"Ryan? he did what?" Bob Ritter growled.
"Bob, you want to settle down? It's nothing to get your tits in a flutter about," James Greer said, half soothingly and half an indirect challenge in the CIA's in-house power playground. Judge Moore looked on in amusement. "Jack went into the field to observe an operation for which we had no available field officer. He didn't step on his crank with the golf shoes, and the defector is in a safe house in the English Midlands right now, and from what I hear, he's singing like a canary."
"Well, what's he telling us?"
"For starters," Judge Moore answered, "it seems that our friend Andropov wants to assassinate the Pope."
Ritter's head snapped around. "How solid is that?"
"It's what made the Rabbit decide to take a walk," the DCI said. "He's a conscience defector, and that set him off."
"Okay, good. What does he know?" the DDO asked.
"Bob, it seems that this defector-his name is Oleg Ivanovich Zaitzev, by the way-was a senior watch officer in The Centre's communications, their version of our MERCURY."
"Shit," Ritter observed an instant later. "This is for real?"
"You know, sometimes a guy puts a quarter in the slot and pulls the handle and he really does get the jackpot," Moore told his subordinate.
"Well, damn."
"I didn't think you'd object. And the good part," the DCI went on, "is that Ivan doesn't know he's gone."
"How the hell did we do that?"
"It was Ed and Mary Pat who twigged to that possibility." Then Judge Moore explained how it had been carried out. "They both deserve a nice Pat on the head, Bob."
"And all while I was out of town," Ritter breathed. "Well, I'll be damned."
"Yes, there's a bunch of attaboy letters to be drawn up," Greer said next. "Including one for Jack."
"I suppose," the DDO conceded. He went quiet for a moment, thinking over the possibilities of Operation BEATRIX. "Anything good so far?"
"Aside from the plot against the Pope? Two code names of penetration agents they have working: NEPTUNE-he sounds like somebody working in the Navy-and CASSIUS. He's probably on The Hill. More to come, I expect."
"I talked to Ryan a few minutes ago. He's pretty excited about this guy, says his knowledge is encyclopedic, says there's gold in these hills, to quote the boy."
"Ryan does know a thing or two about gold," Moore thought out loud.
"Fine, we'll make him our portfolio manager, but he isn't a field officer," Ritter groused.
"Bob, he succeeded. We don't punish people for that, do we?" the DCI asked. This had gone far enough. It was time for Moore to act like the appeals-court judge he had been until a couple years before: the Voice of God.
"Fine, Arthur. You want me to sign the letter of commendation?" Ritter saw the freight train coming, and there was no sense in standing in its way. What the hell, it would just go into the files anyway. CIA commendations almost never saw the light of day. The Agency even classified the names of field officers who'd died heroically thirty years before. It was like a back door into heaven, CIA style.
"Okay, gentlemen, now that we've settled the administrative issues, what about the plot to kill the Pope?" Greer asked, trying to bring order back to the meeting of supposed sober senior executives.
"How solid is the information?" Ritter wanted to know.
"I talked to Basil a few minutes ago. He thinks we need to take it seriously, but I think we need to talk to this Rabbit ourselves to quantify the danger to our Polish friend."
"Tell the President?"
Moore shook his head. "He's tied up all day today with legislative business, and he's flying out to California late this afternoon. Sunday and Monday, he'll be giving speeches in Oregon and Colorado. I'll see him Tuesday afternoon, about four." Moore could have asked for an urgent meeting-he could break into the President's schedule on really vital matters-but until they had the chance to speak face-to-face with the Rabbit, that was out of the question. The President might even want to speak to the guy himself. He was like that.
"What kind of shape is Station Rome in?" Greer asked Ritter.
"The Chief of Station is Rick Nolfi. Good guy, but he retires in three months. Rome's his sunset post. He asked for it. His wife, Anne, likes Italy. Six officers there, mainly working on NATO stuff-two pretty experienced, four rookies," Ritter reported. "But before we get them alerted we need to think this threat through, and a little Presidential guidance won't hurt. The problem is, how the hell do we tell people about this in such a way as not to compromise the source? Guys," Ritter pointed out, "if we went to all the trouble of concealing the defection, it doesn't make much sense to broadcast the information we get from him out to the four winds, y'know?"
"That is the problem," Moore was forced to agree.
"The Pope doubtless has a protective detail," Ritter went on. "But they can't have the same latitude that the Secret Service does, can they? And we don't know how secure they are."
Its the old story, Ryan was saying at the same time in Manchester. "If we use the information too freely, we compromise the source and lose all of its utility. But if we don't use it for fear of compromising it, then we might as well not have the fucking source to begin with." Jack finished off his wine and poured another glass. "There's a book on this, you know."
"What's that?"
"Double-Edged Secrets. A guy named Jasper Holmes wrote it. He was a U.S. Navy crippie in World War Two, worked signals intelligence in FRUPAC with Joe Rochefort and his bunch. It's a pretty good book on how the intelligence business works down where the rubber meets the road."
Kingshot made a mental note to look that book up. Zaitzev was out on the lawn-a very plush one-with his wife and daughter at the moment. Mrs. Thompson wanted to take them all shopping. They had to have their private time-their bedroom suite was thoroughly bugged, of course, complete to a white-noise filter in the bathroom-and keeping the wife and kid happy was crucial to the entire operation.
