by Tom Clancy
“How will it work?”
“I like that. Good. Let’s get down to business. We won’t be doing this very often. You know why.”
Another smile. “Yeah, they say that winters at Leaven-worth are a motherfucker.”
“Not a laughing matter, Peter,” the KGB officer said. “This is a very serious business.” Please, not another bloody cowboy, Marvin thought to himself.
“I know. Sorry,” Henderson apologized. “I’m new to this.”
“First of all, we need to set up a way of contacting me. Your apartment has curtains on the front windows. When they are all the way open, or all the way closed, there is nothing to concern us. When there is, leave them halfway closed. I will check your windows twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday mornings, about nine. Is that acceptable?”
“Yes, Marvin.”
“For starters, Peter, we’ll use a simple transfer method. I will park my car on a street close to your home. It’s a dark-blue Plymouth Satellite with license number HVR-309. Repeat that back to me. Don’t ever write it down.”
“HVR-309.”
“Put your messages in this.” He passed something under the table. It was small and metallic. “Don’t get it too close to your watch. There’s a powerful magnet in it. When you walk past my car, you can bend down to pick up a piece of litter, or rest your foot on the bumper and tie your shoe. Just stick the container on the inside surface of the bumper. The magnet will hold it in place.”
It seemed very sophisticated to Henderson, though everything he’d just heard was kindergarten-level spycraft. This was good for the summer. Winter weather would require something else. The dinner menu arrived, and both men selected veal.
“I have something now if you’re interested,” Henderson told the KGB officer. Might as well let them know how important I am.
Marvin, whose real name was Ivan Alekseyevich Yegorov, had a real job, and everything that went along with it. Employed by the Aetna Casualty and Surety Company as a loss-control representative, he’d been through company training on Farmington Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut, before returning to the Washington regional office, and his job was to identify safety hazards at the many clients of the company, known in the trade as “risks.” Selected mainly for its mobility—the post even came with a company car—the job carried with it the unexpected bonus of visiting the offices of various government contractors whose employees were not always as careful covering up the papers on their desks as they ought to have been. His immediate boss was delighted with Marvin’s performance. His new man was highly observant and downright superb at documenting his business affairs. He’d already turned down promotion and transfer to Detroit—Sorry,boss, but I just like the Washington area too much—which didn’t bother his supervisor at all. A guy with his skills, holding a fairly low-paying job, just made his part of the office look all the better. For Marvin, the job meant being out of the office four days out of five, which allowed him to meet people whenever and wherever he wished, along with a free car—Aetna even paid gas and maintenance—and a life so comfortable that had he believed in God he might have thought himself dead and in heaven. A genuine love for baseball took him to RFK Stadium, where the anonymity of the crowd was as perfect a place for brush-passes and other meets as the KGB Field Operations Manual dared to hope for. All in all, Captain Yegorov was a man on the way up, comfortable with his cover and his surroundings, doing his duty for his country. He’d even managed to arrive in America just in time to catch the sexual revolution. All he really missed was the vodka, something Americans did poorly.
Isn’t this interesting? Marvin asked himself in his Chevy Chase apartment. It was downright hilarious that he had learned about a high-level Russian intelligence operation from an American, and here was a chance to hurt his country’s Main Enemy through surrogates—if they could get things moving in time. He would also be able to inform his control officers of something the Soviet Air Force cretins had running that had significant implications for the Soviet Union’s defense. They’d probably try to take that operation over. You couldn’t trust pilots—it had to be a PVO Strany officer doing the questioning, he was sure—with something as important as national defense. He made his notes, photographed them, and rewound the film into the tiny cassette. His first appointment tomorrow was an early call at a local contractor. From there he would stop off to have breakfast at a Howard Johnson‘s, where he’d make his transfer. The cassette would be in Moscow in two days, maybe three, by diplomatic pouch.
