this lunacy. Or maybe the people in Moscow had gone completely mad.
There was no telling. At least the tea was good.
Awaiting him in the embassy had been an enciphered message from Mos-
cow Center-that hadn’t changed-with names and detailed descriptions. It
made identification easy. Easier than understanding the orders he had.
“Vanya!” Scherenko nearly ran over, seizing the older man’s hand for a
hearty handshake, but forgoing the kiss that Russians are known for. That
was partly to avoid offending Japanese sensibilities and partly because the
American might slug him, passionless people that they were. Madness or
not, it was a moment to savor. These were two senior CIA officers, and
tweaking their noses in public was not without its humor. “It’s been so
long!”
The younger one, Scherenko saw, was doing his best to conceal his feel-
ings, but not quite well enough. KGB/RVS didn’t know anything about him.
But his agency did know the name John Clark. It was only a name and a
cursory description that could have fit a Caucasian male of any nationality.
One hundred eighty-five to one hundred ninety centimeters. Ninety kilos.
Dark hair. Fit. To that Scherenko added, blue eyes, a firm grip. Steady nerve.
Very steady nerve, the Major thought.
“Indeed it has. How is your family, my friend?”
Add excellent Russian to that, Scherenko thought, catching the accent of
St. Petersburg. As he cataloged the physical characteristics of the American,
he saw two sets of eyes, one blue, one black, doing the same to him.
“Natalia misses you. Come! I am hungry! Breakfast!” He led the other
two back to his corner booth.
“CLARK, JOHN (none?)”, the thin file in Moscow was headed. A name so
nondescript that other cover names were unknown and perhaps never as-
signed. Field officer, paramilitary type, believed to perform special covert
functions. More than two (2) Intelligence Stars for courage and/or profi-
ciency in field operations. Brief stint as a Security and Protective Officer,
during which time no one had troubled himself to get a photo, Scherenko
thought. Typical. Staring at him across the table now, he saw a man relaxed
and at ease with the old friend he’d met for the first time perhaps as much as
two minutes earlier. Well, he’d always known that CIA had good people
working for them.
“We can talk here,” Scherenko said more quietly, sticking to Russian.
“Is that so … ?”
“Scherenko, Boris Il’ych, Major, deputy rezident,” he said, finally intro-
ducing himself. Next he nodded to each of his guests. “You air John
Clark-and Domingo Chavez.”
“And this is the fucking Twilight Zone,” Ding muttered.
” ‘Plum blossoms bloom, and pleasure women buy new scarves in a
brothel room.’ Not exactly Pushkin, is it? Not even Pasternak. Arrogant little
barbarians.” He’d been in Japan for three years. He’d arrived expecting to
find a pleasant, interesting place to do business. He’d come to dislike many
aspects of Japanese culture, mainly the assumed local superiority to every-
thing else in the world, particularly offensive to a Russian who felt exactly
the same way.
“Would you like to tell us what this is all about, Comrade Major?” Clark
asked.
Scherenko spoke calmly now. The humor of the event was now behind
them all, not that the Americans had ever appreciated it. “Your Maria Pa-
tricia Foleyeva placed a call to our Sergey Nikolayevich Golovko, asking for
our assistance. I know that you are running another officer here in Tokyo,
but not his name. I am further instructed to tell you, Comrade Klerk, that
your wife and daughters are fine. Your younger daughter made the dean’s
list at her university again, and is now a good candidate for admission to
medical school. If you require further proof of my bonafides, I’m afraid I
cannot help you.” The Major noted a thin expression of pleasure on the
younger man’s face and wondered what that was all about.
Well, that settles that, John thought. Almost. “Well, Boris, you sure as
hell know how to get a man’s attention. Now, maybe you can tell us what the
hell is going on.”
“We didn’t see it either,” Scherenko began, going over all the high
points. It turned out that his data was somewhat better than what Clark had
gotten from Chet Nomuri, but did not include quite everything. Intelligence
was like that. You never had the full picture, and the parts left out were al-
ways important.
“How do you know we can operate safely?”
“You know that I cannot-”
“Boris Il’ych, my life is in your hands. You know I have a wife and two
daughters. My life is important to me, and to them,” John said reasonably,
making himself appear all the more formidable to the pro across the table. It
wasn’t about fear. John knew that he was a capable field spook, and Sche-
renko gave the same impression. “Trust” was a concept both central to and
alien from intelligence operations. You had to trust your people, and yet you
could never trust them all the way in a business where dualisms were a way
of life.
“Your cover works better for you than you think. The Japanese think that
you are Russians. Because of that, they will not trouble you. We can see to
that,” the deputy rezident told them confidently.
“For how long?” Clark asked rather astutely, Scherenko thought.
“Yes, there is always that question, isn’t there?”
“How do we communicate?” John asked.
“I understand that you require a high-quality telephone circuit.” He
handed a card under the table. “All of Tokyo is now fiberoptic. We have
several similar lines to Moscow. Your special communications gear is being
flown there as we speak. I understand it is excellent. I would like to see it,”
Boris said with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s just a ROM chip, man,” Chavez told him. “I couldn’t even tell you
which one it is.”
“Clever,” Scherenko thought.
“How serious are they?” the younger man asked him.
“They appear to have moved a total of three divisions to the Marianas.
Their navy has attacked yours.” Scherenko gave what details he knew. “I
should tell you that our estimate is that you will face great difficulties in
taking your islands back.”
“How great? “Clark asked.
The Russian shrugged, not without sympathy. “Moscow believes it un-
likely. Your capabilities are almost as puny as ours have become.”
And that’s why this is happening, Clark decided on the spot. That was why
he had a new friend in a foreign land. He’d told Chavez, practically on their
first meeting, a quote from Henry Kissinger: “Even paranoids have ene-
mies.” He sometimes wondered why the Russians didn’t print that on their
money, rather like America’s Epluribus unum. The hell of it was, they had a
lot of history to back that one up. And so, for that matter, did America.
“Keep talking.”
“We have their government intelligence organs thoroughly penetrated,
also their military, but THISTLE is a commercial network, and I gather you
have developed better data than I have. I’m not sure what that means.”
Which wasn’t strictly true, but Scherenko was distinguishing between what
he knew and what he thought; and, like a good spook, giving voice only to
the former for now.
“So we both have a lot of work to do.”
Scherenko nodded. “Feel free to come to the chancery.”
“Let me know when the communications gear gets to Moscow.” Clark
could have gone on, but held back. He wouldn’t be completely sure until he
got the proper electronic acknowledgment. So strange, he thought, that he
needed it, but if Scherenko was telling the truth about his degree of penetra-
tion in the Japanese government, then he could have been ‘ ‘flipped” him-
self. And old habits died especially hard in this business. The one
comforting thing was that his interlocutor knew that he was holding back,
and didn’t appear to mind for the moment.
“I will.”
ll didn’t take many people to crowd the Oval Office. The picmirt
room in what Ryan still hoped was the world’s most powerful nation was
smaller than the office he’d occupied during his return to the investment
business-and in fact smaller than his corner office in the West Winy,, Jack
rculi/.ed for the first time.
They were all tired. Brett Hanson was especially haggard. Only Arnie van
Durnm looked approximately normal, but, then, Arnie always looked as
(hough he were coming off a bender. Buzz Fiedler looked to be in something
close to despair. The Secretary of Defense was the worst of all, however. It
was he who had supervised the downsizing of the American military, who
hud told Congress almost on a weekly basis that our capabilities were far in
excess of our needs. Ryan remembered the testimony on TV, the internal
mcmos that dated back several years, the almost desperate objections by the
uniformed chiefs of staff which they had faithfully not leaked to the media.