"Well, Jack, whatever the opposition has planned, it will take time for them to set it up. The bureaucracies over there are even more moribund than ours, you know."
"KGB, too, Al?" Ryan wondered. "I think that's the one part of their system that actually works, and Yuriy Andropov isn't known for his patience, is he? Hell, he was their ambassador in Budapest in 1956, remember? The Russians worked pretty decisively back then, didn't they?"
"That was a serious political threat to their entire system," Kingshot pointed out.
"And the Pope isn't?" Ryan fired back.
"You have me there," the field spook admitted.
"Wednesday. That's what Dan told me. He's all the way in the open every Wednesday. Okay, the Pope can appear at that porch he uses to give blessings and stuff, and a halfway good man with a rifle can pop him doing that, but a man with a rifle is too visible to even a casual observer, and a rifle says 'military' to people, and 'military' says 'government' to everybody. But those probably aren't scheduled very far in advance-at least they're irregular, but every damned Wednesday afternoon he hops in his jeep and parades around the Piazza San Pietro right in the middle of the assembled multitude, Al, and that's pistol range." Ryan sat back in his chair and took another sip of the French white.
"I am not sure I'd want to fire a pistol at that close a range."
"Al, once upon a time they got a guy to do Leon Trotsky with an ice axe-engagement range maybe two feet," Ryan reminded him. "Sure, different situation now, but since when have the Russians been reticent about risking their troops-and this will be that Bulgarian bastard, remember? Your guy called him an expert killer. It's amazing what a real expert can do. I saw a gunnery sergeant at Quantico-that guy could write his name with a forty-five at fifty feet. I watched him do it once." Ryan had never really mastered the big Colt automatic, but that gunny sure as hell had.
"You're probably being overly concerned."
"Maybe," Jack admitted. "But I'd feel a hell of a lot better if His Holiness wore a Kevlar jacket under his vestments." He wouldn't, of course. People like that didn't scare the way civilians did. It wasn't the sense of invincibility that some professional soldiers had. It was just that to them death wasn't something to be afraid of. Any really observant Catholic was supposed to feel that way, but Jack wasn't one of those. Not quite.
"As a practical matter, what can one do? Look for one face in a crowd, and who's to say it's the right face?" Kingshot asked. "Who's to say Strokov hasn't hired someone else to do the actual shooting? I can see myself shooting someone, but not in a crowd."
"So, you use a suppressed weapon, a big can-type silencer. Cut down the noise, and you remove a lot of the danger of being identified. All the eyes are going to be on the target, remember, not looking sideways into the crowd."
"True," Al conceded.
"You know, it's too damned easy to find reasons to do nothing. Didn't Dr. Johnson say that doing nothing is in every man's power?" Ryan asked forlornly. "That's what we're doing, Al, finding reasons not to do anything. Can we let the guy die? Can we just sit here and drink our wine and let the Russians kill the man?"
"No, Jack, but we cannot go off like a loose hand grenade, either. Field operations have to be planned. You need professionals to think things through in a professional way. There are many things professionals can do, but first they have orders to do them."
But that was being decided elsewhere.
"Prime minister, we have reason to believe that the KGB has an operation under way to assassinate the Pope of Rome," C reported. He'd come over on short notice, interrupting her afternoon political business.
"Really?" she asked Sir Basil in dry reply. She was used to hearing the strangest of things from her Intelligence Chief, and had cultivated the habit of not responding too violently to them. "What is the source for that information?"
"I told you several days ago about Operation BEATRIX. Well, we and the Americans have got him out successfully. We even managed to do it in such a way that the Sovs think him dead. The defector is in a safe house outside Manchester right now," C told his chief of government.
"Have we told the Americans?"
Basil nodded. "Yes, Prime Minister. He's their fox, after all. We'll let him fly to America next week, but I discussed the case briefly earlier today with Judge Arthur Moore, their Director of Central Intelligence. I expect he'll brief the President in early next week."
"What action do you suppose they will take?" she asked next.
"Difficult to say, ma'am. It's a rather dicey proposition, actually. The defector-his name is Oleg-is a most important asset, and we must work very hard to protect his identity, and also knowledge of the fact that he is now on our side of the Curtain. Exactly how we might warn the Vatican of the potential danger is a complex issue, to say the least."
"This is a real operation the Soviets have under way?" the PM asked again. It was rather a lot to swallow, even for them, who she believed capable of almost anything.
"It appears so, yes," Sir Basil confirmed. "But we do not know the priority, and, of course, we know nothing of the schedule."
"I see." The Prime Minister fell quiet for a moment. "Our relations with the Vatican are cordial but not especially close." That fact went all the way back to Henry VIII, though the Roman Catholic Church had gradually come to letting bygones be bygones over the intervening centuries.
"Regrettably, that is so," C agreed.
"I see," she said again, and thought some more before speaking again. When she leaned forward, she spoke with dignity and force. "Sir Basil, it is not the policy of Her Majesty's Government to stand idly by while a friendly Chief of State is murdered by our adversaries. You are directed to look into any possible action that might forestall this eventuality."
Some people shot from the hip, Sir Basil thought. Others shot from the heart. For all her outward toughness, the United Kingdom's Chief of Government was one of the latter.
"Yes, Prime Minister." The problem was that she didn't say how the hell he was supposed to do this. Well, he'd coordinate with Arthur at Langley. But for right now he had a mission that would be difficult at best. What exactly was he supposed to do, deploy a squadron of the Special Air Service to St. Peter's Square?
