Red Rabbit Part 35

"If they do anything, it won't be a Russian. Too many political pitfalls, Arthur."

"Again, I agree. But what the h.e.l.l does that leave us?"

"They use the Bulgarians for wet work," Greer pointed out.

"So, look for a Bulgarian shooter?"

"How many Bulgars make pilgrimages to Rome, you suppose?"

"We can't tell the Italians to look into that, can we? It would leak sure as h.e.l.l, and we can't have that. It would look pretty stupid in the press. It's just something we can't do, James."

Greer let out a long breath. "Yeah, I know, not without something firm."

"Firmer than what we have now-and that's air, James, just plain d.a.m.ned air." It would be nice, Judge Moore thought, if CIA were as powerful as the movies and the critics think we are. Not all the time. Just once in a while. But they weren't, and that was a fact.

THE NEXT DAY started in Moscow before it started anywhere else. Zaitzev awoke at the ringing of his windup alarm clock, grumbled and cursed like every workingman in the world, then stumbled off to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, he was drinking his morning tea and eating his black bread and b.u.t.ter.

Less than a mile away, the Foley family was doing much the same thing. Ed decided on an English m.u.f.fin and grape jelly with his coffee for a change, joined by Little Eddie, who took a break from Worker Woman and his Transformers tapes. He was looking forward to the preschool that had been set up for Western children right there in the ghetto, where he showed great promise with crayons and the newly arrived Hot Wheels tricycles, plus being champion at the Sit 'n Spin.

He told himself that he could relax today. The meeting would be in the evening, and MP would handle that. In another week or so . . . maybe . . . BEATRIX would be all over, and he could relax again, letting his field officers do the running around this d.a.m.ned ugly city. Sure enough, the G.o.dd.a.m.ned Baltimore Orioles were in the playoffs, and looking to go head to head with the Philadelphia Phillies, relegating his Bronx Bombers to the Hot Stove League yet again. What was with the new owners.h.i.+p, anyway? How could rich people be so stupid?

He'd have to keep to his metro routine. If KGB had him shadowed, it would be unusual-or would it?-for them to mark the specific train he was getting on. There was a question for him. If they did a one-two tail, the number two guy would stay on the platform and, after the train left, write down the time off the clock in the station-that was the only one that made sense, since it was the one that governed the trains themselves. KGB was thorough and professional, but would they be that good? That sort of precision was positively Germanic, but if the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds could make the trains run that precisely, then probably KGB could take note of it, and the precise timing was what had enabled him to contact the Rabbit.

G.o.d d.a.m.n this life, anyway! Foley raged briefly. But he'd known that before he'd accepted the posting to Moscow, and it was exciting here, wasn't it? Yeah, like Louis XVI was probably excited on the cart ride to the guillotine, Ed Sr. thought.

Someday he'd lecture on this down at The Farm. He hoped they'd appreciate just how hard it had been to write the lesson plan for his Operation BEATRIX lecture. Well, they might be a little impressed.

Forty minutes later, he purchased his copy of Izvestia and rode down the interminable escalator to the platform, as usual not noting the sideways looks of Russians looking at a real, live American as though he were a creature in the zoo. It would never have happened to a Russian in New York, where every ethnic group could be found, especially behind the wheel of a yellow cab.

THE MORNING ROUTINE was set in concrete by now. Miss Margaret was hovering over the kids, and Eddie Beaverton was outside the door. The kids were duly hugged and kissed, and the parents headed off to work. If there was anything Ryan hated, it was this routine. If only he'd been able to persuade Cathy to buy a flat in London, then every work day would have been a good two hours shorter-but, no, Cathy wanted green stuff around for the kids to play on. And soon they wouldn't see the sun until they got to work, and soon thereafter, hardly even then.

Ten minutes later, they were in their first-cla.s.s compartment rolling northwest for London, Cathy in her medical journal and Jack in his Daily Telegraph. There was an article about Poland, and this reporter was unusually well-informed, Ryan saw at once. The articles in Britain tended to be a lot less long-winded than in The Was.h.i.+ngton Post, and for once Jack found himself regretting that. This guy had been well-briefed and/or he was pretty good at a.n.a.lysis. The Polish government was really caught between a rock and a hard place, and was getting squeezed, and there was talk, he saw, that the Pope was making some rumbles about the welfare of his homeland and his people, and that, the reporter noted, could upset a lot of apple carts.

