bond Street,” Ed added. There were already a dozen Secret Service people in London working with the Metropolitan Police and MI-5, properly known as the Security Service. Twenty more were in Warsaw, where security concerns were not all that much of an issue. The Poles were very happy with America right now, and the leftover police agencies from the communist era still kept files on everyone who might be a problem. Each would have a personal baby-sitter for the entire time Ryan was in the country. The NATO meeting was supposed to be almost entirely ceremonial, a basic feel-good exercise to make a lot of European politicians look pretty for their polyglot constituents.
“Jesus, they’re talking about making a move on Grushavoy!” Ed Foley gasped, getting to page three. “Are they totally off their fuckin’ rockers?”
“Looks like they found themselves in a corner unexpectedly,” his wife observed. “We may have overestimated their political stability.”
Foley nodded and looked up at his wife. “Right now?”
“Right now,” she agreed.
Her husband lifted his phone and punched speed-dial #1.
“Yeah, Ed, what is it?” Jack Ryan asked.
“Mary and I are coming over.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“That important?” the President asked.
“This is CRITIC stuff, Jack. You’ll want Scott, Ben, and Arnie there, too. Maybe George Winston. The foundation of the issue is his area of expertise.”
“China?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, come on over.” Ryan switched phones. “Ellen, I need SecState, SecTreas, Ben, and Arnie in my office, thirty minutes from right now.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” his secretary acknowledged. This sounded hot, but Robby Jackson was on his way out of town again, to give a speech in Seattle, at the Boeing plant of all places, where the workers and the management wanted to know about the 777 order to China. Robby didn’t have much to say on that point, and so he’d talk about the importance of human rights and America’s core beliefs and principles, and all that wave-the-flag stuff. The Boeing people would be polite about it, and it was hard to be impolite to a black man, especially one with Navy Wings of Gold on his lapel, and learning to handle this political bullshit was Robby’s main task. Besides, it took pressure off Ryan, and that was Jackson’s primary mission in life, and oddly enough, one which he accepted with relative equanimity. So, his VC-20B would be over Ohio right about now, Jack thought. Maybe Indiana. Just then Andrea came in.
“Company coming?” Special Agent Price-O’Day asked. She looked a little pale, Jack thought.
“The usual suspects. You feeling okay?” the President asked.
“Stomach is a little upset. Too much coffee with breakfast.”
Morning sickness? Ryan wondered. If so, too bad. Andrea tried so hard to be one of the boys. Admitting this female failing would scar her soul as though from a flamethrower. He couldn’t say anything about it. Maybe Cathy could. It was a girl thing.
“Well, the DCI’s coming over with something he says is important. Maybe they’ve changed the toilet paper in the Kremlin, as we used to say at Langley back when I worked there.”
“Yes, sir.” She smiled. Like most Secret Service agents, she’d seen the people and the secrets come and go, and if there were important things for her to know, she’d find out in due course.
General-Lieutenant Kirillin liked to drink as much as most Russians, and that was quite a lot by American standards. The difference between Russians and Brits, Chavez had learned, was that the Brits drank just as much, but they did it with beer, while the Russians made do with vodka. Ding was neither a Mormon nor a Baptist, but he was over his capacity here. After two nights of keeping up with the local Joneses, he’d nearly died on the morning run with his team, and only avoided falling out for fear of losing face before the Russian Spetsnaz people they were teaching to come up to Rainbow standards. Somehow he’d managed not to puke, though he had allowed Eddie Price to take charge of the first two classes that day while he’d wandered off to drink a gallon of water to chase down three aspirins. Tonight, he’d decided, he’d cut off the vodkas at two ... maybe three.
“How are our men doing?” the general asked.
“Just fine, sir,” Chavez answered. “They like their new weapons, and they’re picking up on the doctrine. They’re smart. They know how to think before they act.”
“Does this surprise you?”
“Yes, General, it does. It was the same for me once, back when I was a squad sergeant in the Ninjas. Young soldiers tend to think with their dicks rather than their brains. I learned better, but I had to learn it the hard way in the field. It’s sometimes a lot easier to get yourself into trouble than it is to think yourself out of it. Your Spetsnaz boys started off that way, but if you show them the right way, they listen pretty good. Today’s exercise, for example. We set it up with a trap, but your captain stopped short on the way in and thought it through before he committed, and he passed the test. He’s a good team leader, by the way. I’d say bump him to major.” Chavez hoped he hadn’t just put the curse of hell on the kid, realizing that praise from a CIA officer wasn’t calculated to be career-enhancing for a Russian officer.
“He’s my nephew. His father married my sister. He’s an academician, a professor at Moscow State University.”
“His English is superb. I’d take him for a native of Chicago.” And so Captain Leskov had probably been talent-scouted by KGB or its successor agency. Language skills of that magnitude didn’t just happen.
