Red Rabbit Part 47

And it was just that easy. Kovacs walked back around and climbed into his truck. He wouldn't have to part with the present he had for Sergeant Kerekes Mikaly, and that was good, too.

Hudson was surprised. "No paper check?"

"Laszlo just runs the name through the teletype to Budapest. Some people there are also on my payroll. They are more greedy than he is, but is not major expense. Jani, go," he said to the driver, who started up and pulled across the line painted on the pavement. And just that easily, the truck left the Warsaw Pact.

In the back, Ryan had rarely felt so good to feel a vehicle start to move. It stopped again in a minute, but this was a different border.

And going into Yugoslavia, Jani handled it, just trading a few words with the guard, not even killing the engine, before being waved forward and into the semi-communist country. He drove three kilometers before being told to pull off onto a side road. There, after a few b.u.mps, the Volvo stopped. Yugoslavian border security, Hudson saw, was sod-all.

Ryan was already out of his cardboard box and standing at the back when the canvas cover was flipped aside.

"We're here, Jack," Hudson said.

"Where is that exactly?"

"Yugoslavia, my lad. The nearest town is Legrd, and here we part company."

"Oh?"

"Yes, I'm turning you over to Vic Lucas. He's my counterpart in Belgrade. Vic?" Hudson beckoned.

The man who came into view might have been Hudson's twin, except for the hair, which was black. He was also two or three inches taller, Jack decided on second inspection. He went forward to get the Rabbits out of the boxes. That happened in a hurry, and Ryan helped them down, handing the little girl-remarkably, still asleep-to her mother, who looked more confused than ever.

Hudson walked them to a car, a station wagon-"estate wagon" to the Brits-which would at least have ample room for everyone.

"Sir John-Jack, that is-well done, and thanks for all your help."

"I didn't do s.h.i.+t, Andy, but you handled this pretty d.a.m.ned well," Ryan said, taking his hand. "Come see me in London for a pint sometime."

"That I shall do," Hudson promised.

The estate wagon was a British Ford. Ryan helped the Rabbits into their seats and then took the right-front again.

"Mr. Lucas, where do we go now?"

"To the airport. Our flight is waiting," the Belgrade COS replied.

"Oh? Special flight?"

"No, the commercial aircraft is experiencing 'technical difficulties' at the moment. I rather expect they will be cleared up about the time we get aboard."

"Good to know," Ryan observed. Better this than a real broken airplane, then he realized that one more harrowing adventure lay ahead. His hatred of flying was suddenly back, now that they were in semi-free country.

"Right, let's be off," Lucas said, starting his engine and pulling off. Whatever sort of spook Vic Lucas was, he must have thought himself Stirling Moss's smarter brother. The car rocketed down the road into the Yugoslavian darkness.

"So, how has your night been, Jack?"

"Eventful," Ryan answered, making sure his seat belt was properly fastened.

The countryside here was better lit and the road better engineered and maintained, or so it seemed, flas.h.i.+ng by at what felt like seventy-five miles per hour, rather fast for a strange road in the dark. Robby Jackson drove like this, but Robby was a fighter pilot, and therefore invincible while at the controls of any transportation platform. This Vic Lucas must have felt the same way, calmly looking forward and turning the wheel in short, sharp increments. In the back, Oleg was still tense, and Irina still trying to come to terms with some new and incomprehensible reality, while their little daughter continued to sleep like a diminutive angel. Ryan was chain-smoking. It seemed to help somewhat, though if Cathy smelled it on his breath there would be h.e.l.l to pay. Well, she'd just have to understand, Jack thought, watching telephone poles flash by the car like fence pickets. He was doing Uncle Sam's business.

Then Ryan saw a police car sitting by the side of the road, its officers sipping coffee or sleeping through their watch.

"Not to worry," Lucas said. "Diplomatic tags. I am the senior political counselor at Her Britannic Majesty's Emba.s.sy. And you good people are my guests."

"You say so, man. How much longer?"

"Half an hour, roughly. Traffic's been very kind to us so far. Not much truck traffic. This road can be crowded, even late at night with cross-border trade. That Kovacs chap's been working with us for years. I could make quite a good living in partners.h.i.+p with him. He often brings those Hungarian tape machines this way. They're decent machines, and they're giving the b.l.o.o.d.y things away, what with the labor costs in Hungary. Surprising they don't try to sell them in the West, though I expect they'd have to pay the j.a.panese for the patent infringements. Not too scrupulous about such things on the other side of the line, you see." Lucas took another high-speed turn.

"Jesus, guy, how fast do you go in daylight?"

"Not much faster than this. Good night vision, you see, but the suspension on this car slows me down. American design, you see. Too soft for proper handling."

"So buy a Corvette. Friend of mine has one."

