Rainbow Six (1997) (64 page)

“I’ve never worked directly against them,” John said next. “How good are they?”

“Bloody good,” Holt assured him, catching a nod also from Bill Tawney. “They’re highly dedicated, and superbly organized, but now the organization’s fragmenting somewhat. Obviously, some of them do not want peace to break out. Our good friend Gerry Adams is by profession a publican, and if the Troubles come to an end, and he fails to get himself elected to high public office, as he clearly hopes, then his fallback job is rather lower in prestige than the position he now holds—but the majority of them seem willing to terminate their operations, declare victory, and give peace a chance. That has helped our informer-recruiting somewhat, but there are elements of the PIRA who are more militant today than they were ten years ago. It’s a cause for concern,” Holt told them.

“Same story in the Bekaa Valley,” Clark agreed. What did you do when Satan came to Jesus? Some would never want to stop fighting sin, and if that meant creating some sin themselves, well, that was just the cost of doing business, wasn’t it? “They just don’t want to let go.”

“That is a problem. And I need not tell you that one of the main targets of those chaps is right here. The SAS is not exactly beloved of the PIRA.”

That wasn’t news either. The British Special Air Service commandos had gone into the field often enough to “sort out” IRA members who had made the two serious mistakes of breaking the law and being known. John thought it a mistake to use soldiers to perform what was essentially a police function—but then he had to admit that Rainbow was tasked to that exact mission, in a manner of speaking. But the SAS had done things that in some contexts could be called premeditated murder. Britain, much as it resembled America in so many ways, was a different country with different laws and very different rules in some areas. So security at Hereford was tight, because someday ten or so bad guys might appear with AK-47s and an attitude, and his people, like many of the resident SAS troops, had families, and terrorists didn’t always respect the rights of noncombatants, did they? Not hardly.

The decision had come with unusual speed from Number 2 Dzerzhinsky Square, and a courier was now on his way. Kirilenko was surprised to get the coded message. The courier was flying Aeroflot to Heathrow with a diplomatic bag, which was inviolable so long as the courier kept it in his possession—countries had been known to steal them for their contents, which were often uncoded, but couriers knew about that, and played by a strict set of rules—if they had to visit the can, so did the bag. And so with their diplomatic passports they breezed through control points and went off to the waiting cars that were always there, carrying the usually canvas bags often full of valuable secrets past the eyes of people who would trade their daughters’ virtue for one look.

So it happened here. The courier arrived on the evening flight from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International, was waved through customs, and hopped into the waiting car driven by an embassy employee. From there it was a mere forty minutes through rush-hour traffic to Kensington, and from there to Kirilenko’s office. The manila envelope was sealed with wax to ensure that it hadn’t been tampered with. The
rezident
thanked the courier for this and two other packages and went to work. It was late enough that he’d have to pass on his usual pint of bitter tonight. It was an annoyance to him. He honestly enjoyed the atmosphere of his favorite pub. There was nothing like it in Moscow, or any of the other countries he’d served in. So now, in his hands was the complete dossier on Clark, John T., senior CIA field officer. It ran to twenty single-spaced pages, plus three photographs. He took the time to read the package over. It was impressive. According to this, in his first and only meeting with Chairman Golovko, he’d admitted to smuggling the wife and daughter of former KGB Chairman Gerasimov right out of the country . . . using a
submarine
to do it? So, the story he’d read in the Western media was true? It was like something from Hollywood. Then later he’d operated in Romania around the time of Nicolae Ceauçescu’s downfall, then in cooperation with Station Tokyo he’d rescued the Japanese prime minister, and again with Russian assistance participated in the elimination of Mamoud Haji Daryaei? “Believed to have the ear of the American president,” the analysis page pronounced—and well he should! Kirilenko thought. Sergey Nikolay’ch Golovko himself had added his thoughts to the file. A highly competent field officer, an independent thinker, known to take his own initiative on operations, and believed never to have put a foot wrong . . . training officer at the CIA Academy in Yorktown, Virginia, believed to have trained both Edward and Mary Patricia Foley, respectively the Director of Central Intelligence and the Deputy Director for Operations. This was one formidable officer, Kirilenko thought. He’d impressed Golovko himself, and few enough Russians accomplished that.