But you didn't say no to this Prime Minister, at least not in a 10 Downing Street conference room.
"Anything else this defector has told us?"
"Yes, ma'am. He has identified by code name a Soviet penetration agent, probably in Whitehall. The code name is MINISTER. When we get more information about the man in question, we'll have the Security Service root about after him."
"What does he give them?"
"Political and diplomatic intelligence, ma'am. Oleg tells us that it is high-level material, but he has not as yet given us information that would directly identify him."
"Interesting." It was not a new story. This one could be one of the Cambridge group that had been so valuable to the USSR back in the war years and then all the way into the 1960s, or perhaps a person recruited by them. Charleston had been instrumental in purging them out of SIS, but Whitehall wasn't quite his patch. "Do keep me posted on that." A casual order from her had the force of a granite slab hand-delivered from Mt. Sinai.
"Of course, Prime Minister."
"Would it be helpful if I spoke to the American President on this matter with the Pope?"
"Better to let CIA brief him first, I think. It wouldn't do to short-circuit their system. This defector was, after all, mainly an American operation, and it's Arthur's place to speak to him first."
"Yes, I suppose so. But when I do talk to him, I want him to know that we are taking it with the utmost seriousness, and that we expect him to take some substantive action."
"Prime Minister, I should think he will not take it lying down, as it were."
"I agree. He's such a good chap." The full story on America's covert support for the Falkland Islands War would not see the light of day for many years. America had to keep her fences with South America well mended, after all. But neither was the PM one to forget such assistance, covert or not.
"This BEATRIX operation, it was well executed?" she asked C.
"Flawlessly, ma'am," Charleston assured her. "Our people did everything exactly by the book."
"I trust you will look after those who carried it out."
"Most certainly, ma'am," C assured her.
"Good. Thank you for coming over, Sir Basil."
"A pleasure as always, Prime Minister." Charleston stood, thinking that that Ryan fellow would have called her his sort of broad. As, indeed, she was. But all the way back to Century House, he worried about the operation he now had to get under way. What, exactly, would he be doing about it? Figuring such things out, of course, was why he was so lavishly paid.
"Hi, honey," Ryan said.
"Where are you?" Cathy asked at once.
"I can't say exactly, but I'm back in England. The thing I had to do on the continent-well, it developed into something I have to look after here."
"Can you come home and see us?"
"'Fraid not." One major problem was that, although his Chatham home was actually within driving distance, he wasn't confident enough yet to drive that far without crunching himself on a side road. "Everybody okay?"
"We're fine, except that you aren't here," Cathy responded, with an edge of anger/disappointment in her voice. One thing she was sure of: Wherever Jack had been, it sure as hell hadn't been Germany. But she couldn't say that over the phone. She understood the intelligence business that much.
"I'm sorry, babe. I can tell you that what I'm doing is pretty important, but that's all."
"I'm sure," she conceded. And she understood that Jack wanted to be home with his family. He wasn't one to skip town for the fun of it.
"How's work?"
"I did glasses all day. Got some surgery tomorrow morning, though. Wait a minute, here's Sally."
"Hi, Daddy," a new and small voice said.
"Hi, Sally. How are you?"
"Fine." What kids always said.
"What did you do today?"
"Miss Margaret and I colored."
"Anything good?"
"Yeah, cows and horses!" she reported with considerable enthusiasm. Sally especially liked pelicans and cows.
"Well, I need to talk to Mommy."
"Okay." And Sally would think of this as a deep and weighty conversation, as she went back to the Wizzerdaboz tape in the living room.
"And how's the little guy?" Jack asked his wife.
"Chewing on his hands, mostly. He's in the playpen right now, watching the TV."
"He's easier than Sally was at that age," Jack observed with a smile.
"He's not colicky, thank God," Mrs. Dr. Ryan agreed.
"I miss you," Jack said, rather forlornly. It was true. He did miss her.
"I miss you, too."
"Gotta get back to work," he said next.
"When will you be home?"
"Couple of days, I think."
"Okay." She had to surrender to that unhappy fact. "Call me."
"Will do, babe."
"Bye."
"See you soon. Love ya."
"I love you, too."
"Bye."
"Bye, Jack."
Ryan put the phone back in the cradle and told himself that he wasn't designed for this kind of life. Like his father before him, he wanted to sleep in the same bed as his wife-had his father ever slept away from home? Jack wondered. He couldn't remember such a night. But Jack had chosen a line of work in which that was not always possible. It was supposed to have been. He was an analyst who worked at a desk and slept at home, but somehow it wasn't working out that way, God damn it.
Dinner was beef Wellington with Yorkshire pudding. Mrs. Thompson could have been head chef at a good restaurant. Jack didn't know where the beef came from, but it seemed more succulent than the usual grass-fed British sort. Either she got the meat in a special place-they still had specialty butcher shops over here-or she really knew how to tenderize it, and the Yorkshire pudding was positively ethereal. Toss in the French wine, and this dinner was just plain brilliant-an adjective popular in the U.K.
The Russians attacked the food rather as Georgiy Zhukov had attacked Berlin, with considerable gusto.
"Oleg Ivan'ch, I have to tell you," Ryan admitted in a fit of honesty, "the food in America is not always of this quality." He'd timed this for Mrs. Thompson's appearance at the dining-room door. Jack turned to her. "Ma'am, if you ever need a recommendation as a chef, you just call me, okay?"
