by Tom Clancy
Finally, in the third period, things broke loose. A shot on goal was stopped, and the puck rebounded out from the goalie. The center took it and turned, racing directly for the opposite goal, with Eddie twenty feet to his right. The center passed an instant before being poke-checked, and Eddie swept around to the corner, unable to take a shot at the goal and blocked from approaching it himself by a charging defenseman.
“Center it!” his mother screamed. He didn’t hear her, but didn’t need to. The center was now in place, and Eddie fired the puck to him. The youthful center stopped it with his skate, stepped back, and sent a blazing shot between the legs of the opposing goalie. The light behind the cage flashed, and sticks went soaring into the air.
“Fine centering pass,” Yazov noted with genuine admiration. He continued on in a chiding tone. “You realize that your son now possesses State secrets, and we cannot allow him to leave the country.”
Mary Pat’s eyes widened in momentary alarm, persuading Yazov that she was indeed a typical bubbleheaded Western female, though she was probably quite a handful in bed. Too bad that I’ll never find out.
“You’re joking?” she asked quietly. Both the soldiers broke out into laughter.
“The Comrade Minister is most certainly joking,” Misha said after a moment.
“I thought so!” she said rather unconvincingly before she turned back to the game. “Okay, let’s get another one!”
Heads turned briefly, mainly in amusement. Having this American at the game was always good for a laugh. Russians find the exuberance of Americans immensely entertaining.
“Well, if she’s a spy, I’ll eat this camera.”
“Think on what you just said, Comrade,” the officer in charge whispered. The amusement in his voice died in an instant. Think on what he just said, the man told himself. Her husband, Edward Foley, is regarded by the American press as a dolt, not smart enough to be a proper reporter, certainly not good enough to be on the staff of the New York Times. The problem was, while that was the sort of cover that every real intelligence officer dreamed of, it was one naturally shared by all the government-service dolts serving every nation in the world. He himself knew that his cousin was a cretin, and he worked for the Foreign Ministry.
“Are you sure you have enough film?”
Eddie got his chance with forty seconds left. A defenseman fanned on a shot from the point, and the puck skittered back to center ice. The center flipped it to the right as the flow of the game changed. The other team had been on the verge of pulling its goalie, and the youngster was out of position when Eddie took the pass and streaked in from his left. Edward Foley II turned sharply and fired behind the goalie’s back. The puck clanged on the post, but fell right on the goal line and dribbled across.
“Score!” Mary Pat howled, jumping up and down like a cheerleader. She threw her arms around Yazov, much to the consternation of his security guards. The Defense Minister’s amusement was tempered by the realization that he’d have to write up a contact report on this tomorrow. Well, he had Misha as a witness that they’d discussed nothing untoward. She grabbed Filitov next.
“I told you you were good luck!”
“My God, are all American hockey fans like this?” Misha asked, disengaging himself. Her hand had touched his for a half-imaginary fraction of a second, and the three film cassettes were inside the glove. He felt them there and was amazed that it had been done so skillfully. Was she a professional magician?
“Why are you Russians so grim all the time—don’t you know how to have a good time?”
“Maybe we should have more Americans around,” Yazov conceded. Hell, I wish my wife were as lively as this one! “You have a fine son, and if he plays against us in the Olympics, I will forgive him.” He was rewarded with a beaming smile.
“That’s such a nice thing to say.” I hope he kicks your commie asses all the way back to Moskva. If there was anything she couldn’t stand, it was being patronized. “Eddie got two more points tonight, and that Ivan Somebody didn’t get any!”
“Are you really that competitive, even with children’s games?” Yazov asked.
Mary Pat slipped, just a little, so fast that her brain couldn’t keep up with the automatic reply: “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” She paused, then covered the mistake. “Vince Lombardi, a famous American coach, said that. Excuse me, you must think me nekulturny. You’re right, this is just a game for children.” She smiled broadly. In your face!
“Did you see anything?”
“A foolish woman who gets overly excited,” the photographer replied.
“How quickly will you have the film developed?”
“Two hours.”
“Get moving,” the senior man said.
“Did you see anything?” the remaining officer asked his boss.
“No, I don’t think so. We’ve watched her for nearly two hours, and she acts like a typical American parent who gets too worked up at an athletic match, but just happens to attract the attention of the Defense Minister and the main suspect of a treason case. I think that’s enough, Comrade, don’t you?” What a grand game this is ...
Two hours later, over a thousand black-and-white photographs were laid on the officer’s desk. The camera was a Japanese one that put a time reference on the lower edge, and the KGB photographer was as good as any newspaper professional. He’d shot almost continuously, stopping only long enough to replace the oversized film magazines on the autodriven camera. At first he’d wished to use a portable TV camera, but the photographer had talked him out of it. The resolution wasn’t as good, nor was the speed. A still camera was still the best for catching something quick and small, though you couldn’t read lips from its record as you could with a videotape.
