by Tom Clancy
“YES, ALAN?” Charleston asked, looking up from his desk.
“This is a major operation, I take it?” Kingshot asked.
“Major in its objective, yes,” the Director General confirmed. “As routine as possible in its operation. We only have three people in Budapest, and it would not be overly brilliant to fly in a goon squad.”
“Anyone else going?”
“Jack Ryan, the American,” Sir Basil said.
“He’s no field officer,” Kingshot objected immediately.
“It’s fundamentally an American operation, Alan. They reasonably requested that one of their people go along to observe. In return, we’ll have a day or two to debrief their Rabbit at a safe house of our choosing. He will doubtless have a good deal of useful information, and we’ll get the first chance to speak with him.”
“Well, I hope this Ryan fellow doesn’t queer the pitch for us.”
“Alan, he’s shown himself to be fairly levelheaded in time of trouble, hasn’t he?” Sir Basil asked, reasonable as ever.
“Must be his Marine training,” Kingshot observed with dark generosity.
“And he’s very clever, Alan. He’s been giving us excellent work on his analysis project.”
“If you say so, sir. To get the three bodies, I need to get some help from Special Branch, and then spend time on my knees hoping for something dreadful to happen.”
“What are you thinking?”
Kingshot explained his nascent operational concept. It was really the only way to make something like this happen. And, as Sir Basil had observed earlier in the day, it was as grisly as an autopsy.
“How likely is such a thing to happen?” Basil asked.
“I need to talk with the police to answer that one.”
“Who’s your contact there?”
“Chief Superintendent Patrick Nolan. You’ve met him.”
Charleston closed his eyes for a moment. “The huge chap, arrests rugby forwards for light exercise?”
“That’s Nolan. They call him ‘Tiny’ on the force. I think he eats barbells with his porridge. Am I free to discuss this Operation BEATRIX with him?”
“Just in terms of our needs, Alan.”
“Very good, sir,” Kingshot agreed, and left the room.
“YOU WANT WHAT?” Nolan asked over a pint in a pub a block from New Scotland Yard, just after four in the afternoon.
“You heard me, Tiny,” Kingshot said. He lit a cigarette to fit in with the rest of the bar’s patrons.
“Well, I must say I’ve heard a lot of strange things in my time with the Yard, but never that.” Nolan was a good six-four and two hundred thirty pounds, very little of it fat. He spent at least an hour, three times a week, in the Yard’s exercise room. He rarely carried a handgun on duty. He’d never needed one to help a felon see the futility of resistance. “Can you say what this is for?” he asked.
“Sorry, not allowed to. All I can say is that’s it’s a matter of some importance.”
A long pull on his beer. “Well, you know that we do not keep such things in cold storage, even in the Black Museum.”
“I was thinking a traffic smash. They happen all the time, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do, Alan, but not to a family of three.”
“Well, how often do such things happen?” Kingshot asked.
“Perhaps twenty such incidents in an average year, and their occurrence is wholly irregular. You cannot depend on it in any given week.”
“Well, we’ll just have to hope for good luck, and if it doesn’t happen, then it simply does not happen.” That would be an inconvenience. Perhaps it would be better to enlist the help of the Americans. They killed at least fifty thousand people per year on their highways. He’d suggest that to Sir Basil in the morning, Kingshot decided.
“Good luck? Not sure I’d call it that, Alan,” Nolan pointed out.
“You know what I mean, Tiny. All I can say is that it’s bloody important.”
“And if it happens out on the M4, then what?”
“We collect the bodies—”
“And the survivors of the deceased?” Nolan asked.
“We substitute weighted bags for the bodies. The condition of the corpses will preclude an open-casket ceremony, won’t it?”
“Yes, there is that. Then what?”
“We’ll have our people deal with the bodies. You really do not need to know the details.” The SIS had a close and cordial relationship with the Metropolitan Police, but it went only so far.
Nolan finished his pint. “Yes, I’ll leave the nightmares to you, Alan.” He managed not to shiver. “I should start keeping my eyes open at once, is it?”
“Immediately.”
“And we should consider taking the leavings from more than one such incident?”
“Obviously.” Kingshot nodded. “Another round?”
“Good idea, Alan,” Nolan agreed. And his host waved to the barman. “You know, someday I’d love to know what you are using me for.”
“Someday after we’re both retired, Patrick. You’ll be pleased to know what you are helping with. That I can promise you, old man.”
“If you say so, Alan.” Nolan conceded the point. For now.
“WHAT THE HELL?” Judge Moore observed, reading the latest dispatch from Moscow. He handed the fresh copy over to Greer, who scanned it and passed it along to Mike Bostock.
“Mike, your boy Foley has a lively imagination,” the Admiral commented.
“This sounds more like Mary Pat. She’s the cowboy—well, cowgirl, I suppose you’d say. It is original, guys.”
“Original isn’t the word,” the DCI said, rolling his eyes somewhat. “Okay, Mike, is it doable?”
“Theoretically, yes—and I like the operational concept. To get a defector and keep Ivan ignorant of the fact. That’s style, gentlemen,” Bostock said admiringly. “The ugly part is that you need three bodies, one of them a child.”