Emma had a very friendly smile. "Thank you, Sir John."
"Seriously, ma'am, this is wonderful."
"You're very kind."
Jack wondered if she'd like his steaks on the grill and Cathy's spinach salad. The key was getting good corn-gorged Iowa beef, which wasn't easy here, though he could try the Air Force commissary at Greenham Commons…
It took nearly an hour to finish dinner, and the after-dinner drinks were excellent. They even served Starka vodka, in a gesture of additional hospitality to their Russian guests. Oleg, Jack saw, really gunned it down.
"Even the Politburo does not eat so well," the Rabbit observed, as dinner broke up.
"Well, we raise good beef in Scotland. This was Aberdeen Angus," Nick Thompson advised, as he collected the plates.
"Fed on corn?" Ryan asked. They didn't have that much corn over here, did they?
"I do not know. The Japanese feed beer to their Kobe beef," the former cop observed. "Perhaps they do that up in Scotland."
"That would explain the quality," Jack replied with a chuckle. "Oleg Ivan'ch, you must learn about British beer. It's the best in the world."
"Not American?" the Russian asked.
Ryan shook his head. "Nope. That's one of the things they do better than us."
"Truly?"
"Truly," Kingshot confirmed. "But the Irish are quite good as well. I do love my Guinness, though it's better in Dublin than in London."
"Why waste the good stuff on you guys?" Jack asked.
"Once a bloody Irishman, always a bloody Irishman," Kingshot observed.
"So, Oleg," Ryan asked, lighting up an after-dinner smoke, "is there anything different we ought to be doing-to make you comfortable, I mean?"
"I have no complaints, but I expect CIA will not give me so fine a house as this one."
"Oleg, I am a millionaire and don't live in a house this nice," Ryan confirmed with a laugh. "But your home in America will be more comfortable than your apartment in Moscow."
"Will I get car?"
"Sure."
"Wait how long?" Zaitzev asked.
"Wait for what? To buy a car?"
Zaitzev nodded.
"Oleg, you can pick from any of hundreds of car dealerships, pick the car you like, pay for it, and drive it home-we usually let our wives pick the color," Jack added.
The Rabbit was incredulous. "So easy?"
"Yep. I used to drive a Volkswagen Rabbit, but I kinda like the Jaguar now. I might get one when I get home. Nice engine. Cathy likes it, but she might go back to a Porsche. She's been driving them since she was a teenager. Of course, it's not real practical with two kids," Ryan added hopefully. He didn't like the German two-seater that much. Mercedes seemed to him a much safer design.
"And buy house, also easy?"
"Depends. If you buy a new house, yes, it's pretty easy. To buy a house that somebody already owns, first you have to meet the owner and make an offer, but the Agency will probably help you with that."
"Where will we live?"
"Anywhere you want." After we pick your brain clean, Ryan didn't add. "There's a saying in America: 'It's a free country.' It's also a big country. You can find a place you like and move there. A lot of defectors live in the Washington area. I don't know why. I don't much like it. The summers can be miserable."
"Beastly hot," Kingshot agreed. "And the humidity is awful."
"You think it's bad there, try Florida," Jack suggested. "But a lot of people love it down there."
"And travel from one part to another, no papers?" Zaitzev asked.
For a KGB puke, this guy doesn't know shit, Jack thought. "No papers," Ryan assured him. "We'll get you an American Express card to make that easy." Then he had to explain credit cards to the Rabbit. It took ten minutes, it was so alien a concept to a Soviet citizen. By the end, Zaitzev's head was visibly swimming.
"You do have to pay the bill at the end of the month," Kingshot warned him. "Some people forget that, and they can get into serious financial trouble as a result."
C was in his Belgravia townhouse, sipping some Louis XIII brandy and chatting with a friend. Sir George Hendley was a colleague of thirty years' standing. By profession a solicitor, he'd worked closely with the British government for most of his life, often consulting quietly with the Security Service and the Foreign Office. He had a "Most Secret" clearance, plus one into compartmented information. He'd been a confidant of several prime ministers over the years, and was considered as reliable as the Queen herself. He thought it just came along with the Winchester school tie.
"The Pope, eh?"
"Yes, George," Charleston confirmed. "The PM wants us to look into protecting the man. Trouble is, I haven't a clue at the moment. We can't contact the Vatican directly about it."
"Quite so, Basil. One can trust their loyalty, but not their politics. Tell me, how good do you suppose their own intelligence service is?"
"I'd have to say it's top-drawer in many areas. What better confidant than a priest, after all, and what better way to transfer information than inside the confessional? Plus all the other techniques that one can use. Their political intelligence is probably as good as ours-perhaps even better. I would imagine they know everything that happens in Poland, for example. And Eastern Europe probably has few secrets from them as well. One cannot underestimate their ability to call on a man's highest loyalty, after all. We've kept an ear on their communications for decades."
"Is that so?" Hendley asked.
"Oh, yes. During World War Two, they were very valuable to us. There was a German cardinal in the Vatican back then, chap named Mansdorf-odd, isn't it? Sounds like a Jewish name. First name Dieter, archbishop of Mannheim, then promoted to the Vatican diplomatic service. Traveled a lot. Kept us posted on the inner secrets of the Nazi Party from 1938 through to the end of the war. He didn't much care for Hitler, you see."