Each frame required a few seconds as the officer used a magnifying glass to examine the subjects of his interest. When Mrs. Foley entered the sequence of photos, he needed a few more seconds. He examined her clothing and jewelry at some length, and her face. Her smile was particularly mindless, like something in a Western television commercial, and he remembered hearing her screams over the crowd. Why were Americans so damned noisy?
Good dresser, though, he admitted to himself. Like most American women in a Moscow scene, she stood out like a pheasant in a barnyard—he snorted annoyance at the thought. So what that the Americans spend more money on clothing? What did clothing matter to anyone? Through my binoculars, she looked like she had the brains of a bird ... but not in these photos—why?
It was the eyes, he thought. In the still photos her eyes sparkled with something different from what he’d watched in person. Why was that?
In the photographs, her eyes—they were blue, he remembered—were always focused on something. The face, he noticed, had vaguely Slavic cheekbones. He knew that Foley was an Irish name, and assumed that her ancestry was Irish, too. That America was a country of immigrants, and that immigrants cross ethnic lines in marriage, were foreign concepts to the Russians. Add a few kilograms, change her hair and clothing, and she could be any face encountered on a street in Moscow ... or Leningrad. The latter was more likely, he thought. She looked more like a Leningrader. Her face proclaimed the slight arrogance affected by people from that city. I wonder what her ancestry really is.
He kept flipping through the photos, and remembered that the Foleys had never been given this sort of scrutiny. The file on both was a relatively thin one. They were regarded by “Two” as nonentities. Something told him that this was a mistake, but the voice in the back of his head wasn’t yet loud enough. He approached the last of the photographs, checking his watch. Three in the damned morning! he grumbled to himself and reached for another cup of tea.
Well, that must have been the second score. She was jumping like a gazelle. Nice legs, he saw for the first time. As his colleagues had noted up in the rafters, she was probably very entertaining in bed. Only a few more frames till the end of the game and ... yes, there she was, embracing Yazov—that
randy old goat!—then hugging Colonel Filitov—
He stopped dead. The photograph caught something that he hadn’t seen through the binoculars. While giving Filitov a hug, her eyes were locked on one of the four security guards, the only one not watching the game. Her hand, her left hand, was not wrapped around Filitov at all, but rather down by his right one, hidden from view. He flipped back a few frames. Right before the embraces her hand had been in her coat pocket. Around the Defense Minister, it was balled into a fist. After Filitov, it was open again, and still her eyes were on the security guard, a smile on her face that was very Russian indeed, one that stopped at the lips—but in the next frame, she was back to her normal, flighty self. In that moment he was sure.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered to himself.
How long have the Foleys been here? He searched his weary memory but couldn’t dredge it up. Over two years at least—and we didn’t know, we didn’t even suspect ... what if it’s only her? That was a thought—what if she were a spy and her husband were not? He rejected the idea out of hand, and was correct, but for the wrong reason. He reached for the phone and called Vatutin’s home.
“Yes,” the voice answered after only half a ring.
“I have something of interest,” the officer said simply.
“Send a car.”
Vatutin was there twenty-five minutes later, unshaven and irritable. The Major merely set out the crucial series of photographs.
“We never suspected her,” he said while the Colonel examined the pictures through a magnifying glass.
“A fine disguise,” Vatutin observed sourly. He’d been asleep only for an hour when the phone rang. He was still learning how to sleep without a few stiff drinks beforehand—trying to learn, he corrected himself. The Colonel looked up.
“Can you believe it? Right in front of the Defense Minister and four security guards! The balls of this woman! Who’s her regular shadow?”
The Major merely handed over the file. Vatutin leafed through it and found the proper sheet.
“That old fart! He couldn’t follow a child to school without being arrested as a pervert. Look at this—a lieutenant for twenty-three years!”
“There are seven hundred Americans attached to the embassy, Comrade Colonel,” the Major observed. “We have only so many really good officers—”
“All watching the wrong people.” Vatutin walked to the window. “No more! Her husband, too,” he added.
“That will be my recommendation, Comrade Colonel. It would seem likely that they both work for CIA.”
“She passed something to him.”
“Probably—a message, perhaps something else.”
Vatutin sat down and rubbed his eyes. “Good work, Comrade Major.”
It was already dawn at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Archer was preparing to return to his war. His men had packed their new weapons while their leader—now that was a new thought, the Archer told himself—reviewed his plans for the coming weeks. Among the things he’d received from Ortiz was a complete set of tactical maps. These were made from satellite photographs, and were updated to show current Soviet strongpoints and areas of heavy patrol activity. He had a long-range radio now on which he could tune to weather forecasts—including Russian ones. Their journey wouldn’t start until nightfall.
He looked around. Some of his men had sent their families to this place of safety. The refugee camp was crowded and noisy, but a far happier place than the deserted villages and towns bombed flat by the Russians. There were children here, the Archer saw, and children were happy anywhere they had their parents, and food, and friends. The boys were already playing with toy guns—and with the older ones, they were not toys. He accepted that with a degree of regret that diminished on every trip. The losses among the mudjaheddin demanded replacements, and the youngest were the bravest. If freedom required their deaths—well, their deaths came in a holy cause and Allah was beneficent to those who died for Him. The world was indeed a sad place, but at least here a man could find a time for amusement and rest. He watched one of his riflemen helping his firstborn son to walk. The baby could not do it alone, but with each tottering step he looked up at the smiling, bearded face of a father he’d seen only twice since birth. The new chief of the band remembered doing the same for his son ... now being taught to walk a very different path ...
