This time, the alarm clock worked, and woke them both. Ed Foley rose and headed for the bathroom, quickly made way for his wife, then headed to Eddie's room to shake him loose while Mary Pat started breakfast. Their son immediately switched on the TV and got the morning exercise show that every city in the world seemed to have, starring, as everywhere in the world, a woman of impressive physique-she looked capable of waltzing through the Army's Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Because he had seen the Lynda Carter series at home on cable, Eddie called her Worker-Womannnnnn! Mary Pat was of the opinion that the Russian's blond hair came out of a bottle, while Ed thought it hurt just to watch the things she did. With no decent paper or sports page to read, however, he had little choice in the matter, and semi-vegetated in front of the TV while his son giggled through the end of the wake-up-and-sweat program. It was done live, the Chief of Station saw. So, whoever this broad was, she had to wake up at four in the morning, and so this was probably her morning workout as well. Well, then, at least it was honest. Her husband must have been a Red Army paratrooper, and she could probably beat the shit out of him, Ed Foley thought, waiting for the morning news.
That started at 6:30. The trick was to watch it and then try to figure out what was really happening in the world-just like at home, the CIA officer thought, with an early-morning grumble. Well, he'd have the Early Bird at the embassy for that, sent by secure fax from Washington for the senior embassy staffers. For an American citizen, living in Moscow was like being on a desert island. At least they had a satellite dish at the embassy so they could download CNN and other programming. It made them feel like real people-almost.
Breakfast was breakfast. Little Eddie liked Frosted Flakes-the milk was from Finland, because his mother didn't trust the local grocery store, and the foreigners-only store was convenient to the compound. Ed and Mary Pat didn't talk much over breakfast, in deference to the bugs that littered their walls. They never talked at home about important matters, except via hand code-and never in front of their son, because little kids were incapable of keeping secrets of any kind. In any case, their KGB surveillance people were probably bored with the Foleys by now, which they'd both worked hard at, inserting just enough randomness in their behavior to make them look like Americans. But a considered amount. Not too much. They'd planned it out carefully and thoroughly at Langley, with the help of a tame KGB Second Chief Directorate defector.
Mary Pat had her husband's clothes all laid out on the bed, including the green tie to go with his brown suit. Like the President, Ed looked good in brown, his wife thought. Ed would wear a raincoat again, and he would keep it unbuttoned and loose around his body should another message be passed, and his senses would be thoroughly sandpapered all day.
"What are your plans for the day?" he asked Mary Pat in the living room.
"The usual. I might get together with Penny after lunch."
"Oh? Well, say hello for me. Maybe we can get together for dinner later this week."
"Good idea," his wife said. "Maybe they can explain rugby to me."
"It's like football, honey, just the rules are a little goofy," the Station Chief explained. "Well, off to keep the reporters happy."
"Right!" Mary Pat laughed, working her eyes at the walls. "That guy from the Boston Globe is such an ass."
Outside, the morning was pleasant enough-just a hint of cool air to suggest the approach of autumn. Foley walked off toward the station, waving at the gate guard. The guy on morning duty actually smiled once in a while. He'd clearly been around foreigners too much, or had been trained to do so by KGB. His uniform was that of the Moscow Militia-the city police-but Foley thought he looked a little too intelligent for that. Muscovites thought of their police as a rather low form of life, and such an agency would not attract the brightest of people.
