Jack Ryan 11 - Bear And The Dragon (93 page)

“Truly?” Golovko was a bright man, but he'd grown up in a world in which both America and Russia had often wished each other dead. Such thoughts died hard, even in so agile a mind as his.

“Truly,” John confirmed. “Russia is a great nation, and you are great people. You are fit partners for us.” He didn't add that, this way, America wouldn't have to worry about bailing them out. Now they'd have the wherewithal to see to their own enrichment, and America needed only offer expertise and advice about how to enter the capitalist world with both feet, and open eyes.

“This from the man who helped arrange the defection of the KGB chairman?” Golovko asked.

“Sergey, as we say at home, that was business, not personal. I don't have a hard-on for Russians, and you wouldn't kill an American just for entertainment purposes, would you?”

Indignation: “Of course not. That would be nekulturniy.”

“It is the same with us, Chairman.”

“Hey, man,” Chavez added. “From when I was a teenager, I was trained to kill your people, back when I was an Eleven-Bravo carrying a rifle, but, guess what, we're not enemies anymore, are we? And if we're not enemies, then we can be friends. You helped us out with Japan and Iran, didn't you?”

“Yes, but we saw that we were the ultimate target of both conflicts, and it was in our national interest.”

“And perhaps the Chinese have us as their ultimate target. Then this is in our interest. They probably don't like us any more than they like you.”

Golovko nodded. “Yes, one thing I do know about them is their sense of racial superiority.”

“Dangerous way for people to think, man. Racism means your enemies are just insects to be swatted,” Chavez concluded, impressing Clark with the mixture of East LA accent and master's-degree analysis of the situation at hand. “Even Karl Marx didn't say that he was better than anybody else 'cuz of his skin color, did he?”

“But Mao did,” Golovko added.

“Doesn't surprise me,” Ding went on. “I read his Little Red Book in graduate school. He didn't want to be just a political leader. Hell, he wanted to be God. Let his ego get in the way of his brain -- not an uncommon affliction for people who take countries over, is it?”

“Lenin was not such a man, but Stalin was,” Golovko observed. “So, then Ivan Emmetovich is a friend of Russia. What shall I do with this?”

“That's up to you, pal,” Clark told him.

“I must speak to my president. Yours comes to Poland tomorrow, doesn't he?”

“I think so.”

“I must make some phone calls. Thank you for coming, my friends. Perhaps another time I will be able to entertain you properly.”

“Fair enough.” Clark stood and tossed off the end of his drink. More handshakes, and they left the way they'd come.

“Christ, John, what happens now?” Ding asked, as they drove back out.

“I suppose everybody tries to beat some sense into the Chinese.”

“Will it work?”

A shrug and arched eyebrows: “News at eleven, Domingo.”

Packing for a trip isn't easy, even with a staff to do it all for you. This was particularly true for SURGEON, who was not only concerned about what she wore in public while abroad, but was also the Supreme Authority on her husband's clothes, a status which her husband tolerated rather than entirely approved. Jack Ryan was still in the Oval Office trying to do business that couldn't wait -- actually it mostly could, but there were fictions in government that had to be honored -- and also waiting for the phone to ring.

“Arnie?”

“Yeah, Jack?”

“Tell the Air Force to have another G go over to Warsaw in case Scott has to fly to Moscow on the sly.”

“Not a bad idea. They'll probably park it at some air force base or something.” Van Damm went off to make the phone call.

“Anything else, Ellen?” Ryan asked his secretary.

“Need one?”

“Yeah, before Cathy and I wing off into the sunset.” Actually, they were heading east, but Mrs. Sumter understood. She handed Ryan his last cigarette of the day.

“Damn,” Ryan breathed with his first puff. He'd be getting a call from Moscow sure as hell -- wouldn't he? That depended on how quickly they digested the information, or maybe Sergey would wait for the morning to show it to President Grushavoy. Would he? In Washington, something that hot would be graded CRITIC and shoved under the President's nose inside twenty minutes, but different countries had different rules, and he didn't know what the Russians did. For damned sure he'd be hearing from one of them before he stepped off the plane at Warsaw. But for now...He stubbed the smoke out, reached inside his desk for the breath spray, and zapped his mouth with the acidic stuff before leaving the office and heading outside -- the West Wing and the White House proper are not connected by an indoor corridor, due to some architectural oversight. In any case, inside six minutes he was on the residential level, watching the ushers organize his bags. Cathy was there, trying to supervise, under the eyes of the Secret Service as well, who acted as though they worried about having a bomb slipped in. But paranoia was their job. Ryan walked over to his wife. “You need to talk to Andrea.”