"And their communications?"
"Mansdorf actually gave us his own cipher book to copy. They changed it after the war, of course, and so we got little more in the way of their private mail later on, but they never changed their cipher system, and the chaps at GCHQ have occasional success listening in. Good man, Dieter Cardinal Mansdorf. Never got recognized for his service, of course. Died in 'fifty-nine, I think."
"So how do we know that the Romans don't know about this operation already?" Not a bad question, Charleston thought, but he'd long since considered that one.
"It is being held very closely, our defector tells us. Hand-delivered messages, not going out on their machine ciphers, that sort of thing. And a bare handful of people involved. The one important name we do know is a Bulgarian field officer, Boris Strokov, colonel in the DS. We suspect he's the chap who killed Georgiy Markov just up the road from my office." Which Charleston considered an act of lese-majeste, perhaps even executed as a direct challenge to the Secret Intelligence Service. CIA and KGB had an informal covenant: Neither service ever killed in the other's capital. SIS had no such agreement with anyone, a fact that might have cost Georgiy Markov his life.
"So, you think he might be the prospective assassin?"
C waved his hands. "It's all we have, George."
"Not much," Hendley observed.
"Too thin for comfort, but it's better than nothing. We have numerous photos of this Strokov fellow. The Yard was close to arresting him when he flew out of Heathrow-for Paris, actually, and from there on to Sofia."
"Perhaps he was in a hurry to leave?" Hendley suggested.
"He's a professional, George. How many chances do such people take? In retrospect, it's rather amazing that the Yard got a line on him at all."
"So, you think he might be in Italy." A statement, not a question.
"It's a possibility, but whom can we tell?" C asked. "The Italians have criminal jurisdiction to a point. The Lateran Treaty gives them discretionary jurisdiction, subject to a Vatican veto," Charleston explained. He'd had to look into the legalities of the situation. "The Vatican has its own security service-the Swiss Guards, you know-but however good the men are, it's necessarily a thin reed, what with the restrictions imposed on them from above. And the Italian authorities cannot flood the area with their own security forces, for obvious reasons."
"So, the PM has saddled you with an impossible task."
"Yes, again, George," Sir Basil had to agree.
"So, what can you do?"
"All I can really come up with is to put some officers in the crowd and look for this Markov fellow."
"And if they see him?"
"Ask him politely to depart the area?" Basil wondered aloud. "It would work, probably. He is a professional, and being spotted-I suppose we'd ostentatiously take photographs of him-would give him serious pause, perhaps enough to abandon the mission."
"Thin." Hendley thought of that idea.
"Yes, it is," C had to agree. But it would at least give him something to tell the Prime Minister.
"Whom to send?"
"We have a good Station Chief in Rome, Tom Sharp. He has four officers in his shop, plus we could send a few more from Century House, I suppose."
"Sounds reasonable, Basil. Why did you call me over?"
"I was hoping you'd have an idea that's eluded me, George." A final sip from the snifter. As much as he felt like some more brandy for the night, he demurred.
"One can only do what one can," Hendley sympathized.
"He's too good a man to be cut down this way-at the hands of the bloody Russians. And for what? For standing up for his own people. That sort of loyalty is supposed to be rewarded, not murdered in public."
"And the PM feels the same way."
"She is comfortable taking a stand." For which the PM was famous throughout the world.
"The Americans?" Hendley asked.
Charleston shrugged. "They haven't had a chance to speak to the defector yet. They trust us, George, but not that much."
"Well, do what you can. This KGB operation probably will not happen in the immediate future, anyway. How efficient are the Soviets, anyway?"
"We shall see" was all C had to say.
It was quieter here than in his own house, despite the nearby presence of the motorway, Ryan thought, rolling out of bed at 6:50. The sink continued the eccentric British way of having two faucets, one hot and one cold, making sure that your left hand boiled while the right one froze when you washed your hands. As usual, it felt good to shave and brush and otherwise get yourself ready for the day, even if you had to start it with Taster's Choice.
Kingshot was already in the kitchen when Jack got there. Funny how people slept late on Sunday but frequently not on Saturday.
"Message from London," Al said by way of greeting.
"What's that?"
"A question. How would you feel about a flight to Rome this afternoon?"
"What's up?"
"Sir Basil is sending some people to the Vatican to suss things out. He wants to know if you want to go. It's a CIA op, after all."
"Tell him yes," Jack said without a moment's thought. "When?" Then he realized he was being impetuous again. Damn.
"Noon flight out of Heathrow. You ought to have time to go home and change clothes."
"Car?"
"Nick will drive you over," Kingshot told him.
"What are you going to tell Oleg?"
"The truth. It ought to make him feel more important," Al thought aloud. It was always a good thing for defectors.
Ryan and Thompson left within the hour, with Jack's bags in the "boot."
"This Zaitzev chap," Nick said out on the motorway. "He seems rather an important defector."
"Bet your ass, Nick. He's got all kinds of hot information between his ears. We're going to treat him like a hod full of gold bricks."
"Good of CIA to let us talk to him."
"It'd be kinda churlish not to. You guys got him out for us, and covering the defection up was pretty slick." Jack couldn't say too much more. As trusted as Nick Thompson was, Jack couldn't know how much clearance he had.
The good news was that Thompson knew what not to ask. "So, your father was a police officer?"