The couple blocks to the metro station passed quickly. Crossing the streets was reasonably safe here-far more so than in New York-because private cars were pretty rare. And it was a good thing. Russian drivers made the Italians look prudent and orderly. The guys driving the ubiquitous dump trucks must all have been former tank crewmen, judging by their road manners. He picked up his copy of Pravda at the kiosk and took the escalator down to the platform. A man of the strictest habits, he arrived at the station at exactly the same time every morning, then checked the clock hanging from the ceiling to make sure. The subway trains ran on an inhumanly precise schedule, and he walked aboard at exactly 7:43 A.M. He hadn't looked over his shoulder. It was too far into his residency in Moscow to rubberneck like a new tourist, and that, he figured, would make his KGB shadow think that his American subject was about as interesting as the kasha that Russians liked for breakfast along with the dreadful local coffee. Quality control was something the Soviets reserved for their nuclear weapons and space program, though Foley had doubts about those, based on what he'd seen in this city, where only the metro seemed to work properly. Such a strange combination of casual-klutz and Germanlike precision they were. You could tell how well things worked over here by what they were used for, and intelligence operations had the highest priority of all, lest the Soviets' enemies find out not what they had, but what they didn't have. Foley had agent CARDINAL to tell him and America what the Soviet Union had in the military realm. Generally, it was good stuff to learn, but that was mainly because the more you learned, the less you had to worry. No, it was political intelligence that counted most here because, as backward as they were, they were still big enough to cause trouble if you couldn't counter them early on. Langley was very worried about the Pope at the moment. He'd evidently done something that might be embarrassing to the Russians. And Ivan didn't like being embarrassed in the political field any more than American politicians-just that Ivan didn't go running off to The Washington Post to get even. Ritter and Moore were very concerned about what Ivan might do-and even more worried about what Yuriy Andropov might do. Ed Foley didn't have a feel for that particular Russian. Like most in CIA, he knew the guy only by his face, name, and his evident liver problems-that information had leaked out through a means the Station Chief didn't know. Maybe the Brits… if you could trust the Brits, Ed cautioned himself. He had to trust them, but something kept making the hackles on his neck get nervous about them. Well, they probably had doubts about CIA. Such a crazy game this was. He scanned the front page. Nothing surprising, though the piece on the Warsaw Pact was a little interesting. They still worried about NATO. Maybe they really did worry about having the German army come east again. They were certainly paranoid enough… Paranoia had probably been invented in Russia. Maybe Freud discovered it on a trip here, he mused, lifting his eyes for a pair tracking him… no, none, he decided. Was it possible that the KGB em»wasn't tracking him? Well, possible, yes, but likely, no. If they had a guy-more likely a team-shadowing him, the coverage would be expert-but why put expert-but why put expert coverage on the Press Attache? Foley sighed to himself. Was he too much of a worrier, or not paranoid enough? And how did you tell the difference? Or might he have exposed himself to a false-flag operation by wearing a green tie? How the hell do you tell?
If he was burned, then so was his wife, and that would put the brakes on two very promising CIA careers. He and Mary Pat were Bob Ritter's fair-haired pair, the varsity, the young all-pro team at Langley, and it was a reputation that had to be both protected carefully and also built upon. The President of the United States himself would read their "take" and maybe make decisions based on the information they brought in. Important decisions that could affect the policy of their country. The responsibility was not something to dwell on. It could drive you nuts, make you too cautious-so cautious that you never accomplished anything. No, the biggest problem in the intelligence business was in drawing the line between circumspection and effectiveness. If you leaned too far the one way, you never got anything useful done. If you went too far the other way, then you got yourself burned, and your agents, and over here that meant virtual certain death for people for whose lives you were responsible. It was a dilemma fit to drive a man to drink.
The metro stopped at his station and he went out the door, then up the escalator. He was pretty sure that nobody had fished in his pocket. On the street level, he checked. Nothing. So whomever it was, either he only rode the afternoon train or the Chief of Station had been "made" by the opposition. It would give him something to worry about all day.
"This one's for you," Dobrik said, handing it over. "From Sofia."
"Oh?" Zaitzev responded.
"It's in the book, your-eyes-only, Oleg Ivan'ch," the night-duty officer said. "At least it's short."
"Ah," Zaitzev said, taking the message and seeing the header: 15-8-82-666. So they figured that with a number instead of a name, the header didn't need to be encrypted. He didn't react or say anything further. It just wasn't done. Surely, Kolya wondered about it-it was the office sport in Communications, wondering about the things one couldn't read. This message had come in just forty minutes after his departure. "Well, something to start my watch with. Anything else, Nikolay Konstantinovich?"
"No, aside from that, you have a clean desk." Dobrik was an efficient worker, whatever faults he might have had. "And now I am properly relieved of duty. At home I have a fresh bottle of vodka."
"You should eat first, Kolya," Zaitzev warned.
"That's what my mother says, Oleg. Perhaps I'll have a sandwich with my breakfast," he joked.
"Sleep well, Comrade Major, I relieve you," Zaitzev said, as he took his seat. Ten minutes later, he had the brief dispatch decrypted. The Sofia rezident acknowledged that Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy was his point of contact for Operation 15-8-82-666. So that /was properly crossed. And 15-8-82-666 was a full-fledged operation now. He tucked the decrypted message into a manila envelope, sealed it, and then dripped hot wax on the seal.
