It wasn't easy, really, to make sure one took the right subway train. Both the Rabbit and Foley were using the inhuman efficiency of what had to be the only aspect of Soviet life that actually functioned properly, and the remarkable thing was that the trains ran on a schedule that was as regular and predictable as the setting of the sun, just far more frequent. Foley got his dispatch into Mike Russell's hands, then put his raincoat on and walked out the embassy front door at exactly the right moment, walked at exactly the usual pace, and got to the subway platform at exactly the right time, then turned to verify it with the clock that hung on the ceiling of the station. Yeah, he'd done it again. The train pulled in, just as the previous train pulled out, and Foley walked aboard the usual car, turning to see… yes, the Rabbit was there. Foley unfolded his paper. His unbuttoned raincoat hung loosely on his shoulders.
Zaitzev was actually surprised to see the red tie, but he could hardly complain. As usual, he inched his way in the proper direction.
It was almost routine now, the COS thought. He felt the hand surreptitiously enter his pocket and withdraw. Then his acute senses felt the man take a step away. Hopefully, there would be little more of this. It was safe for Foley, but decidedly unsafe for the Rabbit, however skillful he might have become at this exercise. The presence of others on this subway car-some faces he recognized from repetition-could well represent people of the Second Chief Directorate. There could be intermittent surveillance on him, using a bunch of different officers. That would be a sensible tactic for the opposition to use, on and off, to diminish the chance that he'd spot them.
In due course, as before, the train arrived at the appointed stop, and Foley walked off. In a few more weeks, he'd have to put the lining in his coat, and maybe even wear the shapka Mary Pat had bought him. He had to start thinking about what would happen after they got the Rabbit out. If BEATRIX worked all the way, he'd have to maintain his cover activities for a time-or maybe switch to driving to the embassy, a change in routine that the Russians would not note as unusual. He was an American, after all, and Americans were famous for driving everywhere. The metro was getting tedious. Too crowded, often with people who didn't know what a shower was for. The things he did for his country, Foley thought. No, he corrected himself, the things he did against his country's enemies. That was what made it worthwhile. Giving the big of Bear a bellyache-maybe even stomach cancer, he mused, walking to his apartment.
"Yes, Alan?" Charleston asked, looking up from his desk.
"This is a major operation, I take it?" Kingshot asked.
"Major in its objective, yes," the Director General confirmed. "As routine as possible in its operation. We only have three people in Budapest, and it would not be overly brilliant to fly in a goon squad."
"Anyone else going?"
"Jack Ryan, the American," Sir Basil said.
"He's no field officer," Kingshot objected immediately.
"It's fundamentally an American operation, Alan. They reasonably requested that one of their people go along to observe. In return, we'll have a day or two to debrief their Rabbit at a safe house of our choosing. He will doubtless have a good deal of useful information, and we'll get the first chance to speak with him."
"Well, I hope this Ryan fellow doesn't queer the pitch for us."
"Alan, he's shown himself to be fairly levelheaded in time of trouble, hasn't he?" Sir Basil asked, reasonable as ever.
"Must be his Marine training," Kingshot observed with dark generosity.
"And he's very clever, Alan. He's been giving us excellent work on his analysis project."
"If you say so, sir. To get the three bodies, I need to get some help from Special Branch, and then spend time on my knees hoping for something dreadful to happen."
"What are you thinking?"
Kingshot explained his nascent operational concept. It was really the only way to make something like this happen. And, as Sir Basil had observed earlier in the day, it was as grisly as an autopsy.
"How likely is such a thing to happen?" Basil asked.
"I need to talk with the police to answer that one."
"Who's your contact there?"
"Chief Superintendent Patrick Nolan. You've met him."
Charleston closed his eyes for a moment. "The huge chap, arrests rugby forwards for light exercise?"
"That's Nolan. They call him 'Tiny' on the force. I think he eats barbells with his porridge. Am I free to discuss this Operation BEATRIX with him?"
"Just in terms of our needs, Alan."
"Very good, sir," Kingshot agreed, and left the room.
"You want what?" Nolan asked over a pint in a pub a block from New Scotland Yard, just after four in the afternoon.
"You heard me, Tiny," Kingshot said. He lit a cigarette to fit in with the rest of the bar's patrons.
