The time difference was the biggest handicap in working his station, Foley knew. If he waited around the embassy for a reply, he might have to wait for hours, and there was no percentage in that. So, right after the signal went out, he'd collected his family and gone home, with Eddie conspicuously eating another hot dog on the way out to the car, and a facsimile copy of the New York Daily News in his hand. It was the best sports page of the New York papers, he'd long thought, if a little lurid in its headlines. Mike Lupica knew his baseball better than the rest of the wannabe ballplayers, and Ed Foley had always respected his analysis. He might have made a good spook if he'd chosen a useful line of work. So now he could see why the Yankees had fallen on their asses this season. It looked as though the goddamned Orioles were going to take the pennant, and that, to his New York sensibilities, was a crime worse than how the Rangers looked this year.
"So, Eddie, you looking forward to skating?" he asked his son, belted in the back seat.
"Yeah!" the little guy answered at once. Eddie Junior was his son, all right, and maybe here he'd really learn how to play ice hockey the right way.
Waiting in his father's closet was the best pair of junior hockey skates that money could buy, and another pair for when his feet got bigger. Mary Pat had already checked out the local junior leagues, and those, her husband thought, were about the best this side of Canada, and maybe better.
On the whole, it was a shame he couldn't have an STU in his house, but the Rabbit had told him that they might not be entirely secure, and besides, it would have told the Russians that he wasn't just the embassy officer who baby-sat the local reporters.
Weekends were the dullest time for the Foley family. Neither minded the time with the little guy, of course, but they could have done that at their now-rented Virginia home. They were in Moscow for their work, which was a passion for both of them, and something their son, they hoped, would understand someday. So for now his father read some books with him. The little guy was picking up on the alphabet, and seemed to read words, though as calligraphic symbols rather than letter constructs. It was enough for his father to be pleased about, though Mary Pat had a few minor doubts. After thirty minutes of that, Little Eddie talked his dad through a half hour of Transformers tapes, to the great satisfaction of the former and the bemusement of the latter.
The Station Chief's mind, of course, was on the Rabbit, and now it returned to his wife's suggestion of getting the package out without KGB's knowing they were gone. It was during the Transformers tape that it came back to him. You couldn't have a murder without a body, but with a body you damned sure had a murder. But what if the body wasn't the right one?
The essence of magic, he'd once heard Doug Henning say, was controlling the perception of the audience. If you could determine what they saw, then you could also dictate what they thought they saw, and from that precisely what they would remember seeing, and what they would then tell others. The key to that was in giving them something that they expected to see, even if it was unbelievable. People-even intelligent people-believed all manner of impossible things. It was sure as hell true in Moscow, where the rulers of this vast and powerful country believed in a political philosophy as out of tune with contemporary reality as the Divine Right of Kings. More to the point, they knew it was a false philosophy, and yet they commanded themselves to believe it as though it were Holy Scripture written in gold ink by God's own hand. So these people could be fooled. They worked pretty hard to fool themselves, after all.
Okay, how to fool them? Foley asked himself. Give the other guy something he expected to see, and he'd see it, whether it was really there or not. They wanted the Sovs to believe that the Rabbit and his family had… not skipped town, but had… died?
Dead people, so Captain Kidd had supposedly said, tell no tales. And neither did the wrong dead people.
The Brits did this once in World War II, didn't they? Foley wondered. Yes, he'd read the book in high school, and even then, at Fordham Prep, the operational concept had impressed him. Operation MINCEMEAT, it had been called. That concept had been very elegant indeed, as it had involved making the opposition feel smart, and people everywhere loved to feel smart…
Especially the dumb ones, Foley reminded himself. And the German intelligence services in World War II hadn't been worth the powder to blow them to hell. They were so inept that the Germans would have been better advised to do without them entirely-Hitler's astrologer would have been just as good, and probably a lot cheaper in the long run.
But the Russians, on the other hand, were pretty damned smart-smart enough that you wanted to be very careful playing head games with them, but not so smart that if they found something they expected to find, they would toss it in the trash can and go looking for what they didn't expect. No, that was just human nature, and even the New Soviet Man they kept trying to build was subject to human nature, much as the Soviet government tried to breed it out of him.