They're really going to do it, Oleg Ivanovich told himself with a frown. What do I do now?
Work his usual day, and then look for a green tie on the metro home. And pray he saw it? Or pray he didn't?
Zaitzev shook the thought off and called for a messenger to hand-deliver the dispatch to the top floor. A moment later, a basketful of dispatches landed on his desk for processing.
"Ouch," Ed Foley said aloud at his desk. The message-a lengthy one-came from Ritter and Moore, speaking for the President. He'd have to rattle some serious bushes for this.
Station Moscow didn't have a written list of agents, even by code names, and even in Foley's office safe, which in addition to a combination had a two-phase alarm built in, a keypad on the outside, and one on the inside with a different code, which Foley had set himself. The embassy's Marines had orders to respond to either alarm with drawn weapons, since the contents of this safe were about the most sensitive documents in the whole building.
But Foley had the names of every Russian citizen who worked for the Agency hard cut into his eyelids, along with their specialty areas. Twelve such agents were currently operating. They'd just lost one the week before he'd arrived in Moscow-burned. No one knew how, though Foley was concerned that the Russians might have a mole in Langley itself. It was heresy to think it, but as CIA tried to do it to KGB, so KGB tried to do it to CIA, and there was no referee on the playing field to let the players know what the score was. The lost agent, whose code name had been SOUSA, was a lieutenant colonel in the GRU and had helped identify some major leaks in the German defense ministry and other NATO sources, through which KGB had gotten political-military intelligence of a high order. But that guy was dead-still breathing, perhaps, but dead even so. Foley hoped they wouldn't load the guy alive into a furnace, as had been done with another GRU source back in the 1950s. Rather a cruel method of execution, even for the Russians under Khrushchev, and something that had kept his case officer awake for a very long time, the COS was sure.
So they'd have to get two, maybe three, of their agents working on this one. They had a good guy in KGB and another in the Party Central Committee. Maybe one of them might have heard about a possible operation against the Pope.
Damn, Foley thought, are they that crazy? It required a considerable stretch of his imagination. An Irishman by ancestry, and Roman Catholic by education and religious affiliation, Ed Foley had to make a mental effort to set aside his personal thoughts. Such a plot was beyond the pale, perhaps, but he was dealing with people who didn't recognize the concept of limits, certainly not from any outside agency. For them, God was politics, and a threat to their political world was like Lucifer himself challenging the order of heaven. Except that the simile only went so far. This was more like Michael the Archangel challenging the order of Hell. Mary Pat called it the belly of the beast, and this one was one nasty fuckin' beast.
"Daddy!" Sally exclaimed, waking up with her usual smile. He guided her to the bathroom and then downstairs, where her oatmeal was waiting. Sally still wore her bunny-rabbit sleepers, with feet and a long zipper. This one was yellow. And it was the largest size, and her feet were stretching it. She'd have to change to some other sleepwear soon, but that was Cathy's department.
The routine was set. Cathy fed Little Jack and, halfway through, her husband set down his paper and headed upstairs to shave. By the time he was dressed, she was finished with her duty, and went off to get cleaned up and dressed while Jack burped the little guy and got him into his socks to keep his feet warm, and also to give him something to pull off so that he could see if the feet tasted the same as they had the previous day, which was a newly acquired skill.
Soon the doorbell rang, and it was Margaret van der Beek, soon followed by Ed Beaverton, which allowed the parents to escape off to work. At Victoria Station, Cathy kissed her husband good-bye and headed for the tube station for the ride to Moorefields, while Jack took a different train to Century House, and the day was about to start for real.
"Good morning, Sir John."
"Hey, Bert." Ryan paused. Bert Canderton had "army" written all over him, and it was time to ask. "What regiment were you?"
"I was Regimental Sergeant Major of the Royal Green Jackets, sir."
"Infantry?"
"Correct, sir."
"I thought you guys wore red coats," Ryan observed.
"Well, that's your fault-you Yanks, that is. In your revolutionary war, my regiment took so many casualties from your riflemen that the colonel of the regiment decided a green tunic might be safer. It's been that way ever since."
"How did you end up here?"
"I'm waiting for an opening at the Tower to be a Yeoman Warder, sir. Should have a new red coat in a month or so, they tell me."
Canderton's rent-a-cop blouse had some service ribbons on it, probably not for brushing and flossing his teeth, and a regimental sergeant major in the British army was somebody, like a master gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps.