"Well, I must say I've heard a lot of strange things in my time with the Yard, but never that." Nolan was a good six-four and two hundred thirty pounds, very little of it fat. He spent at least an hour, three times a week, in the Yard's exercise room. He rarely carried a handgun on duty. He'd never needed one to help a felon see the futility of resistance. "Can you say what this is for?" he asked.
"Sorry, not allowed to. All I can say is that's it's a matter of some importance."
A long pull on his beer. "Well, you know that we do not keep such things in cold storage, even in the Black Museum."
"I was thinking a traffic smash. They happen all the time, don't they?"
"Yes, they do, Alan, but not to a family of three."
"Well, how often do such things happen?" Kingshot asked.
"Perhaps twenty such incidents in an average year, and their occurrence is wholly irregular. You cannot depend on it in any given week."
"Well, we'll just have to hope for good luck, and if it doesn't happen, then it simply does not happen." That would be an inconvenience. Perhaps it would be better to enlist the help of the Americans. They killed at least fifty thousand people per year on their highways. He'd suggest that to Sir Basil in the morning, Kingshot decided.
"Good luck? Not sure I'd call it that, Alan," Nolan pointed out.
"You know what I mean, Tiny. All I can say is that it's bloody important."
"And if it happens out on the M4, then what?"
"We collect the bodies-"
"And the survivors of the deceased?" Nolan asked.
"We substitute weighted bags for the bodies. The condition of the corpses will preclude an open-casket ceremony, won't it?"
"Yes, there is that. Then what?"
"We'll have our people deal with the bodies. You really do not need to know the details." The SIS had a close and cordial relationship with the Metropolitan Police, but it went only so far.
Nolan finished his pint. "Yes, I'll leave the nightmares to you, Alan." He managed not to shiver. "I should start keeping my eyes open at once, is it?"
"Immediately."
"And we should consider taking the leavings from more than one such incident?"
"Obviously." Kingshot nodded. "Another round?"
"Good idea, Alan," Nolan agreed. And his host waved to the barman. "You know, someday I'd love to know what you are using me for."
"Someday after we're both retired, Patrick. You'll be pleased to know what you are helping with. That I can promise you, old man."
"If you say so, Alan." Nolan conceded the point. For now.
"What the hell?" Judge Moore observed, reading the latest dispatch from Moscow. He handed the fresh copy over to Greer, who scanned it and passed it along to Mike Bostock.
"Mike, your boy Foley has a lively imagination," the Admiral commented.
"This sounds more like Mary Pat. She's the cowboy-well, cowgirl, I suppose you'd say. It is original, guys."
"Original isn't the word," the DCI said, rolling his eyes somewhat. "Okay, Mike, is it doable?"
"Theoretically, yes-and I like the operational concept. To get a defector and keep Ivan ignorant of the fact. That's style, gentlemen," Bostock said admiringly. "The ugly part is that you need three bodies, one of them a child."
The three intelligence executives managed not to shudder at the thought. It was easiest, oddly, for Judge Moore, who'd managed to get his hands wet thirty years earlier. But that had been in time of war, when the rules were a lot looser. But not loose enough for him to keep from having regrets. That was what had gotten him back into the law. He couldn't take back the things he'd done wrong, but he could make sure they wouldn't happen again. Or something like that, he told himself now. Something like that.
"Why a car crash?" Moore asked. "Why not a house fire? Doesn't that suit the tactical purposes better?"
"Good point," Bostock agreed at once. "Less physical trauma to have to explain away."
"I'll shoot that off to Basil." Even the most brilliant of people, Moore realized, could be limited in their thinking. Well, that was why he kept telling people to think outside the box. And every so often, someone managed to do that. Just not often enough.
"You know," Mike Bostock said, after a little thinking. "This will be something if we can pull it off."
"'If can be a very large word, Mike," Greer cautioned.
"Well, maybe this time the glass is half full," the Deputy DDO suggested. "Fine. The main mission is getting this guy out, but the goose can use a little sauce once in a while."
"Hmph," Greer observed dubiously.
"Well, I'll call Emil over at the Bureau and see what he has to say about this," Moore said. "More his turf than ours."
"And if some lawyer gets hold of it, then what, Arthur?"
"James, there are ways of dealing with lawyers."
A pistol is often useful, Greer didn't say. He nodded concurrence. One bridge to cross at a time was always a good rule, especially in this crazy business.
"How did things go today, honey?" Mary Pat asked.