Captain Yegorov ended his work for the evening just in time to catch the end of the Senators game—despite a ninth-inning homer by Frank Howard they fell short again, losing to Cleveland 5-3. Wasn’t this something, he thought, sipping at his beer. Henderson was a plum all by himself, and nobody had bothered to tell him—probably hadn’t known—that he had his own source within the White House Office of National Security Affairs. Wasn’t that a kick in the ass?
Mission stress and all, it was a relief when the C-141 thumped down at Danang. They’d been in transit for a total of twenty-three noisy and mind-numbing hours, and that was quite long enough, they all thought, until reality struck them hard and fast. Scarcely had the cargo hatch opened when the smell hit them. It was what all veterans of this place came to think of as the Smell of Vietnam. The contents of various latrines were dumped into barrels and burned with diesel fuel.
“Smell o’ home!” one Marine joked, badly, evoking isolated barks of semiamusement.
“Saddle up!” Irvin shouted as the engine noise died. It took a little time. Reactions were slowed by fatigue and stiffness. Many shook their heads to clear off the dizziness induced by the earplugs, along with yawns and stretches which psychologists would have called typical nonverbal expressions of unease.
The flight crew came aft just as the Marines left. Captain Albie went to them, thanking them for the ride, which had been smooth, if long. The Air Force crew looked forward to several days of enforced crew-rest after the marathon stint, not yet knowing that they would hold in this area until the team was ready to fly home, perhaps catching a few cargo hops back and forth to Clark. Then Albie led his men off the aircraft. Two trucks were waiting, and they drove to a different part of the air base, where two aircraft waited. These were Navy C-2A Greyhounds. With a few desultory moans, the Marines selected seats for the next part of their journey, a one-hour hop to USS Constellation. Once there, they boarded a pair of CH- 46 Sea Knight helicopters for a transfer to USS Ogden, where, disoriented and exhausted by travel, they were led to capacious and empty troop quarters—and bunks. Kelly watched them file off, wondering what came next for him.
“How was the trip?” He turned to see Admiral Podulski, dressed in wrinkled khakis and far too cheerful for the moment.
“Aviators gotta be crazy,” Kelly bitched.
“Does get kinda long. Follow me,” the Admiral ordered, leading him into the superstructure. Kelly looked around first. Constellation was on the eastern horizon, and he could see aircraft flying off one end while others circled to land on the other. Two cruisers were in close attendance, and destroyers ringed the formation. It was part of the Navy which Kelly had rarely seen, the Big Blue Team at work, commanding the ocean. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing.
“Russian fishing trawler, AGI.” Podulski waved Kelly through a watertight door.
“Oh, that’s just great!”
“Don’t worry. We can deal with that,” the Admiral assured him.
Inside the superstructure, the two men headed up a series of ladders, finding flag quarters, or what passed for them at the moment. Admiral Podulski had taken over the Captain’s in-port cabin for the duration of the mission, relegating Ogden’s CO to his smaller accommodations nearer the bridge. There was a comfortable sitting room, and the ship’s captain was there.
“Welcome aboard!” Captain Ted Franks said in greeting. “You’re Clark?”
“Yes, sir.”
Franks was a fifty-year-old pro who�
�d been in amphibious ships since 1944. Ogden was his fifth and would be his last command. Short, pudgy, and losing his hair, he still had the look of a warrior on a face that was by turns good-natured and deadly serious. At the moment, it was the former. He waved Kelly to a chair next to a table in the center of which was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
“That ain’t legal,” Kelly observed at once.
“Not for me,” Captain Franks agreed. “Aviator rations.”
“I arranged for them,” Casimir Podulski explained. “Brought ’em over from Connie. You need something to steady down after all that time with the Air Scouts.”
“Sir, I never argue with admirals.” Kelly dropped two ice cubes into a tumbler and covered them with alcohol.
“My XO is talking with Captain Albie and his people. They’re all getting entertained, too,” Franks added, meaning that every man had two miniatures on his assigned bunk. “Mr. Clark, our ship is yours. Anything we have, you got it.”