So, how would we go about that? he wondered quietly, as on the television a diesel truck-tractor changed into a two-legged robot, the better to fight off the forces of evil-whoever they were…
Oh. Yeah. It was pretty obvious, wasn't it? You just had to give them what they needed to see to prove that the Rabbit and his little hutch-mates were dead, to give them what dead people always left behind. That would be a major complication, but not so vast of one as to be impossible to arrange. But they'd need assistance. That thought did not make Ed Foley feel secure. In his line of work, you trusted yourself more than you trusted anyone or anything else-and after that, maybe, others of your own organization, but as few of them as possible. After that, when it became necessary to trust people in some other organization, you really gritted your teeth. Okay, sure, on his pre-mission brief at Langley, he'd been told that Nigel Haydock could be relied upon as a very tame-and very able-Brit, and a pretty good field spook working for a closely allied service, and, okay, sure, he liked the look of the guy, and, okay, sure, they'd hit it off fairly well. But, God damn it, he wasn't Agency. But Ritter had told him that, in a pinch, Haydock could be relied upon for a helping hand, and the Rabbit himself had told him that Brit comms hadn't been cracked yet, and he had to trust the Rabbit to be an honest player. Foley's life wasn't riding on that, but damned sure his career was.
Okay, but what-no, how-to work this one. Nigel was the Commercial Attache at the Brit Embassy, right across the river from the Kremlin itself, a station that went back to the czars, and one that had supposedly pissed Stalin off royally, to see the Union Jack every morning from his office window. And the Brits had helped recruit, and had later run GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovskiy, the agent who'd prevented World War III and, along the way, recruited CARDINAL, the brightest jewel in CIA's crown. So if he had to trust anyone, it would have to be Nigel. Necessity was the mother of many things, and if the Rabbit came to grief, well, they'd know that SIS was penetrated. Again. He realized he'd have to apologize to Nigel just for thinking this way, but this was business, not personal.
Paranoia, Eddie, the COS told himself. You can't suspect everybody.
The hell I can't!
But, probably, he knew, Nigel Haydock thought the same thing about him. That was just how the game was played.
And if they got the Rabbit out, it was proof positive that Haydock was straight. No way in hell that Ivan would let this bunny skip town alive. He just knew too much.
Did Zaitzev have any idea at all of the danger he was walking into? He trusted CIA to get him and his family out of Dodge City alive…
But with all the information to which he had access, wasn't he making an informed judgment?
Jesus, there were enough interlocking wheels in this to make a bicycle factory, weren't there?
The tape ended, and Master Truck Robot-or whatever the hell his name was-transformed himself back into a truck and motored off to the sound of "Transformers, more than meets the eye…" It was sufficient to the moment that Eddie liked it. So, he'd arranged some quality time with his son and some good think time for himself-not a bad Sunday evening on the whole.
"So, what's the plan, Arthur?" Greer asked.
"Good question, James," the DCI answered. They were watching TV in his den, the Orioles and the White Sox playing in Baltimore. Mike Flanagan was pitching, and looked to be on his way to another Cy Young Award, and the rookie shortstop the Orioles had just brought up was playing particularly well, and looked to have a big-league future. Both men were drinking beer and eating pretzels, as though they were real people enjoying a Sunday afternoon of America's pastime. That was partly true.
"Basil will help. We can trust him," Admiral Greer opined.
"Agreed. Whatever problems he had are a thing of the past, and he'll compartmentalize it as tight as the Queen's jewel box. But we'll want one of our people involved at his end."
"Who, do you suppose?"
"Not the COS London. Everybody knows who he is, even the cabdrivers." There was no disputing that. The London Station Chief had been in the spook business for a very long time, and was more an administrator now than an active field officer. The same could be said of most of his people, for whom London was a sinecure job, and mainly a sunset posting for people looking forward to retirement. They were good men all, of course, just ready to hang up the spikes. "Whoever it is, he'll have to go to Budapest, and he'll have to be invisible."
"So, somebody they don't know."