The three intelligence executives managed not to shudder at the thought. It was easiest, oddly, for Judge Moore, who’d managed to get his hands wet thirty years earlier. But that had been in time of war, when the rules were a lot looser. But not loose enough for him to keep from having regrets. That was what had gotten him back into the law. He couldn’t take back the things he’d done wrong, but he could make sure they wouldn’t happen again. Or something like that, he told himself now. Something like that.
“Why a car crash?” Moore asked. “Why not a house fire? Doesn’t that suit the tactical purposes better?”
“Good point,” Bostock agreed at once. “Less physical trauma to have to explain away.”
“I’ll shoot that off to Basil.” Even the most brilliant of people, Moore realized, could be limited in their thinking. Well, that was why he kept telling people to think outside the box. And every so often, someone managed to do that. Just not often enough.
“You know,” Mike Bostock said, after a little thinking. “This will be something if we can pull it off.”
“ ‘If’ can be a very large word, Mike,” Greer cautioned.
“Well, maybe this time the glass is half full,” the Deputy DDO suggested. “Fine. The main mission is getting this guy out, but the goose can use a little sauce once in a while.”
“Hmph,” Greer observed dubiously.
“Well, I’ll call Emil over at the Bureau and see what he has to say about this,” Moore said. “More his turf than ours.”
“And if some lawyer gets hold of it, then what, Arthur?”
“James, there are ways of dealing with lawyers.”
A pistol is often useful, Greer didn’t say. He nodded concurrence. One bridge to cross at a time was always a good rule, especially in this crazy business.
“HOW DID THINGS go today, honey?” Mary Pat asked.
“Oh, the usual” was the reply for the microphones in the ceiling. More significant was the double thumbs-up, followed by the pass of the note from his coat pocket. They had a meeting place
and a time. MP would handle that. She read the note and nodded. She and Eddie would take another walk to meet little Svetlana, the zaichik. Then it was just a matter of getting the Rabbit out of town, and since he was KGB, it ought not to be overly hard. That was one advantage of having him work at The Centre. They were taking out a minor nobleman, after all, not just another muzhik from the widget factory.
Dinner, he saw, was steak, the usual celebratory meal. MP was as psyched about this as he was—probably more so. With just a little luck, this Operation BEATRIX would make their reputation, and a good field rep was something they both wanted.
RYAN TOOK THE usual train back to Chatham. He’d missed his wife again, but she’d had a routine day, so she’d probably left early, like all the government-employed docs with whom she worked. He wondered if this bad habit would carry over when they went home to Peregrine Cliff. Probably not. Bernie Katz liked to have his desk clean, and waiting lists at zero, and the local work habits were driving his wife to drink. The good news was that, with no surgery scheduled this week, they’d be able to have wine that evening with dinner.
He wondered how long he’d be away from home. It wasn’t something he was used to. One advantage of being an analyst was that he did all of his work at the office, then drove home. He’d rarely slept away from his wife in all the time they’d been married, a rule almost sacred in their marriage. He liked it when he woke up at three in the morning and could roll over and kiss her in mid-dream, then see her smile in her sleep. His marriage to Cathy was the anchor to his life, the very center of his universe. But now duty would take him away from her for several days—not something he looked forward to. Nor did he look forward to flying on another goddamned airplane into a communist country with false identity papers and overseeing a black operation there—he didn’t know shit about them, just what he’d picked up talking to the occasional field spook at Langley . . . and from his own experiences here in London, and at home over the Chesapeake, when Sean Miller and his terrorists had come to his house with guns blazing. It was something he tried very hard to forget. It might have been different had he stayed in the Marine Corps, but there he would have been surrounded by fellow warriors. He’d have been able to bathe in their respect, to remember his feat of arms with pride at having done the right thing at the right time, to recount his deeds to the interested, to pass along the tactical lessons learned the hard way on the field of demibattle over beers at the O-club, even to smile about something that one didn’t ordinarily smile about. But he’d left the Marine Corps with a bad back, and had had to endure his combat as a very frightened civilian. Courage, though, he’d once been told, was being the only one who knew how terrified you were. And, yeah, he supposed, he’d shown that quality when it had counted. And his job in Hungary would be only to watch, and then, the important part, to sit in while Sir Basil’s boys interviewed the Rabbit at some safe house in London, or wherever, before the Air Force, probably, flew them to Washington in their own special-mission KC-135 out of RAF Bentwaters, with nice food and plenty of liquor to ease the flight fright.
He walked off the train and up the steps, and caught a cab for Grizedale Close, where he found that Cathy had sent Miss Margaret away and was busy in the kitchen, assisted, he saw, by Sally.
“Hey, babe.” Kiss. He lifted Sally for the usual hug. Little girls give the best hugs.
“So, what was the important message about?” Cathy asked.
“No big deal. Kinda disappointing, actually.”
Cathy turned to look her husband in the eye. Jack couldn’t lie worth a damn. It was one of the things she liked about him, actually. “Uh-huh.”