“Well, Cap’n, you surely know how to say hello.” Kelly sipped at his drink, and the first touch of the booze made his body remember how wrung-out he was. “So when do we start?”
“Four days. You need two to recover from the trip,” the Admiral said. “The submarine will be with us two days after that. The Marines go in Friday morning, depending on weather.”
“Okay.” There was nothing else he could say.
“Only the XO and I know anything yet. Try not to spread things around. We’ve got a pretty good crew. The intel team is aboard and working. The medical team gets here tomorrow.”
“Recon?”
Podulski handled that one. “We’ll have photos of the camp later today, from a Vigilante working off Connie. Then another set twelve hours before you move out. We have Buffalo Hunter shots, five days old. The camp is still there, still guarded, same as before.”
“Items?” Kelly asked, using the code word for prisoners.
“We’ve only got three shots of Americans in the compound.” Podulski shrugged. “They don’t make a camera yet that can see through a tile roof.”
“Right.” Kelly’s face said it all.
“I’m worried about that, too,” Cas admitted.
Kelly turned. “Captain, you have an exercise place, something like that?”
“Weight room, aft of the crew’s mess. Like I said, it’s yours if you want it.”
He finished off his drink. “Well, I think I need to get some rack time.”
“You’ll mess with the Marines. You’ll like the food here,” Captain Franks promised.
“Fair enough.”
“I saw two men not wearing their hard-hats,” Marvin Wilson said to the boss.
“I’ll talk to them.”
“Aside from that, thanks a lot for your cooperation.” He’d made a total of eleven safety recommendations, and the owner of the cement company had adopted every one, hoping for a reduction in his insurance rates. Marvin took off his white hard-hat and wiped the sweat from his brow. It was going to be a hot one. The summer climate was not all that much unlike Moscow, but more humid. At least the winters were milder.
“You know, if they made these things with little holes in them for ventilation, they’d be a lot more comfortable to wear.”
“I’ve said that myself,” Captain Yegorov agreed, heading off to his car. Fifteen minutes later he pulled into a Howard Johnson’s. The blue Plymouth took a spot along the west side of the building, and as he got out, a patron inside finished off his coffee and left his spot at the counter, along with a quarter tip to thrill the waitress. The restaurant had a double set of doors to save on the air-conditioning bill, and when the two men met there, just the two of them, moving, with the glass of the doors interfering with anyone who might be observing them, the film was passed. Yegorov/Wilson continued inside, and a “legal” KGB major named Ishchenko went his way. Relieved of his burden for the day, Marvin Wilson sat at the counter and ordered orange juice to start. There were so many good things to eat in America.
“I’m eating too much.” It was probably true, but it didn’t stop Doris from attacking the pile of hotcakes.
Sarah didn’t understand the Americans’ love for emaciation. “You lost plenty in the last two weeks. It won’t hurt you to put a little back,” Sarah Rosen told her graduating patient.
Sarah’s Buick was parked outside, and today would see them in Pittsburgh. Sandy had worked on Doris’s hair a little more, and made one more trip to get clothes that befitted the day, a beige silk blouse and a burgundy skirt that ended just above the knee. The prodigal son could return home in rags, but the daughter had to arrive with some pride.
“I don’t know what to say,” Doris Brown told them, standing to collect the dishes.
“You just keep getting better,” Sarah replied. They went out to the car, and Doris got in the back. If nothing else, Kelly had taught them caution. Dr. Sarah Rosen headed out quickly, turning north on Loch Raven, getting on the Baltimore Beltway and heading west to Interstate 70. The posted limit on the new highway was seventy miles per hour, and Sarah exceeded it, pushing her heavy Buick northwest toward the Catoctin Mountains, every mile between them and the city an additional safety factor, and by the time they passed Hagerstown she relaxed and started enjoying the ride. What were the chances, after all, of being spotted in a moving car?
