by Tom Clancy
The Russian speech concluded, and it was time for a coffee break. Ryan closed his leather-bound folder and trooped out of the room with everyone else. He selected a cup of tea, just to be different, and decorated his saucer with finger food.
“So, Ryan, what do you think?” It was Golovko.
“Is this business or socializing?” Jack asked.
“The latter, if you wish.”
Jack walked to the nearest window and looked out. One of these days, he promised himself, I will see something of Moscow. They must have something here that’s worth snapping a few pictures. Maybe peace will break out someday and I’ll be able to bring the family over ... He turned. But not today, not this year, nor the year after that. Too bad.
“Sergey Nikolayevich, if the world made sense, people like you and me would sit down and hammer all this crap out in two or three days. Hell, you and I know that both sides want to cut inventories by half. The issue we’ve been fighting over all week is how many hours of notice there’ll be before the surprise-inspection team arrives, but because neither side can get its act together on the answer, we’re talking about stuff that we’ve already come to terms on instead of getting on with it. If it was just between you and me, I’d say one hour, and you’d say eight, and we’d eventually talk down to three or four—”
“Four or five.” Golovko laughed.
“Four, then.” Jack did, too. “You see? We’d settle the son of a bitch, wouldn’t we?”
“But we are not diplomats,” Golovko pointed out. “We know how to strike bargains, but not in the accepted way. We are too direct, you and I, too practical. Ah, Ivan Emmetovich, we will make a Russian of you yet.” He’d just Russianized Jack’s name. Ivan Emmetovich. John, son of Emmet.
Business time again, Ryan thought. He changed gears and decided to yank the other man’s chain in turn. “No, I don’t think so. It gets a little too cool here. Tell you what, you go to your chief talker, and I’ll go to Uncle Ernie, and we’ll tell them what we decided on inspection-warning time—four hours. Right now. How ’bout it?”
That rattled him, Jack saw. For the briefest fraction of a second, Golovko thought that he was serious. The GRU/ KGB officer recovered his composure in a moment, and even Jack barely noticed the lapse. The smile was hardly interrupted, but while the expression remained fixed around the mouth, it faded momentarily about the man’s eyes, then returned. Jack didn’t know the gravity of the mistake he had just made.
You should be very nervous, Ivan Emmetovich, but you are not. Why? You were before. You were so tense at the reception the other night that I thought you would explode. And yesterday when you passed the note, I could feel the sweat on your palm. But today, you make jokes. You try to unnerve me with your banter. Why the difference, Ryan? You are not a field officer. Your earlier nervousness proved that, but now you are acting like one. Why? he asked himself as everyone filed back into the conference room. Everyone sat for the next round of monologues, and Golovko kept an eye on his American counterpart.
Ryan wasn’t fidgeting now, he noted with some surprise. On Monday and Tuesday he had been. He merely looked bored, no more uncomfortable than that. You should be uncomfortable, Ryan, Golovko thought.
Why did you need to meet with Gerasimov? Why twice? Why were you nervous before and after the first ... and before but not after the second?
It didn’t make much sense. Golovko listened to the droning words in his earpiece—it was the American’s turn to ramble on about things that had already been decided—but his mind was elsewhere. His mind was in Ryan’s KGB file. Ryan, John Patrick. Son of Emmet William Ryan and Catherine Burke Ryan, both deceased. Married, two children. Degrees in economics and history. Wealthy. Brief service in U.S. Marine Corps. Former stockbroker and history teacher. Joined CIA on a part-time basis four years before, after a consulting job the year before that. Soon thereafter became a full-time officer-analyst. Never trained at the CIA’s field school at Camp Peary, Virginia. Ryan had been involved in two violent incidents, and in both cases deported himself well—the Marine training, Golovko supposed, plus his innate qualities as a man, which the Russian respected. Very bright, brave when he had to be: a dangerous enemy. Ryan worked directly for the DDI, and was known to have prepared numerous special intelligence evaluations ... but a special intelligence mission ... ? He had no training for that. He was probably the wrong sort of personality. Too open, Golovko thought; there was little guile in the man. When he was hiding something, you would never know what, but you would know that he was hiding something ...
You were hiding something before, but not now, are you?
And what does that mean, Ivan Emmetovich? What the hell kind of name is Emmet? Golovko wondered irrelevantly.
Jack saw the man looking at him and saw the question in his eyes. The man was no dummy, Jack told himself, as Ernest Allen spoke on about some technical issue or other. We thought he was GRU, and he really turned out to be KGB—or so it would seem, Jack corrected himself. Is there something else about him that we don’t know?
At parking position number nine at Sheremetyevo Airport, Colonel von Eich was standing at the aft passenger door of his aircraft. In front of him, a sergeant was fiddling with the door seal, an impressive array of tools spread out before him. Like most airliner doors, it opened outward only after opening inward, allowing the airtight seal to unseat itself and slide out of the way so that it would not be damaged. Faulty door seals had killed aircraft before, the most spectacular being the DC-10 crash outside Paris a decade before. Below them, a uniformed KGB guard stood with loaded rifle outside the aircraft. His own flight crew had to pass security checks. All Russians took security very seriously indeed, and the KGB were outright fanatics on the subject.