“He was a parachutist before they sent him to Spetsnaz,” Kirillin went on, “a good light-infantryman.”
“That’s what Ding was, once upon a time,” Clark told the Russian.
“Seventh Light Infantry. They de-established the division after I left. Seems like a long time now.”
“How did you go from the American army into CIA?”
“His fault,” Chavez answered. “John spotted me and foolishly thought 1 had potential.”
“We had to clean him up and send him to school, but he’s worked out pretty well—even married my daughter.”
“He’s still getting used to having a Latino in the family, but I made him a grandfather. Our wives are back in Wales.”
“So, how did you emerge from CIA into Rainbow?”
“My fault, again,” Clark admitted. “I did a memo, and it perked to the top, and the President liked it, and he knows me, and so when they set the outfit up, they put me in charge of it. I wanted Domingo here to be part of it, too. He’
s got young legs, and he shoots okay.”
“Your operations in Europe were impressive, especially at the park in Spain.”
“Not our favorite. We lost a kid there.”
“Yeah,” Ding confirmed with a tiny sip of his drink. “I was fifty yards away when that bastard killed Anna. Homer got him later on. Nice shot it was.”
“I saw him shoot two days ago. He’s superb.”
“Homer’s pretty good. Went home last fall on vacation and got himself a Dall sheep at eight hundred-plus yards up in Idaho. Hell of a trophy. He made it into the Boone and Crockett book in the top ten.”
“He should go to Siberia and hunt tiger. I could arrange that,” Kirillin offered.
“Don’t say that too loud.” Chavez chuckled. “Homer will take you up on it.”
“He should meet Pavel Petrovich Gogol,” Kirillin went on.
“Where’d I hear that name?” Clark wondered at once.
“The gold mine,” Chavez handled the answer.
“He was a sniper in the Great Patriotic War. He has two gold stars for killing Germans, and he’s killed hundreds of wolves. There aren’t many like him left.”
“Sniper on a battlefield. The hunting must get real exciting.”
“Oh, it is, Domingo. It is. We had a guy in Third SOG who was good at it, but he damned near got his ass killed half a dozen times. You know—” John Clark had a satellite beeper, and it started vibrating in his belt. He picked it up and checked the number. “Excuse me,” he said and looked for a good place. The Moscow officers’ club had a court-yard, and he headed for it.
What does this mean?” Arnie van Damm asked. The executive meeting had started with copies of the latest SORGE/SONGBIRD being passed out. Arnie was the fastest reader of the group, but not the best strategic observer.
“It doesn’t mean anything good, pal,” Ryan observed, turning to the third page.
“Ed,” Winston asked, looking up from page two. “What can you tell me about the source? This looks like the insider-trading document from hell.”
“A member of the Chinese Politburo keeps notes on his conversations with the other ministers. We have access to those notes, never mind how.”
“So, this document and the source are both genuine?”
“We think so, yes.”
“How reliable?” TRADER persisted.
The DCI decided to take a long step out on a thin limb. “About as reliable as one of your T-bills.”
“Okay, Ed, you say so.” And Winston’s head went back down. In ten seconds, he muttered, “Shit ...”
“Oh, yeah, George,” POTUS agreed. “‘Shit’ about covers it.”
“Concur, Jack,” SecState agreed.
Of those present, only Ben Goodley managed to get all the way through it without a comment. For his part, Goodley, for all the status and importance that came from his job as the President’s National Security Adviser, felt particularly junior and weak at the moment. Mainly he knew that he was far the President’s inferior in knowledge of national-security affairs, that he was in his post mainly as a high-level secretary. He was a carded National Intelligence Officer, one of whom, by law and custom, accompanied the President everywhere he went. His job was to convey information to the President. Former occupants of his corner office in the West Wing of the White House had often told their presidents what to think and what to do. But he was just an information-conveyor, and at the moment, he felt weak even in that diminished capacity.
Finally, Jack Ryan looked up with blank eyes and a vacant face. “Okay. Ed, Mary Pat, what do we have here?”
“It looks as if Secretary Winston’s predictions on the financial consequences of the Beijing Incident might be coming true.”
“They’re talking about precipitous consequences,” Scott Adler observed coolly. “Where’s Tony?”
“Secretary Bretano’s down at Fort Hood, Texas, looking at the heavy troopers at Third Corps. He gets back late tonight. If we yank him back in a hurry, people will notice,” van Damm told the rest.
“Ed, will you object if we get this to him, secure?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Ryan nodded and reached across his desk for his phone. “Send Andrea in, please.” That took less than five seconds.
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“Could you walk this over to Signals, and have them TAPDANCE it to THUNDER?” He handed her the document. “Then please bring it back here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thanks, Andrea,” Ryan told the disappearing form. Then he took a drink of water and turned to his guests. “Okay, it looks pretty serious. How serious is it?”
