Red Rabbit

by Tom Clancy

  Best of all, so was Ivan, wearing the same clothes that he’d worn on the metro. Maybe his best suit? Foley wondered. If so, he’d better get his ass to a Western country as soon as possible.

  Other than the at-best-mediocre quality of the goods here, a department store was a department store, though here the departments were semi-independent shops. But their Ivan was smart. He’d suggested a meet in a part of the place where there would certainly be high-quality goods. For millennia, Russia had been a place of cold winters, a place where even the elephants had needed fur coats, and since 25 percent of the human blood supply goes to the brain, men needed hats. The decent fur hats were called shapkas, roughly tubular fur head coverings that had little in the way of precise shape, but did serve to keep the brain from freezing. The really good ones were made out of muskrat—mink and sable went only to the most expensive specialty stores, and those were mainly limited to well-to-do women, the wives and/or mistresses of Party bosses. But the noble muskrat, a swamp creature that smelled—well, the smell was taken out of the skin somehow, lest the wearer of the hat be mistaken for a tidal wetland garbage dump—had very fine fur or hair or whatever it was, and was a good insulator. So, fine, a rat with a high R rating. But that wasn’t the important part, was it?

  Ed and Mary Pat could also communicate with their eyes, though the bandwidth was pretty narrow. The time of day helped. The winter hats had just been stocked in the store, and the fall weather didn’t have people racing to buy new ones yet. There was just one guy in a brown jacket, and Mary Pat moved in that direction, after shooing her husband away, as though to buy him something as a semi-surprise.

  The man was shopping, just as she was, and he was in the hat department. He’s not a dummy, whoever he is, she thought.

  “Excuse me,” she said in Russian.

  “Yes?” His head turned. Mary Pat checked him out; he was in his early thirties, but looked older than that, as life in Russia tended to age people more rapidly, even more rapidly than New York City. Brown hair, brown eyes—rather smart-looking in the eyes. That was good.

  “I am shopping for a winter hat for my husband, as you suggested,” she added in her very best Russian, “on the metro.”

  He didn’t expect it to be a girl, Mrs. Foley saw at once. He blinked hard and looked at her, trying to square the perfect Russian with the fact that she had to be an American.

  “On the metro?”

  “That’s right. My husband thought it better that I should meet you, rather than he. So . . .” She lifted a hat and riffled the fur, then turned to her new friend, as though asking his opinion. “So, what do you wish of us?”

  “What do you mean?” he blurted back at her.

  “You have approached an American and requested a meeting. Do you want to assist me in buying a hat for my husband?” she asked very quietly indeed.

  “You are CIA?” he asked, his thought now back under semicontrol.

  “My husband and I work for the American government, yes. And you work for KGB.”

  “Yes,” he replied, “in communications, Central Communications.”

  “Indeed?” She turned back to the gable and lifted another shapka. Holy shit, she thought, but was he telling the truth, or did he just want a cheap ticket to New York?

  “Really? How can I be sure of that?”

  “I say it is so,” he replied, surprised and slightly outraged that his honesty should come into question. Did this woman think he was risking his life as a lark? “Why do you talk to me?”

  “The message blanks you passed on the metro did get my attention,” she said, holding up a dark brown hat and frowning, as though it were too dark.

  “Madam, I work in the Eighth Chief Directorate.”

  “Which department?”

  “Simple communications processing. I am not part of the signals intelligence service. I am a communications officer. I transmit outgoing signals to the various rezidenturas, and when signals come to my desk from out in the field, I forward them to the proper recipients. As a result, I see many operational signals. Is that sufficient to your purpose?” He was at least playing the game properly, gesturing to the shapka and shaking his head, then pointing to another, its fur dyed a lighter brown, almost a blond color.

  “I suppose it might be. What do you ask of us?”

  “I have information of great importance—very great importance. In return for that information, I require passage to the West for myself, my wife, and my daughter.”

  “How old is your daughter?”

