Russian so well?”
“The kid’s got a gift for it, doesn’t he?” Clark noted. “Especially the
slang.”
‘ ‘Hey, I like to read, okay? And whenever I can I catch Russian TV at the
home office and stuff. What’s the big deal?” The last sentence slipped out in
English. Russian didn’t quite have that euphemism.
‘ ‘The big deal is that you’re truly gifted, my young friend,” Major Lyalin
said, saluting with his glass.
Chavez acknowledged the compliment. He hadn’t even had a high-school
diploma when he’d sneaked into the U.S. Army, mainly by promising to be a
grunt, not a missile technician, but it pleased him that he had indeed raced
through George Mason University for his subsequent undergraduate degree,
and was now within a dissertation of his master’s. He marveled at his luck
and wondered how many others from his barrio could have done as well,
given an equal smile from Chance.
“So does Mrs. Foley know that you left a network behind?”
“Yes, but all her Japanese speakers must be elsewhere. I don’t think they
would have tried to reactivate without letting me know. Besides, they will
only activate if they are told the right thing.”
“Jesus,” Clark whispered, also in English, since one only swears in his
native longuc. That was a natural consequence of the Agency’s deemphasis
of human intelligence in favor of electronic bullshit, which was useful but
not the be-all and end-all that the paper-pushers thought it to be. Of CIA’s
total of over fifteen thousand employees, somewhere around four hundred
fif’iv of them were field officers, actually out on the street or in the weeds,
talking to real people and trying to learn what their thoughts were instead of
counting beans from overheads and reading newspaper articles for the rest.
“You know, sometimes I wonder how we ever won the fuckin’ war.”
“America tried very hard not to, but the Soviet Union tried harder.” Lya-
lin paused. “THISTLE was mainly concerned with gathering commercial in-
formation. We stole many industrial designs and processes from Japan, and
your country’s policy is not to use intelligence services for that purpose.”
Another pause. “Except for one thing.”
“What’s that, Oleg?” Chavez asked, popping another Coors open.
“There’s no real difference, Domingo. Your people-I tried for several
months to explain that to them. Business is the government over there. Their
parliament and ministries, they are the ‘legend,’ the maskirovka for the busi-
ness empires.”
“In that case there’s one government in the world that knows how to
make a decent car.” Chavez chuckled. He’d given up on buying the Corvette
of his dreams-the damned things just cost too much-and settled on a “Z”
that was almost as sporty for half the price. And now he’d have to get rid of
it, Ding told himself. He had to be more respectable and settled if he were
going to marry, didn’t he?
‘ ‘Nyet. You should understand this: the opposition is not what your coun-
try thinks it is. Why do you suppose you have such problems negotiating
with them? I discovered this fact early on, and KGB understood it readily.”
As they had to, Clark told himself, nodding. Communist theory predicted
that very “fact,” didn’t it? Damn, wasn’t that a hoot! “How were the pick-
ings?” he asked.
“Excellent,” Lyalin assured him. “Their culture, it’s so easy for them to
take insults, but so hard for them to respond. They conceal much anger.
Then, all you need do is show sympathy.”
Clark nodded again, this time thinking. This guy is a real pro. Fourteen
well-placed agents, he still had the names and addresses and phone numbers
in his head, and, unsurprisingly, nobody at Langley had followed up on it
because of those damned-fool ethics laws foisted on the Agency by law-
yers-a breed of government servant that sprouted up like crabgrass every-
where you looked, as though anything the Agency did was, strictly speaking,
ethical at all. Hell, he and Ding had kidnapped Corp, hadn’t they? In the
interests of justice, to be sure, but if they had brought him to America for
(rial, instead of leaving him with his own countrymen, some high-priced and
highly ethical defense attorney, perhaps even acting pro bono-obstructing
justice for free, Clark told himself-would have ranted and raved first before
cameras and later before twelve good men (and women) about how this pa-
triot had resisted an invasion of his country, et cetera, et cetera.
” An interesting weakness,” Chavez noted judiciously.’ ‘People really are
Ihc same all over the world, aren’t they?”
“Different masks, but the same flesh underneath,” Lyalin pronounced,
feeling ever more the teacher. The offhand remark was his best lesson of the
day.
Of all human lamentations, without doubt the most common is, If only I had
known. But we can’t know, and so days of death and fire so often begin no
differently from those of love and warmth. Pierce Denton packed the car for
the trip to Nashville. It was not a trivial exercise. Both twin girls had safety
seats installed in the back of the Cresta, and in between went the smaller seat
for their brand-new brother, Matthew. The twin girls, Jessica and Jeanine,
were three and a half years old, having survived the “terrible twos” (or
rather, their parents had) and the parallel adventures of learning to walk and
talk. Now, dressed in identical short purple dresses and white tights, they
allowed Mom and Dad to load them into their seats. Matthew went in after
them, restless and whining, but the girls knew that the vibration of the car
would soon put him back to sleep, which is what he mostly did anyway,
except when nursing from his mother’s breasts. It was a big day, off for a
weekend at Grandmother’s house.
Pierce Denton, twenty-seven, was a police officer in Greeneville, Tennes-
see’s, small municipal department, still attending night school to finish up
his college degree, but with no further ambition other than to raise his family
and live a comfortable life in the tree-covered mountains, where a man could
hunt and fish with friends, attend a friendly community church, and gener-
ally live as good a life as any person might desire. His profession was far less
stressful than that of colleagues in other places, and he didn’t regret that a
bit. Greeneville had its share of trouble, as did any American town, but far
less than he saw on TV or read about in the professional journals that lay on
tables in the station. At quarter after eight in the morning, he backed onto the
quid slrcct and headed off, first toward U.S. Route I iH. He was rested and
alert, with his usual two cups of morning coffee already at work, chasing
away the cobwebs of a restful night, or as restful as one could be with an
infant sleeping in the same bedroom with him and his wife, Candace. Within
fifteen minutes he pulled onto Interstate Highway 81, heading south with the
morning sun behind him.
Traffic was fairly light this Saturday morning, and unlike most police offi-
cers Denton didn’t speed, at least not with his family in the car. Rather, he
cruised evenly at just under seventy miles per hour, just enough over the
posted limit of sixty-five for the slight thrill of breaking the law just a little.
Interstate 81 was typical of the American interstates, wide and smooth even
as it snaked southwest through the mountain range that had contained the
first westward expansion of European settlers. At New Market, 81 merged
with 1-40, and Denton merged in with westbound traffic from North Caro-
lina. Soon he would be in Knoxville. Checking his rearview mirror, he saw
that both daughters were already lulled into a semiconscious state, and his
ears told him that Matthew was the same. To his right, Candy Denton was
do/.ing as well. Their infant son had not yet mastered the skill of sleeping
through the night, and that fact took its toll on his wife, who hadn’t had as
much as six straight hours of sleep since . . . well, since before Matt’s birth,
actually, the driver told himself. His wife was petite, and her small frame
had suffered from the latter stages of pregnancy. Candy’s head rested on the
right-side window, grabbing what sleep she could before Matthew woke up
and announced his renewed hunger, though with a little luck, that might just
last until they got to Nashville.
The only hard part of the drive, if you could call it that, was in Knoxville,
a medium-sized city mostly on the north side of the Tennessee River. It was
large enough to have an inner ring highway, 1-640, which Denton avoided,
preferring the direct path west.
The weather was warm for a change. The previous six weeks had been
one damned snow-and-ice storm after another, and Greeneville had already
exhausted its budget for road salt and overtime for the crews. He’d re-