“What for?”

“Stomach trouble, she says.”

“Uh-oh.” Cathy had suffered from queasiness with Sally, but that was ages ago, and it hadn't been severe. “Not really much you can do about it, you know.”

“So much for medical progress,” Jack commented. “She probably could use some girl-girl support anyway.”

Cathy smiled. “Oh, sure, womanly solidarity. So, you're going to bond with Pat?”

Jack grinned back at her. “Yeah, maybe he'll teach me to shoot a pistol better.”

“Super,” SURGEON observed dryly.

“Which dress for the big dinner?” POTUS asked FLOTUS.

“The light-blue one.”

“Slinky,” Jack said, touching her arm.

The kids showed up then, shepherded up to the bedroom level by their various detail leaders, except for Kyle, who was carried by one of his lionesses. Leaving the kids was never particularly easy, though all concerned were somewhat accustomed to it. The usual kisses and hugs took place, and then Jack took his wife's hand and led her to the elevator.

It let them off at the ground level, with a straight walk out to the helicopter pad. The VH-3 was there, with Colonel Malloy at the controls. The Marines saluted, as they always did. The President and First Lady climbed inside and buckled into the comfortable seats, under the watchful eyes of a Marine sergeant, who then went forward to report to the pilot in the right-front seat.

Cathy enjoyed helicopter flight more than her husband did, since she flew in one twice a day. Jack was no longer afraid of it, but he did prefer driving a car, which he hadn't been allowed to do in months. The Sikorsky lifted up gently, pivoted in the air, and headed off to Andrews. The flight took about ten minutes. The helicopter alighted close to the VC-25A, the Air Force's version of the Boeing 747; it was just a few seconds to the stairs, with the usual TV cameras to mark the event.

“Turn and wave, honey,” Jack told Cathy at the top of the steps. “We might make the evening news.”

“Again?” Cathy grumped. Then she waved and smiled, not at people, but at cameras. With this task completed, they went inside the aircraft and forward to the presidential compartment. There they buckled in, and were observed to do so by an Air Force NCO, who then told the pilot it was okay to spool up the engines and taxi to the end of Runway Zero-one-right. Everything after that was ordinary, including the speech from the pilot, followed by the usual, stately takeoff roll of the big Boeing, and the climb out to thirty-eight thousand feet. Aft, Ryan was sure, everyone was comfortable, because the worst seat on this aircraft was as good as the best first-class seat on any airline in the world. On the whole this seemed a serious waste of the taxpayers' money, but to the best of his knowledge no taxpayer had ever complained very loudly.

The expected happened off the coast of Maine.

“Mr. President?” a female voice asked.

“Yeah, Sarge?”

“Call for you, sir, on the STU. Where do you want to take it?”

Ryan stood. “Topside.”

The sergeant nodded and waved. “This way, sir.”

“Who is it?”

“The DCI.”

Ryan figured that made sense. “Let's get Secretary Adler in on this, too.”

“Yes, sir,” she said as he started up the spiral stairs.

Upstairs, Ryan settled into a working-type seat vacated for him by an Air Force NCO who handed him the proper phone. “Ed?”

“Yeah, Jack. Sergey called.”

“Saying what?”

“He thinks it's a good idea you coming to Poland. He requests a high-level meeting, on the sly if possible.”

Adler took the chair next to Ryan and caught the comment.

“Scott, feel like a hop to Moscow?”

“Can we do it quietly?” SecState asked.

“Probably.”

“Then, yes. Ed, did you field the NATO suggestion?”

“Not my turf to try that, Scott,” the Director of Central Intelligence replied.

“Fair enough. Think they'll spring for it?”

“Three-to-one, yes.”

“I'll agree with that,” Ryan concurred. “Golovko will like it, too.”

“Yeah, he will, once he gets over the shock,” Adler observed, with irony in his voice.