“I don’t know why you’re getting the warning light, Colonel,” the sergeant said after twenty minutes. “The seal’s perfect, the switch that goes to the light seems to be in good shape—anyway, the door is fine, sir. I’ll check the panel up front next.”
You get that? Paul von Eich wanted to ask the KGB guard fifteen feet below, but couldn’t.
His crew was already readying the plane for its return trip. They’d had a couple of days to see the sights. This time it had been an old monastery about forty miles outside the city—the last ten miles of which had been over roads that were probably dirt in summertime but were a mixture of mud and snow now. They’d had their guided, guarded tour of Moscow, and now the airmen were ready to go home. He hadn’t briefed his men on what Ryan had told him yet. The time for that would come tomorrow evening. He wondered how they would react.
The session ended on schedule, with a hint from the Soviets that they’d be willing to talk over inspection times tomorrow. They’d have to talk fast, Ryan thought, because the delegation would be leaving tomorrow night, and they had to have something to take back home from this round of talks. After all, the summit meeting was already scheduled informally. This one would be in Moscow. Moscow in the spring, Jack thought. I wonder if they’ll bring me along for the signing ceremony? I wonder if there’ll be a treaty to sign? There had better be, Ryan concluded.
Golovko watched the Americans leave, then waved for his own car, which took him to KGB headquarters. He walked directly to the Chairman’s office.
“So what did our diplomats give away today?” Gerasimov asked without preamble.
“I think tomorrow we’ll make our amended proposal for inspection timing.” He paused before going on. “I spoke with Ryan today. He seems to have changed somewhat and I thought I should report it.”
“Go on,” the Chairman said.
“Comrade Chairman, I do not know what the two of you discussed, but the change in his demeanor is such that I thought you should know of it.” Golovko went on to explain what he’d seen.
“Ah, yes. I cannot discuss our conversations because you are not cleared for that compartment, but I would not be concerned, Colonel. I am handling this matter personally. Your observation is noted. Ryan wil
l have to learn to control his emotions better. Perhaps he is not Russian enough.” Gerasimov was not a man who made jokes, but this was an exception. “Anything else on the negotiations?”
“My notes will be written up and on your desk tomorrow morning.”
“Good. Dismissed.” Gerasimov watched the man leave. His face didn’t change until the door clicked shut. Bad enough to lose, he thought, and to lose to a nonprofessional ... But he had lost, and, he reminded himself, he wasn’t a professional either, merely the Party man who gave them orders. That decision was behind him. It was too bad about his officers in—wherever the place was—but they had failed, and earned their fates. He lifted his phone and ordered his private secretary to arrange for his wife and daughter to fly the following morning to Talinn, the capital of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. Yes, they would need a car and a driver also. No, just one. The driver would double as their security guard. Not many people knew who his wife was, and the trip was unscheduled, just to see old friends. Very good. Gerasimov hung up his phone and looked around his office. He’d miss it. Not so much the office itself: the power. But he knew that he’d miss his life more.
“And this Colonel Bondarenko?” Vatutin asked.
“A fine young officer. Very bright. He’ll make a good general when the time comes.”
Vatutin wondered how his final report would handle that issue. There was no suspicion about that man, except for his association with Filitov. But there had been no suspicion about Filitov, despite his connection with Oleg Penkovskiy. Colonel Vatutin shook his head in amazement. That fact would be talked about in security classes for a generation. Why didn’t they see? the young officer-trainees would demand. How could anyone be so stupid? Because only the most trusted people can be spies—you don’t give classified information to someone you cannot trust. The lesson was as it had always been: Trust no one. Coming back to Bondarenko, he wondered what would happen to him. If he were the loyal and exceptional officer he seemed to be, then he should not be tainted by this affair. But—there was always a but, wasn’t there?—there were also some additional questions to ask, and Vatutin went to the bottom of his list. His initial interrogation report was due on Gerasimov’s desk the following day.
The climb took all night in total darkness. The clouds that had swept in from the south covered both moon and stars, and the only illumination was from the perimeter lights of their objective, reflected off the clouds. Now they were within easy sight of it. Still a sizable march, they were close enough that the individual units could be briefed on their tasks, and could see what they had to do. The Archer picked for himself a high spot and rested his binoculars on a rock to steady them as he surveyed the site. There seemed to be three encampments. Only two of them were fenced, though at the third he could make out piles of posts and fencing material near an orange-white light atop the sort of pole used in cities to illuminate the streets. The extent of the construction surprised him. To do all this—on the top of a mountain! How important could such a place be to deserve all the effort, all the expense? Something that sent a laser beam into the sky ... to what end? The Americans had asked him if he’d seen what the light-beam had hit. They knew it had hit something, then? Something in the sky. Whatever it was, it had frightened the Americans, had frightened the same people who made the missiles with which he had killed so many Russian pilots ... What could frighten people so clever as that? The Archer could see the place, but did not see anything more frightening than the guard towers that held machine guns. One of those buildings held armed soldiers who would have heavy weapons. That was something to be frightened about. Which building? He had to know that, because that building had to be attacked first. His mortars would put their shells on that one first of all. But which one was it?
