by Tom Clancy
“Clark!” a man’s voice boomed onto the line. “You are well there in England?” And already it started. The Chairman of the reconfigured Russian foreign-intelligence service wanted him to know that he knew where he was and what he was doing, and it wouldn’t do to ask how he’d found out.
“I find the climate agreeable, Chairman Golovko.”
“This new unit you head has been rather busy. The attack on your wife and daughter—they are well?”
“It was rather unpleasant, but yes, thank you, they are quite well.” The conversation was in Russian, a language Clark spoke like a native of Leningrad—St. Petersburg, John corrected himself. That was another old habit that died hard. “And I am now a grandfather.”
“Indeed, Vanya? Congratulations! That is splendid news. I was not pleased to learn of the attack on you,” Golovko went on sincerely. Russians have always been very sentimental people, especially where small children are concerned.
“Neither was I,” Clark said next. “But it worked out, as we say. I captured one of the bastards myself.”
“That I did not know, Vanya,” the Chairman went on—lying or not, John couldn’t tell. “So, what is the purpose of your call?”
“I need your assistance with a name.”
“What name is that?”
“It is a cover identity: Serov, Iosef Andreyevich. The officer in question—former officer, I should think—works with progressive elements in the West. We have reason to believe he has instigated operations in which people were killed, including the attack on my people here in Hereford.”
“We had nothing at all to do with that, Vanya,” Golovko said at once, in a very serious voice.
“I have no reason to think that you did, Sergey, but a man with this name, and identified as a Russian national, handed over money and drugs to the Irish terrorists. He was known to the Irishmen from years of experience, including in the Bekaa Valley. So, I think he was KGB at one time. I also have a physical description,” Clark said, and gave it.
“ ‘Serov,’ you said. That’s an odd—”
“Da, I know that.”
“This is important to you?”
“Sergey, in addition to killing two of my people, this operation threatened my wife and daughter directly. Yes, my friend, this is very important to me.”
In Moscow, Golovko wondered about that. He knew Clark, having met him eighteen months before. A field officer of unusual talent and amazing luck, John Clark had been a dangerous enemy, a quintessential professional intelligence officer, along with his younger colleague, Domingo Estebanovich Chavez, if he remembered right. And Golovko knew that his daughter was married to this Chavez boy—he’d just found that out, in fact. Someone had given that information to Kirilenko in London, though he couldn’t remember who.
But if it were a Russian, a former chekist no less, who was stirring up the terrorist pot, well, that was not good news for his country. Should he cooperate? the Chairman asked himself. What was the upside and what might be the downside? If he agreed now, he’d have to follow through on it, else CIA and other Western services might not cooperate with him. Was it in his country’s interest? Was it in his institution’s interest?
“I will see what I can do, Vanya, but I can make no promises,” Clark heard. Okay, that meant he was thinking about it at least.
“I would deem it a personal favor, Sergey Nikolay’ch.”
“I understand. Allow me to see what information I can find.”
“Very well. Good day, my friend.”
“Dosvidaniya.”
Clark punched out the tape and put it in his desk drawer. “Okay, pal, let’s see if you can deliver.”
The computer system in the Russian intelligence service was not as advanced as its Western counterparts, but the technical differences were mainly lost on human users, whose brains moved at slower speed than even the most backward computer. Golovko had learned to make use of it because he didn’t always like to have people doing things for him, and in a minute he had a screenful of data tracked down by the cover name.
POPOV, DMITRIY ARKADEYEVICH, the screen read, giving service number, date of birth, and time of employment. He’d retired as a colonel near the end of the first big RIF that had cut the former KGB by nearly a third. Good evaluations by his superiors, Golovko saw, but he’d specialized in a field in which the agency no longer had great interest. Virtually everyone in that sub-department had been terminated, pensioned off in a land where pensions could feed one for perhaps as much as five days out of a month. Well, there wasn’t much he could do about that, Golovko told himself. It was hard enough to get enough funding out of the Duma to keep his downsized agency operating, despite the fact that the downsized nation needed it more than ever before . . . and this Clark had performed two services that had benefited his nation, Golovko reminded himself—in addition, of course, to previous actions that had caused the Soviet Union no small harm . . . but again, those acts had helped elevate himself to the chairmanship of his agency.
Yes, he had to help. It would be a good bargaining chip to acquire for later requests to be made of the Americans. Moreover, Clark had dealt honorably with him, Sergey reminded himself, and it was distantly troubling to him that a former KGB officer had helped attack the man’s family—attacks on non-combatants were forbidden in the intelligence business. Oh, occasionally the wife of a CIA officer might have been slightly roughed up in the old days of the East-West Cold War, but serious harm? Never. In addition to being nekulturny, it would only have started vendettas that would only have interfered with the conduct of real business, the gathering of information. From the 1950s on, the business of intelligence had become a civilized, predictable one. Predictability was always the one thing the Russians had wanted from the West, and that had to go both ways. Clark was predictable.
With that decision made, Golovko printed up the information on his screen.
“So?” Clark asked Bill Tawney.
