Red Rabbit Part 49

"Immediately I leave Moscow State University. They take me into communications department."

"And how long there?"

"Since, well, for nine and half years in total, set aside my time in academy and other training."

"And where do you work now?" Kingshot led him on.

"I work in Central Communications in bas.e.m.e.nt of Moscow Centre."

"And what exactly did you do there?" Alan finally asked.

"During my watch, all dispatches come in from field to my desk. My job is to maintain security, to be sure proper procedures followed, and then I forward to action officers upstairs. Or to United StatesCanada Inst.i.tute sometimes," Oleg said, gesturing to Ryan.

Jack did his best not to let his mouth fall open. This guy really was an escapee from the Soviet counterpart to CIA's MERCURY. This guy saw it all. Everything, or d.a.m.ned near. He'd just helped a gold mine escape from behind the wire. Son of a b.i.t.c.h!

Kingshot did a somewhat better job of concealing his feelings, but he let his eyes slip over to Ryan's, and that expression said it all.

b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l.

"So, do you know the names of your field officers and their agents?" Kingshot asked.

"KGB officer names-I know many names. Agents, the names I know very few, but I know code names. In Britain, our best agent is code-named MINISTER. He give us high-value diplomatic and political intelligence for many years-twenty years, I think, perhaps more."

"You said KGB has compromised our communications," Ryan observed.

"Yes, somewhat. That is agent NEPTUNE. How much he give, I am not sure, but I know KGB read much of American naval communications."

"What about other communications?" Jack asked immediately.

"Naval communications, that I am sure. Others, I am not sure, but you use same cipher machines for all, yes?"

"Actually not," Alan told him. "So, you say British communications are secure?"

"If broken, I do not know it," Zaitzev replied. "Most American diplomatic and intelligence information we get come from Agent Ca.s.sIUS. He is aide to senior politician in Was.h.i.+ngton. He give us good information on what CIA do and what CIA learn from us."

"But you said he's not part of CIA?" Ryan asked.

"No, I think he is politician aide, helper, member of staff-like that," Zaitzev said rather positively.

"Good." Ryan lit up a smoke and offered one to Zaitzev, who took it at once.

"I run out of my Krasnopresnenskiye," he explained.

"I should give you all of mine. My wife wants me to quit. She's a doctor," Jack explained.

"Bah," the Rabbit responded.

"So, why did you decide to leave?" Kingshot asked, taking a sip of tea. The reply nearly made him drop the cup.

"KGB want to kill Pope."

"You're serious?" It was the more experienced man who asked that question, not Ryan.

"Serious? I risk my life, my wife life, my daughter life. Da, I am serious," Oleg Ivanovich a.s.sured his interlocutors with an edge on his voice.

"f.u.c.k," Ryan breathed. "Oleg, we need to know about this."

"It start in August. Fifteen August it start," Zaitzev told them, spinning out his tale without interruption for five or six minutes.

"No name for the operation?" Jack asked when he stopped.

"No name, just dispatch number fifteen-eight-eighty-two-six-six-six. That is date of first message from Andropov to rezidentura Rome, and number of message, yes? Yuriy Vladimirovich ask how get close to Pope. Rome say bad idea. Then Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy-he is main a.s.sistant to chairman, yes?-he send signal to rezidentura Sofia. Operation go from Sofia. So, operation -six-six-six probably run for KGB by Dirzhavna Sugurnost. I think officer name is Strokov, Boris Andreyevich."

Kingshot had a thought and rose, leaving the room. He came back with Nick Thompson, a former detective superintendent of the Metropolitan Police.

"Nick, does the name Boris Andreyevich Strokov mean anything to you?" The former cop blinked hard. "Indeed it does, Alan. He's the chappie we think killed Georgiy Markov on Westminster Bridge. We had him under surveillance, but he flew out of the country before we had enough cause to pick him up for questioning."

"Wasn't he under diplomatic cover?" Ryan asked, and was surprised by Thompson's answer.

"Actually not. He came in undoc.u.mented and left the same way. I saw him myself at Heathrow. But we didn't put the pieces together quickly enough. Dreadful case it was. The poison they gave Markov was horrific stuff."

"You eyeballed this Strokov guy?"

Thompson nodded. "Oh, yes. He might have noticed me. I wasn't being all that careful under the circ.u.mstances. He's the one who killed Markov. I'd stake my life on it."

"How can you be sure?"

"I chased murderers for near on twenty years, Sir John. You get to know them in all that time. And that's what he was, a murderer," Thompson said with total confidence. Ryan could remember his father being like this, even on frustrating cases when he knew what he needed but couldn't quite prove it to a jury.

"The Bulgarians have a sort of contract with the Soviets," Kingshot explained. "Back in 1964 or so, they agreed to handle all the 'necessary' eliminations for the KGB. In return, they get various perks, mostly political. Strokov, yes, I've heard that name before. Did you get a photo of the chap, Nick?"

