Jack Ryan 11 - Bear And The Dragon (51 page)

He was twelve kilometers away. Behind him, the trail cars were switching in and out of visual coverage as deftly as the Russian national football team advancing the soccer ball into tied-game opposition. Provalov was in the command vehicle, watching and listening as the KGB/FSS team leader used a radio and a map to guide his people in and out. The vehicles were all dirty, middle-aged, nondescript types that could be owned by the Moscow city government or gypsy-cab operators, expected to dart around, concealing themselves among the numerous twins they all had. In most cases, the second vehicle occupant was in the back seat, not the front, to simulate a taxi's passenger, and they even had cell phones to complete the disguise, which allowed them to communicate with their base station without looking suspicious. That, the FSS leader remarked to the cop, was one advantage of new technology.

Then came the call that the subject had pulled over, stopped, and parked his car. The two surveillance vehicles in visual contact continued past, allowing new ones to close in and stop.

“He's getting out,” a Federal Security Service major reported. “I'm getting out to follow on foot.” The major was young for his rank, usually a sign of a precocious and promising young officer on the way up, and so it was in this case. He was also handsome with his twenty-eight years, and dressed in expensive clothing like one of the new crop of Moscovite business entrepreneurs. He was talking into his phone in a highly animated fashion, the very opposite of what someone conducting a surveillance would do. That enabled him to get within thirty meters of the subject, and to watch his every move with hawk's eyes. Those eyes were needed to catch the most elegant of maneuvers. Suvorov/Koniev sat on a bench, his right hand already in his overcoat pocket while his left fiddled with the morning paper he'd brought out from the car -- and that is what tipped the FSS major that he was up to no good. A newspaper was the main disguise used by a spy, something to cover the actions of the working hand, just as a stage magician kept one hand ostentatiously busy while the other performed the actual illusion. And so it was here, so beautifully done that had he been an untrained man, he would never have caught it. The major took a seat on another bench and dialed up another false number on his cell phone and started talking to a fictitious business associate, then watched his surveillance subject stand and walk with studied casualness back to his parked Mercedes.

Major Yefremov called a real number when his subject was a hundred meters away. “This is Pavel Georgiyevich. I am staying here to see what he left behind,” he told his base station. He crossed his legs and lit a cigarette, watching the figure get back into his car and drive off. When he was well out of sight, Yefremov walked over to the other bench and reached under. Oh, yes. A magnetic holder. Suvorov had been using this one for some time. He'd glued a metal plate to the bottom of the green-painted wood, and to this he could affix a magnetic holder...about a centimeter in thickness, his hand told him. Their subject was a “player” after all. He'd just executed a dead-drop.

On hearing it, Provalov experienced the thrill of seeing a crime committed before his very eyes. Now they had their man committing a crime against the state. Now he was theirs. Now they could arrest him at any time. But they wouldn't, of course. The operation's commander next to him ordered Yefremov to retrieve the container for examination. That would be done very speedily,, because the container would have to be returned. They only had half of the spy team. The other half would come to pick it up.

It was the computer. It had to be. On turning it on, they found a maze of folders, but one of them, they quickly saw, had encrypted contents. The encryption program was one they hadn't come across before. It was American, and its name was written down. They could do no more now. They lacked the proper disks to copy the covert file. That they could fix, and they could also copy the encryption program. Next, they'd have to plant a bugging device on the keyboard. In that way, they could use Sovorov's own password code to crack the encrypted file. With that decision made, the burglary team left the premises.

The next part was virtually preordained. They followed the Mercedes using the same multi-car drill, but the break came when a dump truck -- still the dominant form of life on the Moscow streets -- was closest. The subject parked the German sedan and jumped out, took just enough time to affix a strip of paper tape to a lamppost, and hopped back into his car. He didn't even bother to look around, as though he'd only done something routine.