“The Swiss were a little slow. It turns out that the account number Grady gave us was real enough—”
“Was?” John said, thinking that he could hear the bad-news “but” coming.
“Well, actually it’s still an active account. It began with about six million U.S. dollars deposited, then several hundred thousand withdrawn—and then, the very day of the attack at the hospital, all but a hundred thousand was withdrawn and redeposited elsewhere, another account in yet another bank.”
“Where?”
“They say they cannot tell us.”
“Oh, well, you tell their fucking Justice Minister that the next time he needs our help, we’ll fuckin’ let the terrorists kill off their citizens!” Clark snarled.
“They do have laws, John,” Tawney pointed out. “What if this chap had an attorney do the transfer? The attorney-client privilege applies, and no country can break that barrier. The Swiss do have laws that govern funds thought to have been generated by criminal means, but we have no proof of that, do we? I suppose we could gin something up to get around the law, but that will take time, old man.”
“Shit,” Clark observed. Then he thought for a second. “The Russian?”
Tawney nodded sagely. “Yes, that makes sense, doesn’t it? He set them up a numbered account, and when they were taken out, he still had the necessary numbers, didn’t he?”
“Fuck, so he sets them up and rips them off.”
“Quite,” Tawney observed. “Grady said six million dollars in the hospital, and the Swiss confirm that number. He needs a few hundred thousand to purchase the trucks and other vehicles they used—we have records on that from the police investigation—and left the rest in place, and then this Russian chap decided they have no further use of the funds. Well, why not?” the intelligence officer asked. “Russians are notoriously greedy people, you know.”
“The Russian giveth, and the Russian taketh away. He gave them the intel on us, too.”
“I would not wager against that, John,” Tawney agreed.
“Okay, let’s back up some,” John proposed, putting his temper back in its box. “This Russian appears, gives them intelligence information on us, funds the operation from somewhere—sure as hell not Russia, because, A, they have no reason to undertake such an operation and, B, they don’t have that much money to toss around. First question: where did the money—”
“And the drugs, John. Don’t forget that.”
“Okay, and the drugs—come from?”
“Easier to track the drugs, perhaps. The Garda say that the cocaine was medical quality, which means that it came from a drug company. Cocaine is closely controlled in every nation in the world. Ten pounds is a large quantity, enough to fill a fairly large suitcase—cocaine is about as dense as tobacco. So the bulk of the shipment would be the equivalent of ten pounds of cigarettes. Say the size of a large suitcase. That’s a bloody large quantity of drugs, John, and it would leave a gap in someone’s controlled and guarded warehouse, wherever it might be.”
“You’re thinking it all originated in America?” Clark asked.
“For a starting point, yes. The world’s largest pharmaceutical houses are there and here in Britain. I can get our chaps started checking out Distillers, Limited, and the others for missing cocaine. I expect your American DEA can attempt to do the same.”
“I’ll call the FBI about that,” Clark said at once. “So, Bill, what do we know?”
“We will assume that Grady and O’Neil were telling us the truth about this Serov chap. We have a former—presumably former—KGB officer who instigated the Hereford attack. Essentially he hired them to do it, like mercenaries, with a payment of cash and drugs. When the attack failed, he simply confiscated the money for his own ends, and on that I still presume that he kept it for himself. The Russian will not have such private means—well, I suppose it could be the Russian Mafia, all those former KGB chaps who are now discovering free enterprise, but I see no reason why they should target us. We here at Rainbow are not a threat to them in any way, are we?”
“No,” Clark agreed.
“So, we have a large quantity of drugs and six million American dollars, delivered by a Russian. I am assuming for the moment that the operation originated in America, because of the drugs and the quantity of the money.”
“Why?”
“I cannot justify that, John. Perhaps it’s my nose telling me that.”
“How did he get to Ireland?” John asked, agreeing to trust Tawney’s nose.
“We don’t know that. He must have flown into Dublin—yes, I know, with such a large quantity of drugs, that is not a prudent thing to do. We need to ask our friends about that.”
“Tell the cops that’s important. We can get a flight number and point of origin from that.”
“Quite.” Tawney made a note.
“What else are we missing?”
“I’m going to have my chaps at ‘Six’ check for the names of KGB officers who are known to have worked with terrorist groups. We have a rough physical description which may be of some use for the purposes of elimination. But I think our best hope is the ten pounds of drugs.”
Clark nodded. “Okay, I’ll call the Bureau on that one.”
“Ten pounds, eh?”
“That’s right, Dan, and doctor-quality pure. That’s a real shitload of coke, man, and there ought to be a blank spot in somebody’s warehouse.”
“I’ll call DEA and have them take a quick look,” the FBI Director promised. “Anything shaking on your end?”
“We’re giving the tree a kick, Dan,” John told him. “For the moment we’re proceeding on the assumption that the operation initiated in America.” He explained on to tell Murray why this was so.
“This Russian guy, Serov, you said, former KGB, formerly a go-between for terrorists. There weren’t all that many of those, and we have some information on the specialty.”
