by Tom Clancy
It took another couple of minutes to decide. She could get a message off to her father, couldn't she?
Fifty feet and one floor away, Ben Farmer got himself a mug of coffee and sat back down into his swivel chair after a quick trip to the men's room. He picked up the copy of Bio-Watch he'd been reading. It was three in the morning, and all was quiet on his end of the building.
DADDY, I'M NOT SURE WHERE I AM. THEY SAY I SIGNED A FORM ALLOW THEM TO SIGN ME IN FOR SOME MEDICAL TESTS, SOME NEW DRUG OR SOMETHING BUT I FEEL PRETTY CRUMMY NOW, AND IM NOT SUREW WHY. THEY HAVE BE HOOKEDUP TO A MEDICAION THING THATS PLUGGED INTOMY ARM, FEEL PRETTY CRUMMY AND I-
Farmer finished the article on global warming, and then checked the TV display. The computer flipped through the operating cameras. showing all the sickies in their beds-
–except one. Huh? he thought, waiting for the cameras to flip back, having missed the code number for the one with the empty bed. It took about a minute. Oh, shit, T-4 was missing. That was the girl, wasn't it? Subject F4, Mary something. Oh, shit, where had she gone to? He activated the direct controls and checked the corridor. Nobody there, either. Nobody had tried to go through the doors into the rest of the complex. They were both locked and alarmed. Where the hell were the docs? The one on duty now was a woman, Lani something, the other staff all disliked her 'cause she was an arrogant, obnoxious bitch. Evidently, Killgore didn't like her either, 'cause she always had the night duty. Palachek, that was her last name. Farmer wondered vaguely what nationality that was as he lifted the microphone for the PA system.
"Dr. Palacheck, Dr. Palachek, please call security," he said over the speaker system. It took about three minutes before his phone rang.
"This is Dr. Palachek. What is it?"
"Subject F4 has taken a walk. I can't spot her on the surveillance cameras."
"On the way. Call Dr. Killgore."
"Yes, Doctor." Farmer called that number from memory.
"Yeah?" came the familiar voice.
"Sir, it's Ben Farmer. F4 has disappeared from her room. We're looking for her now."
"Okay, call me back when you find her." And the phone went dead. Killgore wasn't all that excited. You might be able to walk around for a while. but you couldn't lave the building without someone seeing you.
It was still rush hour in London. Ivan Petrovich Kirilenko had an apartment close to the embassy, which allowed him to walk to work. The sidewalks were crowded with rapidly moving people on their way to their own jobs-the Brits are a polite people, but Londoners tend to race along and he got to the agreed-upon corner at exactly 8:20 A.M. He carried his copy of the Daily Telegraph, a conservative morning newspaper, in his left hand as he stopped at the corner, waiting for the light to change.
The switch was expertly done. No words were exchanged, just a double bump on the elbow to tell him to slacken his grip, to allow one Telegraph to be changed for another. It was done below the waist, hidden from the casual view of those around him, and low enough to be hidden by the crowd from cameras that might be looking down from the rooftops around the busy corner. It was all the rezident could do not to smile. The exercise of fieldcraft was always a pleasure for him. Despite his currently high rank, he enjoyed the day-to-day business of espionage, just to prove to himself that he could still do it as well as the youngsters. working under him. A few seconds later, the light changed, and a man in a tan coat angled away from him, walking briskly forward with his morning paper. It was two more blocks to the embassy. He walked through the iron gate, into the building, past security, and up to his second-floor office. There, his coat hung on the hook on the back of his door, he sat down and opened the paper on his desk.
So, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich had kept his word. There were two sheets of unlined white paper liberally covered with handwritten commentary. CIA Field Officer John Clark was now in Hereford, England, and was now the commander of a new multinational counterterrorist group known as "Rainbow," composed of ten to twenty men selected from English, American, and perhaps some other nationalities. It was a black operation, known only to a handful of highly placed people. His wife was a nurse working at the local public hospital. His team was well regarded by the local civilians who worked on the SAS base. Rainbow had been on three missions, Bern, Vienna, and Worldpark, where, in every case, it had dealt with the terrorists-Kirilenko noted that Popov had avoided use of the previous term of art, "progressive elements" efficiently, quickly, and under the cover of local police agencies. The Rainbow team had access to American hardware, which had been used in Spain, as was clear from television coverage of the event. which he recommended that the embassy get hold of. Through the Defense Attach+й would probably be best, Popov noted.
