Jack Ryan 11 - Bear And The Dragon (66 page)

But that was going to change. Information was getting in. In allowing free-market commerce, the government of the PRC had also allowed the installation of a forest of telephone lines. Many of them were connected to fax machines, and even more were connected to computers, and so lots of information was circulating around the country now. Wise wondered if the government appreciated the implications of that. Probably not. Neither Marx nor Mao had really understood how powerful a thing information was, because it was the place where one found the Truth, once you rooted through it a little, and Truth wasn't Theory. Truth was the way things really were, and that's what made it a son of a bitch. You could deny it, but only at your peril, because sooner or later the son of a bitch would bite you on the ass. Denying it just made the inevitable bite worse, because the longer you put it off, the wider its jaws got. The world had changed quite a bit since CNN had started up. As late as 1980, a country could deny anything, but CNN's signals, the voice and the pictures, came straight down from the satellite. You couldn't deny pictures worth a damn.

And that made Barry Wise the croupier in the casino of Information and Truth. He was an honest dealer -- he had to be in order to survive in the casino, because the customers demanded it. In the free marketplace of ideas, Truth always won in the end, because it didn't need anything else to prop it up. Truth stood by itself, and sooner or later the wind would blow the props away from all the bullshit.

It was a noble enough profession, Wise thought. His mission in life was reporting history, and along the way, he got to make a little of it himself -- or at least to help -- and for that reason he was feared by those who thought that defining history was their exclusive domain. The thought often made him smile to himself. He'd helped a little the other day, Wise thought, with those two churchmen. He didn't know where it would lead. That was the work of others.

He still had more work of his own to do in China.

“So, what else is going to go wrong over there?” Ryan asked.

“Things will quiet down if the other side has half a brain,” Adler said hopefully.

“Do they?” Robby Jackson asked, just before Arnie van Damm could.

“Sir, that's not a question with an easy answer. Are they stupid? No, they are not. But do they see things in the same way that we do? No, they do not. That's the fundamental problem dealing with them -- ”

“Yeah, Klingons,” Ryan observed tersely. “Aliens from outer space. Jesus, Scott, how do we predict what they're going to do?”

“We don't, really,” SecState answered. “We have a bunch of good people, but the problem is in getting them all to agree on something when we need an important call. They never do,” Adler concluded. He frowned before going on. “Look, these guys are kings from a different culture. It was already very different from ours long before Marxism arrived, and the thoughts of our old friend Karl only made things worse. They're kings because they have absolute power. There are some limitations on that power, but we don't fully understand what they are, and therefore it's hard for us to enforce or to exploit them. They are Klingons. So, what we need is a Mr. Spock. Got one handy, anyone?”

Around the coffee table, there were the usual half-humorous snorts that accompany an observation that is neither especially funny nor readily escapable.

“Nothing new from SORGE today?” van Damm asked.

Ryan shook his head. “No, the source doesn't produce something every day.”

“Pity,” Adler said. “I've discussed the take from SORGE with some of my I and R people -- always as my own theoretical musings...”

“And?” Jackson asked.

“And they think it's decent speculation, but not something to bet the ranch on.”

There was amusement around the coffee table at that one.

“That's the problem with good intelligence information. It doesn't agree with what your own people think -- assuming they really think at all,” the Vice President observed.

“Not fair, Robby,” Ryan told his VP.

“I know, I know.” Jackson held up surrendering hands. “I just can't forget the motto of the whole intelligence community: 'We bet your life.' It's lonely out there with a fighter plane strapped to your back, risking your life on the basis of a piece of paper with somebody's opinion typed on it, when you never know the guy it's from or the data it's based on.” He paused to stir his coffee. “You know, out in the fleet we used to think -- well, we used to hope -- that decisions made in this room here were based on solid data. It's quite a disappointment to learn what things are really like.”