Ain't that the truth, Jack thought. The really bad news was that it was in the open now. Who'd leaked it? He knew the reporter's name. He was a specialist in foreign affairs, mainly European. So, who'd leaked this? Somebody in the Foreign Office? Those people were, on the whole, pretty smart, but, like their American counterparts at Foggy Bottom, they occasionally spoke without thinking, and over here that could happen over a friendly pint in one of the thousands of comfortable pubs, maybe in a quiet corner booth, with a government employee paying off a marker or just wanting to show the media how smart he was. Would a head roll over this one? he wondered. Something to talk about with Simon.

Unless Simon had been the leaker. He was senior enough and well liked by his boss. Maybe Basil had authorized the leak? Or maybe they both knew a guy in Whitehall and had authorized him to have a friendly pint with a guy from Fleet Street.

Or maybe the reporter was smart enough to put two and two together all by himself. Not all the smart guys worked at Century House. d.a.m.ned sure not all the smart ones in America worked at Langley. Generally speaking, talent went to where the money was, because smart people wanted large houses and nice vacations just like everyone else did. Those who went into government service knew that they could live comfortably, but not lavishly-but the best of them also knew that they had a mission to fulfill in life, and that was why you found very good people wearing uniforms or carrying guns and badges. In his own case, Ryan had done well in the trading business, but he finally found it unsatisfying. And so not all talented people sought after money. Some found themselves on some sort of quest.

Is that what you're doing, Jack? he asked himself, as the train pulled into Victoria Station.

"What deep thoughts this morning?" his wife asked.

"Huh?" Jack responded.

"I know the look, honey," she pointed out. "You're chewing over something important."

"Cathy, are you an eye cutter or a pshrink?"

"With you, I'm a pshrink," she replied, with a playful smile.

Jack stood and opened the compartment door. "Okay, my lady. You have eyeb.a.l.l.s to regulate, and I have secrets to figure out." He waved his wife out the door. "What new things did you learn from The a.s.shole and Armpit Monthly Gazette on the way in?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"Probably," Jack conceded, heading off to the cabstand. They took a robin's-egg-blue one instead of the usual black.

"Hammersmith Hospital," Ryan told the driver, "and then One Hundred Westminster Bridge Road."

"MI-Six, is it, sir?"

"Excuse me?" Ryan replied innocently.

"Universal Export, sir, where James Bond used to work." He chuckled and pulled off.

Well, Ryan reflected, the CIA exit off the George Was.h.i.+ngton Parkway wasn't marked NATIONAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION anymore. Cathy thought it was pretty funny. There was no keeping secrets from London cabdrivers. Cathy hopped out in the large underpa.s.s at Hammersmith, and the driver U-turned and went the last few blocks to Century House. Ryan went through the door, past Sergeant Major Canderton, and up to his office.

Coming in the door, he dropped the Telegraph on Simon's desk before doffing his raincoat.

"I saw it, Jack," Harding said at once.

"Who's talking?"

"Not sure. Foreign Office, probably. They've been briefed in on this. Or perhaps someone from the PM's office. Sir Basil is not pleased," Harding a.s.sured him.

"n.o.body called the paper?"

"No. We didn't know about this until it was published this morning."

"I thought the local papers had a more cordial relations.h.i.+p with the government over here."

"Generally, they do, which leads me to believe it was the PM's office that did the leak." Harding's face was innocent enough, but Jack found himself trying to read it. That was something his wife was far better at. He had the feeling that Harding was not being entirely truthful, but he had no real reason to complain about that, did he?

"Anything new from the overnights?"

Harding shook his head. "Nothing of great interest. Nothing on this BEATRIX operation, either. Tell your wife about your impending trip?"

"Yeah, and I didn't tell you that she's pretty good at reading my mind."

"Most wives can, Jack." Harding had a good laugh at that.

ZAITZEV HAD THE same desk and the same pile of message traffic, always different in exact details, but always the same really: reports from field officers transmitting data from foreign nationals on all manner of subjects. He had hundreds of operation names memorized, and untold thousands of details resident between his ears, including the actual names of some of the agents and the code names of many, many others.

As on the previous workdays, he took his time, reading over all the morning traffic before sending it upstairs, trusting his trained memory to record and file away all of the important details.