On the whole a useful, concise, and informative report, the rezident thought, and a fair trade for what he'd exchanged on the street corner.
"Well, see anything this morning?" Cyril Holt asked the head of the surveillance group.
"No," the other "Five" man replied. "He was carrying the usual paper in the usual hand, but the pavement will crowded. There could have been a switch, but if there was. we didn't see it. And we are dealing with a professional, sir." the chief of the surveillance section reminded the Deputy Director of the Security Service.
Popov, his brown wide-brimmed hat in his lap, was sitting in the train on the way back to Hereford, seemingly reading the newspaper, but in fact leafing through the photocopies of the single-spaced pages relayed from Moscow. Kirilenko was as good as his word, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich saw with pleasure. As a good rezident should be. And so. now, here he was, sitting alone in the first-class carriage of the inter-city train out of Paddington Station, learning more about this John Clark chap, and impressed with what he saw. His former agency in Moscow had paid quite a bit of attention to him. There were three photographs. one of them quite good that appeared to have been shot in the office of the RVS chairman himself in Moscow. They'd even taken the time to learn about his family. Two daughters, one still in college in America, and one a physician now married to one Domingo Chavez another CIA field officer! Popov saw, in his middle thirties. Domingo Estebanovich, who'd also met Golovko, and was evidently partnered with the older officer. Both were paramilitary officers… might this Chavez be in England, too? A physician, so that was easily checked. Clark and his diminutive partner were officially described as formidable and experienced field-intelligence officers, both spoke Russian in a manner described as literate and cultured - Graduates of the U.S. military's language school at Monterey, California, no doubt. Chavez, the report went on, had an undergraduate and a master's degree in International Relations from George Mason University outside of Washington, doubtless paid for by CIA. So, neither he nor Clark was merely a strong back. Both were educated as well. And the younger one was married to a physician.
Their known and confirmed field operations- -nichevo! Popov thought. Two really impressive ones done with Russian assistance, plus the exfiltration of Gerasimov's wife and daughter ten years before, along with several others suspected but not confirmed… "Formidable" was the right word for both of them. Himself a field intelligence officer for over twenty years, he knew what to be impressed with. Clark had to be a star at Langley, and Chavez was evidently his protege, following in the wide, deep footsteps of his… father-in-law… Wasn't that interesting?
They found her at three-forty, still typing away on the computer, slowly and badly. Ben Farmer opened the door and saw, first, the IV tree, then the back on the hospital gown.
"Well, hello," the security guard said, not unkindly. "Taking a little walk, eh?"
"I wanted to tell Daddy where I was," Mary Bannister replied.
"Oh, really. By e-mail?"
"That's right," she answered pleasantly.
"Well, how about we get you back to your room now, okay?"
"I guess," she agreed tiredly. Farmer helped her to her feet and walked her out into the corridor, gently, his hand around her waist. It was a short walk, and he opened the door into
Treatment 4, got her in bed, and pulled the blanket up. He dimmed the lights before leaving, then found Dr. Palachek walking the halls.
"We may have a problem, Doc."
Lam Palachek didn't like being called "doc," but didn't make an issue of it now. "What's the problem?"
"I found her on the computer in T-9. She says she e-mailed her father."
"What?" That popped the doc's eyes open, Farmer saw.
"That's what she said."
Oh, shit! the doctor thought. "What does she know?"
"Probably not much. None of them know where they are." And even looking out the windows wouldn't help. The scenery showed only wooded hills, not even a parking lot whose auto license plates might give a clue. That part of the operation had been carefully thought through.
"Any way to recover the letter she sent?"