It was a surprisingly quiet ride. They’d talked themselves out in the previous few days as Doris had returned to a condition approximating normality. She still needed drug counseling, and seriously needed psychiatric help, but Sarah had already taken care of that with a colleague at the University of Pittsburgh’s excellent medical school, a sixtyish woman who knew not to report things to the local police, assured that that part of the matter was already in hand. In the silence of the car Sandy and Sarah could feel the tension build. It was something they’d talked about. Doris was returning to a home and a father she’d left for a life that had nearly become a death. For many months the principal component of her new life would be guilt, part earned, part not. On the whole she was a very lucky young lady, something Doris had yet to grasp. She was, first of all, alive. With her confidence and self-esteem restored she might in two or three years be able to continue her life on a course so normal that no one would ever suspect her past or notice the fading scars. Restored health would change this girl, returning her not only to her father but also to the world of real people.
Perhaps she might even become stronger, Sarah hoped, if the psychiatrist brought her along slowly and carefully. Dr. Michelle Bryant had a stellar reputation, a correct one, she hoped. For Dr. Rosen, still racing west slightly over the legal limit, this was one of the hard parts of medicine. She had to let the patient go with the job not yet complete. Her clinical work with drug abusers had prepared her for it, but those jobs, like this one, were never really finished. It was just that there came a time when you had to let go, hoping and trusting that the patient could do the rest. Perhaps sending your daughter off to be married was like this, Sarah thought. It could have been so much worse in so many ways. Over the phone her father seemed a decent man, and Sarah Rosen didn’t need a specialization in psychiatry to know that more than anything else, Doris needed a relationship with an honorable and loving man so that she could, one day, develop another such relationship that would last her lifetime. That was now the job of others, but it didn’t stop Sarah from worrying about her patient. Every doctor can be a Jewish mother, and in her case it was difficult to avoid.
The hills were steep in Pittsburgh. Doris directed them along the Monongahela River and up the right street, suddenly tense while Sandy checked the numbers on the houses. And there it was. Sarah pulled the red Buick into a parking place and everyone took a deep breath.
“You okay?” she asked Doris, getting a frightened nod in response.
“He’s your father, honey. He loves you.”
There was nothing remarkable about Raymond Brown, Sarah saw a moment later. He must have been waiting at t
he door for hours, and he, too, was nervous, coming down the cracked concrete steps, holding the rail as he did so with a trembling hand. He opened the car door, helping Sandy out with awkward gallantry. Then he reached inside, and though he was trying to be brave and impassive, when his fingers touched Doris‘s, the man burst into tears. Doris tripped coming out of the car, and her father kept her from falling, and clutched her to his chest.
“Oh, Daddy!”
Sandy O’Toole turned away, not put off by the emotion of the moment, but wanting them to have it alone, and the look she gave Dr. Rosen was its own culminating moment for people of their profession. Both medics bit their lips and examined the other’s moist eyes.
“Let’s get you inside, baby,” Ray Brown said, taking his little girl up the steps, needing to have her in his house and under his protection. The other two women followed without being bidden.
The living room was surprisingly dark. A day-sleeper, Mr. Brown had added dark shades to his home and had forgotten to raise them this day. It was a cluttered room of braided rugs and overstuffed ’40s furniture, small mahogany tables with lacelike doilies. There were framed photos everywhere. A dead wife. A dead son. And a lost daughter—four of those. In the dark security of the house, father clutched daughter again.
“Honey,” he said, recounting words that he’d been practicing for days. “The things I said, I was wrong, I was so damned wrong!”
“It’s okay, Daddy. Thank you for . . . for letting me—”
“Dor, you’re my little girl.” Nothing more had to be said. That hug lasted over a minute, and then she had to draw back with a giggle.
“I have to go.”
“The bathroom’s in the same place,” her father said, wiping his own eyes. Doris moved off, finding the stairs and going up. Raymond Brown turned his attention to his guests.