After that ... ? He’d deploy his men into two sections of almost a hundred each. The Major would take one and go left. He’d take the other and go right. The Archer had selected his objective as soon as he saw the mountaintop. That building, he told himself, was where the people were. That was where the Russians lived. Not the soldiers, but those the soldiers guarded. Some of the windows were lighted. An apartment building built atop a mountain, he thought. What sort of people would they be that the Russians would put up a building of the sort found only in cities? People who needed comfort. People who had to be guarded. People who worked on something the Americans were afraid of. People he would kill without mercy, the Archer told himself.
The Major came down to lie at his side.
“All the men are well hidden,” the man said. He trained his own binoculars on the objective. It was so dark that the Archer barely saw the man’s outline, only the contours of his face and the vague shadow of his bristling mustache. “We misjudged the ground from the other hilltop. It will take three hours to close in.”
“Closer to four, I think.”
“I don’t like those guard towers,” the Major noted. Both men shivered with the cold. The wind had picked up, and they no longer were sheltered from it by the bulk of the mountain. It would be a difficult night for all of the men. “One or two machine guns in each of them. They can sweep us off the mountainside as we make the final assault.”
“No searchlights,” the Archer noted.
“Then they’ll be using night-vision devices. I’ve used them myself.”
“How good?”
“Their range is limited because of the way they work. They can see large things, like trucks, out to this distance. A man on a broken background like this one ... perhaps three thousand meters. Far enough for their purposes, my friend. The towers must go first. Use the mortars on them.”
“No.” The Archer shook his head. “We have less than a hundred shells. They must go on the guard barracks. If we can kill all of the sleeping soldiers, so much the easier for us when we get inside.”
“If the machine-gunners in those towers see us coming, half of our men will be dead before the guards wake up,” the Major pointed out.
The Archer grunted. His comrade was right. Two of the towers were sited in a way that would allow the men in them to sweep the steep slope that they’d have to climb before getting to the mountain’s flat summit. He could counter that with his own machine guns ... but duels of that sort were usually won by the defender. The wind gusted at them, and both men knew that they’d have to find shelter soon or risk frostbite.
“Damn this cold!” the Major swore.
“Do you think the towers are cold also?” the Archer asked after a moment.
“Even worse. They are more exposed than we.”
“How will the Russian soldiers be dressed?”
The Major chuckled. “The same as we—after all, we’re all wearing their clothing, are we not?”
The Archer nodded, searching for the thought that hovered at the edge of his consciousness. It came to him through his cold-numbed brain, and he left his perch, telling the Major to remain. He came back carrying a Stinger missile launcher. The metal tube was cold to the touch as he assembled it. The acquisition units were all carried inside his men’s clothing, to protect the batteries from the cold. He expertly assembled and activated the weapon, then rested his cheek on the metal conductance bar and trained it on the nearest guard tower ...
“Listen,” he said, and handed the weapon over. The officer took it and did as he was directed.
“Ah.” His teeth formed a Cheshire-cat grin in the black night.
Clark was busy, too. Obviously a careful man, Mancuso noted as he watched, he was laying out and checking all of his equipment. The man’s clothing looked ordinary, though shabby and not well made.
“Bought in Kiev,” Clark explained. “You can’t exactly wear Hart, Schaffner, and Marx and expect to look like a local.” He also had a coverall to put over it, with camouflage stripes. There was a complete set of identity papers—in Russian, which Mancuso couldn’t read—and a pistol. It was a small one, barely larger than the silencer that sat next to it.
“Never s
een one of these before,” the Captain said.
“Well, that’s a Qual-A-Tec baffle-type silencer with no wipes and a slide-lock internal to the can,” Clark said.
“What—”
Mr. Clark chuckled. “You guys have been hitting me with subspeak ever since I got aboard, skipper. Now it’s my turn.”
Mancuso lifted the pistol. “This is only a twenty-two.”
“It’s damned near impossible to silence a big round unless you want a silencer as long as your forearm, like the FBI guys have on their toys. I have to have something that’ll fit in a pocket. This is the best Mickey can do, and he’s the best around.”
“Who?”
“Mickey Finn. That’s his real name. He does the design work for Qual-A-Tec, and I wouldn’t use anybody else’s silencer. It isn’t like TV, Cap’n. For a silencer to work right, it has to be a small caliber, you have to use a subsonic round, and you have to have a sealed breech. And it helps if you’re out in the open. In here, you’d hear it ’cause of the steel walls. Outside, you’d hear something out to thirty feet or so, but you wouldn’t know what it was. The silencer goes on the pistol like this, and you twist it”—he demonstrated—“and now the gun’s a single shot. The silencer locks the action. To get off another round, you have to twist it back and cycle the action manually.”
“You mean you’re going in there with a twenty-two single-shot?”
“That’s how it’s done, Captain.”
“Have you ever—”
“You really don’t want to know. Besides, I can’t talk about it.” Clark grinned. “I’m not cleared for that myself. If it makes you feel any better, yeah, I’m scared, too, but this is what they pay me for.”