"Yep." Moore nodded as he took a bite of his sandwich and reached for some chips. "He won't have to do very much, just let the Brits know he's there. Keep 'em honest, like."
"Basil's going to want to interview this guy."
"No avoiding that," Moore agreed. "And he's entitled to dip his beak, too." That was a line he had picked up as a judge on a rare organized-crime appeals case. He and his fellow jurists in Austin, Texas, had laughed about it for weeks, after rejecting the appeal, 5-0.
"We'll want one of our people in for that, too."
"Bet your bippy, James," Moore agreed again.
"And better that our guy is based over there. Timing might get a little tough."
"You bet."
"How about Ryan?" Greer asked. "He's way the hell under the radar. Nobody knows who he is-he's one of mine, right? He doesn't even look like a field officer."
"His face has been in the papers," Moore objected.
"You think KGB reads the society page? At most they might have noticed him as a rich wannabe writer, and if he has a file, it's in some sub-basement at The Centre. That ought not to be a problem."
"You think so?" Moore wondered. For sure, this would give Bob Ritter a bellyache. But that wasn't entirely a bad thing. Bob had visions of taking over all CIA operations, and, good man that he was, he would never be DCI, for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that Congress didn't much like spooks with Napoleonic complexes. "Is he up to it?"
"The boy's an ex-Marine and he knows how to think on his feet, remember?"
"He has paid his dues, James. He doesn't take a leak sitting down," the DCI conceded.
"And all he has to do is keep an eye on our friends, not play spook on enemy soil."
"Bob will have a conniption fit."
"It won't hurt our purposes to keep Bob in his place, Arthur." Especially, he didn't add, if this works out. And work out it should. Once out of Moscow, it ought to be a fairly routine operation. Tense, of course, but routine.
"What if he screws things up?"
"Arthur, Jimmy Szell dropped the ball in Budapest, and he's an experienced field officer. I know, probably not even his fault, probably just bad luck, but it proves the point. A lot of this racket is just luck. The Brits will be doing all the real work, and I'm sure Basil will pick a good team."
Moore weighed the thought quietly. Ryan was very new at CIA, but he was a rising star. What helped was his adventure, not yet a year old, where twice he'd faced loaded guns and gotten it done anyway. One nice thing about the Marine Corps, they didn't turn out many pussies. Ryan could think and act on his feet, and that was a nice thing to have in your pocket. Better yet, the Brits liked him. He'd seen the comments from Sir Basil Charleston on Ryan's tenure at Century House-he was taking quite a liking to the young American analyst. So this was a chance to bring a new talent along, and though he wasn't a graduate of The Farm, that didn't mean he was a babe in the woods. Ryan had been through the woods, and he'd killed himself a couple of wolves along the way, hadn't he?
"James, it's a little outside the box, but I won't say no for that reason. Okay, cut him loose. I hope your boy doesn't wet his pants."
"What did Foley call this operation?"
"BEATRIX, he said. You know, like Peter Rabbit."
"Foley, that boy is going places, Arthur, and his wife, Mary Patricia, she is a real piece of work."
"There we surely agree, James. She'd make a great rodeo rider, and he'd be a pretty good town marshal west of the Pecos," the DCI said. He liked to see some of the young talent the Agency was producing. Where they all came from-well, they came from a lot of different places, but they all seemed to have the same fire in the belly that he'd had thirty years before, working with Hans Tofte. They weren't terribly different from the Texas Rangers he'd learned to admire as a little boy-the smart, tough people who did what had to be done.
"How do we get the word to Basil?"
"I called Chip Bennett last night, told him to have his people gin up some one-timers. Ought to be at Langley this evening. We'll fly them to London on the 747 tonight, and shoot some on from there to Moscow. So we'll be able to communicate securely, if not conveniently."