"If we get her password and the server she logged into, maybe," Farmer replied. He was fully checked out on computers. Just about everyone in the company was. "I can try that when we wake her up-say, in about four hours?"
"Any way to un-send it?"
Farmer shook his head. "I doubt it. Not many of them work that way. We don't have AOL software on the systems, just Eudora, and if you execute the IMMEDIATE-SENT) command, it's all the-way gone, Doc. That goes right into the Net, and once it's there-oh, well."
"Killgore is going to freak."
"Yes, ma'am," the former Marine said. "Maybe we need to codeword access to the 'puters." He didn't add that he'd been off the monitors for a while, and that it was all his fault. Well, he hadn't been briefed on this contingency, and why the hell didn't they lock the rooms they wanted to keep people out of? Or just locked the subjects in their rooms? The winos from the first group of test subjects had spoiled them. None of those street bums had had the ability to use a computer, nor the desire to do much of anything, and it hadn't occurred to anyone that the current group of experimental animals might. Oops. Well, he'd seen bigger mistakes than that happen before. The good news, however, was that there was no way they could know where they were, nor anything about the name of the company that owned the facility. Without those things, what could F4 have told anyone? Nothing of value, Farmer was sure. But she was right about one thing, Farmer knew. Dr. John Killgore was going to be seriously pissed.
The English ploughman's lunch was a national institution. Bread, cheese, lettuce, baby tomatoes, chutney, and some meat-turkey in this case-along with a beer, of course. Popov had found it to be agreeable on his first trip to Britain. He'd taken the time to remove his tie and change into more casual clothes, in order to appear a working-class type.
"Well, hello," the plumber said as he sat down. His name was Edward Miles. A tall, powerfully built man with tattoos on his arm-a British affectation, especially for men in uniform, Popov knew. "Started ahead of me, I see."
"How did the morning go?"
"The usual. Fixed a water-heater in one of the houses, for a French chap, in fact, part of the new team. His wife is a smasher," Miles reported. "Only saw a picture of him. A sergeant in the French army, it would seem."
"Really?" Popov took a bite of his open-face sandwich.
"Yes, have to go back this afternoon to finish up. Then I have a watercooler to fix in the headquarters building. Bloody things, must be fifty years old. I may have to make the part I need to repair the damned thing. Impossible to get them. The maker went out of business a dog's age ago." Miles started on his own lunch, expertly dividing the various ingredients and then piling them on the freshly made bread.
"Government institutions are all the same," Popov told him.
"That's a fact!" Miles agreed. "And my helper called iii sick. Sick my ahss, " the plumber said. "No rest for the bloody wicked."
"Well, perhaps my tools can help," Popov offered. They continued talking about sports until lunch was finished, then both stood and walked to Miles's truck, a small blue van with government tags. The Russian tossed his collection of tools in the back. The plumber started it up, pulled onto the road.;end headed for the main gate of the Hereford base. The security guard waved them through without a close look.
"See, you just need to know the right bloke to get in here." Miles laughed at his conquest of base security, which, the sign said, was on BLACK status, the lowest alert state. "I suppose the IRA chaps have calmed down quite a bit, and it would never have been a good idea to conic here, not against these chaps, like tweaking a lion's nose - bad job, that," he went on.
"I suppose that's so. All I know about the SAS is what I see on the telly. They certainly look like a dangerous lot."
"That's the bloody truth," Miles confirmed. "All you need do is to look at them, the way they walk and such. They know they're lions. And this new lot, they're exactly the same, maybe even better, some folks say. They've had three jobs, or so I understand, and they've all been on the telly. They sorted that mob out at Worldpark for fair, didn't they?"
The base engineer's building was so typical of its type that the ones in the former Soviet Union could hardly have been different. The paint was peeling, and the parking area lumpy and fragmented. The double doors into the back had locks on them, of the type a child could have picked with a hairpin, Popov thought, but, then, the most dangerous weapon in there would have been a screwdriver. Miles parked his truck and waved for Popov to follow him. Inside was also as expected: a cheap desk for the plumber to do his paperwork on, a well-worn swivel chair whose stuffing was visible through the cracked vinyl on the seat, and a pegboard hung with tools, few of which could have been younger than five years, judging by the chipped paint on the forged steel.
