by Tom Clancy
Maybe. Ryan admitted to himself that this might be as false a panacea as all the others; it had never been tried, after all.
“May I make a suggestion to you?”
“Certainly,” Golovko answered.
“Let’s drop the shop talk, and you tell me about this room while I enjoy the champagne.” It’ll save us both a lot of time when we write up our contact reports tomorrow.
“Perhaps I could get you some vodka?”
“No, thanks, this bubbly stuff is great. Local?”
“Yes, from Georgia,” Golovko said proudly. “I think it is better than the French.”
“I wouldn’t mind taking a few bottles home,” Ryan allowed.
Golovko laughed, a short bark of amusement and power. “I will see to it. So. The palace was finished in 1849, at the cost of eleven million rubles, quite a sum at the time. It’s the last grand palace ever built, and, I think, the best ...”
Ryan wasn’t the only one touring the room, of course. Most of the American delegation had never seen it. Russians bored with the reception led them around, explaining as they went. Several people from the embassy tagged along, keeping a casual eye on things.
“So, Misha, what do you think of American women?” Defense Minister Yazov asked his aide.
“Those coming this way are not unattractive, Comrade Minister,” the Colonel observed.
“But so skinny—ah, yes, I keep forgetting, your beautiful Elena was also thin. A fine woman she was, Misha.”
“Thank you for remembering, Dmitri Timofeyevich.”
“Hello, Colonel!” one of the American ladies said in Russian.
“Ah, yes, Mrs....”
“Foley. We met at the hockey game last November.”
“You know this lady?” the Minister asked his aide.
“My nephew—no, my grand-nephew Mikhail, Elena’s sister’s grandson—plays junior-league hockey, and I was invited to a game. It turned out that they allowed an imperialist on the team,” he replied with a raised eyebrow.
“Your son plays well?” Marshal Yazov asked.
“He is the third-leading scorer in the league,” Mrs. Foley replied.
“Splendid! Then you must stay in our country, and your son can play for Central Army when he grows up.” Yazov grinned. He was a grandfather four times over. “What do you do here?”
“My husband works for the embassy. He’s over there, shepherding the reporters around—but the important thing is, I got to come here tonight. I’ve never seen anything like this in my whole life!” she gushed. Her glistening eyes spoke of several glasses of something. Probably champagne, the Minister thought. She looked like the champagne type, but she was attractive enough, and she had bothered to learn the language reasonably well, unusual for Americans. “These floors are so pretty, it seems a crime to walk on them. We don’t have anything like this at home.”
“You never had the czars, which was your good fortune,” Yazov replied like a good Marxist. “But as a Russian I must admit that I am proud of their artistic sense.”
“I haven’t seen you at any other games, Colonel,” she said, turning back to Misha.
“I don’t have the time.”
“But you’re good luck! The team won that night, and Eddie got a goal and an assist.”
The Colonel smiled. “All our little Misha got was two penalties for high-sticking.”
“Named for you?” the Minister asked.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t have those on when I saw you.” Mrs. Foley pointed to the three gold stars on his chest.
“Perhaps I didn’t take off my topcoat—”
“He always wears them,” the Marshal assured her. “One always wears his Hero of the Soviet Union medals.”
“Is that the same as our Medal of Honor?”
“The two are roughly equivalent,” Yazov said for his aide. Misha was unaccountably shy about them. “Colonel Filitov is the only man living who has ever won three in battle.”
“Really? How does someone win three?”
“Fighting Germans,” the Colonel said tersely.
“Killing Germans,” Yazov said even more bluntly. When Filitov had been one of the Red Army’s brightest stars, he’d been a mere lieutenant. “Misha is one of the best tank officers who ever lived.”
Colonel Filitov actually blushed at that. “I did my duty, as did many soldiers in that war.”
“My father was decorated in the war, too. He led two missions to rescue people from prison camps in the Philippines. He didn’t talk about it very much, but they gave him a bunch of medals. Do you tell your children about those bright stars of yours?”
Filitov went rigid for a moment. Yazov answered for him.
“Colonel Filitov’s sons died some years ago.”
“Oh! Oh, Colonel, I am so sorry,” Mrs. Foley said, and she really was.
“It was long ago.” He smiled. “I remember your son well from the game, a fine young man. Love your children, dear lady, for you will not always have them. If you will excuse me for a moment.” Misha moved off in the direction of the rest rooms. Mrs. Foley looked to the Minister, anguish on her pretty face.
“Sir, I didn’t mean—”
“You could not have known. Misha lost his sons a few years apart, then his wife. I met her when I was a very young man—lovely girl, a dancer with the Kirov Ballet. So sad, but we Russians are accustomed to great sadnesses. Enough of that. What team does your son play for?” Marshal Yazov’s interest in hockey was amplified by the pretty young face.
Misha found the rest room after a minute. Americans and Russians were sent to different ones, of course, and Colonel Filitov was alone in what had been the private water closet of a prince, or perhaps a czar’s mistress. He washed his hands and looked in the gilt-edged mirror. He had but one thought: Again. Another mission. Colonel Filitov sighed and tidied himself up. A minute later he was back out in the arena.