That, in fact, was just about done. A computer system used for taking down the dot-dash signals of International Morse Code was connected to a highly sensitive radio tuned to a frequency used by no human agency, transforming the garbage noise into Roman letters. One of the technicians at Fort Meade remarked along the way that the intergalactic noise they were copying down was the residual static produced by the Big Bang, for which Penzias and Miller had collected a Nobel Prize a few years before, and that was as random as things got-unless you could decode it to learn what God thought, which was beyond the skills even of NSA's Z-division. A dot-matrix printer put the letters to carbon-paper sets-three copies of each, the original to the originators, and a copy each for CIA and NSA. They all contained enough letters to transcribe the first third of the Bible, and each page and each line were alphanumerically identified to make decryption possible. Three people separated the pages, made sure that the sets were properly arranged, and then slipped them into ring binders for some semblance of ease of use. Then two were handed off to an Air Force NCO, who drove the CIA copies off to Langley. The lead technician wondered what was so goddamned important to require such massive one-time pads, which NSA had long before gotten past with its institutional worship of electronic technology, but his was not-ever-to reason why, was it? Not at Fort Meade, Maryland, it wasn't.
Ryan was watching TV, trying to get used to the British sitcoms. He'd grown to like British humor-they'd invented Benny Hill, after all. That guy had to be mentally disabled to do some of the things he did-but the regular series TV took a little getting used to. The signals were just different, and though he spoke English as well as any American, the nuances here-exaggerated, of course, on TV-had a subtle dimension that occasionally slipped by him. But not his wife, Jack observed. His wife was laughing hard enough to gag, and at things he barely comprehended. Then came the trilling note of his STU in his upstairs den. He trotted upstairs to get it. It wouldn't be a wrong number. Whoever had set his number up-British Telecom, a semiprivate corporation that did exactly what the government told it to do-would have chosen a number so far off the numerical trail that only an infant could dial his secure phone by mistake.
"Ryan," he said, after his phone mated up with the one at the other end.
"Jack, Greer here. How's Sunday evening in Jolly Old England?"
"It rained today. I didn't get to cut the grass," Ryan reported. He didn't mind much. He hated cutting grass, having learned as a child that however much you sliced it down, the goddamned stuff just grew back in a few days to look scraggly again.
"Well, here the Orioles are leading the White Sox five-two after six innings. I think your team looks good for the pennant."
"Who in the National League?"
"If I had to bet, I'd say the Phillies all the way, my boy."
"I got a buck says you're wrong, sir. My O's look good from here." Which isn't there, damn it. Since losing the Colts, he'd transferred his loyalty to baseball. The game was more interesting, tactically speaking, though lacking the manly combat of NFL football. "So, what's happening in Washington on a Sunday afternoon, sir?"
"Just wanted to give you a heads-up. There's a signal on its way to London that's going to involve you. New tasking. It'll take maybe three or four days."
"Okay." It perked his interest, but he'd have to see what it was before he got overly excited about it. Probably some new analysis that they wanted him for. Those were usually economics, because the Admiral liked his way of working through the numbers games. "Important?"
"Well, we're interested in what you can do with it" was all the DDI wanted to say.
This guy must teach foxes how to outsmart dogs and horses. Good thing he wasn't a Brit. The local aristocracy would shoot him for ruining their steeplechases, Ryan told himself. "Okay, sir, I'll be looking for it. I don't suppose you can give me a play-by-play?" he asked with a little hope in his voice.
"That new shortstop-Ripken, is it?-just doubled down the left-field line, drove in run number six, one out, bottom of the seventh."
"Thank you for that, sir. It beats Fawlty Towers."
"What the hell is that?"
"It's what they call a comedy over here, Admiral. It's funny if you can understand it."
"Brief me in next time I come over," the DDI suggested.
"Aye aye, sir."
"Family okay?"
"We're all just fine, sir, thank you for asking."
"Okay. Have a good one. See ya."
"What was that?" Cathy asked in the living room.
"The boss. He's sending me something to work on."
"What exactly?" She never stopped trying.
"He didn't say, just a heads-up that I have something new to play with."
"And he didn't tell you what it was?"
"The Admiral likes his surprises."
"Hmph" was her response.
The courier settled into his first-class seat. The package in his carry-on bag was tucked under the seat in front, and he had a collection of magazines to read. Since he was covert, not an official diplomatic courier, he could pretend to be a real person, a disguise that he'd shed at Heathrow's Terminal Four immigration desk, there to catch an embassy car for the ride into Grosvenor Square. Mainly he looked forward to a nice pub and some Brit beer before he flew back home in a day and a half. It was a waste of talent and training for the newly hatched field officer, but everyone had to pay his dues, and this, for a guy fresh out of The Farm, was just that. He consoled himself with the thought that whatever it was, it had to be a little bit important. Sure, Wilbur. If it were all that important, he'd be on the Concorde.