  “Three years and seven months. Can you deliver what I require?”

  That question shot a full pint of adrenaline into her bloodstream. She’d have to make this decision almost instantly, and with that decision she was committing the whole power of CIA onto a single case. Getting three people out of the Soviet Union was not going to be a picnic.

  But this guy works in MERCURY, Mary Pat realized. He’d know things a hundred well-placed agents couldn’t get to. Ivan here was custodian of the Russian Crown Jewels, more valuable even than Brezhnev’s balls, and so—

  “Yes, we can get you and your family out. How soon?”

  “The information I have is very time-sensitive. As soon as you can arrange. I will not reveal my information until I am in the West, but I assure you the information is a matter of great importance—it is enough to force me into this action,” he added as an additional dangle.

  Don’t overplay your hand, Ivan, she thought. An ego-driven agent would tell them he had the launch codes for the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, when he just had his mother’s recipe for borscht, and getting the bastard out would be a waste of resources that had to be used with the greatest care. But, against that possibility, Mary Pat had her eyes. She looked into this man’s soul, and saw that whatever he was, “liar” probably wasn’t among them.

  “Yes, we can do this very quickly if necessary. We need to discuss place and methods. We cannot talk any longer here. I suggest a meeting place to discuss details.”

  “That is simple,” Zaitzev replied, setting the place for the following morning.

  You’re in a hurry. “What name do I call you?” she finally asked.

  “Oleg Ivan’ch,” he answered automatically, then realized he’d spoken the truth, in a situation where dissimulation might have served him better.

  “That is good. My name is Maria,” she replied. “So, which shapka would you recommend?”

  “For your husband? This one, certainly,” Zaitzev said, handing over the dirty-blond one.

  “Then I shall buy it. Thank you, comrade.” She fussed over the hat briefly, then walked off, checking the price tag, 180 rubles, more than a month’s pay for a Moscow worker. To effect the purchase, she handed the shapka over to one clerk, then walked to a cash register, where she paid her cash—the Soviets hadn’t discovered credit cards yet—and got a receipt in return, which she handed to the first clerk, who gave her the hat back.

  So, it was true—the Russians really were more inefficient than the American government. Amazing that it was possible, but seeing was believing, she told herself, clutching the brown-paper bag and finding her husband, whom she quickly walked outside.

  “So, what did you buy me?”

  “Something you’ll like,” she promised, holding up the bag, but her sparkling blue eyes said it all. Then she checked her watch. It was just 3:00 A.M. in Washington and, if they phoned this one in, it was too early. This wasn’t something for the night crew, even the trusted people in MERCURY. She’d just learned that one the hard way. No, this one would get written up, encrypted, and put in the diplomatic bag. Then it was just a matter of getting approval from Langley.

  THEIR CAR HAD just been swept by an embassy mechanic the previous day—everybody in the embassy did it routinely, so this didn’t finger them as spooks, and the telltales on door and hood hadn’t been disturbed the previous night. The Mercedes 280 also had a fairly sophisticated alarm. So Ed Foley just turned up the sound on
the radio-tape player. In the slot was a Bee Gees tape sure to offend anyone listening to a bug, and easily loud enough to overpower it. In her passenger seat, Mary Pat danced to the music, like a good California girl.

  “Our friend needs a ride,” she said, just loudly enough to be heard by her husband. “Him, wife, and daughter, age three and a half.”

  “When?” Ed wanted to know.

  “Soon.”

  “How?”

  “Up to us.”

  “He’s serious?” Ed asked his wife, meaning, Worth our time?

  “Think so.”

  You couldn’t be sure, but MP had a good eye for reading people, and he was willing to wager on those cards. He nodded. “Okay.”

  “Any company?” she asked next.

  Foley’s eyes were about equally divided between the street and the mirrors. If they were being followed, it was by the Invisible Man. “Nope.”

  “Good.” She turned the sound down some. “You know, I like it, too, Ed, but easy on the ears.”