So, now, he was in England somewhere, doing something covert, and his parent agency wanted to know about it, because you tried very hard to keep track of such people. The
rezident
took the paper scrap from his wallet. It looked like a cellular phone number. He had several of those in his desk drawers, all cloned from existing accounts, because it kept his signals people busy, cost the embassy no money, and was very secure. Tapping into a known cellular account was difficult, but absent the electronic codes, it was just one more signal in a city awash in them.

Dmitriy Arkadeyevich had the same thing. In every city in the world were people who cloned phones and sold them illegally on the street. London was no exception.

“Yes?” a distant voice said.

“Dmitriy, this is Vanya.”

“Yes?”

“I have the package you requested. I will require payment in the terms we agreed upon.”

“It will be done,” Popov promised. “Where can we make the exchange?”

That was easy. Kirilenko proposed the time, place, and method.

“Agreed.” And the connection broke after a mere seventy seconds. Perhaps Popov had been RIF’d, but he still knew about communications discipline.

She knew she was sick. She wasn’t sure how much, but Mary Bannister knew that she didn’t feel well. And through the drugs, part of her worried that it might be serious. She’d never been in a hospital, except once to the local emergency room for a sprained ankle that her father worried might be broken, but now she was in a hospital-type bed with an IV tree next to her, and a clear plastic line that ran down into the inside of her right arm, and just the sight of it frightened her, despite the drugs going into her system. She wondered what they were giving her. Dr. Killgore had said fluids to keep her hydrated and some other stuff, hadn’t he? She shook her head, trying to get the cobwebs loose enough to remember. Well, why not find out? She swung her legs to the right and stood, badly and shakily, then bent down to look at the items hanging on the tree. She had trouble making her eyes focus, and bent closer, only to find that the markings on the tag-tapes were coded in a way she didn’t understand. Subject F4 stood back up and tried to frown in frustration but didn’t quite make it. She looked around the treatment room. Another bed was on the far side of what appeared to be a brick partition about five feet high, but it was unoccupied. There was a TV, off at the moment, hanging on the far wall. The floor was tile, and cold on her bare feet. The door was wood, and had a latch rather than a knob—it was a standard hospital door, but she didn’t know that. No phone anywhere. Didn’t hospitals have phones in the room? Was she
in
a hospital? It looked and seemed like one, but she knew that her brain was working more slowly than usual, though she didn’t know how she knew. It was as if she’d had too much to drink. Besides feeling ill, she felt vulnerable not in total command of herself. It was time to do
something,
though exactly what she wasn’t sure. She stood there for a brief time to consider it, then took the tree in her right hand and started walking for the door. Fortunately, the electronic control unit on the tree was battery-powered and not plugged into the wall. It rolled easily on the rubber wheels.

The door, it turned out, was unlocked. She pulled it open, stuck her head out, and looked around the door frame into the corridor. Empty. She walked out, still dragging the IV tree behind her. She saw no nurses’ station at either end, but did not find that remarkable. Subject F4 headed to her right, pushing the IV tree ahead of her now, looking for—something, she wasn’t sure what. She managed a frown and tried other doors, but while they opened, they revealed only darkened rooms, most of them smelling of disinfectant until she got to the very end. This door was labeled T-9, and behind it she found something different. No beds here, but a desk with a computer whose monitor screen was on, meaning that the computer was powered up. She walked in and leaned over the desk. It was an IBM-compatible, and she knew how to work those. It even had a modem, she saw. Well, then, she could do—what?

It took another couple of minutes to decide. She could get a message off to her father, couldn’t she?