Ed foley was sleeping the sleep of the just. The next day, he'd find an excuse to head over to the British Embassy and have a sit-down with Nigel and plan the operation. If that went well, he'd wear his reddest tie and take the message from Oleg Ivan'ch, set up the next face-to-face and go for ward with the operation. Who is it, he wondered, who the KGB is trying to kill? The Pope? Bob Ritter had his knickers in a twist over that. Or somebody else? The KGB had a very direct way of dealing with people it didn't like. CIA did not. They hadn't actually killed anyone since the fifties, when President Eisenhower had used CIA-actually quite skillfully-as an alternative to employing uniformed troops in an overt fashion. But that skill hadn't been conveyed to the Kennedy Administration, which had screwed up nearly everything it touched. Too many James Bond books, probably. Everything in fiction was simpler than the real world, even fiction written by a former field spook. In the real world, zipping your zipper could be hard.
But he was planning a fairly complex operation and telling himself that it wasn't all that complex. Was he making a mistake? Foley's mind wandered while the rest of his consciousness slept. Even asleep, he kept going over and over things. In his dreams, he saw rabbits running around a green field while foxes and bears watched. The predators didn't move on them, perhaps because they were too fast and/or too close to their rabbit holes for them to waste a chase. But what happened when the rabbits got too far away from their holes? Then the foxes could catch them, and the bears could move in to swallow them whole… And his job was to protect the little bunnies, wasn't it?
Even so, in his dream the foxes and bears just watched while he, the eagle, circled high and looked down. He, the eagle, had sworn off rabbits, though a fox might be a nice morsel to rip apart, if his talons got it properly, just behind the head to snap the neck, and leave him for the bear to eat, because bears didn't really care whom they ate. No, Mr. Bear didn't care one little bit. He was just a big old bear, and his belly was always empty. He'd even eat an eagle if he got the chance, but the eagle was too swift and too smart, wasn't he? Only so long as he kept his eyes open, the noble eagle told himself; he had great abilities and fine sight, but even he had to be careful. And so the eagle soared aloft, riding the thermals and watching. He couldn't enter the fray, exactly. At most, he could swoop down and warn the cute little bunnies that there was danger about, but the bunnies were proverbially dumb bunnies, munching their grass and not looking around as much as they ought to. That was his job, the noble eagle told himself, to use his superb eyesight to make sure he knew everything he needed to know. The bunny's job was to run when he needed to run, and with help from the eagle, to run to a different field, one without foxes and bears around it, so that he could be free to raise more cute little bunnies and live happily ever after, like Beatrix Potter's little Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail.
Foley rolled over, and the dream ended, the eagle watching for danger, and the rabbits eating their grass, and the foxes and bears a good way off, just watching but not moving, because they didn't know which bunny would stray too far from its safe little hole.
The alarm clock's deliberately annoying buzz caused Foley's eyes to snap open, and he rolled over to switch it off. Then he jerked himself out of bed and into the bathroom. He suddenly missed his house in Virginia. It had more than one bathroom-two and a half, in fact, which allowed some degree of flexibility should an emergency occur. Little Eddie got up when summoned, then almost immediately sat on the floor in front of the TV set and called out "Worker-womannnn!" when the exercise show came on. That generated a smile from his mom and dad. Even the KGB guys on the other end of the bug wires probably had a little chuckle at that.
"Anything important planned for the office today?" Mary Pat asked in the kitchen.
"Well, ought to be the usual weekend traffic from Washington. I have to run over to the Brit Embassy before lunch."
"Oh? What for?" his wife asked.
"I want to stop over and see Nigel Haydock about a couple of things," he told her, as she set the bacon frying. Mary Pat always did bacon and eggs on the day of important spook work. He wondered if their KGB listeners would ever tumble to that. Probably not. Nobody was that thorough, and American eating habits probably interested them only insofar as foreigners usually ate better than Russians.