“Okay, Ed, tell Sergey that we are amenable to a covert meeting. SecState flying into Moscow for consultations. Let us know what develops.”

“Will do.”

“Okay, out.” Ryan set the handset down and turned to Adler. “Well?”

“Well, if they spring for it, China will have something to think about.” This statement was delivered with a dollop of hope.

The problem, Ryan thought once again as he stood, is that Klingons don't think quite the same way we do.

The bugs had them all smirking. Suvorov/Koniev had picked up another expensive hooker that night, and her acting abilities had played out in the proper noises at the proper moments. Or maybe he was really that good in bed, Provalov wondered aloud, to the general skepticism of the others in the surveillance van. No, the others thought, this girl was too much of a professional to allow herself to get into it that much. They all thought that was rather sad, lovely as she was to look at. But they knew something their subject didn't know. This girl had been a “dangle,” pre-briefed to meet Suvorov/Koniev.

Finally the noise subsided, and they heard the distinctive snap of an American Zippo lighter, and the usual post-sex silence of a sated man and a (simulatedly) satisfied woman.

“So, what sort of work do you do, Vanya?” the female voice asked, showing the expected professional interest of an expensive hooker in a wealthy man she might wish to entertain again.

“Business” was the answer.

“What sort?” Again, just the right amount of interest. The good news, Provalov thought, was that she didn't need coaching. The Sparrow School must have been fairly easy to operate, he realized. Women did this sort of thing from instinct.

“I take care of special needs for special people,” the enemy spy answered. His revelation was followed by a feminine laugh.

“I do that, too, Vanya.”

“There are foreigners who need special services which I was trained to handle under the old regime.”

“You were KGB? Really?” Excitement in her voice. This girl was good.

“Yes, one of many. Nothing special about it.”

“To you, perhaps, but not to me. Was there really a school for women like me? Did KGB train women to...to take care of the needs of men?”

A man's laugh this time: “Oh, yes, my dear. There was such a school. You would have done well there.”

Now the laugh was coquettish. “As well as I do now?”

“No, not at what you charge.”

“But am I worth it?” she asked.

“Easily” was the satisfied answer.

“Would you like to see me again, Vanya?” Real hope, or beautifully simulated hope, in the question.

“Da, I would like that very much, Maria.”

“So, you take care of people with special needs. What needs are those?” She could get away with this because men so enjoyed to be found fascinating by beautiful women. It was part of their act of worship at this particular altar, and men always went for it.

“Not unlike what I was trained to do, Maria, but the details need not concern you.”

Disappointment: “Men always say that,” she grumped. “Why do the most interesting men have to be so mysterious?”

“In that is our fascination, woman,” he explained. “Would you prefer that I drove a truck?”

“Truck drivers don't have your...your manly abilities,” she replied, as if she'd learned the difference.

“A man could get hard just listening to this bitch,” one of the FSS officers observed.

“That's the idea,” Provalov agreed. “Why do you think she can charge so much?”

“A real man need not pay for it.”

“Was I that good?” Suvorov/Koniev asked in their headphones.

“Any better and I would have to pay you, Vanya,” she replied, with joy in her voice. Probably a kiss went along with the proclamation.

“No more questions, Maria. Let it lie for now,” Oleg Gregoriyevich urged to the air. She must have heard him.

“You know how to make a man feel like a man,” the spy/assassin told her. “Where did you learn this skill?”

“It just comes naturally to a woman,” she cooed.

“To some women, perhaps.” Then the talking stopped, and in ten minutes, the snoring began.

“Well, that's more interesting than our normal cases,” the FSS officer told the others.

“You have people checking out the bench?”

“Hourly.” There was no telling how many people delivered messages to the dead-drop, and they probably weren't all Chinese nationals. No, there'd be a rat-line in this chain, probably not a long one, but enough to offer some insulation to Suvorov's handler. That would be good fieldcraft, and they had to expect it. So, the bench and its dead-drop would be checked out regularly, and in that surveillance van would be a key custom-made to fit the lock on the drop-box, and a photocopier to make a duplicate of the message inside. The FSS had also stepped up surveillance of the Chinese Embassy. Nearly every employee who came outside had a shadow now. To do this properly meant curtailing other counterespionage operations in Moscow, but this case had assumed priority over everything else. It would soon become even more important, but they didn't know that yet.