"Detective, yeah. Mainly homicide. Did that more than twenty years. He topped out at lieutenant. Said captains never got to do anything more than administrative stuff, and dad wasn't into that. He liked busting bad guys and sending them to the joint."
"The what?"
"Prison. The Maryland State Prison is one evil-looking structure in Baltimore, by Jones Falls. Kinda like a medieval fortress, but more forbidding. The inmates call it Frankenstein's Castle."
"Fine with me, Sir John. I've never had much sympathy for murderers."
"Dad didn't talk about them much. Didn't bring his work home. Mom didn't like hearing about it. Except once, a father killed his son over a crab cake. That's like a little hamburger made out of crab meat," Jack explained. "Dad said it seemed like a shitty thing to get killed over. The father-the killer-copped right out, all broken up about it. But it didn't do his son much good."
"Amazing how many murderers react that way. They gather up the rage to take a life, then afterwards they are consumed by remorse."
"Too soon old, too late smart," Jack quoted from the Old West.
"Indeed. The whole business can be so bloody sad."
"What about this Strokov guy?"
"Different color of horse, entirely," Thompson replied. "You don't see many of those. For them it's part of the job, ending a life. No motive in the usual sense, and they leave little behind in the way of physical evidence. They can be very difficult to find, but mainly we do find them. We have time on our side, and sooner or later someone talks and it gets to our ear. Most criminals talk their own way into prison," Nick explained. "But people like this Strokov fellow, they do not talk-except when he gets home and writes up his official report. But we never see those. Getting a line on him was plain luck. Mr. Markov remembered being poked by the umbrella, remembered the color suit the man was wearing. One of our constables saw him wearing the same suit and thought there was something odd about him-you know, instead of flying right home, he waited to make sure Markov died. They'd bungled two previous attempts, you see, and so they called him in because of his expertise. Good professional, Strokov. He wanted to be completely sure, and he waited to read the death notice in the newspapers. In that time, we talked to the staff at his hotel and started assembling information. The Security Service got involved, and they were helpful in some ways but not in others-and the government got involved. The government was worried about creating an international incident, and so they held us up-cost us two days, I reckon. On the first of those two days, Strokov took a taxi to Heathrow and flew off to Paris. I was on the surveillance team. Stood within fifteen feet of him. We had two detectives with cameras, shot a lot of pictures. The last was of Strokov walking down the jetway to the Boeing. Next day, the government gave us permission to detain him for questioning."
"Day late and a dollar short, eh?"
Thompson nodded. "Quite. I would have liked to put him in the dock at the Old Bailey, but that fish got away. The French shadowed him at De Gaulle International, but he never left the international terminal, never talked with anyone. The bugger showed no remorse at all. I suppose for him it was like chopping firewood," the former detective said.
"Yeah. In the movies you make your hit and have a martini, shaken not stirred. But it's different when you kill a good guy."
"All Markov ever did was broadcast over BBC World Service," Nick said, gripping the wheel a little tightly. "I imagine the people in Sofia were somewhat put out with what he said."
"The people on the other side of the Curtain aren't real big on Freedom of Speech," Ryan reminded him.
"Bloody barbarians. And now this chap is planning to kill the Pope? I am not a Catholic, but he is a man of God, and he seems rather a good chap. You know, the most vicious criminal hesitates before trifling with a man of the clergy."
"Yeah, I know. Doesn't do to piss God off. But they don't believe in God, Nick."
"Fortunate for them that I am not God."
"Yeah, it would be nice to have the power to right all the wrongs in the world. The problem is, that's what Strokov's bosses think they're doing."
"That is why we have laws, Jack-yes, I know, they make up their own."
"That's the problem," Jack agreed as they came into Chatham.
"This is a pleasant area," Thompson said, turning up the hill on City Way.
"Not a bad neighborhood. Cathy likes it. I would have preferred closer to London, but, well, she got her way."
"Women usually do." Thompson chuckled, turning right onto Fristow Way and then left on Grizedale Close. And there was the house. Ryan got out and retrieved his bags.
"Daddy!" Sally screamed when he walked in the door. Ryan dropped his bags and scooped her up. Little girls, he'd long since learned, gave the best hugs, though their kisses tended to be a little sloppy.
"How's my little Sally?"
"Fine." It was oddly like a cat, coming out of her mouth.
"Oh, hello, Dr. Ryan," Miss Margaret said in greeting. "I didn't expect you."
"Just making a low pass. Have to change cleans for dirties and head back out."
"You going away again?" Sally asked with crushing disappointment in her voice.
"Sorry, Sally. Daddy has business."
Sally wriggled out of his arms. "Phooey." And she went back to the TV, putting her father firmly in his place.
Jack took the cue to go upstairs. Three-no, four-clean shirts, five sets of underwear, four new ties, and… yes, some casual wear, too. Two new jackets, two pairs of slacks. His Marine tie bar. That about did it. He left the pile of dirties on the bed and, with his bags packed, headed back down. Oops. He set his bags down and went back upstairs for his passport. No sense using the fake Brit one anymore.
"Bye, Sally."
"Bye, Daddy." But then she thought again and jumped to her feet to give him another hug. She wouldn't grow up to break hearts, but to rip them out and cook them over charcoal. But that was a long way off, and for now her father had the chance to enjoy her. Little Jack was asleep on his back in the playpen, and his father decided not to disturb him.
"See ya, buddy," Ryan said as he turned to the door.
"Where are you going?" Miss Margaret asked.