  “Fine, honey. I have to go back to the office this afternoon.”

  “What for?” she asked in the semiangry voice every husband in the world knows.

  “Well, I have some paperwork from yesterday—”

  “And you want to check the baseball scores,” she huffed. “Ed, why can’t we get satellite TV in our apartment block?”

  “They’re working on getting it for us, but the Russians are making a little trouble. They’re afraid it might be a spy tool,” he added in a disgusted voice.

  “Yeah,” she observed. “Sure. Give me a break.” Just in case KGB had a very clever black-bag guy who prowled the parking lot at night. Maybe the FBI could pull that one off but, though they had to guard against the possibility, she doubted that the Russians had anybody that clever. Their radios were just too bulky. Even so, yes. They were paranoid, but were they paranoid enough?

  CATHY TOOK SALLY and Little Jack outside. There was a park just a block and a half away, off Fristow Way, where there were a few swings that Sally liked and grass for the little guy to pull at and try to eat. He’d just figured out how to use his hands, badly and awkwardly, but whatever found its way into his little fist immediately thereafter found its way to his mouth, a fact known by every parent in the world. Still and all, it was a chance to get the kids some sun—the winter nights would be long and dark here—and it got the house quiet for Jack to get some work done on his Halsey book.

  He’d already taken out one of Cathy’s medical textbooks, Principles of Internal Medicine, to read up on shingles, the skin disease that had tormented the American admiral at a very inconvenient time. Just from reading the subchapter on the ailment—related to chicken pox, it turned out—it must have been like medieval torture to the then elderly naval aviator. Even more so that his beloved carrier battle group, Enterprise and Yorktown, would have to sail into a major engagement without him. But he’d taken it like a man—the only way William Frederick Halsey, Jr., had ever taken anything—and recommended his friend Raymond Spruance to take his place. The two men could scarcely have been more different. Halsey the profane, hard-drinking, chain-smoking former football player. Spruance, the nonsmoking, teetotaling intellectual reputed never to have raised his voice in anger. But they’d become the closest of friends, and would later in the war switch off command of the Pacific Fleet, renaming it from Third Fleet to Fifth Fleet and back again when command was exchanged. That, Ryan thought, was the most obvious clue that Halsey had been the intellectual, too, and not the blustering hell-for-leather aggressor that the contemporary newspapers had proclaimed him to be. Spruance the intellectual would not have befriended a knuckle-dragger. But their staffs had snarled at each other like tomcats fighting over a tabby in heat, probably the military equivalent of “my daddy can whip your daddy,” engaged in by children up to the age of seven or so—and no more intellectually respectable.

  He had Halsey’s own words on the illness, though what he’d really said must have been muted by his editor and cowriter, since Bill Halsey really had spoken like a Chief Bosun’s Mate with a few drinks under his belt—probably one of the reasons reporters had liked him so much. He’d made such good copy.

  His notes and some source documents were piled next to his Apple IIe computer. Jack used WordStar as his word-processing program. It was fairly complicated, but a damned sight better than using a typewriter. He wondered which publisher would be right for the book. The Naval Institute Press was after him again, but he found himself wondering whether to switch over to a big-league publisher. But he had to finish the damned book first, didn’t he? And so, back into Halsey’s complex brain.