“Excuse me,” Ryan said. Turning around, he’d bumped into an elderly gentleman in uniform. Golovko said something in Russian that Ryan didn’t catch. The officer said something to Jack that sounded polite, and walked over, Ryan saw, to the Defense Minister.
“Who’s that?” Jack asked his Russian companion.
“The Colonel is personal aide to the Minister,” Golovko replied.
“Little old for a colonel, isn’t he?”
“He is a war hero. We do not force all such men to retire.”
“I guess that’s fair enough,” Jack commented, and turned back to hear about this part of the room. After they had exhausted the St. George Hall, Golovko led Jack into the adjacent St. Vladimir Hall. He expressed the hope that he and Ryan would next meet here. St. Vladimir Hall, he explained, was set aside for the signing of treaties. The two intelligence officers toasted one another on that.
The party broke up after midnight. Ryan got into the seventh limousine. Nobody talked on the ride back to the embassy. Everyone was feeling the alcohol, and you didn’t talk in cars, not in Moscow. Cars were too easy to bug. Two men fell asleep, and Ryan came close enough himself. What kept him awake was the knowledge that they’d fly out in another five hours, and if he was going to have to do that, he might as well keep tired enough to sleep on the plane, a skill he had only recently acquired. He changed his clothes and went down to the embassy’s canteen for coffee. It would be enough to keep himself going for a few hours while he made his own notes.
Things had gone amazingly well these past four days. Almost too well. Jack told himself that averages are made up of times when things went well and times they went poorly. A draft treaty was on the table. Like all draft treaties of late, it was intended by the Soviets to be more a negotiating tool than a negotiating document. Its details were already in the press, and already certain members of Congress were saying on the floor how fair a deal it was—and why don’t we just agree to it?
Why not, indeed? Jack wondered with an ironic smile. Verifiability. That was one reason. The other ...
was there another? Good question. Why had they changed their stance so much? There was evidence that General Secretary Narmonov wanted to reduce his military expenditures, but despite all the public perceptions to the contrary, nuclear arms were not the place you did that. Nukes were cheap for what they did; they were a very cost-effective way of killing people. While a nuclear warhead and its missile were expensive gadgets, they were far cheaper than the equivalent destructive power in tanks and artillery. Did Narmonov genuinely want to reduce the threat of nuclear war? But that threat didn’t come from the weapons; as always it came from the politicians and their mistakes. Was it all a symbol? Symbols, Jack reminded himself, were far easier for Narmonov to produce than substance. If a symbol, at whom was it aimed?
Narmonov had charm, and power—the sort of visceral presence that came with his post, but even more from his personality. What sort of man was this? What was he after? Ryan snorted. That wasn’t his department. Another CIA team was examining Narmonov’s political vulnerability right here in Moscow. His far easier job was to figure out the technical side. Far easier, perhaps, but he didn’t yet know the answer to his own questions.
Golovko was already back at his office, making his own notes in a painful longhand. Ryan, he wrote, would uneasily support the draft proposal. Since Ryan had the ear of the Director, that probably meant that CIA would, too. The intelligence officer set down his pen and rubbed his eyes for a moment. Waking up with a hangover was bad enough, but having to stay awake long enough to welcome it with the sunrise was above and beyond the duty of a Soviet officer. He wondered why his government had made the offer in the first place, and why the Americans seemed so eager. Even Ryan, who should have known better. What did the Americans have in mind? Who was outmaneuvering whom?
Now there was a question.
He turned back to Ryan, his assignment of the previous evening. Well along for a man of his years, the equivalent of a colonel in the KGB or GRU and only thirty-five. What had he done to rise so quickly? Golovko shrugged. Probably connected, a fact of life as important in Washington as in Moscow. He had courage—the business with the terrorists almost five years before. He was also a family man, something Russians respected more than their American counterparts would have believed—it implied stability, and that in turn implied predictability. Most of all, Golovko thought, Ryan was a thinker. Why, then, was he not opposed to a pact that would benefit the Soviet Union more than it benefited America? Is our evaluation incorrect? he wrote. Do the Americans know something we do not? That was a question, or better still: Did Ryan know something that Golovko did not? The Colonel frowned, then reminded himself what he knew that Ryan did not. That drew a half-smile. It was all part of the grand game. The grandest game there was.
“You must have walked all night.”
The Archer nodded gravely and set down the sack that had bowed his shoulders for five days. It was almost as heavy as the one Abdul had packed. The younger man was near collapse, the CIA officer saw. Both men found pillows to sit on.
“Have something to drink.” The officer’s name was Emilio Ortiz. His ancestry was sufficiently muddled that he could have passed for a native of any Caucasian nation. Also thirty years of age, he was of medium height and build, with a swimmer’s muscles, which was how he’d won a scholarship to USC, where he’d won a degree in languages. Ortiz had a rare gift in this area. With two weeks’ exposure to a language, a dialect, an accent, he could pass for a native anywhere in the world. He was also a man of compassion, respectful of the ways of the people with whom he worked. This meant that the drink he offered was not—could not be—alcoholic. It was apple juice. Ortiz watched him drink it with all the delicacy of a wine connoisseur sampling new bordeaux.