"Oh, the usual" was the reply for the microphones in the ceiling. More significant was the double thumbs-up, followed by the pass of the note from his coat pocket. They had a meeting place and a time. MP would handle that. She read the note and nodded. She and Eddie would take another walk to meet little Svetlana, the zaichik. Then it was just a matter of getting the Rabbit out of town, and since he was KGB, it ought not to be overly hard. That was one advantage of having him work at The Centre. They were taking out a minor nobleman, after all, not just another muzhik from the widget factory.
Dinner, he saw, was steak, the usual celebratory meal. MP was as psyched about this as he was-probably more so. With just a little luck, this Operation BEATRIX would make their reputation, and a good field rep was something they both wanted.
Ryan took the usual train back to Chatham. He'd missed his wife again, but she'd had a routine day, so she'd probably left early, like all the government-employed docs with whom she worked. He wondered if this bad habit would carry over when they went home to Peregrine Cliff. Probably not. Bernie Katz liked to have his desk clean, and waiting lists at zero, and the local work habits were driving his wife to drink. The good news was that, with no surgery scheduled this week, they'd be able to have wine that evening with dinner.
He wondered how long he'd be away from home. It wasn't something he was used to. One advantage of being an analyst was that he did all of his work at the office, then drove home. He'd rarely slept away from his wife in all the time they'd been married, a rule almost sacred in their marriage. He liked it when he woke up at three in the morning and could roll over and kiss her in mid-dream, then see her smile in her sleep. His marriage to Cathy was the anchor to his life, the very center of his universe. But now duty would take him away from her for several days-not something he looked forward to. Nor did he look forward to flying on another goddamned airplane into a communist country with false identity papers and overseeing a black operation there-he didn't know shit about them, just what he'd picked up talking to the occasional field spook at Langley… and from his own experiences here in London, and at home over the Chesapeake, when Sean Miller and his terrorists had come to his house with guns blazing. It was something he tried very hard to forget. It might have been different had he stayed in the Marine Corps, but there he would have been surrounded by fellow warriors. He'd have been able to bathe in their respect, to remember his feat of arms with pride at having done the right thing at the right time, to recount his deeds to the interested, to pass along the tactical lessons learned the hard way on the field of demibattle over beers at the O-club, even to smile about something that one didn't ordinarily smile about. But he'd left the Marine Corps with a bad back, and had had to endure his combat as a very frightened civilian. Courage, though, he'd once been told, was being the only one who knew how terrified you were. And, yeah, he supposed, he'd shown that quality when it had counted. And his job in Hungary would be only to watch, and then, the important part, to sit in while Sir Basil's boys interviewed the Rabbit at some safe house in London, or wherever, before the Air Force, probably, flew them to Washington in their own special-mission KC-135 out of RAF Bentwaters, with nice food and plenty of liquor to ease the flight fright.
He walked off the train and up the steps, and caught a cab for Grizedale Close, where he found that Cathy had sent Miss Margaret away and was busy in the kitchen, assisted, he saw, by Sally.
"Hey, babe." Kiss. He lifted Sally for the usual hug. Little girls give the best hugs.
"So, what was the important message about?" Cathy asked.
"No big deal. Kinda disappointing, actually."
Cathy turned to look her husband in the eye. Jack couldn't lie worth a damn. It was one of the things she liked about him, actually. "Uh-huh."
"Honest, babe," Ryan said, knowing the look, and then deepening the hole in which he was standing. "I didn't get shot at or anything."
"Okay," she acknowledged, meaning, We'll talk about it later.
Blew it again, Jack, Ryan told himself. "How's the glasses business?"
"Saw six people, had time for eight or nine, but that's all I had on my list."
"Have you told Bernie about working conditions here?"
"Called him today, right after I got home. He had himself a good laugh and told me to enjoy the vacation."
"What about the guys who had a brewski during a procedure?"
Cathy turned. "He said, and I quote, 'Jack's in the CIA, isn't he? Have him shoot the bastards.' End of quote." She turned back to her cooking.
"You need to tell him that we don't do that sort of thing." Jack managed a smile. This, at least, wasn't a lie, and he hoped she could tell.
"I know. You'd never be able to carry it on your conscience."
"Too Catholic," he confirmed.
"Well, at least I know you'll never fool around on me."
"May God strike me dead with cancer if I ever do." It was the one imprecation about cancer that she almost approved of.
"You'll never have reason to, Jack." And that was true enough. She didn't like guns and she didn't like bloodshed, but she did love him. And that was sufficient to the moment.