The Archer returned to his own work. He couldn’t be a missileer anymore, but he’d trained Abdul well. Now the Archer would lead his men. It was a right that he’d earned, and, better still, his men thought him lucky. It would be good for morale. Though he had never in his life read books on military theory, the Archer felt that he knew their lessons well enough.
There was no warning—none at all. The Archer’s head snapped around as he heard the crackling sound of exploding cannon shells, then he saw the dart-shapes of the Fencers, barely a hundred meters high. He hadn’t yet reached for his rifle when he watched the bombs falling free of the ejector racks. The black shapes wobbled slightly before the fins stabilized them, their noses tipping down in slow motion. The engine noise of the Soviet Su-24 attack-bombers came next, and he turned to follow them as his rifle came up to his shoulder, but they were too fast. There was nothing left to do but dive to the ground, and it seemed that everything was happening very, very slowly. He was almost hovering in the air, the earth reluctant to come to meet him. His back was turned to the bombs, but he knew they were there, heading down. His eyes snapped up to see people running, his rifleman trying to cover the infant son with his body. The Archer turned to look up and was horrified to see that one bomb seemed to come straight at him, a black circle against the clear morning sky. There was no time even to say Allah’s name as it passed over his head, and the earth shook.
He was stunned and deafened by the blast, and felt wobbly when he stood. It seemed strange to see and feel noise, but not to hear it. Instinct alone flipped the safety off his rifle as he looked around for the next plane. There it was! The rifle came up and fired of its own accord, but made no difference. The next Fencer dropped its load a hundred meters farther on and raced away before a trail of black smoke. There were no more.
The sounds came back slowly, and seemed distant, like the noises of a dream. But this was no dream. The place where his man and the baby had been was now a hole in the ground. There was no trace of the freedom fighter or his son, and even the certainty that both now stood righteously before their God could not mask the blood-chilling rage that coursed through his body. He remembered showing mercy to the Russian, feeling some regret at his death. No more. He’d never show mercy to an infidel again. His hands were chalk-white around the rifle.
Too late, a Pakistani F-16 fighter streaked across the sky, but the Russians were already across the border, and a minute later, the F-16 circled over the camp twice before heading back to its base.
“Are you all right?” It was Ortiz. His face had been cut by something or other, and his voice was far away.
There was no verbal answer. The Archer gestured with his rifle as he watched a newly made widow scream for her family. Together the two men looked for wounded who might be saved. Luckily, the medical section of the camp was unhurt. The Archer and the CIA officer carried a half-dozen people there, to see a French doctor cursing with the fluency of a man accustomed to such things, his hands already bloody from his work.
They found Abdul on their next trip. The young man had a Stinger up and armed. He wept as he confessed that he’d been asleep. The Archer patted his shoulder and said it wasn’t his fault. There was supposed to be an agreement between the Soviets and the Pakistanis that prohibited cross-border raids. So much for agreements. A television news crew—French—appeared, and Ortiz took the Archer to a place where neither could be seen.
“Six,” the Archer said. He didn’t mention the noncombatant casualties.
“It is a sign of weakness that they do this, my friend,” Ortiz replied.
“To attack a place of women and c
hildren is an abomination before God!”
“Have you lost any supplies?” To the Russians this was a guerrilla camp, of course, but Ortiz didn’t bother voicing their view of things. He’d been here too long to be objective about such matters.
“Only a few rifles. The rest is outside the camp already.”
Ortiz had no more to say. He’d run out of comforting observations. His nightmare was that his operation to support the Afghans was having the same effect as earlier attempts to aid the Hmong people of Laos. They’d fought bravely against their Vietnamese enemies, only to be virtually exterminated despite all their Western assistance. The CIA officer told himself that this situation was different, and, objectively, he thought that this was true. But it tore at what was left of his soul to watch these people leave the camp, armed to the teeth, and then to count the number that returned. Was America really helping the Afghans to redeem their own land, or were we merely encouraging them to kill as many Russians as possible before they, too, were wiped out?
What is the right policy? he asked himself. Ortiz admitted that he didn’t know.
Nor did he know that the Archer had just made a policy decision of his own. The old-young face turned west, then north, and told himself that Allah’s will was no more restricted by borders than was the will of His enemies.
15.
Culmination
“All we need to do now is spring the trap,” Vatutin told his Chairman. His voice was matter-of-fact, his face impassive as he gestured to the evidence laid out on Gerasimov’s desk.
“Excellent work, Colonel!” The Chairman of the KGB allowed himself a smile. Vatutin saw that there was more in it than the satisfaction of closing a difficult and sensitive case. “Your next move?”