"I've been there, been to the club they have," said Ryan. "Good bunch of troops."
"Indeed. I have a friend there, Mick Truelove. He was in the Queen's Regiment."
"Well, sar-major, keep the bad guys out," Ryan said, as he worked his card into the electronic slot that controlled the entry gate.
"I will do that, sir," Canderton promised.
Harding was at his desk when Ryan came in. Jack hung his jacket on the tree.
"Come in early, Simon?"
"Your Judge Moore sent a fax to Bas last night-just after midnight, as a matter of fact. Here." He handed it across.
Ryan scanned it. "The Pope, eh?"
"Your President is interested, and so is the PM, as it happens," Harding said, relighting his pipe. "Basil called us in early to go over what data we have."
"Okay, what do we have?"
"Not much," Harding admitted. "I can't talk to you about our sources-"
"Simon, I'm not dumb. You have somebody in close, either a confidante of a Politburo member or someone in the Party Secretariat. He's not telling you anything?" Ryan had seen some very interesting "take" in here, and it had to have come from somebody inside the big red tent.
"I can't confirm your suspicion," Harding cautioned, "but no, none of our sources have given us anything, not even that the Warsaw Letter has arrived in Moscow, though we know it must have."
"So, we don't know jackshit?"
Simon nodded soberly. "Correct."
"Amazing how often that happens."
"It's just a part of the job, Jack."
"And the PM has her panties in a wad?"
Harding hadn't heard that Americanism before, and it caused him to blink twice. "So it would seem."
"So, what are we supposed to tell her? She damned sure doesn't want to hear that we don't know."
"No, our political leaders do not like to hear that sort of thing."
Neither do ours, Ryan admitted to himself. "So, how good is Basil at a song-and-dance number?"
"Quite good, actually. In this case, he can say that your chaps do not have very much, either."
"Ask other NATO services?"
Harding shook his head. "No. It might leak out to the opposition-first, that we're interested, and second, that we don't know enough."
"How good are our friends?"
"Depends. The French SDECE occasionally turns good information, but they do not like to share. Neither do our Israeli friends. The Germans are thoroughly compromised. That Markus Wolf chap in East Germany is a bloody genius at this business-perhaps the best in the world, and under Soviet control. The Italians have some talented people, but they, too, have problems with penetration. You know, the best service on the continent might well be the Vatican itself. But if Ivan is doing anything at the moment, he's covering it nicely. Ivan is quite good at that, you know."
"So I've heard," Ryan agreed. "When does Basil have to go to Downing Street?"
"After lunch-three this afternoon, I understand."
"And what will we be able to give him?"
"Not very much, I'm afraid-worse, Basil might want me with him."
Ryan grunted. "That ought to be fun. Met her before?"
"No, but the PM has seen my analyses. Bas says she wants to meet me." He shuddered. "It'd be much better if I had something substantive to tell her."
"Well, let's see if we can come up with a threat analysis, okay?" Jack sat down. "What exactly do we know?"
Harding handed a sheaf of documents across. Ryan leaned back in his chair to pick through them.
"You got the Warsaw Letter from a Polish source, right?"
Harding hesitated, but it was clear he had to answer this one: "That is correct."
"So nothing from Moscow itself?" Jack asked.
He shook his head. "No. We know the letter was forwarded to Moscow, but that's all."
"We're really in the dark, then. You might want to have a beer before you go across the river."
Harding looked up from his notes. "Why, thank you, Jack. I really needed to hear that bit of encouragement."
They were silent for a moment.
"I work better on a computer," Ryan said. "How hard is it to get one in here?"
"Not easy. They have to be tempest-checked to make sure someone outside the building cannot read the keystrokes electronically. You can call administration about it."
But not today, Ryan didn't say aloud. He'd learned that the bureaucracy at Century House was at least as bad as the one at Langley, and after a few years of working in the private sector, it could drive him to distraction. Okay, he'd try to come up with some ideas to save Simon from getting a new asshole installed in his guts. The Prime Minister was a lady, but in terms of demands, Father Tim at Georgetown had nothing on her.
Oleg Ivan'ch got back from lunch at the KGB cafeteria and faced facts. Very soon, he would have to decide what to say to his American, and how to say it.