"Well, say hello for me."
"Right." He yawned and took a sip of coffee.
"We need to have them over-maybe next weekend?"
"Works for me. Roast beef and the usual?"
"Yeah, I'll try to get some frozen corn on the cob." Russians grew corn you could buy in the open farmers' markets, and it was okay, but it wasn't the Silver Queen that they'd come to love in Virginia. So they usually settled for the frozen corn the Air Force flew in from Rhein-Main, along with the Chicago Red hot dogs that they served in the embassy canteen and all the other tastes of home that became so important on a posting like this one. It was probably just as true in Paris, Ed thought. Breakfast went quickly, and half an hour later, he was almost dressed.
"Which tie today, honey?"
"Well, in Russia, you should wear red once in a while," she said, handing the tie over with a wink, along with the lucky silver tie bar.
"Um-hmm," he agreed, looking in the mirror to snug it into his collar. "Well, here is Edward Foley, Senior, foreign-service officer."
"Works for me, honey." She kissed him, a little loudly.
"Bye, Daddy," Junior said as his father headed for the door. A high five instead of a kiss. He'd gotten a little too old for the sissy stuff.
The rest of the trip was stultifyingly routine. Walk to the metro. Buy his paper at the kiosk and catch the exact same train for the same five-kopeck fare, because if he caught the same one going home, so as to be marked by KGB as a creature of strict routine, then he had to mirror-image morning and afternoon habits. At the embassy, he entered his office and waited for Mike Russell to bring in the morning message traffic. More than usual, he saw at once, flipping through the messages and checking the headers.
"Anything about what we talked about?" the communications officer asked, lingering for a moment.
"Doesn't look like it," Foley replied. "Got you a little torqued?"
"Ed, getting secure stuff in and out is my only job, y'know?"
"Look at it from my side, Mike. If they tumble to me, I'm as useless as tits on a boarhog. Not to mention the guys who get killed because of it."
"Yeah, I hear you." Russell paused. "I just can't believe they can crack my systems, Ed. Like you said, you'd be losing people left and right."
"I want to agree with you, but we can't be too careful, can we?"
"Roger that, man. I catch anybody dicking around in my shop, they won't live long enough to talk to the FBI," he promised darkly.
"Don't get too carried away."
"Ed, when I was in Vietnam, nonsecure signals got soldiers killed. That's as important as things get, y'know?"
"If I hear anything, I'll make sure you know about it, Mike."
"Okay." Russell headed out, not quite trailing smoke out of his ears.
Foley organized his message traffic-it was addressed to the Chief of Station, of course, not to anyone's name-and started reading through it. There was still concern about KGB and the Pope, but, aside from the Rabbit, he had nothing new to report, and it was only hope that told him the Flopsy had anything to report on that subject. A lot of interest in last week's Politburo meeting, but for that he'd have to wait for his sources to report in. Questions about Leonid Brezhnev's health, but while they knew the names of his physicians-a whole team of them-none of them talked to CIA directly. You could see the picture on TV and know that Leonid Ilyich wasn't going to be running the marathon in the next Olympics. But people like that could linger for years, good news and bad news. Brezhnev wasn't going to be doing anything new and different, but, as he became increasingly irrational, there was no telling what dumbass things he might try-damned sure he wasn't going to be pulling out of Afghanistan. He didn't care a rap about the lives of young Russian soldiers, not when he heard Death's footsteps approaching his own door. The succession was of interest to CIA, but it was fairly settled that Yuriy Vladimirovich Andropov would be the next guy at the seat at the head of the table, absent a sudden death or a major foot put wrong in a political sense. Andropov was too canny a political operator for that, however. No, he was the current czarevich, and that was that. Hopefully, he wouldn't be too vigorous-and he wouldn't if the stories about his liver disease were true. Every time Foley saw him on Russian TV, he looked for the yellow tinge on his skin that announced that particular ailment-but makeup could hide that, if they used makeup on their political chieftains… Hmm, how to check that? he wondered. Something to send back to the Science and Technology Directorate at Langley, maybe.