"Lovely things, but made out of plastic." Lucas shook his head and reached for a cigar. Probably a Cuban one, Ryan was sure. They loved the things in England.

Half an hour later, Lucas congratulated himself. "There it is. Just on time."

Airports are airports all over the world. The same architect probably designed them all, Ryan thought. The only differences were the signs for the rest rooms. In England they called them toilets, which had always struck him as a little crude in an otherwise gentle country. Then he got a surprise. Instead of driving to the terminal, Lucas took the path through the open gate right onto the flight line.

"I have an arrangement with the airport manager," he explained. "He likes single malts." Still and all, Lucas stayed on the yellow-lined car path, right to a lonely aircraft jetway with an airliner parked next to it. "Here we are," the Brit spook announced.

They all stepped out of the car, this time with Mrs. Rabbit holding the Bunny. Lucas led them up the exterior stairs into the jetway's control booth, and from there right into the aircraft's open door.

The captain, hatless but wearing four stripes on his shoulders, was standing right there. "You're Mr. Lucas?"

"That is correct, Captain Rogers. And here are your extra pa.s.sengers." He pointed to Ryan and the Rabbit family.

"Excellent." Captain Rogers turned to his lead stew. "We can board the aircraft now."

The second-ranking flight attendant took them to the four front-row first-cla.s.s seats, where Ryan was singularly surprised to be happy belting himself in to 1-B, the aisle seat just behind the front bulkhead. He watched thirty or so working-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers come aboard after sunning themselves on the Dalmatian Coast-a favorite for Brits of late-none of them looking very happy for the three-hour delay on what was already supposed to be the day's last flight to Manchester. Things happened quickly after that. He heard both engines start up, and then the BAC-111-the British counterpart to the Douglas DC-9-backed away from the jetway and taxied out on the ramp.

"What now?" Oleg asked, in what was almost a normal voice.

"We fly to England," Ryan replied. "Two hours or so, I guess, and we'll be there."

"So easy?"

"You think this was easy?" Ryan asked, with no small amount of incredulity in his voice. Then the intercom turned on.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Rogers speaking. I am glad to say that we finally got the electronic problem repaired. Thank you ever so much for your patience, and after we lift off, the drinks will be free to all pa.s.sengers." That evoked a cheer from the back of the aircraft. "For the moment, please pay attention to the flight attendants for your safety message."

Put your seat belts on, dummies, and they work like this, for those of you stupid enough not to notice that you have the f.u.c.king things in your personal automobiles, too. And then in three more minutes the British Midlands airliner clawed its way into the sky.

As promised, before they'd gotten to ten thousand feet, the no-smoking light dinged off and the drink cart arrived. The Russian asked for vodka and got three miniatures of Finlandia. Ryan got himself a gla.s.s of wine and the promise of more. He wouldn't sleep on this flight, but he wouldn't worry as much as usual, either. He was leaving the communist world behind at five hundred miles per hour, and that was probably the best way to do it.

Oleg Ivan'ch, he saw, drank vodka as though it were water after a hot day of cutting the gra.s.s. His wife, over in 1-C, was doing the same. Ryan felt positively virtuous sipping gently at his French wine.

"SIGNAL IN FROM BASIL," Bostock reported over the phone. "The Rabbit is in the air. ETA Manchester in ninety minutes."

"Great," Judge Moore breathed, relieved as always when a black operation worked out as planned. Better still, they'd run it without Bob Ritter, who, though a good man, was not entirely indispensable.

"Three more days and we can debrief him," Bostock said next. "The nice house out by Winchester?"

"Yeah, we'll see if he likes horse country." The house even had a Steinway piano for Mrs. Rabbit to play and lots of green for the kid to run around on.

ALAN KINGSHOT WAS just pulling into the parking area at the Manchester airport, along with two subordinates. There would be a large back Daimler automobile to take the arriving defectors out to Somerset in the morning. He hoped they didn't mind driving. It would be nearly a two-hour drive. For the moment, they'd be quartering at a nice country house just a few minutes from the airport. They'd probably done quite enough traveling for the moment, with still more to come before the end of the week. But then he started thinking about it. Might that be too hard on them? The question gave him something to ponder at one of the airport's bars.

RYAN WAS PRETTY well potted. Maybe alcohol interacted with anxiety, he thought, taking a moment to go to the forward rest room on the airliner, and feeling better when he got back and was strapped in. He almost never took his seat belt off. The food served was just sandwiches-English ones, with their unnatural affection for a weed called watercress. What he really wanted now was a good corned beef, but the Brits didn't even know what corned beef was, thinking it the canned junk that looked like dog food to most Americans. In fact, the Brits probably fed better stuff to their dogs, as enthralled as they were with their pets. The lights pa.s.sing underneath the airliner proved that they were overflying Western Europe. The Eastern part was never well lit, as he'd learned coming south from Budapest.

