some excitable people on Saipan. I mean it doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“I agree, the data does not form any clear picture, but the individual
pieces-damn it, I know Robby Jackson. I know Bart Mancuso.”
“Who’s that?”
“ComSubPac. He owns all our subs out there. I sailed with him once.
Jackson is deputy J-3, and we’ve been friends since we were both teaching at
Annapolis.” Lo, these many years ago.
“Okay,” Durling said. “You’ve told us everything you know?”
“Yes, Mr. President. Every word, without any analysis.”
“Meaning you don’t really have any?” The question stung some, but this
was not a time for embroidering. Ryan nodded.
“Correct, Mr. President.”
“So for now, we wait. How long to Andrews?”
Fiedler looked out a window. “That’s the Chesapeake Bay below us now.
We can’t be too far out.”
“Press at the airport?” he asked Arnie van Damm.
‘ ‘Just the ones in the back of the plane, sir.”
“Ryan?”
“We firm up our information as fast as we can. Tin- MMVKTS air all on
alert.”
“What are those fighters doing out there?” Fiedler asked. Thry wrir now
Hying abeam Air Force One, in a tight two-ship element about a mile away,
their pilots wondering what this was all about. Ryan wondered it the press
would take note of it. Well, how long could this affair remain a secret’.’
“My idea, Buzz,” Ryan said. Might as well take responsibility for it.
“A little dramatic, don’t you think?” SecState inquired.
“We didn’t expect to have our fleet attacked either, sir.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Colonel Evans. We’re now approaching
Andrews Air Force Base. We all hope you’ve enjoyed the flight. Please
bring your seats back to the upright position and …” In the back, the junior
White House aides ostentatiously refused to fasten their seat belts. The cabin
crew did what they were supposed to do, of course.
Ryan felt the main gear thump down on runway Zero-One Right. For the
majority of the people aboard, the press, it was the end. For him it was just
the beginning. The first sign was the larger than normal complement of secu-
rity police waiting at the terminal building, and some especially nervous Se-
cret Service agents. In a way it was a relief to the National Security Advisor.
Not everyone thought it was some sort of mistake, but it would be so much
better, Ryan thought, if he were wrong, just this once. Otherwise they faced
the most complex crisis in his country’s history.
24
Running in Place
If there was a worse feeling than this one, Clark didn’t know what it might
be. Their mission in Japan was supposed to have been easy: evacuate an
American citizen who had gotten herself into a tight spot and ascertain the
possibility of reactivating an old and somewhat dusty intelligence network.
Well, that was the idea, the officer told himself, heading to his room.
Chavez was parking the car. They’d decided to rent a new one, and again the
clerk at the counter had changed his expression on learning that their credit
card was printed in both Roman and Cyrillic characters. It was an experience
so new as to have no precedent at all. Even at the height (or depths) of the
Cold War, Russians had treated American citizens with greater deference
than their own countrymen, and whether that had resulted from curiosity or
not, the privilege of being American had been an important touchstone for a
lonely stranger in a foreign and hostile land. Never had Clark felt so fright-
ened, and it was little consolation that Ding Chavez didn’t have the experi-
ence to realize just how unusual and dangerous their position was.
It was therefore something of a relief to feel the piece of tape on the under-
side doorknob. Maybe Nomuri could give him some useful information.
Clark went in the room only long enough to use the bathroom before heading
right back out. He saw Chavez in the lobby and made the appropriate ges-
ture: Stay put. Clark noticed with a smile that his junior partner had stopped
at a bookstore and purchased a copy of a Russian-language newspaper,
which he carried ostentatiously as a kind of defensive measure. Two minutes
later, Clark was looking in the window of the camera shop again. There
wasn’t much street traffic, but enough that he wasn’t the only one around. As
he stood looking at ihe latest automated wonder from Nikon, he loll some-
one bump into him.
“Watch where you’re going,” a gruff voice said in i’in^lish and moved
on. Clark took a few seconds before heading in the oilier direction, luimii^
the corner and heading down an alley. A minute later he found a shadowy
place and waited. Nomuri was there quickly.
“This is dangerous, kid.”
“Why do you think I hit you with that signal?” Nomuri’s voice was low
and shaky.
It was fieldcraft from a TV series, about as realistic and professional as
two kids sneaking a smoke in the boys’ room of their junior high. The odd
part was that, important as it was, Nomuri’s message occupied about one
minute. The rest of the time was concerned with procedural matters.
“Okay, number one, no contact at all with your normal rat-line. Even if
they’re allowed out on the street, you don’t know them. You don’t go near
them. Your contact points are gone, kid, you understand?” Clark’s mind
was going at light-speed toward nowhere at the moment, but the most imme-
diate priority was survival. You had to be alive in order to accomplish some-
thing, and Nomuri, like Chavez and himself, were “illegals,” unlikely to
receive any sort of clemency after arrest and totally separated from any sup-
port from their parent agency.
Chet Nomuri nodded. “That leaves you, sir.”
“That’s right, and if you lose us, you return to your cover and you don’t
do anything. Got that? Nothing at all. You’re a loyal Japanese citizen, and
you stay in your hole.”
“But-”
“But nothing, kid. You are under my orders now, and if you violate them,
you answer to me!” Clark softened his voice. “Your first priority is always
survival. We don’t issue suicide pills and we don’t expect movie-type bull-
shit. A dead officer is a dumb officer.” Damn, Clark thought, had the mis-
sion been different from the very beginning, they would have had a routine
established-dead-drops, a whole collection of signals, a selection of cut-
outs-but there wasn’t time to do that now, and every second they talked
here in the shadows there was the chance that some Tokyoite would let his
cat out, see a Japanese national talking to a gaijin, and make note of it. The
paranoia curve had risen fast, and would only get steeper.
“Okay, you say so, man.”
‘ ‘And don’t forget it. Stick to your regular routine. Don’t change anything
except maybe to back off some. Fit in. Act like everybody else does. A nail
that sticks up gets hammered down. Hammers hurt, boy. Now, here’s what I
want you to do.” Clark went on for a minute. “Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get lost.” Clark headed down the alley, and entered his hotel through
the delivery entrance, thankfully unwatched at this time of night. Thank
God, he thought, that Tokyo had so little crime. The American equivalent
would be locked, or have an alarm, or be patrolled by an armed guard. Even
at war, Tokyo was a safer place than Washington, B.C.
“Why don’t you just buy a bottle instead of going out to drink?” “Che-
kov” asked, not for the first time, when he came back into the room.
“Maybe I should.” Which reply made the younger officer’s eyes jerk up
from his paper and his Russian practice. Clark pointed to the TV, turned it
on, and found CNN Headline News, in English.
Now for my next trick. How the hell do I get the word in? he wondered. He
didn’t dare use the fax machine to America. Even the Washington Interfax
office was far too grave a risk, the one in Moscow didn’t have the encryption
gear needed, and he couldn’t go through the Embassy’s CIA connection ei-
ther. There was one set of rules for operating in a friendly country, and an-
other for a hostile one, and nobody had expected the rules that made the rules
to change without warning. That he and other CIA officers should have pro-
vided forewarning of the event was just one more thing to anger the experi-
enced spy; the congressional hearings on that one were sure to be
entertaining if he lived long enough to enjoy them. The only good news was
that he had the name of a probable suspect in the murder of Kimberly Nor-
ton. That, at least, gave him something to fantasize about, and his mind had
little other useful activity to undertake at the moment. At the half-hour it was