to grasp it than for her husband.
“Sure enough, and it’s all on his honor as a spy,” Jack confirmed, quot-
ing the Russian’s words.
“I always did like his sense of humor,” the DDO said, getting her first
laugh of the day, and probably the last. “He’s studied us so hard that he’s
more American than Russian.”
Oh, Jack thought, that’s it. That explained Ed. The opposite was true of
him. A Soviet specialist for nearly all of his career, he was more Russian
than American. The realization occasioned his own smile.
“Thoughts?” the National Security Advisor asked.
“Jack, it gives them the ID of the only three humint assets we have on the
ground over there. Bad joss, man,” Edward Foley said.
“That’s a consideration,” Mary Patricia Foley agreed. “But there’s an-
other consideration. Those three assets are cut off. Unless we can communi-
cate with them, they might as well not be there. Jack, how serious is this
situation?”
“We are for all practical purposes at war, MP.” Jack had already relayed
the gist of the meeting with the Ambassador, including his parting comment.
She nodded. “Okay, they’re giving a war. Are we going to come?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan admitted. “We have dead people out there. We
have U.S. territory with another flag flying over it right now. But our ability
to respond effectively is severely compromised-and we have this little
problem at home. Tomorrow the markets and the banking system are going
to have to come to terms with some very unpleasant realities.”
“Interesting coincidence,” Ed noted. He was too old a hand in the intelli-
gence business to believe in coincidences. “What’s going to happen with
that stuff, Jack? You know a lot about it.”
“I don’t have a clue, guys. It’s going to be bad, but how bad, and how it’s
going to be bad . . . nobody’s been here before. I suppose the good news is
that things can’t fall further. The bad news is the mentality that goes with the
situation will be like a person trapped in a burning building. You may be safe
where you are, but you can’t get out, either.”
“What agencies are looking into things?” Ed Foley asked.
“Just about all of them. The Bureau’s the lead agency. It has the most
available investigators. The SEC is better suited to it, but they don’t have the
troops for something this big.”
“Jack, in a period of less than twenty-four hours, somebody leaked the
news on the Vice President”-he was in the Oval Office right now, they all
knew-“the market went in the crapper, and we had the attack on Pacific
Fleet, and you just told us the most harmful thing to us is this economic
thing. If I were you, sir-”
“I see your point,” Ryan said, cutting Ed off a moment too soon for a
complete picture. He made a few notes, wondering how the hell he’d be able
to prove anything, as complex as the market situation was. “Is anybody that
smart?”
“Lots of smart people in the world, Jack. Not all of them like us.” It was
very much like talking with Sergey Nikolay’ch, Ryan thought, and like
Golovko, Ed Foley was an experienced pro for whom paranoia was always a
way of life and often a tangible reality. “But we have something immediate
to consider here.”
“These are three good officers,” Mary Pat said, taking the ball from her
husband. “Nomuri’s been doing a fine job sliding himself into their society,
taking his time, developing a good network of contacts. Clark and Chavez
are as good a team of operators as we have. They have good cover identities
and they ought to be pretty safe.”
“Except for one thing,” Jack added.
“What’s that?” Ed Foley asked, cutting his wife off.
“The PSID knows they’re working.”
“Golovko?” Mary Pat asked. Jack nodded soberly. “That son of a
bitch,” she went on. “You know, they still are the best in the world.”
Which was not an altogether pleasant admission from the Deputy Director
(Operations) of the Central Intelligence Agency.
“Don’t tell me they have the head of Japanese counterintel under their
control?” her husband inquired delicately.
“Why not, honey? They do it to everybody else.” Which was true. “You
know, sometimes I think we ought to hire some of their people just to give
lessons.” She paused for a second. “We don’t have a choice.”
“Sergey didn’t actually come out and say that, but I don’t know how else
he could have known. No,” Jack agreed with the DDO, “we don’t really
have any choice at all.”
Even Ed saw that now, which was not the same as liking it. “What’s the
quid on this one?”
“They want everything we get out of THISTLE. They’re a little concerned
about this situation. They were caught by surprise, too, Sergey tells me.”
“But they have another network operating there. He told you that, too,”
MP observed. “And it has to be a good one, too.”
“Giving them the ‘take’ from THISTLE in return for not being hassled is
one thing-and a pretty big thing. This goes too far. Did you think this one
all the way through, Jack? It means that they’ll actually be running our peo-
ple for us.” Ed didn’t like that one at all, but on a moment’s additional con-
sideration, it was plain that he didn’t see an alternative either.
“Interesting circumstances, but Sergey says he was caught with his draw-
ers down. Go figure.” Ryan shrugged, wondering yet again how it was pos-
sible for three of the best-informed intelligence professionals in his country
not to be able to understand what was going on.
‘ ‘A lie on his part?” Ed wondered. “On the face of it, that doesn’t make a
whole lot of sense.”
“Neither does lying,” Mary Pat said. “Oh, I love these matryoshka puz-
zles. Okay, at least we know there are things we don’t know yet. That means
we have a lot of things to find out, the quicker the better. If we let RVS run
our people . . . it’s risky, Jack, but–damn, I don’t see that we have a
choice.”
“I tell him yes?” Jack asked. He had to get the President’s approval, too,
but that would be easier than getting theirs.
The Foleys traded a look and nodded.
An oceangoing commercial tug was located by a helicopter fifty miles from
the Enterprise formation, and in a remarkable set of circumstances, the frig-
ate Gary took custody of the barge and dispatched the tug to the carrier,
where she could relieve the Aegis cruiser, and, by the way, increase Big-E’s
speed of advance to nine knots. The tug’s skipper contemplated the magni-
tude of the fee he’d gainer under the Lloyd’s Open Form salvage contract,
which the carrier’s CO had signed and ferried back by helicopter. The typi-
cal court award was 10 to 15 percent of the value of the property salved. A
carrier, an air wing, and six thousand people, the tugboat crew thought.
What was 10 percent of three billion dollars? Maybe they’d be generous and
settle for five.
It was a mixture of the simple and the complex, as always. There were
now P-3C Orion patrol aircraft operating out of Midway to support the re-
treating battle force. It had taken a full day to reactivate the facilities at the
midocean atoll, possible only because there was a team of ornithologists
Ihcrc studying the goonies. The Orions were in turn supported In (‘ i »ns of
Ihc Hawaiian Air National Guard. However it had hap|>e!ied, the admiral
who still flew his flag on the crippled aircraft carrier could look at a radar
picture with four antisubmarine aircraft arrayed around his Heel and start In
feel a little safer. His outer ring of escorts were hammering the ocean with
their active sonars, and, after an initial period of near panic, finding nothing
much to worry about. He’d make Pearl Harbor by Friday evening, and
maybe with a little wind could get his aircraft off, further safeguarding them.
The crew was smiling now, Admiral Sato could see, as he headed down the
passageway. Only two days before, they’d been embarrassed and shamed by
the “mistake” their ship had made. But not now. He’d gone by ship’s heli-
copter to all four of the Kongos personally to deliver the briefings. Two days
away from the Marianas, they now knew what they had accomplished. Or at
least part of it. The submarine incidents were still guarded information, and
for the moment they knew that they had avenged a great wrong to their coun-
try, done so in a very clever way, allowing Japan to reclaim land that was
historically hers-and without, they thought, taking lives in the process. The
initial reaction had been shock. Going to war with America? The Admiral
had explained that, no, it was not really a war unless the Americans chose to