"Out of the country. Business," Jack explained. "I'll call Cathy from the airport."
"Good trip, Dr. Ryan."
"Thanks, Margaret." And back out the door.
"How are we on time?" Ryan asked, back in the car.
"No problem," Thompson thought out loud. If they were late, this airliner, too, would have a minor mechanical problem.
"Good." Jack adjusted his seat to lean back and get a few winks.
He awoke just outside Heathrow Terminal Three. Thompson drove up to where a man in civilian clothes was standing. He looked like some sort of government worker.
He was. As soon as Ryan alighted from the car, the man came over with a ticket envelope.
"Sir, your flight leaves in forty minutes, Gate Twelve," the man reported. "You'll be met in Rome by Tom Sharp."
"What's he look like?" Jack asked.
"He will know you, sir."
"Fair enough." Ryan took the tickets and headed to the back of the car for his bags.
"I'll take care of that for you, sir."
This sort of traveling had its possibilities, Jack thought. He waved at Thompson and headed into the terminal, looking for Gate Twelve. That proved easy enough. Ryan took a seat close by the gate and checked his ticket-1-A again, a first-class ticket. The SIS must have had a comfortable understanding with British Airways. Now all he had to do was survive the flight.
He boarded twenty minutes later, sitting down, strapping in, and turning his watch forward one hour. He endured the usual rigmarole of useless safety briefing and instructions on how to buckle his seat belt, which, in Jack's case, was already clicked and snugged in.
The flight took two hours, depositing Jack at Leonardo da Vinci Airport at 3:09 local time. Jack walked off the aircraft and looked for the Blue Channel to get his diplomatic passport stamped after a wait of about five seconds-one other diplomat had been ahead of him, and the bonehead had forgotten which pocket his passport was in.
With that done, he retrieved his bags off the carousel and headed out. A man with a gray and brown beard seemed to be eyeballing him.
"You're Jack Ryan?"
"You must be Tom Sharp."
"Correct. Let me help you with your bags." Why people did this, Ryan didn't know, though on reflection, he'd done it himself often enough, and the Brits were the world champions at good manners.
"And you are?" Ryan asked.
"Station Chief Rome," Sharp replied. "C called to say you were coming in, Sir John, and that I ought to meet you personally."
"Good of Basil," Jack thought out loud.
Sharp's car was, in this case, a Bentley sedan, bronze in color, with left-hand driver's seat in deference to the fact that they were in a barbarian country.
"Nice wheels, fella."
"My cover is Deputy Chief of Mission," Sharp explained. "I could have had a Ferrari, but it seemed a little too ostentatious. I do little actual field work, you see, just administrative things. I actually am the DCM of the embassy. Too much diplomatic work-that can drive one mad."
"How's Italy?"
"Lovely place, lovely people. Not terribly well organized. They say we Brits muddle through things, but we're bloody Prussians compared to this lot."
"Their cops?"
"Quite good, actually. Several different police forces. Best of the lot are the Carabinieri, paramilitary police of the central government. Some of them are excellent. Down in Sicily they're trying to get a handle on the Mafia-pig of a job that is, but, you know, eventually I think they will succeed."
"You briefed in on why they sent me down?"
"Some people think Yuriy Vladimirovich wants to kill the Pope? That's what my telex said."
"Yeah. We just got a defector out who says so, and we think he's giving us the real shit."
"Any details?"
"'Fraid not. I think they sent me down here to work with you until somebody figures out the right thing to do. Looks to me like an attempt might be made Wednesday."
"The weekly appearance in the square?"
Jack nodded. "Yep." They were on the highway from the airport to Rome. The country looked odd to Ryan, but it took a minute to figure out why. Then he got it. The pitch of the roofs was different-shallower than what he was used to. They probably didn't get much snow here in winter. Otherwise the houses looked rather like sugar cubes, painted white to reject the heat of the Italian sun. Well, every country had its unique architecture.
"Wednesday, eh?"
"Yeah. We're also looking for a guy named Boris Strokov, colonel in the Bulgarian DS. Sounds like a professional killer."
Sharp concentrated on the road. "I've heard the name. Wasn't he a suspect in the Georgiy Markov killing?"
"That's the guy. They ought to be sending some photos of him."
"Courier on your flight," Sharp reported. "Taking a different way into the city."
"Any ideas on what the hell to do?"
"We'll get you settled at the embassy-my house, actually, two blocks away. It's rather nice. Then we'll drive down to Saint Peter's and look around, get a feel for things. I've been there to see the artwork and such-the Vatican art collection is on a par with the Queen's-but I've never worked there per se. Ever been to Rome?"
"Never."
"Very well, let's take a drive-about first instead, give you a quick feel for the place."
Rome seemed a remarkably disorganized place-but so did a street map of London, whose city fathers had evidently not been married to the city mothers. And Rome was older by a thousand years or so, built when the fastest thing going was a horse, and they were slower in real life than in a John Ford Western. Not many straight lines for the roads, and a meandering river in the middle. Everything looked old to Ryan-no, not old but old, as though dinosaurs had once walked the streets. That was a little hard to reconcile with the automobile traffic, of course.
"That's the Flavian Amphitheater. It was called the Coliseum because the Emperor Nero had built a large statue of himself right there"-Sharp pointed-"and the people took to calling the stadium by that name, rather to the annoyance of the Flavian family, which built the place out of proceeds from the Jewish rebellion that Josephus wrote about."