Dinner turned out okay, followed by the usual evening activities, until it was time for their four-year-old to put on her yellow sleeper and climb into her big-girl bed.
With Sally in bed and Little Jack dozing as well, there was time for the usual mindless TV watching. Or so Jack hoped, until…
"Okay, Jack, what's the bad news?"
"Nothing much," he answered. The worst possible answer. Cathy was just too good at reading his mind.
"What's that mean?"
"I have to go on a little trip-to Bonn," Jack remembered the advice from Sir Basil. "It's a NATO thing I got stuck with."
"Doing what?"
"I can't say, babe."
"How long?"
"Three or four days, probably. They think I am uniquely suited to this for some damned reason or other."
"Uh-huh." Ryan's semi-truthfulness was just oblique enough to foil her mind reading for once.
"You're not going to be carrying a gun or anything?"
"Honey, I am an analyst, not a field officer, remember? That sort of thing is not my job. For that matter, I don't think field spooks carry guns very much anyway. Too hard to explain away if somebody notices."
"But-"
"James Bond is in the movies, babe, not real life."
Ryan returned his attention to the TV. ITV was doing a repeat of Danger-UXB, and again Jack found himself wondering if Brian would survive his job of defusing unexploded bombs and then marry Suzy when he returned to civilian life. EOD, now there was a miserable job, but, if you made a mistake, at least it wouldn't hurt for very long.
"Heard anything from Bob?" Greer asked just before six in the evening.
Judge Moore stood up from his expensive swivel chair and stretched.
Too much time sitting down, and not enough moving around. Back in Texas, he had a small ranch-called that because he owned three quarter horses; you couldn't be a prominent citizen in Texas unless you owned a horse or two-and three or four times a week, he'd saddle Aztec up and ride around for an hour or so, mainly to get his head clear, to allow himself to think outside his office. That was how he tended to get his best thinking done. Maybe, Moore thought, that's why he felt so goddamned unproductive here. An office just wasn't a very good place for thinking, but every executive in the world pretended it was. Christ knew why. That's what he needed at Langley-his own stable. There was plenty of room on the Langley campus-a good five times what he had in Texas. But if he ever did that, the stories would spread around the world: The American DCI liked to ride horses with his black Stetson hat-that went along with the horse-and probably a Colt.45 on his hip-that was optional-and that just wouldn't look good to the TV crews that would sooner or later appear at the perimeter fence with their minicams. And so, for reasons of personal vanity, he had to deny himself the chance to do some good creative thinking. It was totally asinine, the former judge told himself, to allow such considerations to affect the way he did his work. Over in England, Basil could chase foxes on the back of a nice hunter-thoroughbred, and would anyone over there care? Hell, no. He'd be admired for it, or at worst thought a tiny bit eccentric, in a country where eccentricity was an admirable quality. But in the Land of the Free, men were enslaved by customs imposed on them by news reporters and elected officials who screwed their secretaries. Well, there was no rule that the world had to make sense, was there?
"Nothing important. Just a cable that said his meetings with our Korean friends were going well," Moore reported.
"You know, those people scare me a little," Greer observed. He didn't have to explain why. The KCIA occasionally had its field personnel deal a little too directly with employees of the other Korean government. The rules were a little different over there. The ongoing state of war between North and South was still a very real thing and, in time of war, some people lost their lives. CIA hadn't done such things in almost thirty years. Asian people hadn't adopted Western ideas of the value of human life. Maybe because their countries were just too crowded. Maybe because they have different religious beliefs. Maybe a lot of things, but for whatever reason they were just a little different in the operational parameters they felt free to work within-or without.
"They're our best eye on North Korea and China, James," Moore reminded him. "And they are very faithful allies."
"I know, Arthur." It was nice to hear things about the People's Republic of China once in a while. Penetrating that country was one of CIA's most frustrating tasks. "I just wish they weren't so cavalier about murder."
"They operate within fairly strict rules, and both sides seem to play by them."
And on both sides, killings had to be authorized at a very high level. Not that this would matter all that much to the corpse in question. "Wet" operations interfered with the main mission, which was gathering information. That was something people occasionally forgot, but something that CIA and KGB mainly understood, which was why both agencies had gotten away from it.
But when the information retrieved frightened or otherwise upset the politicians who oversaw the intelligence services, then the spook shops were ordered to do things that they usually preferred to avoid-and so, then, they took their action through surrogates and/or mercenaries, mainly…
"Arthur, if KGB wants to hurt the Pope, how do you suppose they'd go about it?"