But he hadn't. He'd just posted a flag, a notice to someone unknown that the dead-drop had something in it. That someone would walk or drive past and see the tape and know where to go. So, they had to examine the capsule quickly and replace it, lest they warn the enemy spy that their little operation had been compromised. No, you didn't do that until you had to, because things like this were like an unraveling sweater on a pretty woman. You didn't stop pulling the yarn until the tits were exposed, the FSS commander told Provalov.

“What's this?” the President asked at his morning intelligence briefing.

“A new SORGE source, this one's called WARBLER. I'm afraid it's not as good from an intelligence point of view, though it does tell us things about their ministers,” Dr. Goodley added with some feigned delicacy.

Whoever WARBLER was, Ryan saw, she -- it was definitely a she -- kept a very intimate diary. She, too, worked with this Minister Fang Gan, and, it appeared, he was enamored of her, and she, if not exactly enamored of him, certainly kept records of his activities. All of them, Ryan saw. It was enough to make his eyes go a little wide this early in the morning.

“Tell Mary Pat that she can sell this stuff to Hustler if she wants, but I really don't need it at eight in the goddamned morning.”

“She included it to give you a feel for the source,” Ben explained. “The material isn't as narrowly political as we're getting from SONGBIRD, but MP thinks it tells us a lot about the guy's character, which is useful, and also there's some political content to go along with the information on Fang's sex life. It would appear he's a man of, well, commendable vigor, I guess, though the girl in question would clearly prefer a younger lover. It appears that she had one, but this Fang guy scared him off.”

“Possessive bastard,” Ryan saw, skimming that section. “Well, I guess at that age you hold on to what you need. Does this tell us anything?”

“Sir, it tells us something about the kind of people who make decisions over there. Here we call them sexual predators.”

“Of which we have a few in government service ourselves,” Ryan observed. The papers had just broken a story on a member of the Senate.

“At least not in this office,” Goodley told his President. He didn't add anymore.

“Well, this President is married to a surgeon. She knows how to use sharp instruments,” Ryan said, with a wry grin. “So, the Taiwan stuff yesterday was just a ploy because they haven't figured out how to address the trade issues yet?”

“So it would appear, and yes, that does seem a little odd. Also, MP thinks that they might have a low-level source in State. They know a little more than they could have gotten from the press, she thinks.”

“Oh, great,” Jack noted. “So what happened? The Japanese corporations sold their old sources to the Chinese?”

Goodley shrugged. “No telling at this time.”

“Have Mary Pat call Dan Murray about this. Counterespionage is the FBI's department. Is this something we want to move on at once, or will this compromise SONGBIRD?”

“That's for somebody else to judge, sir,” Goodley said, reminding the President that he was good, but not quite that good at this business.

“Yeah, somebody other than me, too. What else?”

“The Senate Select Intelligence Committee wants to look into the Russian situation.”

“That's nice. What's the beef?”

“They seem to have their doubts about how trustworthy our friends in Moscow are. They're worried that they're going to use the oil and gold money to become the USSR again, and maybe threaten NATO.”

“NATO's moved a few hundred miles east, last time I looked. The buffer zone will not hurt our interests.”

“Except that we are obligated to defend Poland now,” Goodley reminded his boss.

“I remember. So, tell the Senate to authorize funds to move a tank brigade east of Warsaw. We can take over one of the old Soviet laagers, can't we?”

“If the Poles want us to. They don't seem overly concerned, sir.”

“Probably more worried by the Germans, right?”

“Correct, and there is a precedent for that concern.”

“When will Europe get the word that peace has finally broken out for good and all?” Ryan asked the ceiling.

“There's a lot of history, some of it pretty recent, for them to remember, Mr. President. And much of it militates in the other direction.”

“I've got a trip to Poland scheduled, don't I?”

“Yes, not too far off, and they're working out the itinerary right now.”

“Okay, I'll tell the Polish president personally that he can depend on us to keep the Germans under control. If they step out of line -- well, we'll take Chrysler back.” Jack sipped his coffee and checked his watch. “Anything else?”

“That should do it for today.”

The President looked up slyly. “Tell Mary Pat if she sends me more of this WARBLER stuff, I want the pictures to go with it.”

