Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

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.