“Robby, back when I was in high school, I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember wondering if the world was going to blow up. But I still had to translate half a page of Caesar's goddamned Gallic Wars, and I saw the President on TV, and I figured things were okay, because he was the President of the United Goddamned States, and he-had to know what was really going on. So, I translated the battle with the Helvetii and slept that night. The President knows, because he's the President, right? Then I become President, and I don't know a damned thing more than I knew the month before, but everybody out there” -- Ryan waved his arm at the window -- “thinks I'm fucking omniscient...Ellen!” he called loudly enough to get through the door.

The door opened seven seconds later. “Yes, Mr. President?”

“I think you know, Ellen,” Jack told her.

“Yes, sir.” She fished in her pocket and pulled out a fliptop box of Virginia Slims. Ryan took one out, along with the pink butane lighter stashed inside. He lit the smoke and took a long hit. “Thanks, Ellen.”

Her smile was downright motherly. “Surely, Mr. President.” And she headed back to the secretaries' room, closing the curved door behind her.

“Jack?”

“Yeah, Rob?” Ryan responded, turning.

“That's disgusting.”

“Okay, I am not omniscient, and I'm not perfect,” POTUS admitted crossly after the second puff. “Now, back to China.”

“They can forget MFN,” van Damm said. “Congress would impeach you if you asked for it, Jack. And you can figure that the Hill will offer Taiwan any weapons system they want to buy next go-round.”

“I have no problems with that. And there's no way I was going to offer them MFN anyway, unless they decide to break down and start acting like civilized people.”

“And that's the problem,” Adler reminded them all. “They think we're the uncivilized ones.”

“I see trouble,” Jackson said, before anyone else could. Ryan figured it was his background as a fighter pilot to be first in things. “They're just out of touch with the rest of the world. The only way to get them back in touch will involve some pain. Not to their people, especially, but sure as hell to the guys who make the decisions.”

“And they're the ones who control the guns,” van Damm noted.

“Roger that, Arnie,” Jackson confirmed.

“So, how can we ease them the right way?” Ryan asked, to center the conversation once more.

“We stick to it. We tell them we want reciprocal trade access, or they will face reciprocal trade barriers. We tell them that this little flare-up with the Nuncio makes any concessions on our part impossible, and that's just how things are. If they want to trade with us, they have to back off,” Adler spelled out. “They don't like being told such things, but it's the real world, and they have to acknowledge objective reality. They do understand that, for the most part,” SecState concluded.

Ryan looked around the room and got nods. “Okay, make sure Rutledge understands what the message is,” he told EAGLE.

“Yes, sir,” SecState agreed, with a nod. People stood and started filing out. Vice President Jackson allowed himself to be the last in the line of departure.

“Hey, Rob,” Ryan said to his old friend.

“Funny thing, watched some TV last night for a change, caught an old movie I hadn't seen since I was a kid.”

“Which one?”

“Billy Budd, Melville's story about the poor dumb sailor who gets himself hanged. I'd forgot the name of Billy's ship.”

“Yeah?” So had Ryan.

“It was The Rights of Man. Kind of a noble name for a ship. I imagine Melville made that up with malice aforethought, like writers do, but that's what we fight for, isn't it? Even the Royal Navy, they just didn't fight as well as we did back then. The Rights of Man, ” Jackson repeated. “It is a noble sentiment.”

“How does it apply to the current problem, Rob?”

“Jack, the first rule of war is the mission: First, why the hell are you out there, and then what are you proposing to do about it. The Rights of Man makes a pretty good starting point, doesn't it? By the way, CNN's going to be at Pap's church tomorrow and at Gerry Patterson's. They're switching off, preaching in each other's pulpit for the memorial ceremonies, and CNN decided to cover it as a news event in and of itself. Good call, I think,” Jackson editorialized. “Wasn't like that in Mississippi back when I was a boy.”

“It's going to be like you said?”

“I'm only guessing,” Robby admitted, “but I don't see either one of them playing it cool. It's too good an opportunity to teach a good lesson about how the Lord doesn't care a rat's ass what color we are, and how all men of faith should stand together. They'll both probably fold in the abortion thing -- Pap ain't real keen on abortion rights, and neither's Patterson -- but mainly it'll be about justice and equality and how two good men went to see God after doing the right thing.”