“Bill’s having ‘Six’ look at it, too, and I’ve already kicked it around with Ed Foley. I talked to Sergey Golovko about it as well.”
“You really think he’ll help?” Director Murray asked.
“The worst thing he can say is no, Dan, and that’s where we are already,” Rainbow Six pointed out.
“True,” Dan conceded. “Anything else we can do on this end?”
“If I come up with anything I’ll let you know, pal.”
“Okay, John. Been watching the Olympics?”
“Yeah, I actually have a team there.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, Ding Chavez and some men. The Aussies wanted us down to observe their security operations. He says they’re pretty good.”
“Free trip to the Olympics, not a bad gig,” the FBI director observed.
“I guess so, Dan. Anyway, let us know if you turn anything, will ya?”
“You bet, John. See you later, pal.”
“Yeah. Bye, Dan.”
Clark replaced the secure phone and leaned back in his chair, wondering what he might be missing. He was checking everything he had thought of, every loose end, hoping that somewhere someone might come up with another seemingly innocent factoid that might lead to another. He’d never quite appreciated how hard it was to be a cop investigating a major crime. The color of the damned car the bad guys drove was or could be important, and you had to remember to ask that question, too. But it was something for which he was not trained, and he had to trust the cops to do their jobs.
They were doing that. In London, the police sat Timothy O’Neil down in the usual interrogation room. Tea was offered and accepted.
It wasn’t easy for O’Neil. He wanted to say nothing at all, but with the shock of the information given him by the police that could only have originated with Sean Grady, his faith and his resolve had been shaken, and as a result he had said a few things, and that was a process that once begun could not be taken back.
“This Russian chap, Serov, you told us his name was,” the detective inspector began. “He flew into Ireland?”
“It’s a long swim, mate,” O’Neil replied as a joke.
“Yes, and a difficult drive,” the police inspector agreed. “How did he fly in?”
The answer to that was silence. That was disappointing, but not unexpected.
“I can tell you something you don’t know, Tim,” the inspector offered, to jump-start the conversation.
“What might that be?”
“This Serov bloke set you up a numbered Swiss account for all the money he brought in. Well, we just learned from the Swiss that he cleaned it out.”
“What?”
“The day of your operation, someone called the bank and transferred nearly all the money out. So, your Russian friend gave with one hand, and took away with the other. Here”—the inspector handed a sheet of paper across—“this is the account number, and this is the activation number to do transfers. Six million dollars, less what you chaps spent to buy the trucks and such. He transferred it out, to his own personal account, I’ll wager. You chaps picked the wrong friend, Tim.”
“That bloody fucking thief!” O’Neil was outraged.
“Yes, Tim, I know. You’ve never been one of those. But this Serov chappie is, and that’s a fact, my boy.”
O’Neil swore something at odds with his Catholicism. He recognized the account number, knew that Sean had written it down, and was reasonably certain that this cop wasn’t lying to him about what had happened with it.
“He flew into Shannon on a private business jet. I do not know where from.”
“Really?”
“Probably because of the drugs he brought in with him. They don’t search plutocrats, do they? Bloody nobility, they act like.”
“What kind of aircraft, do you know?”
O’Neil shook his head. “It had two engines and the tail was shaped like a T, but no, I do not know the name of the bloody thing.”
“And how did he get to the meeting?”
“We had a car meet him.”
“Who drove the car?” the
inspector asked next.
“I will not give you names. I’ve told you that.”
“Forgive me, Tim, but I must ask. You know that,” the cop apologized. He’d worked hard winning this terrorist’s confidence. “Sean trusted this Serov chap. That was evidently a mistake. The funds were transferred out two hours after your operation began. We rather suspect he was somewhere close, to watch, and when he saw how things were going, he simply robbed you. Russians are greedy buggers,” the cop sympathized. His eyes didn’t show his pleasure at the new information developed. The room was bugged, of course, and already the Police of the Metropolis were on the phone to Ireland.
The Irish national police force, called the Garda, had almost always cooperated with their British counterparts, and this time was no exception. The senior local Gardai drove at once to Shannon to check for flight records—as far as he was concerned, all he wanted to know was how ten pounds of illegal drugs had entered his country. That tactical mistake by the IRA had only enraged the local cops, some of whom did have their tribal sympathies with the revolutionary movement to the north. But those sympathies stopped well short of drug-trafficking, which they, like most cops in the world, regarded as the dirtiest of crimes.
The flight-operations office at Shannon had paper records of every flight that arrived or departed from the complex, and with the date, the assistant operations manager found the right sheet in under three minutes. Yes, a Gulfstream business jet had arrived early in the morning, refueled, and departed soon after. The documents showed the tail number and the names of the flight crew. More to the point, it showed that the aircraft was registered in the United States to a large charter company. From this office, the Irish police officer went to immigration/customs control, where he found that one Joseph Serov had indeed cleared customs on the morning indicated. The Gardai took a photocopy of all relevant documents back to his station, where they were faxed immediately to Garda headquarters in Dublin, and then on to London, and from there to Washington, D.C.