"Fifty or more, Alan," Thompson a.s.sured him. "I'll never forget that face. He has the eyes of a corpse-no life in them at all, like a doll's eyes."

"How good is he?" Ryan asked.

"As an a.s.sa.s.sin? Quite good, Sir John. Very good indeed. His elimination of Markov on the bridge was expertly done-it was the third attempt. The first two would-be a.s.sa.s.sins bungled the job, and they called Strokov in to get it right. And that he did. Had things gone just a little differently, we would not have realized it was a murder at all."

"We think he's worked elsewhere in the West," Kingshot said. "But very little good information. Just gossip really. Jack, this is a dangerous development. I need to get this information to Basil soonest." And with that, Alan left the room to get to a secure phone. Ryan turned back to Zaitzev.

"And that's why you decided to leave?"

"KGB want kill innocent man, Ryan. I see plot grow. Andropov himself say do this. I handle the messages. How can man stop KGB?" he asked. "I cannot stop KGB, but I will not help KGB kill priest-he is innocent man, yes?"

Ryan's eyes looked down at the floor. "Yes, Oleg Ivan'ch, he is." Dear G.o.d in heaven. He checked his watch. He had to get this information out PDQ, but n.o.body was awake at Langley yet.

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l," Sir Basil Charleston said into his secure phone. "Is this reliable information, Alan?"

"Yes, sir, I believe it to be entirely truthful. Our Rabbit seems a decent chap, and a rather clever one. He seems to be motivated exclusively by his conscience." Next, Kingshot told him about the first revelation of the morning, MINISTER.

"We need to get 'five' looking into that." The British Security Service-once known as MI-5-was the counterespionage arm of their government. They'd need a little more specific information to run that putative traitor down, but they already had a starting point. Twenty years, was it? What a productive traitor that fellow had to be, Sir Basil thought. Time for him to see Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. Charleston had spent years cleaning up his own shop, once a playground for the KGB. But no more, and never b.l.o.o.d.y again, the Knight Commander of the Bath swore to himself.

WHOM DO I TELL? Ryan wondered. Basil would doubtless call Langley-Jack would make sure of that, but Sir Basil was a supremely reliable guy. Next came a more difficult question: What the h.e.l.l can I/we do about this?

Ryan lit another smoke to consider that one. It was more police work than intelligence work....

And the central issue would be cla.s.sification.

Yeah, that's going to be the problem. If we tell anybody, the word will get out somehow, and then somebody will know we have the Rabbit-and guess what, Jack? The Rabbit is now more important to the CIA than the life of the Pope.

Oh, s.h.i.+t, Ryan thought. It was like a trick of jujitsu, like a sudden reversal of polarity on the dial of a compa.s.s. North was now south. Inside was now outside. And the needs of American intelligence might now supersede the life of the Bishop of Rome. His face must have betrayed what he was thinking.

"What is amiss, Ryan?" the Rabbit asked. It seemed to Jack a strange word for him to know.

"The information you just gave us. We've been worrying about the safety of the Pope for a couple of months, but we had no specific information to make us believe his life was actually at risk. Now you have given that information to us, and someone must decide what to do with it. Do you know anything at all about the operation?"

"No, almost nothing. In Sofia the action officer is the rezident, Colonel Bubovoy, Ilya Fedorovich. Senior colonel, he is-Amba.s.sador, can I say? To Bulgarian DS. This Colonel Strokov, this name I know from old cases. He is officer a.s.sa.s.sin for DS. He do other things, too, yes, but when man need bullet, Strokov deliver bullet, yes?"

This struck Ryan as something from a bad movie, except that in the movies the big, bad CIA was the one with a special a.s.sa.s.sination department, like a cupboard with vampire bats inside. When the director needed somebody killed, he'd open the door, and one of the bats flew out and made its kill, then flew back docilely to the cupboard and hung upside down until the next man needed killing. Sure, Wilbur. Hollywood had everything figured out, except that government bureaucracies all ran on paper-nothing happened without a written order of some sort, because only a piece of white paper with black ink on it would cover somebody's a.s.s when things went bad-and if somebody really needed killing, someone inside the system had to sign the order, and who would sign that kind of order? That sort of thing became a permanent record of something bad, and so the signature blank would be bucked all the way to the Oval Office, and once there it just wasn't the sort of paper that would find its way into the Presidential Library that memorialized the person known inside the security community as National Command Authority. And n.o.body in between would sign the order, because government employees never stuck their necks out-that wasn't the way they were trained.

Except me, Ryan thought. But he wouldn't kill someone in cold blood. He hadn't even killed Sean Miller in very hot blood, and while that was a strange thing to be proud of, it beat the h.e.l.l out of the alternative.