 

 

Fifty feet and one floor away, Ben Farmer got himself a mug of coffee and sat back down into his swivel chair after a quick trip to the men’s room. He picked up the copy of
Bio-Watch
he’d been reading. It was three in the morning, and all was quiet on his end of the building.

 

Farmer finished the article on global warming, and then checked the TV display. The computer flipped through the operating cameras, showing all the sickies in their beds—

—except one. Huh? he thought, waiting for the cameras to flip back, having missed the code number for the one with the empty bed. It took about a minute. Oh, shit, T-4 was missing. That was the girl, wasn’t it? Subject F4, Mary something. Oh, shit, where had she gone to? He activated the direct controls and checked the corridor. Nobody there, either. Nobody had tried to go through the doors into the rest of the complex. They were both locked and alarmed. Where the hell were the docs? The one on duty now was a woman, Lani something, the other staff all disliked her ’cause she was an arrogant, obnoxious bitch. Evidently, Killgore didn’t like her either, ’cause she always had the night duty. Palachek, that was her last name. Farmer wondered vaguely what nationality that was as he lifted the microphone for the PA system.

“Dr. Palacheck, Dr. Palachek, please call security,” he said over the speaker system. It took about three minutes before his phone rang.

“This is Dr. Palachek. What is it?”

“Subject F4 has taken a walk. I can’t spot her on the surveillance cameras.”

“On the way. Call Dr. Killgore.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Farmer called that number from memory.

“Yeah?” came the familiar voice.

“Sir, it’s Ben Farmer. F4 has disappeared from her room. We’re looking for her now.”

“Okay, call me back when you find her.” And the phone went dead. Killgore wasn’t all that excited. You might be able to walk around for a while, but you couldn’t leave the building without someone seeing you.

 

 

It was still rush hour in London. Ivan Petrovich Kirilenko had an apartment close to the embassy, which allowed him to walk to work. The sidewalks were crowded with rapidly moving people on their way to their own jobs—the Brits are a polite people, but Londoners tend to race along—and he got to the agreed-upon corner at exactly 8:20 A.M. He carried his copy of the
Daily Telegraph,
a conservative morning newspaper, in his left hand as he stopped at the corner, waiting for the light to change.

The switch was expertly done. No words were exchanged, just a double bump on the elbow to tell him to slacken his grip, to allow one
Telegraph
to be changed for another. It was done below the waist, hidden from the casual view of those around him, and low enough to be hidden by the crowd from cameras that might be looking down from the rooftops around the busy corner. It was all the
rezident
could do not to smile. The exercise of fieldcraft was always a pleasure for him. Despite his currently high rank, he enjoyed the day-to-day business of espionage, just to prove to himself that he could still do it as well as the youngsters working under him. A few seconds later, the light changed, and a man in a tan coat angled away from him, walking briskly forward with his morning paper. It was two more blocks to the embassy. He walked through the iron gate, into the building, past security, and up to his second-floor office. There, his coat hung on the hook on the back of his door, he sat down and opened the paper on his desk.

So, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich had kept his word. There were two sheets of unlined white paper liberally covered with handwritten commentary. CIA Field Officer John Clark was now in Hereford, England, and was now the commander of a new multinational counterterrorist group known as “Rainbow,” composed of ten to twenty men selected from English, American, and perhaps some other nationalities. It was a black operation, known only to a handful of highly placed people. His wife was a nurse working at the local public hospital. His team was well regarded by the local civilians who worked on the SAS base. Rainbow had been on three missions, Bern, Vienna, and Worldpark, where, in every case, it had dealt with the terrorists—Kirilenko noted that Popov had avoided use of the previous term of art, “progressive elements”—efficiently, quickly, and under the cover of local police agencies. The Rainbow team had access to American hardware, which had been used in Spain, as was clear from television coverage of the event, which he recommended that the embassy get hold of. Through the Defense Attaché would probably be best, Popov noted.