"Not one of their own," Moore thought. "Too dangerous. It would be a political catastrophe, like a tornado going right through the Kremlin. It would sure as hell kibosh Yuriy Vladimirovich's political career and, you know, I don't see him taking that much risk for any cause. Power is just too important to him."
The DDI nodded. "Agreed. I think he's going to resign his chairmanship soon. Has to. They wouldn't even let him jump from KGB boss to the General Secretaryship. That's a little too sinister even for them. They still remember Beria-the ones who sit around that table do, anyway."
"That's a good point, James," Moore said, turning back from the window. "I wonder how much longer Leonid Illyich has." Ascertaining Brezhnev's health was a constant CIA interest-hell, it was a matter of interest to everyone in Washington.
"Andropov is our best indicator on that. We're pretty sure he's Brezhnev's replacement. When it looks like Leonid Illyich is heading for the last roundup, then Yuriy Vladimirovich changes jobs."
"Good point, James. I'll float that to State and the White House."
Admiral Greer nodded. "It's what they pay us for. Back to the Pope," he suggested.
"The President is still asking questions," Moore confirmed.
"If they do anything, it won't be a Russian. Too many political pitfalls, Arthur."
"Again, I agree. But what the hell does that leave us?", "They use the Bulgarians for wet work," Greer pointed out.
"So, look for a Bulgarian shooter?", "How many Bulgars make pilgrimages to Rome, you suppose?"
"We can't tell the Italians to look into that, can we? It would leak sure as hell, and we can't have that. It would look pretty stupid in the press. It's just something we can't do, James."
Greer let out a long breath. "Yeah, I know, not without something firm."
"Firmer than what we have now-and that's air, James, just plain damned air." It would be nice, Judge Moore thought, if CIA were as powerful as the movies and the critics think we are. Not all the time. Just once in a while. But they weren't, and that was a fact.
The next day started in Moscow before it started anywhere else. Zaitzev awoke at the ringing of his windup alarm clock, grumbled and cursed like every workingman in the world, then stumbled off to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, he was drinking his morning tea and eating his black bread and butter.
Less than a mile away, the Foley family was doing much the same thing. Ed decided on an English muffin and grape jelly with his coffee for a change, joined by Little Eddie, who took a break from Worker Woman and his Transformers tapes. He was looking forward to the preschool that had been set up for Western children right there in the ghetto, where he showed great promise with crayons and the newly arrived Hot Wheels tricycles, plus being champion at the Sit 'n Spin.
He told himself that he could relax today. The meeting would be in the evening, and MP would handle that. In another week or so… maybe… BEATRIX would be all over, and he could relax again, letting his field officers do the running around this damned ugly city. Sure enough, the goddamned Baltimore Orioles were in the playoffs, and looking to go head to head with the Philadelphia Phillies, relegating his Bronx Bombers to the Hot Stove League yet again. What was with the new ownership, anyway? How could rich people be so stupid?
He'd have to keep to his metro routine. If KGB had him shadowed, it would be unusual-or would it?-for them to mark the specific train he was getting on. There was a question for him. If they did a one-two tail, the number two guy would stay on the platform and, after the train left, write down the time off the clock in the station-that was the only one that made sense, since it was the one that governed the trains themselves. KGB was thorough and professional, but would they be that good? That sort of precision was positively Germanic, but if the bastards could make the trains run that precisely, then probably KGB could take note of it, and the precise timing was what had enabled him to contact the Rabbit.
God damn this life, anyway! Foley raged briefly. But he'd known that before he'd accepted the posting to Moscow, and it was exciting here, wasn't it? Yeah, like Louis XVI was probably excited on the cart ride to the guillotine, Ed Sr. thought.
Someday he'd lecture on this down at The Farm. He hoped they'd appreciate just how hard it had been to write the lesson plan for his Operation BEATRIX lecture. Well, they might be a little impressed.
Forty minutes later, he purchased his copy of Izvestia and rode down the interminable escalator to the platform, as usual not noting the sideways looks of Russians looking at a real, live American as though he were a creature in the zoo. It would never have happened to a Russian in New York, where every ethnic group could be found, especially behind the wheel of a yellow cab.