If he was a regular embassy employee, he would have passed the first note along to the CIA chief in the embassy-there had to be one, he knew, an American rezident whose job it was to spy on the Soviet Union, just as Russians spied on everyone in the world. The big question was whether they were spying on him. Could he have been "doubled" by the Second Chief Directorate, whose reputation would frighten the devil in hell himself? Or could this ostensible American have been a Russian bearing a "false-flag"?
So, first of all, Oleg had to make damned sure he was dealing with the real thing. How to do that…?
Then it came to him. Yes, he thought. That was something KGB could never bring off. That would ensure that he was dealing with someone able to do what he needed done. No one could fake that. In celebration, Zaitzev lit up another cigarette and went back into the morning dispatches from the Washington rezidentura.
It was hard to like Tony Prince. The New York Times correspondent in Moscow was well-regarded by the Russians, and, as far as Ed Foley was concerned, that spoke to a weakness in his character.
"So, how do you like the new job, Ed?" Prince asked.
"Still settling in. Dealing with the Russian press is kind of interesting. They're predictable, but unpredictably so."
"How can people be unpredictably predictable?" the Times correspondent inquired, with a crooked smile.
"Well, Tony, you know what they're going to say, just not how they're going to ask it." And half of them are spooks or at least stringers, anyway, in case you haven't noticed.
Prince affected a laugh. He felt himself to be the intellectual superior.
Foley had failed as a general-beat reporter in New York, whereas Prince had parlayed his political savvy to one of the top jobs in American journalism. He had some good contacts in the Soviet government, and he cultivated them assiduously, frequently sympathizing with them over the boorish, nekulturniy behavior of the current regime in Washington, which he occasionally tried to explain to his Russian friends, often pointing out that he hadn't voted for this damned actor, and neither had anyone in his New York office.
"Have you met the new guy, Alexandrov, yet?"
"No, but one of my contacts knows him, says he's a reasonable sort, talks like he's in favor of peaceful coexistence. More liberal than Suslov. I hear he's pretty sick."
"I've heard that, too, but I'm not sure what's wrong with him."
"He's diabetic, didn't you hear? That's why the Baltimore docs came over to work on his eyes. Diabetic retinopathy," Prince explained, speaking the word slowly so that Foley could comprehend it.
"I'll have to ask the embassy doc what that means," Foley observed, making an obvious note on his pad. "So, this Alexandrov guy is more liberal, you think?"
"Liberal" was a word that meant "good guy" to Prince.
"Well, I haven't met him myself, but that's what my sources think. They also think that when Suslov departs from this life, Mikhail Yevgeniyevich will take his place."
"Really? I'll have to drop that on the ambassador."
"And the Station Chief?"
"You know who that is? I don't," Foley said.
An eye roll. "Ron Fielding. Hell, everybody knows that."
"No, he isn't," Ed protested as sharply as his acting talent allowed. "He's the senior consular officer, not a spook."
Prince smiled, thinking, You never could figure things out, could you? His Russian contacts had fingered Fielding to him, and he knew they wouldn't lie to him. "Well, that's just a guess, of course," the reporter went on.
And if you thought it was me, you'd blurt it right out, wouldn't you? Foley thought right back at him. You officious ass. "Well, I'm cleared for some things, as you know, but not that one."
"I know who does know," Prince offered.
"Yeah, but I'm not going to ask the Ambassador, Tony. He'd rip my face off."
"He's just a political appointment, Ed-nothing special. This ought to be a posting for somebody who knows diplomacy, but the President didn't ask me for advice."
Thank God, the Station Chief commented inwardly.
"Fielding sees him a lot, doesn't he?" Prince went on.
"A consular officer works directly with the Ambassador, Tony. You know that."
"Yeah. Convenient, isn't it? How much do you see him?"
"The boss, you mean? Once a day, usually," Foley answered.
"And Fielding?"
"More. Maybe two or three times."
"There you have it," Prince concluded grandly. "You can always tell."
"You read too many James Bond books," Foley said dismissively. "Or maybe Matt Helm."
"Get real, Ed," Prince bristled with elegant gentleness.
"If Fielding is the head spook, who are his underlings? Damned if I know."
"Well, those are always pretty covert," Prince admitted. "No, on that I don't have a clue."
"Pity. That's one of the games you play in the embassy-who are the spooks."
"Well, I can't help you."
"It's not something I need to know anyway, I guess," Foley admitted.
You never were curious enough to be a good reporter, Prince thought, with a casual, pleasant smile. "So, does this keep you busy?"
"It's not a ball-breaker. Anyway, can we make a deal?"