“Allah’s blessings upon this house,” the Archer said when he finished the first glass. That he had waited until drinking the apple juice was as close as the man ever came to making a joke. Ortiz saw the fatigue written on the man’s face, though he displayed it no other way. Unlike his young porter, the Archer seemed invulnerable to such normal human concerns. It wasn’t true, but Ortiz understood how the force that drove him could suppress his humanity.
The two men were dressed almost identically. Ortiz considered the Archer’s clothing and wondered at the ironic similarity with the Apache Indians of America and Mexico. One of his ancestors had been an officer under Terrazas when the Mexican Army had finally crushed Victorio in the Tres Castillos Mountains. The Afghans, too, wore rough trousers under their loincloths. They, too, tended to be small, agile fighters. And they, too, treated captives as noisy amusements for their knives. He looked at the Archer’s knife and wondered how it was used. Ortiz decided he didn’t want to know.
“Do you wish something to eat?” he asked.
“It can wait,” the Archer replied, reaching for his pack. He and Abdul had brought out two loaded camels, but for the important material, only his backpack would do. “I fired eight rockets. I hit six aircraft, but one had two engines and managed to escape. Of the five I destroyed, two were helicopters, and three were bombing-fighters. The first helicopter we killed was the new kind of twenty-four you told us about. You were correct. It did have some new equipment. Here is some of it.”
It was ironic, Ortiz thought, that the most sensitive equipment in military aircraft would survive treatment guaranteed to kill its crew. As he watched, the Archer revealed six green circuit boards for the laser-designator that was now standard equipment on the Mi-24. The U.S. Army Captain who’d stayed in the shadows and kept his mouth shut to this point now came forward to examine them. His hands fairly trembled as he reached for the items.
“You have the laser, too?” the Captain asked in accented Pashtu.
“It was badly damaged, but, yes.” The Archer turned. Abdul was snoring. He nearly smiled until he remembered that he had a son also.
For his part, Ortiz was saddened. To have a partisan with the Archer’s education under his control was rare enough. He’d probably been a skilled teacher but he could never teach again. He could never go back to what he’d been. War had changed the Archer’s life as fully and certainly as death. Such a goddamned waste.
“The new rockets?” the Archer asked.
“I can give you ten. A slightly improved model, with an additional five-hundred-meter range. And some more smoke rockets, too.”
The Archer nodded gravely, and the corners of his mouth moved in what, in different times, might have been the beginnings of a smile.
“Perhaps now I can go after their transports. The smoke rockets work very well, my friend. Every time, they push the invaders close to me. They have not yet learned about that tactic.”
Not a trick, Ortiz noted. He called it a tactic. He wants to go after transports now, he wants to kill a hundred Russians at a time. Jesus, what have we made of this man? The CIA officer shook his head. That wasn’t his concern.
“You are weary, my friend. Rest. We can eat later. Please honor my house by sleeping here.”
“It is true,” the Archer acknowledged. He was asleep within two minutes.
Ortiz and the Captain sorted through the equipment brought to them. Included was the maintenance manual for the Mi- 24’s laser equipment, and radio code sheets, in addition to other things they’d seen before. By noon he had it all fully catalogued and began making arrangements to ship it all to the embassy; from there it would be flown immediately to California for a complete evaluation.
The Air Force VC-137 lifted off right on time. It was a customized version of the venerable Boeing 707. The “V” prefix on its designation denoted that it was designed to carry VIP passengers, and the aircraft’s interior reflected this. Jack lay back on the couch and abandoned himself to the fatigue that enveloped him. Ten minutes later a hand shook his shoulder.
“The boss wants you,” another member of the team said.
“Doesn’t he ever sleep?” Jack growled.
“Tell me about it.”
Ernest Allen was in the VIP-est
accommodations on the aircraft, a cabin set exactly atop the wing spar with six plush swivel chairs. A coffeepot sat on the table. If he didn’t have some coffee he’d soon be incoherent. If he did, he’d be unable to go back to sleep. Well, the government wasn’t paying him to sleep. Ryan poured himself some coffee.
“Yes, sir?”
“Can we verify it?” Allen skipped the preliminaries.
“I don’t know yet,” Jack replied. “It’s not just a question of National Technical Means. Verifying the elimination of so many launchers—”
“They’re giving us limited on-site inspection,” noted a junior member of the team.
“I’m aware of that,” Jack replied. “The question is, does that really mean anything?” The other question is, why did they suddenly agree to something we’ve wanted for over thirty years ... ?
“What?” the junior member asked.
“The Soviets have put a lot of work into their new mobile launchers. What if they have more of them than we know about? Do you think we can find a few hundred mobile missiles?”
“But we have surface-scanning radar on the new birds, and—”
“And they know it, and they can avoid it if they want to—wait a minute. We know that our carriers can and do evade Russian radar-ocean-recon satellites. If you can do it with a ship, you can damned sure do it with a train,” Jack pointed out. Allen looked on without comment, allowing his underling to pursue the line in his stead. A clever old fox, Ernie Allen.