The morning routine was set in concrete by now. Miss Margaret was hovering over the kids, and Eddie Beaverton was outside the door. The kids were duly hugged and kissed, and the parents headed off to work. If there was anything Ryan hated, it was this routine. If only he'd been able to persuade Cathy to buy a flat in London, then every work day would have been a good two hours shorter-but, no, Cathy wanted green stuff around for the kids to play on. And soon they wouldn't see the sun until they got to work, and soon thereafter, hardly even then.
Ten minutes later, they were in their first-class compartment rolling northwest for London, Cathy in her medical journal and Jack in his Daily Telegraph. There was an article about Poland, and this reporter was unusually well-informed, Ryan saw at once. The articles in Britain tended to be a lot less long-winded than in The Washington Post, and for once Jack found himself regretting that. This guy had been well-briefed and/or he was pretty good at analysis. The Polish government was really caught between a rock and a hard place, and was getting squeezed, and there was talk, he saw, that the Pope was making some rumbles about the welfare of his homeland and his people, and that, the reporter noted, could upset a lot of apple carts.
Ain't that the truth, Jack thought. The really bad news was that it was in the open now. Who'd leaked it? He knew the reporter's name. He was a specialist in foreign affairs, mainly European. So, who'd leaked this? Somebody in the Foreign Office? Those people were, on the whole, pretty smart, but, like their American counterparts at Foggy Bottom, they occasionally spoke without thinking, and over here that could happen over a friendly pint in one of the thousands of comfortable pubs, maybe in a quiet corner booth, with a government employee paying off a marker or just wanting to show the media how smart he was. Would a head roll over this one? he wondered. Something to talk about with Simon.
Unless Simon had been the leaker. He was senior enough and well liked by his boss. Maybe Basil had authorized the leak? Or maybe they both knew a guy in Whitehall and had authorized him to have a friendly pint with a guy from Fleet Street.
Or maybe the reporter was smart enough to put two and two together all by himself. Not all the smart guys worked at Century House. Damned sure not all the smart ones in America worked at Langley. Generally speaking, talent went to where the money was, because smart people wanted large houses and nice vacations just like everyone else did. Those who went into government service knew that they could live comfortably, but not lavishly-but the best of them also knew that they had a mission to fulfill in life, and that was why you found very good people wearing uniforms or carrying guns and badges. In his own case, Ryan had done well in the trading business, but he finally found it unsatisfying. And so not all talented people sought after money. Some found themselves on some sort of quest.
Is that what you're doing, Jack? he asked himself, as the train pulled into Victoria Station.
"What deep thoughts this morning?" his wife asked.
"Huh?" Jack responded.
"I know the look, honey," she pointed out. "You're chewing over something important."
"Cathy, are you an eye cutter or a pshrink?"
"With you, I'm a pshrink," she replied, with a playful smile.
Jack stood and opened the compartment door. "Okay, my lady. You have eyeballs to regulate, and I have secrets to figure out." He waved his wife out the door. "What new things did you learn from The Asshole and Armpit Monthly Gazette on the way in?"
"You wouldn't understand."
"Probably," Jack conceded, heading off to the cabstand. They took a robin's-egg-blue one instead of the usual black.
"Hammersmith Hospital," Ryan told the driver, "and then One Hundred Westminster Bridge Road."
"Mi-Six, is it, sir?"
"Excuse me?" Ryan replied innocently.
"Universal Export, sir, where James Bond used to work." He chuckled and pulled off.
Well, Ryan reflected, the CIA exit off the George Washington Parkway wasn't marked NATIONAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION anymore. Cathy thought it was pretty funny. There was no keeping secrets from London cabdrivers. Cathy hopped out in the large underpass at Hammersmith, and the driver U-turned and went the last few blocks to Century House. Ryan went through the door, past Sergeant Major Canderton, and up to his office.
Coming in the door, he dropped the Telegraph on Simon's desk before doffing his raincoat.
"I saw it, Jack," Harding said at once.
"Who's talking?"
"Not sure. Foreign Office, probably. They've been briefed in on this. Or perhaps someone from the PM's office. Sir Basil is not pleased," Harding assured him.
"Nobody called the paper?"
"No. We didn't know about this until it was published this morning."
"I thought the local papers had a more cordial relationship with the government over here."
"Generally, they do, which leads me to believe it was the PM's office that did the leak." Harding's face was innocent enough, but Jack found himself trying to read it. That was something his wife was far better at. He had the feeling that Harding was not being entirely truthful, but he had no real reason to complain about that, did he?