“We’re bringing Professor Weaver down from Brown to evaluate it for us. He’s about the best guy in the country for reading their minds.”
“Why the hell doesn’t he work for me?” Jack asked.
“He likes it at Brown. He comes from Rhode Island. We’ve offered him a job across the river half a dozen times that I know of,” DCI Foley told Ryan, “but he always says the same thing.”
“Same at State, Jack. I’ve known George for fifteen years or more. He doesn’t want to work for the government.”
“Your kind of man, Jack,” Arnie added for a little levity.
“Besides, he can make more money as a contractor, can’t he? Ed, when he comes down, make sure he comes in to see me.”
“When? You’re flying out in a few hours,” Ed pointed out.
“Shit.” Ryan remembered it now. Callie Weston was just finishing up the last of his official speeches in her office across the street. She was even coming across on Air Force One with the official party. Why was it that you couldn’t deal with things one at a time? Because at this level, they just didn’t arrive that way.
“All right,” Jack said next. “We need to evaluate how serious this is, and then figure a way to forestall it. That means—what?”
“One of several things. We can approach them quietly,” SecState Adler said. “You know, tell them that this has gone too far, and we want to work with them on the sly to ameliorate the situation.”
“Except Ambassador Hitch is over here now, consulting, remember? Where’s he doing it today, Congressional or Burning Tree?” POTUS asked. Hitch enjoyed golf, a hobby he could hardly pursue in Beijing. Ryan could sympathize. He was lucky to get in one round a week, and what swing he’d once had was gone with the wind.
“The DCM in Beijing is too junior for something like this. No matter what we said through him, they wouldn’t take it seriously enough.”
“And what, exactly, could we give them?” Winston asked. “There’s nothing big enough to make them happy that we could keep quiet. They’d have to give us something so that we could justify giving them anything, and from what I see here, they don’t want to give us anything but a bellyache. We’re limited in our action by what the country will tolerate.”
“You think they’d tolerate a shooting war?” Adler snapped.
“Be cool, Scott. There are practical considerations. Anything juicy enough to make these Chinese bastards happy has to be approved by Congress, right? To get such a concession through Congress would mean giving them the justification for it.” Winston waved the secret document in his hand. “But we can’t do that because Ed here would have a fit, and even if we did, somebody on the Hill would leak it to the papers in a New York minute, and half of them would call it danegeld, and say fuck the Chinks, millions for defense but not one penny for tribute. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Arnie answered. “The other half would call it responsible statesmanship, but the average Joe out there wouldn’t much like it. The average citizen would expect you to call Premier Xu on the phone and say, ‘Better not do this, buddy,’ and expect it to stick.”
“Which would, by the way, kill SONGBIRD,” Mary Pat added as a warning, lest they take that option seriously. “That would end a human life, and deny us further information that we need to have. And from my reading of this report, Xu would deny eve
rything and just keep going forward. They really think they’re in a corner, but they can’t see a way to smart themselves out of it.”
“The danger is ... ?” TRADER asked.
“Internal political collapse,” Ryan explained. “They’re afraid that if anything upsets the political or economic conditions inside the country, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. With serious consequences for the current royal family of the PRC.”
“Called the chop.” Ben Goodley had to say something, and that was an easy one. “Actually a rifle bullet today.” It didn’t help him feel much better. He was out of his depth and he knew it.
That’s when the President’s STU rang. It was SecDef Tony Bretano, THUNDER. “Yeah,” Ryan said. “Putting you on speaker, Tony. Scott, George, Arnie, Ed, Mary Pat, and Ben are here, and we just read what you got.”
“I presume this is real?”
“Real as hell,” Ed Foley told the newest member of the SORGE/ SONGBIRD chorus.
“This is worrisome.”
“On that we are agreed, Tony. Where are you now?”
“Standing on top of a Bradley in the parking lot. Never seen so many tanks and guns in my life. Feels like real power here.”
“Yeah, well, what you just read shows you the limits of our power.”
“So I gather. If you want to know what I think we should do about it—well, make it clear to them somehow that this would be a really bad play for them.”
“How do we do that, Tony?” Adler asked.
“Some animals—the puffer fish, for example. When threatened, it swallows a gallon of water and expands its size—makes it look too big to eat.”
Ryan was surprised to hear that. He’d no idea that Bretano knew anything about animals. He was a physics and science guy. Well, maybe he watched the Discovery Channel like everyone else.
“Scare them, you mean?”
“Impress them, better way of putting it.”
“Jack, we’re going to Warsaw—we can let Grushavoy know about this ... how about we invite him into NATO? The Poles are there already. It would commit all of Europe to come to Russia’s defense in the event of an invasion. I mean, that’s what alliances and mutual-defense treaties are all about. ‘You’re not just messing with me, Charlie. You’re messing with all my friends, too.’ It’s worked for a long time.”