But Jack wasn't afraid of sticking it out. The loss of his government paycheck would be a net profit for John Patrick Ryan. He could go back to teaching, perhaps at a nice private university that paid halfway decently, and he'd be able to dabble with the stock market on the side, something with which his current job interfered rather badly....

What the h.e.l.l am I going to do? The worst part of all was that Ryan considered himself to be a Catholic. Maybe he didn't make it to ma.s.s every week. Maybe they'd never name a church after him, but, G.o.d d.a.m.n it, the Pope was someone he was compelled by his lengthy education-Catholic schools all the way, including almost twelve years of Jesuits-to respect. And added to that was something equally important-the education he'd received at the gentle hands of the United States Marine Corps at Quantico's Basic School. They'd taught him that when you saw something that needed doing, you d.a.m.ned well did it, and you hoped that your senior officers would bless it afterward, because decisive action had saved the day more than once in the history of the Corps. "It's a lot easier to get forgiveness than permission" was what the major who'd taught that particular cla.s.s had said, then added with a smile, "But don't you people ever quote me on that." You just had to apply judgment to your action, and such judgment came with experience-but experience often came from bad decisions.

You're over thirty now, Jack, and you've had experience that you never wanted to get, but be d.a.m.ned if you haven't learned a h.e.l.l of a lot from it. He would have been at least a captain by now, Jack thought. Maybe even a junior major, like Billy Tucker, who'd taught that cla.s.s. Just then, Kingshot walked back into the room.

"Al, we have a problem," Ryan told him.

"I know, Jack. I just told Sir Basil. He's thinking about it."

"You're a field spook. What do you think?"

"Jack, this is well over my level of expertise and command."

"You turn your brain off, Al?" Ryan asked sharply.

"Jack, we cannot compromise our source, can we?" Kingshot shot back. "That is the paramount consideration here and now."

"Al, we know that somebody is going to try to whack the head of my church. We know his name, and Nick has a photo alb.u.m on the f.u.c.ker, remember?" Ryan took a deep breath before going on. "I am not going to sit here and do nothing about it," Ryan concluded, entirely forgetting the presence of the Rabbit for the moment.

"You do nothing? I risk my life for this and you do nothing?" Zaitzev demanded, catching on to the rapid-fire English exchanged in front of him. His face showed both outrage and puzzlement.

Al Kingshot handled the answer. "That is not for us to say. We cannot compromise our source-you, Oleg. We must protect you as well."

"f.u.c.k!" Ryan stood and walked out of the room. But what the h.e.l.l could he actually do? Jack asked himself. Then he went looking for the secure phone and dialed a number from memory.

"Murray," a voice said after the STUs married up.

"Dan, it's Jack."

"Where you been? I called two nights ago and Cathy said you were in Germany on NATO business. I wanted to-" Ryan just cut him off.

"Stick it, Dan. I was somewhere else doing something else. Listen up. I need some information and I need it in a hurry," Jack announced, lapsing briefly back into the voice of an officer of Marines.

"Shoot," Murray replied.

"I need to know the Pope's schedule for the next week or so." It was Friday. Ryan hoped the Bishop of Rome didn't have anything hopping for the weekend.

"What?" The FBI official's voice communicated predictable puzzlement.

"You heard me."

"What the h.e.l.l for?"

"Can't tell you-oh, s.h.i.+t," Ryan swore, and then went on. "Dan, we have reason to believe there's a contract out on the Pope."

"Who?" Murray asked.

"It ain't the Knights of Columbus," was all Ryan felt comfortable saying.

"s.h.i.+t, Jack. Are you serious?"

"What the h.e.l.l do you think?" Ryan demanded.

"Okay, okay. Let me make some phone calls. What exactly am I free to say?"

That question stopped Ryan cold in his tracks. Think, boy, think. "Okay, you're a private citizen and a friend of yours is going to Rome and he wants to eyeball His Holiness. You want to know what's the best way to accomplish that mission. Fair enough?"

"What's Langley say about this?"

"Dan, frankly, I don't care a rat's a.s.s right now, okay? Please, get me that information. I'll call back in an hour. Okay?"

"Roger that, Jack. One hour." Murray hung up. Ryan knew he could trust Murray. He was himself a Jesuit product, like so many FBI agents, in his case a Boston College alum, just like Ryan, and so whatever additional loyalties he had would work in Ryan's favor. Breathing a little easier, Ryan returned to the ducal library.

"Whom did you call, Jack?" Kingshot asked.

"Dan Murray at the emba.s.sy, the FBI rep. You ought to know him."

"The Legal Attache-yes, I do. Okay, what did you ask?"

"The Pope's schedule for the coming week."

"But we don't know anything yet," Kingshot objected.

"Does that make you feel any better, Al?" Jack inquired delicately.

"You did not compro-"