"Sure," Prince replied. "What is it?"
"If you hear anything interesting, let us know here?"
"You can read about it in the Times, usually on the front page above the fold," he added, to make sure Foley knew how important he was, along with his penetrating analysis.
"Well, some things, you know, the Ambassador likes to get a heads-up. He told me to ask, off-the-record-like."
"That's an ethical issue, Ed."
"If I tell Ernie that, he won't be real happy."
"Well, you work for him. I don't."
"You are an American citizen, right?"
"Don't wave the flag at me, okay?" Prince responded wearily. "Okay, if I find out they're about to launch nuclear weapons, I'll let you know. But it looks to me like we're more likely to do something that stupid than they are."
"Tony, give me a break."
"This 'focus of evil in the world' crap wasn't exactly Abe Lincoln talking, was it?"
"You saying the President was wrong?" the Chief of Station asked, wondering just how far his opinion of this ass might sink.
"I know about the Gulag, okay? But that's a thing of the past. The Russians have mellowed since Stalin died, but the new administration hasn't figured that one out yet, have they?"
"Look, Tony, I'm just a worker bee here. The Ambassador asked me to forward a simple request. I take it your response is 'no'?"
"You take it correctly."
"Well, don't expect any Christmas cards from Ernie Fuller."
"Ed, my duty is to The New York Times and my readers, period."
"Okay, fine. I had to ask," Foley said defensively. He hadn't expected anything better from the guy, but he'd suggested this to Ambassador Fuller himself to feel Prince out, and the Ambassador had approved it.
"I understand." Prince checked his watch. "Hey, I have a meeting scheduled at the CPSU Central Committee building."
"Anything I ought to know about?"
"Like I said, you can read it in the Times. They fax you the Early Bird out of Washington, don't they?"
"Yeah, it eventually trickles down here."
"Then, day after tomorrow, you can read it," Prince advised, standing to take his leave. "Tell Ernie."
"I'll do that," Foley said, extending his hand. Then he decided he'd walk Prince to the elevator. On the way back, he'd hit the men's room to wash his hands. His next stop after that was the Ambassador's office.
"Hi, Ed. Meet with that Prince guy?"
Foley nodded his head. "Just cut him loose."
"Did he nibble at your hook?"
"Nope. Just spat it right back at me."
Fuller smiled crookedly. "What did I tell you? There used to be some patriotic reporters back when I was your age, but they've mostly grown out of it over the last few years."
"I'm not surprised. When Tony was a new kid in New York, he never liked the cops very much, but he was good at getting them to talk to him. Persuasive bastard, when he wants to be."
"Did he work on you?"
"No, sir. I'm not important enough for that."
"What did you think of the Washington request about the Pope?" Fuller asked, changing the subject.
"I'm going to have some people look into it, but-"
"I know, Ed. I don't want to know exactly what you're doing about it. If you find anything, will you be able to tell me about it?"
"Depends, sir," Foley answered, meaning probably not.
Fuller accepted that. "Okay. Anything else shaking?"
"Prince is on to something, ought to be in the papers day after tomorrow. He's on his way to the Central Committee, or so he told me. He confirmed that Alexandrov will replace Mikhail Suslov when Red Mike checks out. If they're telling him, it must be official. I think we can believe that one. Tony has good contacts with their political types, and it tracks with what our other friends tell us about Suslov."
"I've never met the guy. What gives with him?"
"He's one of the last true believers. Alexandrov is another one. He thinks Marx is the One True God, and Lenin is his prophet, and their political and economic system really does work."
"Really? Some people never learn."
"Yep. You can take that to the bank, sir. There are a few left, but Leonid Ilyich isn't one of them, and neither is his heir apparent, Yuriy Vladimirovich. But Alexandrov is Andropov's ally. There's a Politburo meeting later today."
"When will we know what they discussed?"
"Couple of days, probably." But exactly how we find out, you do not need to know, sir, Foley didn't add.
He didn't have to. Ernie Fuller knew the rules of the game. The U.S. Ambassador to every country was thoroughly briefed on the embassy he was taking over. To get into Moscow involved voluntary brainwashing at Foggy Bottom and Langley. In reality, the American ambassador to Moscow was his country's chief intelligence officer in the Soviet Union, and Uncle Ernie was a pretty good one, Foley thought.
"Okay, keep me posted if you can."
"Will do, sir," the Chief of Station promised.