Jack had seen it on TV and in the movies, but that wasn't quite the same as driving past it. Men had built that with nothing more than sweat power and hemp ropes. Its shape was strangely reminiscent of Yankee Stadium in New York. But Babe Ruth had never spilled a guy's guts out in the Bronx. A lot of that had happened here. It was time for Ryan to make an admission.
"You know, if they ever invent a time machine, I think I might like to come back and see what it was like. Makes me a barbarian, doesn't it?"
"Just their version of rugby," Sharp said. "And the football here can be pretty tough."
"Soccer is a girl's game," Jack snorted.
"You are a barbarian, Sir John. Soccer," he explained in his best accent, "is a gentleman's game played by thugs, while rugby is a thug's game played by gentlemen."
"I'll take your word for it. I just want to see the International Tribune. My baseball team's in the World Series, and I don't even know how it's going."
"Baseball? Oh, you mean rounders. Yes, that is a girl's game," Sharp announced.
"I've had this talk before. You Brits just don't understand."
"As you do not understand proper football, Sir John. In Italy it's even more a national passion than at home. They tend to play a fiery game, rather different from the Germans, for example, who play like great bloody machines."
It was like listening to the distinction between a curveball and a slider or a screwball and a forkball. Ryan wasn't all that good a baseball fan to be able to grasp all the distinctions; it depended on the TV announcer, who probably just made it up anyway. But he knew that there wasn't a player in baseball who could smack a good curveball on the outside corner.
Saint Peter's Basilica was five minutes after that.
"Damn!" Jack breathed.
"Big, isn't it?"
It wasn't big; it was vast.
Sharp went to the left side of the cathedral, ending up in what looked like an area of shops-jewelry, it seemed-where he parked.
"Let's take a look, shall we?"
Ryan took the chance to leave the car and stretch his legs, and he had to remind himself that he was not here to admire the architecture of Bramante and Michelangelo. He was here to scout the terrain for a mission, as he had been taught to plan for at Quantico. It wasn't really all that hard if you spoke the language.
From above, it must have looked like an old-fashioned basketball key. The circular part of the piazza looked to be a good two hundred yards in diameter, then narrowed down to perhaps a third of that as you got away from the monstrous bronze doors to the church itself.
"When he sees the crowd, he boards his car-rather like a cross between a jeep and a golf trolley-just there, and he follows a cleared path in the crowd along this way," Sharp explained, "around there, and back. Takes about, oh, twenty minutes or so, depending on whether he stops the car for-what you Americans call pressing the flesh. I suppose I shouldn't compare him to a politician. He seems a very decent chap, a genuinely good man. Not all the popes have been so, but this one is. And he's no coward. He's had to live through the Nazis and the communists, and that never turned him a single degree from his path."
"Yeah, he must like riding the point of the lance," Ryan murmured in reply. There was just one thing occupying his mind now. "Where's the sun going to be?"
"Just at our backs."
"So, if there's a bad guy, he'll stand just about here, sun behind him, not in his eyes. People looking that way from the other side have the sun in their eyes. Maybe it's not all that much, but when your ass is on the line, you play every card in your hand. Ever been in uniform, Tom?"
"Coldstream Guards, leftenant through a captaincy. Saw some action in Aden, but mainly served in the BOAR. I agree with your estimate of the situation," Sharp said, turning to do his own evaluation. "And professionals are somewhat predictable, since they all study out of the same syllabus. But what about a rifle?"
"How many men you have to use for this?"
"Four, besides myself. C might send more down from London, but not all that many."
"Put one up there?" Ryan gestured to the colonnade. Seventy feet high? Eighty? About the same height as the perch Lee Harvey Oswald had used to do Jack Kennedy… with an Italian rifle, Jack reminded himself. That was good for a brief chill.
"I can probably get a man up there disguised as a photographer." And long camera lenses made for good telescopes.
"How about radios?"
"Say, six civilian-band walkie-talkies. If we don't have them at the embassy, I can have them flown in from London."
"Better to have military ones, small enough to conceal-we had one in the Corps that had an earpiece like from a transistor radio. Also better if it's encrypted, but that might be hard." And such systems, Ryan didn't add, are not entirely reliable.
"Yes, we can do that. You have a good eye, Sir John."
"I wasn't a Marine for long, but the way they teach lessons in the Basic School, it's kinda hard to forget them. This is one hell of a big place to cover with six men, fella."
"And not something SIS trains us to do," Sharp added.
"Hey, the U.S. Secret Service would cover this place with over a hundred trained agents-shit, maybe more-plus try to get intel on every hotel, motel, and flophouse in the area." Jack let out a breath. "Mr. Sharp, this is not possible. How thick are the crowds?"
"It varies. In the summer tourist season, there are enough people here to fill Wembley Stadium. This coming week? Certainly thousands," he estimated. "How many is hard to reckon."
This mission is a real shitburger, Ryan told himself.
"Any way to hit the hotels, try to get a line on this Strokov guy?"
"More hotels in Rome than in London. It's a lot to cover with four field officers. We can't get any help from the local police, can we?"
"What guidance on that from Basil?" Ryan inquired, already guessing the answer.
"Everything is on close hold. No, we cannot let anyone know what we're doing."
He couldn't even call for help from CIA's local station, Jack realized. Bob Ritter would never sanction it. Shitburger-was optimistic.