“Your dad's pretty good with a sermon, eh?”

“If they gave out Pulitzers for preaching, he'd have a wall covered in the things, Jack, and Gerry Patterson ain't too bad for a white boy either.”

“Ah,” Yefremov observed. He was in the building perch instead of one of the vehicles. It was more comfortable, and he was senior enough to deserve and appreciate the comforts. There was Suvorov/Koniev, sitting back on the bench, an afternoon newspaper in his hands. They didn't have to watch, but watch they did, just to be sure. Of course, there were thousands of park benches in Moscow, and the probability that their subject would sit in the same one this many times was genuinely astronomical. That's what they would argue to the judge when the time came for the trial...depending on what was in the subject's right hand. (His KGB file said that he was right-handed, and it seemed to be the case.) He was so skillful that you could hardly see what he did, but it was done, and it was seen. His right hand left the paper, reached inside his jacket, and pulled out something metallic. Then the hand paused briefly, and as he turned pages in the paper -- the fluttering of the paper was a fine distraction to anyone who might be watching, since the human eye is always drawn to movement -- the right hand slid down and affixed the metal transfer case to the magnetic holder, then returned for the paper, all in one smooth motion, done so quickly as to be invisible. Well, almost, Yefremov thought. He'd caught spies before -- four of them, in fact, which explained his promotion to a supervisory position -- and every one had a thrill attached to it, because he was chasing and catching the most elusive of game. And this one was Russian-trained, the most elusive of all. He'd never bagged one of them before, and there was the extra thrill of catching not just a spy but a traitor as well...and perhaps a traitor guilty of murder? he wondered. That was another first. Never in his experience had espionage involved the violation of that law. No, an intelligence operation was about the transfer of information, which was dangerous enough. The inclusion of murder was an additional hazard that was not calculated to please a trained spy. It made noise, as they said, and noise was something a spy avoided as much as a cat burglar, and for much the same reason.

“Call Provalov,” Yefremov told his subordinate. Two reasons for that. First, he rather owed it to the militia lieutenant, who'd presented him with both the case and the subject. Second, the civilian cop might know something useful to his part of this case. They continued to watch Suvorov/Koniev for another ten minutes. Finally, he stood and walked back to his car for the drive back to his apartment, during which he was duly followed by the ever-changing surveillance team. After the requisite fifteen minutes, one of Yefremov's people crossed the street and retrieved the case from the bench. It was the locked one again, which told them that the item inside was perhaps more important. You had to get past the anti-tamper device to keep the contents from being destroyed, but the FSS had people well skilled in that, and the key for this transfer case had already been struck. That was confirmed twenty minutes later, when the case was opened and the contents extracted, unfolded, photographed, refolded, reinserted, and, finally, relocked in the container, which was immediately driven back to the bench.

Back at FSS headquarters, the decryption team typed the message into a computer into which the one-time-pad had already been inputted. After that, it was a matter of mere seconds before the computer performed a function not unlike sliding a document over a printed template. The clear-text message was, agreeably, in Russian. The content of the message was something else.

“Yob tvoyu maht!” the technician breathed, in one of his language's more repulsive imprecations: Fuck your mother. Then he handed the page to one of the supervising inspectors, whose reaction was little different. Then he walked to the phone and dialed Yefremov's number.

“Pavel Georgeyevich, you need to see this.”

Provalov was there when the chief of the decryption section walked in. The printout was in a manila folder, which the head cryppie handed over without a word.

“Well, Pasha?” the homicide investigator asked.

“Well, we have answered our first question.”

The motorcar was even purchased at the same dealership in central Moscow, the sheet read. There is no fault to be found here. The men who performed the mission are both dead in St. P. Before I can make another attempt, I need an indication from you on the timeline, and also on the payment to my contractors.