“Will do, sir.” Goodley had himself a good hoot at that.

Ryan picked up the briefing papers again and read through them more slowly this time, between sips of coffee and snorts, with a few grumbles thrown in. Life had been much easier when he was the guy who prepared these briefing papers than it was now that he was the guy who had to read them. Why was that? Shouldn't it have been the other way around? Before, he'd been the one to find the answers and anticipate the questions, but now that other people had done all that stuff for him...it was harder. That didn't make any sense at all, damn it. Maybe, he decided, it was because, after him, the information stopped. He had to make the decisions, and so whatever other decisions and analyses had been made at lower levels, the process came to one place and stopped cold. It was like driving a car: Someone else could tell him to turn right at the corner, but he was the guy at the wheel who had to execute the turn, and if somebody clobbered the car, he was the guy who'd get the blame. For a moment, Jack wondered if he was better suited to being a step or two down in the process, able to do the analysis work and make his recommendations with confidence...but always knowing that someone else would always get the credit for making the right move, or the blame for making the wrong one. In that insulation from consequence, there was safety and security. But that was cowardice talking, Ryan reminded himself. If there were anyone in Washington better suited for making decisions, he hadn't met the guy yet, and if that was arrogance talking, then so be it.

But there ought to be someone better, Jack thought, as the clock wound to his first appointment of the day, and it wasn't his fault that there wasn't. He checked his appointment sheet. The whole day was political bullshit...except it wasn't bullshit. Everything he did in this office affected the lives of American citizens in one way or another, and that made it important, to them and to him. But who had decided to make him the national daddy? What the hell made him so damned smart? The people behind his back, as he thought of it, outside the overly thick windows of the Oval Office, all expected him to know how to do the right thing, and over the dinner table or a low-stakes card game, they'd bitch and moan and complain about the decisions he'd made that they didn't like, as though they knew better -- which was easy to say out there. In here it was different. And so, Ryan had to apply himself to every little decision, even menus for school lunches -- that one was a real son of a bitch. If you gave kids what they liked to eat, nutritionists would complain that they really ought to eat healthy twigs and berries, but for the most part, parents would probably opt for burgers and fries, because that's what the kids would eat, and even healthy food, uneaten, did them little good. He'd talked that one over with Cathy once or twice, but he really didn't need to. She let their own kids eat pizza whenever they wished, claiming that pizza was high in protein, and that a kid's metabolism could eat almost anything without ill effect, but when cornered, she'd admit that put her at odds with some of her fellow professors at Johns Hopkins. And so what was Jack Ryan, President of the United States, Doctor of Philosophy in History, Bachelor of Arts in Economics, and a Certified Public Accountant (Ryan couldn't even remember why he had bothered taking that exam), supposed to think, when experts -- including the one he was married to -- disagreed? That was worth another snort, when his desk buzzer went off and Mrs. Sumter announced that his first appointment of the day was here. Already Jack was wishing for a bummed cigarette, but he couldn't do that until he had a break in his schedule, because only Mrs. Sumter and a few of his Secret Service detail were allowed to know that the President of the United States suffered, intermittently, from that vice.

Jesus, he thought, as he did so often when the workday began, how did I ever get stuck in here? Then he stood and faced the door, conjuring up his welcoming Presidential smile as he tried to remember who the hell was coming in first to discuss farm subsidies in South Dakota.

The flight, as usual, was out of Heathrow, this one in a Boeing 737, because it wasn't all that long a hop to Moscow. The RAINBOW troopers filled the entire first-class section, which would please the cabin staff, though they didn't know it yet, because the passengers would be unusually polite and undemanding. Chavez sat with his father-in-law, politely watching the safety-briefing video, though both knew that if the airplane hit the ground at four hundred knots, it really wouldn't help all that much to know where the nearest emergency exit was. But such things were rare enough to be ignored. Ding grabbed the magazine from the pocket in front and flipped through it in the hope of finding something interesting. He'd already bought all the useful items from the “flying mall” magazine, some to his wife's pitying amusement.