Some, of course, contained information that was hidden in multiple ways. There was probably a penetration agent within CIA, for example, but his code name-TRUMPET-was all Zaitzev knew. Even the data he transmitted were concealed by the use of layered super-encryption, including a one-time pad. But the data went to a colonel on the sixth floor who specialized in CIA investigations and worked closely with the Second Chief Directorate-so, by implication, TRUMPET was giving KGB something in which the Second Directorate was interested, and that meant agents operating for CIA right here in Moscow. Which was enough to give him chills, but the Americans he'd talked to-he'd warned them about communications security, and that would flag any dispatch about him to a very limited number of people. And he knew that TRUMPET was being paid huge amounts of money, and so, probably he was not a senior CIA official, who, Zaitzev judged, were probably very well paid. An ideological agent would have given him cause to worry, but there were none of them in America whom he knew about-and he would know, wouldn't he?

In a week, perhaps less, the communicator told himself, he'd be in the West and safe. He hoped his wife would not go totally amok when he told her his plans, but probably she would not. She had no immediate family. Her mother had died the previous year, to Irina's great sorrow, and she had neither brothers nor sisters to hold her back, and she was not happy working at GUM because of all the petty corruption there. And he would promise to get her the piano she longed to have, but which even his KGB post couldn't get for her, so meager was the supply.

So he shuffled his papers, perhaps more slowly than usual, but not greatly so, he thought. There were few really hard workers, even in KGB. The cynical adage in the Soviet Union was "As long as they pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work," and the principle applied here as well. If you exceeded your quota, they'd just increase it the following year without any improvement in your working conditions-and so, few worked hard enough to be noticed as Heroes of Socialist Labor.

Just after 11:00, Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy appeared in the comms room. Zaitzev caught his eye and waved him over.

"Yes, Comrade Major?" the colonel asked.

"Comrade Colonel," he said quietly, "there have been no recent communications about six-six-six. Is there anything I need to know?"

The question took Rozhdestvenskiy aback. "Why do you ask?"

"Comrade Colonel," Zaitzev went on humbly, "it was my understanding that this operation is important and that I am the only communicator cleared for it. Have I acted improperly in any way?"

"Ah." Rozhdestvenskiy relaxed. "No, Comrade Colonel, we have no complaints with your activities. The operation no longer requires communications of this type."

"I see. Thank you, Comrade Colonel."

"You look tired, Major Zaitzev. Is anything the matter?"

"No, comrade. I suppose I could use a vacation. I didn't get to go anywhere during the summer. A week or two off duty would be a blessing, before the winter hits."

"Very well. If you have any difficulties, let me know, and I'll try to smooth things out for you."

Zaitzev managed a grateful smile. "Why, thank you, Comrade Colonel."

"You do good work down here, Zaitzev. We're all ent.i.tled to some time off, even State Security people."

"Thank you again, Comrade Colonel. I serve the Soviet Union."

Rozhdestvenskiy nodded and took his leave. As he walked out the door, Zaitzev took a long breath and went back to work memorizing dispatches . . . but not for the Soviet Union. So, he thought, -666 was being handled by courier now. He'd learn no more about it, but he'd just learned that it was going forward on a high-priority basis. They were really going to do it. He wondered if the Americans would get him out quickly enough to forestall it. The information was in his hands, but the ability to do anything about it was not. It was like being Ca.s.sandra of old, daughter of King Priam of Troy, knowing what was going to happen, but unable to get anyone to do anything about it. Ca.s.sandra had angered the G.o.ds somehow or other and received that curse as a result, but what had he done to deserve it? Zaitzev wondered, suddenly angry at CIA's inefficiency. But he couldn't just board a Pan American flight out of Sheremetyevo International Airport, could he?

CHAPTER 22.

PROCUREMENTS AND ARRANGEMENTS.