  But he was hesitating today. That was unusual. His typing—three fingers and a thumb (two thumbs on a good day)—was the same, but his brain wasn’t concentrating properly, as though it wanted to look at something else. This was an occasional curse of his CIA analysis work. Some problems just wouldn’t go away, forcing his mind to go over the same material time and again until he stumbled upon the answer to a question that often enough made little sense in and of itself. The same thing had occasionally happened during his time at Merrill Lynch, when he’d investigated stock issues, looking for hidden worth or danger in the operations and finances of some publicly traded company. That had occasionally put him at odds with the big boys up in the New York office, but Ryan had never been one to do something just because a superior told him to. Even in the Marine Corps, an officer, however junior, was expected to think, and a stockbroker with clients was entrusted by them to safeguard their money as though it were his own. Mostly, he’d succeeded. After putting his own funds into Chicago and North Western Railroad, he’d been hammered by his supervisors, but he’d stood his ground, and those clients who’d listened to him had cashed in rather nicely—which had earned him a crowd of new clients. So Ryan had learned to listen to his instincts, to scratch the itches he couldn’t quite see and could barely feel. This was one of those, and “this” was the Pope. The information he had did not form a complete picture, but he was used to that. In the stock-trading business, he’d learned how and when to bet his money on incomplete pictures, and nine times out of ten he’d been right.

  He had nothing to bet on this one but his itch, however. Something was happening. He just didn’t know what. All he’d seen was a copy of a warning letter sent to Warsaw, and certainly forwarded to Moscow, where a bunch of old men would look upon it as a threat.

  That wasn’t much to go on, was it? Ryan asked himself. He found himself wishing for a cigarette. Such things helped his thinking process sometimes, but there’d be hell to pay if Cathy smelled smoke in their house. But chewing gum, even bubble gum, just didn’t cut it at times like this.

  He needed Jim Greer. The Admiral often treated him like a surrogate son—his own son had been killed as a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam, Ryan had learned along the way—giving him the occasional chance to talk through a problem. But he wasn’t that close to Sir Basil Charleston, and Simon was too near to him in age, if not quite in experience. And this was not a problem to be kicked around alone. He wished he could discuss it with his wife—doctors, he knew, were pretty smart—but that wasn’t allowed, and, anyway, Cathy didn’t really know the situation well enough to understand the threats. No, she’d grown up in a more privileged environment, daughter of a millionaire stock-and-bonds trader, living in a large Park Avenue apartment, all the best schools, her own new car for her sixteenth birthday, and all the hazards of life held off well beyond arm’s length. Not Jack. His dad had been a cop, mostly a homicide investigator, and, while his father hadn’t brought work home, Jack had asked enough questions to understand that the real world could be a place of unpredictable danger and that some people just didn’t think like real people. They were called Bad Guys—and they could be pretty goddamned bad. He’d never lived without a conscience. Whether he’d picked that up in distant childhood or Catholic schools, or it had been part of his genetic makeup, Jack didn’t know. He did
know that breaking the rules was rarely a good thing, but he also knew that the rules were a product of reason, and reason was paramount, and so the rules could be broken if you had a good—a very goddamned good—reason for doing so. That was called judgment, and the Marines, oddly enough, had nurtured that particular flower. You made an estimate of the situation and thought through the options, and then you acted. Sometimes you had to do it in a very big hurry—and that was why officers were paid more than sergeants, though you were always well advised to listen to your gunny if you had the time.

  But Ryan had none of those things now, and that was the bad news. There was no immediately identifiable threat in view, and that was the good news. But now he was in an environment in which the threats were not always readily visible, and it was his job to find them out by piecing the available information together. But there wasn’t much of that now either. Just a possibility, which he had to apply to the minds of people he didn’t know and would never meet, except as paper documents written up by other people he didn’t know. It was like being the navigator on a ship in Christopher Columbus’s little fleet, thinking land might be out there, but not knowing where or when he might come upon it—and hoping to God it wouldn’t be at night, in a storm, and that the land would not appear as a barrier reef to rip the bottom of his ship out. His own life was not in danger, but, as he’d been compelled by professional obligation to treat the money of his clients as his own, so he had to regard the life of a man in potential danger as having the importance of the life of his own child.

  And that was where the itch came from. He could call Admiral Greer, Ryan thought, but it wasn’t even seven in the morning in Washington yet, and he’d be doing his boss no favor by waking him up to the trilling sound of his home STU. Especially as he had nothing to tell, just a few things to ask. So he leaned back in his chair and stared at the green screen of his Apple monitor, looking for something that just wasn’t there.