"Anything new from the overnights?"
Harding shook his head. "Nothing of great interest. Nothing on this BEATRIX operation, either. Tell your wife about your impending trip?"
"Yeah, and I didn't tell you that she's pretty good at reading my mind."
"Most wives can, Jack." Harding had a good laugh at that.
Zaitzev had the same desk and the same pile of message traffic, always different in exact details, but always the same really: reports from field officers transmitting data from foreign nationals on all manner of subjects. He had hundreds of operation names memorized, and untold thousands of details resident between his ears, including the actual names of some of the agents and the code names of many, many others.
As on the previous workdays, he took his time, reading over all the morning traffic before sending it upstairs, trusting his trained memory to record and file away all of the important details.
Some, of course, contained information that was hidden in multiple ways. There was probably a penetration agent within CIA, for example, but his code name-TRUMPET-was all Zaitzev knew. Even the data he transmitted were concealed by the use of layered super-encryption, including a one-time pad. But the data went to a colonel on the sixth floor who specialized in CIA investigations and worked closely with the Second Chief Directorate-so, by implication, TRUMPET was giving KGB something in which the Second Directorate was interested, and that meant agents operating for CIA right here in Moscow. Which was enough to give him chills, but the Americans he'd talked to-he'd warned them about communications security, and that would flag any dispatch about him to a very limited number of people. And he knew that TRUMPET was being paid huge amounts of money, and so, probably he was not a senior CIA official, who, Zaitzev judged, were probably very well paid. An ideological agent would have given him cause to worry, but there were none of them in America whom he knew bout-and he would know, wouldn't he?
In a week, perhaps less, the communicator told himself, he'd be in the West and safe. He hoped his wife would not go totally amok when he told her his plans, but probably she would not. She had no immediate family. Her mother had died the previous year, to Irina's great sorrow, and she had neither brothers nor sisters to hold her back, and she was not happy working at GUM because of all the petty corruption there. And he would promise to get her the piano she longed to have, but which even his KGB post couldn't get for her, so meager was the supply.
So he shuffled his papers, perhaps more slowly than usual, but not greatly so, he thought. There were few really hard workers, even in KGB. The cynical adage in the Soviet Union was "As long as they pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work," and the principle applied here as well. If you exceeded your quota, they'd just increase it the following year without any improvement in your working conditions-and so, few worked hard enough to be noticed as Heroes of Socialist Labor.
Just after 11:00, Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy appeared in the comms room. Zaitzev caught his eye and waved him over.
"Yes, Comrade Major?" the colonel asked.
"Comrade Colonel," he said quietly, "there have been no recent communications about six-six-six. Is there anything I need to know?"
The question took Rozhdestvenskiy aback. "Why do you ask?"
"Comrade Colonel," Zaitzev went on humbly, "it was my understand ing that this operation is important and that I am the only communicator cleared for it. Have I acted improperly in any way?"
"Ah." Rozhdestvenskiy relaxed. "No, Comrade Colonel, we have no complaints with your activities. The operation no longer requires communications of this type."
"I see. Thank you, Comrade Colonel."
"You look tired, Major Zaitzev. Is anything the matter?"
"No, comrade. I suppose I could use a vacation. I didn't get to go anywhere during the summer. A week or two off duty would be a blessing, before the winter hits."
"Very well. If you have any difficulties, let me know, and I'll try to smooth things out for you."
Zaitzev managed a grateful smile. "Why, thank you, Comrade Colonel."
"You do good work down here, Zaitzev. We're all entitled to some time off, even State Security people."
"Thank you again, Comrade Colonel. I serve the Soviet Union." Rozhdestvenskiy nodded and took his leave. As he walked out the door, Zaitzev took a long breath and went back to work memorizing dispatches… but not for the Soviet Union. So, he thought, -666 was being handled by courier now. He'd learn no more about it, but he'd just learned that it was going forward on a high-priority basis. They were really going to do it. He wondered if the Americans would get him out quickly enough to forestall it. The information was in his hands, but the ability to do anything about it was not. It was like being Cassandra of old, daughter of King Priam of Troy, knowing what was going to happen, but unable to get anyone to do anything about it. Cassandra had angered the gods somehow or other and received that curse as a result, but what had he done to deserve it? Zaitzev wondered, suddenly angry at CIA's inefficiency. But he couldn't just board a Pan American flight out of Sheremetyevo International Airport, could he?