Zaitzev took his seat, after relieving Kolya Dobrik, and looked over his message traffic. He decided to memorize as much as possible, and so he took a little longer than usual forwarding the messages to their end-recipients. There was one from Agent CASSIUS again, routed for political-intelligence people upstairs, and also at the U.S.-Canada Institute, where the academicians read the tea leaves for The Centre as a backup. There was one from NEPTUNE, requesting money for the agent who was giving KGB such good communications intelligence. NEPTUNE suggested the sea, didn't it? Zaitzev searched his memory for previous signals from that source. Wasn't it mainly about the American navy? And he was the reason he worried about American signals security. Surely KGB was paying him a huge amount of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars in American cash, something KGB had a problem getting ahold of-it was far easier for the Soviet Union to pay in diamonds, since it could mine for diamonds in eastern Siberia. They'd paid some Americans in diamonds, but they'd been caught by the vigilant American FBI, and KGB had never tried to negotiate their release… so much for loyalty. The Americans tried to do that, he knew, but most of the time the people they tried to get out had already been executed-a thought that stopped his thoughts cold in their tracks.
But there was no turning back now, and CIA was competent enough that KGB feared it, and didn't that mean that he was in good hands?
Then he remembered one other thing he had to do today. In his drawer was a pad of contact reports. Mary had suggested he report their meeting, and so he did. He described her as pretty, in her late twenties or early thirties, mother of a fairly nice little son, and none too bright-very American in mannerisms, he wrote-with modest language skills, good vocabulary but poor syntax and pronunciation, which made her Russian understandable but stilted. He didn't make an evaluation of her likelihood to be an intelligence officer, which, he figured, was the smart thing to do. After fifteen minutes of writing, he walked it over to the department security officer.
"This was a waste of time," he said, handing it to the man, a captain passed over for promotion twice.
The security officer scanned it. "Where did you meet her?"
"It's right there." He pointed to the contact form. "I took my zaichik for a walk in the park, and she showed up with her little boy. His name is Eddie, actual name is evidently Edward Edwardovich-Edward Junior, as the Americans say it-age four, I think she said, a nice little boy. We talked a few minutes about not very much, and the two of them walked away."
"Your impression of her?"
"If she is a spy, then I am confident of the victory of socialism," Zaitzev replied. "She is rather pretty, but far too skinny, and not overly bright. What I suppose is a typical American housewife."
"Anything else?"
"It's all there, Comrade Captain. It took longer to write that up than it did to speak with her."
"Your vigilance is noted, Comrade Major."
"I serve the Soviet Union." And Zaitzev headed back to his desk. It was a good idea on her part, he thought, to cross this t so assiduously. There might have been a shadow on her, after all, and if not, then there would be a new entry in her KGB file, reported by a KGB officer, certifying that she was no threat to world socialism.
Back at his desk, he returned to making extra-careful mental notes of his daily work. The more he gave CIA, the better he'd be paid. Maybe he would take his daughter to that Disney Planet amusement park, and maybe his little zaichik would enjoy herself there. His signals included other countries, too, and he memorized those as well. One code-named MINISTER in England was interesting. He was probably in their Foreign Ministry, and provided excellent political/diplomatic intelligence that they loved upstairs.
Foley took an embassy car for the drive to the British Embassy. They were cordial enough once he showed his ID, and Nigel came down to meet him in the grand foyer, which was indeed quite grand.
"Hello, Ed!" He gave a hearty handshake and a smile. "Come this way." They went up the marble stairs and then right to his office. Haydock closed the door and pointed him to a leather chair.
"What can I do for you?"
"We got a Rabbit," Foley said, skipping the preliminaries.
And that said it all. Haydock knew that Foley was a spook-a "cousin" in the British terminology.
"Why are you telling me?"
"We're going to need your help getting him out. We want to do that through Budapest, and our station there just got burned down. How's your shop there?"
"The chief is Andy Hudson. Former officer in the Parachute Regiment, able chap. But do back up, Edward. What can you tell me, and why is this so important?"
"He's a walk-in, I guess you'd say. He seems to be a communications guy. He feels real as hell, Nigel. I've requested permission to bust him right out, and Langley has green-lighted it. Pair of fives, man," he added.