“Honest, babe,” Ryan said, knowing the look, and then deepening the hole in which he was standing. “I didn’t get shot at or anything.”
“Okay,” she acknowledged, meaning, We’ll talk about it later.
Blew it again, Jack, Ryan told himself. “How’s the glasses business?”
“Saw six people, had time for eight or nine, but that’s all I had on my list.”
“Have you told Bernie about working conditions here?”
“Called him today, right after I got home. He had himself a good laugh and told me to enjoy the vacation.”
“What about the guys who had a brewski during a procedure?”
Cathy turned. “He said, and I quote, ‘Jack’s in the CIA, isn’t he? Have him shoot the bastards.’ End of quote.” She turned back to her cooking.
“You need to tell him that we don’t do that sort of thing.” Jack managed a smile. This, at least, wasn’t a lie, and he hoped she could tell.
“I know. You’d never be able to carry it on your conscience.”
“Too Catholic,” he confirmed.
“Well, at least I know you’ll never fool around on me.”
“May God strike me dead with cancer if I ever do.” It was the one imprecation about cancer that she almost approved of.
“You’ll never have reason to, Jack.” And that was true enough. She didn’t like guns and she didn’t like bloodshed, but she did love him. And that was sufficient to the moment.
Dinner turned out okay, followed by the usual evening activities, until it was time for their four-year-old to put on her yellow sleeper and climb into her big-girl bed.
With Sally in bed and Little Jack dozing as well, there was time for the usual mindless TV watching. Or so Jack hoped, until . . .
“Okay, Jack, what’s the bad news?”
“Nothing much,” he answered. The worst possible answer. Cathy was just too good at reading his mind.
“What’s that mean?”
“I have to go on a little trip—to Bonn,” Jack remembered the advice from Sir Basil. “It’s a NATO thing I got stuck with.”
“Doing what?”
“I can’t say, babe.”
“How long?”
“Three or four days, probably. They think I am uniquely suited to this for some damned reason or other.”
“Uh-huh.” Ryan’s semi-truthfulness was just oblique enough to foil her mind reading for once.
“You’re not going to be carrying a gun or anything?”
“Honey, I am an analyst, not a field officer, remember? That sort of thing is not my job. For that matter, I don’t think field spooks carry guns very much anyway. Too hard to explain away if somebody notices.”
“But—”
“James Bond is in the movies, babe, not real life.”
Ryan returned his attention to the TV. ITV was doing a repeat of Danger—UXB, and again Jack found himself wondering if Brian would survive his job of defusing unexploded bombs and then marry Suzy when he returned to civilian life. EOD, now there was a miserable job, but, if you made a mistake, at least it wouldn’t hurt for very long.
“HEARD ANYTHING FROM BOB?” Greer asked just before six in the evening.
Judge Moore stood up from his expensive swivel chair and stretched. Too much time sitting down, and not enough moving around. Back in Texas, he had a small ranch—called that because he owned three quarter horses; you couldn’t be a prominent citizen in Texas unless you owned a horse or two—and three or four times a week, he’d saddle Aztec up and ride around for an hour or so, mainly to get his head clear, to allow himself to think outside his office. That was how he tended to get his best thinking done. Maybe, Moore thought, that’s why he felt so goddamned unproductive here. An office just wasn’t a very good place for thinking, but every executive in the world pretended it was. Christ knew why. That’s what he needed at Langley—his own stable. There was plenty of room on the Langley campus—a good five times what he had in Texas. But if he ever did that, the stories would spread around the world: The American DCI liked to ride horses with his black Stetson hat—that went along with the horse—and probably a Colt .45 on his hip—that was optional—and that just wouldn’t look good to the TV crews that would sooner or later appear at the perimeter fence with their minicams. And so, for reasons of personal vanity, he had to deny hims
elf the chance to do some good creative thinking. It was totally asinine, the former judge told himself, to allow such considerations to affect the way he did his work. Over in England, Basil could chase foxes on the back of a nice hunter-thoroughbred, and would anyone over there care? Hell, no. He’d be admired for it, or at worst thought a tiny bit eccentric, in a country where eccentricity was an admirable quality. But in the Land of the Free, men were enslaved by customs imposed on them by news reporters and elected officials who screwed their secretaries. Well, there was no rule that the world had to make sense, was there?
“Nothing important. Just a cable that said his meetings with our Korean friends were going well,” Moore reported.
“You know, those people scare me a little,” Greer observed. He didn’t have to explain why. The KCIA occasionally had its field personnel deal a little too directly with employees of the other Korean government. The rules were a little different over there. The ongoing state of war between North and South was still a very real thing and, in time of war, some people lost their lives. CIA hadn’t done such things in almost thirty years. Asian people hadn’t adopted Western ideas of the value of human life. Maybe because their countries were just too crowded. Maybe because they have different religious beliefs. Maybe a lot of things, but for whatever reason they were just a little different in the operational parameters they felt free to work within—or without.
“They’re our best eye on North Korea and China, James,” Moore reminded him. “And they are very faithful allies.”