THE SECOND FACE-TO-FACE meeting was back at GUM department store, where a certain Little Bunny needed some fall/winter clothing, which her father wanted to get her-which was something of a surprise for Irina Bogdanova, but a pleasant one. Mary Pat, the supreme expert on shopping in the Foley family, wandered about looking at the various items on sale, surprised to see that they weren't all Soviet schlock. Some were even attractive . . . though not quite attractive enough to buy. She dawdled again in the fur department-the furs here might have sold fairly well in New York, though they were not quite on a par with Fendi. There weren't enough Italian designers in Russia. But the quality of the furs-that is, the animal skins themselves-wasn't too shabby. The Soviets just didn't know how to sew them together properly. That was too bad, really, she thought. The saddest thing about the Soviet Union was how the government of that gray country prevented its citizens from actually accomplis.h.i.+ng much. There was so little originality here. The best things to buy were all old, prerevolutionary art works, usually small ones, almost always religious pieces, sold at impromptu flea markets to raise needed money for some family or other. She'd already purchased several pieces, trying not to feel like a thief in doing so. To a.s.suage her conscience, she never haggled, almost always paying the price asked instead of trying to chisel it down by a few percent. That would have been like armed robbery, she thought, and her ultimate mission in Moscow-this was a core belief for her-was to help these people, though in a way they could hardly have understood or approved. But, for the most part, Muscovites liked her American smile and friendliness. And certainly they liked the blue-stripe certificate rubles she paid with, cash money that would give them access to luxury items or, almost as good, cash that they could exchange at a rate of three or four to one.

She wandered about for half an hour, then saw her target in the children's clothing area. She maneuvered that way, taking time to lift and examine various items before coming up behind him.

"Good evening, Oleg Ivan'ch," she said quietly, handling a parka meant for a girl of three or four.

"Mary, is it?"

"That is correct. Tell me, do you have any vacation days available to you?"

"Yes, I do. Two weeks of it, in fact."

"And you told me that your wife likes cla.s.sical music?"

"That is also correct."

"There is a fine conductor. His name is Jozsef Rozsa. He will start performing in the main concert hall in Budapest on Sunday evening. The best hotel for you to check in to is the Astoria. It is a short distance from the train station, and is popular with Soviet guests. Tell all your friends what you are doing. Arrange to buy them things in Budapest. Do everything that a Soviet citizen does. We will handle the rest," she a.s.sured him.

"All of us," Zaitzev reminded her. "All of us come out?"

"Of course, Oleg. Your little zaichik will see many wonders in America, and the winters are not so fierce as they are here," MP added.

"We Russians enjoy our winters," he pointed out, with a little amour propre.

"In that case, you will be able to live in an area as cold as Moscow. And if you desire warm weather in February, you can drive or fly to Florida and relax on a sunny beach."

"You are tourist agent, Mary?" the Rabbit asked.

"For you, Oleg, I am just that. Are you comfortable pa.s.sing information to my husband on the metro?"

"Yes."

You shouldn't be, Mary Pat thought. "What is your best necktie?"

"A blue one with red stripes."

"Very well, wear that one two days before you take the train to Budapest. b.u.mp into him and apologize, and we will know. Two days before you leave Moscow, wear your blue-striped tie and b.u.mp into him on the metro," she repeated. You had to be careful doing this. People could make the G.o.dd.a.m.nedest mistakes in the simplest of matters, even when-no, especially when-their lives were on the line. That was why she was making it as easy as possible. Only one thing to remember. Only one thing to do.

"Da, I can do that easily."

Optimistic b.a.s.t.a.r.d, aren't you? "Excellent. Please be very careful, Oleg Ivan'ch." And with that, she went on her way. But then she stopped five or six meters away and turned. In her purse was a Minox camera. She shot five frames, and then walked away.

"WELL, DIDN'T YOU see anything worth getting?" her husband asked, out in their used Mercedes 280.

"No, nothing really worthwhile. Maybe we should try a trip up to Helsinki to get some winter stuff," she suggested. "You know, take the train, like. Ought to be fun to do it that way. Eddie should like it."

The Station Chief's eyebrow went up. Probably better to take the train, he thought. Doesn't look rushed or forced. Carry lots of suitcases, half of them empty to bring back all the s.h.i.+t you'll buy there with your Comecon rubles, Ed Foley thought. Except you don't come back . . . and if Langley and London get their s.h.i.+t together, maybe we can make it a real home-run ball. . . .

"Home, honey?" Foley asked. Wouldn't it be a hoot if KGB didn't have their home and car bugged, and they were doing all this secret-agent c.r.a.p for no reason at all? he thought idly. Well, at worst, it was good practice, wasn't it?

"Yeah, we've done enough for one day."

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l," Basil Charleston breathed. He lifted his phone and punched three b.u.t.tons.

"Yes, sir?" Kingshot asked, coming into the room.

"This." C handed the dispatch across.

"s.h.i.+t," Kingshot breathed.