"So, high priority and high reliability on this chappie?"
Foley bobbed his head. "Yep. Want the good news?"
"If there is any."
"He says our comms may be compromised, but your new system hasn't been cracked yet."
"Good to hear. So, that means I can communicate freely, but you cannot?"
Another nod. "I learned this morning that a communications aid is on its way to me-perhaps they ginned up a couple of pads for me to use. I'll find out later today, maybe."
Haydock leaned back in his chair and lit up a smoke, a low-tar Silk Cut. He'd switched to them to make his wife happy.
"You have a plan?" the Brit spook asked.
"I figure he takes the train to Budapest. For the rest of it, well…" Foley outlined the idea he and Mary Pat had figured out.
"That is creative, Edward." Haydock thought. "When did you read up on MINCEMEAT? It's part of the syllabus at our academy, you know."
"Back when I was a kid. I always thought it was pretty clever."
"In the abstract, not a bad idea-but, you know, the pieces you need are not something you pick up at the ironmongers."
"I kinda figured that, Nigel. So, if we want to make the play, better that we get moving on it right quick."
"Agreed." Haydock paused. "Basil will want to know a few things. What else can I tell him?"
"He ought to get a hand-carried letter from Judge Moore this morning. All I can really say is, this guy looks pretty real."
"You said he's a communications officer-in The Centre, is it?"
"Yep."
"That could be very valuable indeed," Haydock agreed. "Especially if he's a mail clerk." He pronounced it clark. The invocation of the name of Foley's training officer almost caused him to smile… but not quite.
It was a slower nod this time, with Foley's eyes locked in on his host. "That's what we're thinking, guy."
It finally got home. "Bloody hell," Haydock breathed. "That would be valuable. And he's just a walk-in?"
"Correct. A little more complicated than that, but that's what it comes down to, bud."
"Not a trap, not a false-flag?"
"I've thought about that, of course, but it just doesn't make sense, does it?" Foley asked. The Brit knew he was Agency, but didn't know he was Station Chief. "If they've ID'd me, why tip their hand this early?"
"True," Nigel had to agree. "That would be clumsy. So, Budapest, is it? Easier than out of Moscow-at least there's that."
"There's bad news, too. His wife isn't in on the plan." Foley had to tell him that.
"You must be joking, Edward."
"Wish I was, man. But that's how it's going down."
"Ah. Well, what's life without a few complications? Any preferences how to get your Rabbit out?" He asked, not quite letting Foley know what he was thinking.
"That's for your guy Hudson in Budapest, I suppose. It's not my turf, not my place to tell him how to run his operation."
Haydock just nodded. It was one of those things that went without saying but had to be said anyway. "When?" he asked.
"Soon, as soon as possible. Langley's almost as hot for this as I am." And, he didn't add, it was sure as hell a way for him to make an early mark as Chief of Station Moscow.
"Rome, you're thinking? Sir Basil has been rattling my windows about that."
"Your Prime Minister interested?"
"About as much as your President, I should imagine. That play might well muddy the waters rather thoroughly."
"Big-time," Foley agreed. "Anyway, I wanted to give you a heads-up. Sir Basil will probably have a signal for you later today."
"Understood, Edward. When that arrives, I'll be able to begin taking action." He checked his watch-too soon to offer his guest a beer in the embassy pub. Pity.
"When you get authorization, give me a call. Okay?"
"Certainly. We shall get things sorted out for you, Ed. Andy Hudson's a good officer, and he runs a tight operation in Budapest."
"Great." Foley stood.
"How about a dinner soon?" Haydock asked.
"I guess we'd better do it soon. Penny looks about due. When will you be flying her home?"
"A couple of weeks. The little bugger is rolling about and kicking all the time now."
"Always a good sign, man."
"And we have a good physician right here in the embassy, should he be a little early." Just that the embassy doc didn't really want to deliver a baby. They never did.
"Well, if it's a boy, Eddie will lend you his Transformers tapes," Ed promised.
"Transformers? What's that?"
"If it's a boy, you'll find out," Foley assured him.