BUT ZAITZEV wasn't sure. What if this was a very elaborate ruse to get him to spill the beans? What if the Second Chief Directorate had staged a huge maskirovka village for his brief benefit?

"Ryan?"

Jack turned. "Yes?"

"What will I see in England when we get there?"

"I don't know what the plan is after we get to Manchester," Ryan reported.

"You are CIA?" the Rabbit asked again.

"Yes." Jack nodded.

"How can I be sure of this?"

"Well . . ." Ryan fished out his wallet. "Here are my driver's license, credit cards, some cash. My pa.s.sport is fake, of course. I'm an American, but they fixed me up with a British one. Oh," Ryan realized, "you're worried that this is all faked?"

"How can I be sure?"

"My friend, in less than an hour, you will be certain it is not. Here-" He opened his wallet again. "This is my wife, my daughter, and our new son. My address at home-in America, that is-is here on my driver's license, 5000 Peregrine Cliff Road, Anne Arundel County, Maryland. That is right on the Chesapeake Bay. It takes me about an hour to drive from there to CIA Headquarters at Langley. My wife is an eye surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. It is world-famous. You must have heard of it."

Zaitzev just shook his head.

"Well, a couple years ago, three docs from Hopkins fixed the eyes of Mikhail Suslov. I understand he just died. His replacement, we think, will be Mikhail Yevgeniyevich Alexandrov. We know a little about him, but not enough. In fact, we don't know enough about Yuriy Vladimirovich."

"What do you not know?"

"Is he married? We've never seen a picture of his wife, if any."

"Yes, everyone knows this. His wife is Tatiana, elegant woman, my wife says she has n.o.ble features. But no children for them," Oleg concluded.

Well, there's factoid #1 from the Rabbit, Ryan thought.

"How is it possible that you do not know this?" Zaitzev demanded.

"Oleg Ivan'ch, there are many things we do not know about the Soviet Union," Jack admitted. "Some are important, and some are not."

"Is this true?"

"Yes, it is."

Something rattled loose in Zaitzev's head. "You say your name Ryan?" "That's right."

"Your father policeman?"

"How did you know that?" Ryan asked in some surprise.

"We have small dossier on you. Was.h.i.+ngton rezidentura do it. Your family attacked by hooligans, yes?"

"Correct." KGB is interested in me, eh? Jack thought. "Terrorists, they tried to kill me and my family. My son was born that night."

"And you join CIA after that?"

"Again, yes-officially, anyway. I've done work for the Agency for several years." Then curiosity took full hold. "What does my dossier say about me?"

"It say you are rich fool. You were officer in naval infantry, and your wife is rich and you marry her for that reason. To get more money for self."

So, even the KGB is a prisoner of its own political prejudices, Jack thought. Interesting.

"I am not poor," Jack told the Rabbit. "But I married my wife for love, not money. Only a fool does that."

"How many capitalists are fools?"

Ryan had himself a good laugh. "A lot more than you might think. You do not need to be very smart in America to become rich." New York and Was.h.i.+ngton in particular were full of rich idiots, but Ryan thought the Rabbit needed a little while before he learned that lesson. "Who did the dossier on me?"

"Reporter in Was.h.i.+ngton rezidentura of Izvestia is junior KGB officer. He do it last summer."

"And how did you come to know about it?"

"His dispatch come to my desk, and I forward to AmericaCanada Inst.i.tute-is KGB office. You know that, yes?"

"Yes," Jack confirmed. "That is one we do know." That was when his ears popped. The airliner was descending. Ryan gunned down the last of his third white wine and told himself it would all be over in a few minutes. One thing he'd learned from Operation BEATRIX: This field work wasn't for him.

The no-smoking sign dinged back on. Ryan brought his chair to its full upright position, and then the lights of Manchester appeared through the windows, the car headlights and the airport fence, and in a few more seconds . . . thump, the wheels touched down in Merry Old England. It might not be the same as America, but for the moment it would do.

Oleg, he saw, had his face against the window, checking out the tail colors of the aircraft. There were too many for this to be a Soviet Air Force base and a huge maskirovka. He visibly started to relax.

"We welcome you to Manchester," the pilot said over the intercom. "The time is three-forty, and the temperature outside is fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit. We appreciate your patience earlier today, and we hope to see you again soon in British Midlands Airways."

Yeah, Jack thought. In your dreams, skipper.

Ryan sat and waited as the aircraft taxied to the international-arrivals area. A truck-borne stairway came to the front door, which the lead stew duly opened. Ryan and the Rabbit family were first off and down the steps, where they were guided to some cars instead of the waiting transfer bus.

Alan Kingshot was there to take his hand. "How was it, Jack?"

"Just like a trip to Disney World," Ryan answered, without a trace of audible irony in his voice.