"Do they let you purchase new tools?" Popov asked, just to stay in character.
"I have to make a request, with justification, to the chief of the physical-plant department. He's usually a decent bloke about it, and I don't ask for things I don't need." Miles pulled a Post-it note from his desk. "They want that watercooler fixed today. Why can't they just drink Coca-Cola?" he wondered aloud. "Well, want to come along?"
"Why not?" Popov stood and followed him out the door. Five minutes later, he regretted it. An armed soldier was outside the entrance to headquarters-and then he realized that this was the headquarters for Rainbow. Inside would be Clark, Ivan Timofeyevich, himself.
Miles parked the truck, got out, walked to the rear door, and opened it, pulling out his toolbox.
"I'll need a small pipe wrench," he told Popov, who opened the canvas sack he'd brought, and extracted a brand-new twelve-inch Rigid wrench.
"Will this do?"
"Perfect." Miles waved him along. "Good afternoon, Corp," he said to the soldier, who nodded politely in reply, but said nothing.
For his part, Popov was more than surprised. In Russia the security would have been much tighter. But this was England, and the plumber was doubtless known to the guard. With that, he was inside, trying not to look around too obviously, and exercising all of his self-control not to appear nervous. Miles immediately set to work, unscrewing the front, setting the cover aside, and peering back into the guts of the watercooler. He held his hand out for the small wrench, which Popov handed to him. "Nice feel for the adjustment… but it's brand-new, so that's to be expected…" He tightened an a pipe and gave the wrench a twist. "Come on, now… there." He pulled the pipe out and inspected it by holding it up to a light. "Ah, well, that I can fix. Bloody miracle," he added. He slid back on his knees and looked in his toolbox. "The pipe is merely clogged up. Look, must be thirty years of sediment in there." He handed it over.
Popov made a show of looking through the pipe, but saw nothing at all, the metal tube was so packed with sediment, he guessed from what Miles had said. Then the plumber took it back and inserted a small screwdriver, jammed it like the ramrod of a musket to clear it out, then switched ends to do the same from the other direction.
"So, we're going to get clean water for our coffee?" a voice asked.
"I expect so, sir," Miles replied.
Popov looked
up and managed to keep his heart beating. It was Clark, Ivan Timofeyevich, as the KGB file had identified him. Tall, middle fifties, smiling down at the two workmen, dressed in suit and tie, which somehow looked uncomfortable on him. He nodded politely at the man, and looked back down to his tools while thinking as loudly as he could, Go away!
"There, that should do it," Miles said, reaching to put the pipe back inside, then taking the wrench from Popov to screw it into place. In another moment he stood and turned the plastic handle. The water that came out was dirty. "We just need to keep this open for five minutes or so, sir, to allow the pipe to flush itself out."
"Fair enough. Thanks," the American said, then walked off.
"A pleasure, sir," Miles said to the disappearing back. "That was the boss, Mr. Clark."
"Really? Polite enough."
"Yes, decent bloke." Miles stood and flipped the plastic lever. The water coming out of the spigot was clouded at first, but after a few minutes it appeared totally clear. "Well, that's one job done. It's a nice wrench," Miles said, handing it back. "What do they cost?"
"This one - it's yours."
"Well, thank you, my friend." Miles smiled on his way out the door and past the corporal of the British Army's military police.
Next they rode around the base. Popov asked where Clark lived, and Miles obliged by taking a left turn and heading off to the senior officers' quarters.
"Not a bad house, is it?"
"It looks comfortable enough." It was made of brown brick, with what appeared to be a slate roof, and about a hundred square meters, and a garden in the back.
"I put the plumbing in that one myself, Miles told him, "back when it was renovated. Ah, that must be the missus."
A woman came out dressed in a nurse's uniform, walked to the car, and got in. Popov looked and recorded the image.
