Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

his share of asses along the way-”

“And to make up for that, he has some bad habits with women,” MP

added. “There’s a lot of that over there. Our boy Nomuri sent in a lengthy

dispatch on what he’s seen.” It was the youth and inexperience, the DDO

knew. So many field officers on their first major assignment reported every-

thing, as though writing a book or something. It was mainly the product of

boredom.

‘ ‘Over here he couldn’t get elected dogcatcher,” Ed noted with a chuckle.

Think so? Ryan thought, remembering Edward Kealty. On the other hand,

it might just turn out to be something America could use in the right forum

and under the right circumstances. Maybe the first time they met, if things

went badly, President Burling could make a quiet reference to his former

girlfriend, and the implications of his bad habits on Japanese-American rela-

tions . . .

“How’s THISTLE doing?”

Mary Pat smiled as she rearranged the Sega games on the basement TV.

This was where the kids told Mario and all the others what to do. “Two of

the old members are gone, one retired and one on overseas assignment, in

Malaysia, as I recall. The rest of them are contacted. If we ever want to-”

“Okay, let’s think about what we want them to do for us.”

“Why?” MP asked. “I don’t mind, but why?”

“We’re pushing them too hard. I’ve told the President that, but he’s got

political reasons for pushing, and he isn’t going to stop. What we’re doing is

going to hurt their economy pretty bad, and now it turns out that their new

PM has a real antipathy to us. If they decide to push back, I want to know

before it happens.”

“What can they do?” Ed Foley sat on his son’s favorite Nintendo chair.

“I don’t know that, either, but I want to find out. Give me a few days to

figure out what our priorities are. Damn, I don’t have a few days,” Jack said

next. “I have to prep for the Moscow trip.”

“It takes time to set up anyway. We can get our boys the comm gear and

stuff.”

“Do it,” Jack ordered. “Tell ’em they’re in the spy business for-real.”

“We need presidential authorization for that,” Ed warned. Activating a

spy network in a friendly country was not a trivial undertaking.

“I can deliver it for you.” Ryan was sure that Durling wouldn’t object.

“And get the girl out, earliest opportunity.”

“Debrief her where?” MP asked. “For that matter, what if she says no?

You’re not telling us to kidnap her, are you?”

Ouch, Jack thought. “No, I don’t suppose that’s a good idea. They know

how to be careful, don’t they?”

“Clark does.” Mary Pat knew from what he’d taught her and her husband

at the Farm, all those years ago: No matter where you are, it’s enemy terri-

tory, ll was a good axiom for field spooks, but she’d always wondered where

he’d picked it up.

Most of these people should have been at work, Clark thought but so did

they, and that was the problem, wasn’t it? He’d seen his share of demonstra-

tions, most of them expressing displeasure with his country. The ones in Iran

had been especially unpleasant, knowing that there were Americans in the

hands of people who thought “Death to America!” was a perfectly reason-

able expression of concern with the foreign policy of his country. He’d been

in the field, part of the rescue mission that had failed-the lowest point,

Clark told himself, in a lengthy career. Being there to see it all fail, having to

scramble out of the country, they were not good memories. This scene

brought some of it back.

The American Embassy wasn’t taking it too seriously. Business as usual,

after a fashion, the Ambassador had all his people inside the embassy build-

ing, another example of Frank-Lloyd-Wright-Meets-the-Siegfried-Line de-

sign, this one located across from the Ocura Hotel. After all, this was a

civilized country, wasn’t it? The local police had an adequate guard force

outside the fence, and as vociferous as the demonstrators were, they didn’t

seem the sort to attack the severe-looking cops arrayed around the building.

But the people in the street were not kids, not students taking a day off from

class-remarkably, the media never reported that so many of those student

demonstrations coincided with semester finals, a worldwide phenomenon.

In the main, these were people in their thirties and forties, and for that reason

the chants weren’t quite right. There was a remarkably soft edge on the ex-

pressions. Embarrassed to be here, somewhat confused by the event, more

hurt than angry, he thought as Chavez snapped his pictures. But there were a

lot of them. And there was a lot of hurt. They wanted to blame someone-

the inevitable them, the someone else who always made the bad things hap-

pen. That perspective was not uniquely Japanese, was it?

As with everything in Japan, it was a highly organized affair. People, al-

ready formed into groups with leaders, had arrived mostly by crowded com-

muter trains, boarded buses at the stations, and been dropped off only a few

blocks away. Who chartered the buses? Clark wondered. Who printed the

signs? The wording on them was literate, which was odd, he was slow to

realize. Though often well schooled in English, Japanese citizens messed up

the foreign tongue as much as one might expect, especially on slogans. He’d

seen one young man earlier in the day wearing a T-shirt with the legend

” Inspire in Paradise,” probably an exact representation of something in Jap-

anese, and yet another example of the fact that no language translated pre-

cisely into another. But not these signs. The syntax was perfect in every case

he saw, better, in fact, than he might have seen in an American demonstra-

tion. Wasn’t that interesting?

Well, what the hell, he thought. I’m a journalist, right?

“Excuse me,” John said, touching a middle-aged man on the arm.

“Yes?” The man turned in surprise. He was nicely turned out, wore a

dark suit, and his tie was neatly knotted in the collar of his white shirt. There

wasn’t even much anger on his face, nor any emotion that might have built

up from the spirit of the moment. ‘ ‘Who are you?”

“I am a Russian journalist, for the Interfax News Agency,” Clark said,

showing an ID card marked in Cyrillic.

“Ah.” The man smiled and bowed politely. Clark returned the gesture

correctly, drawing an approving look for his good manners.

“May I please ask you some questions?”

‘ ‘Certainly.” The man almost seemed relieved to be able to stop shouting.

A few questions established that he was thirty-seven, married with one child,

a salaryman for an auto company, currently laid off, and very upset with

America at the moment-though not at all unhappy with Russia, he added

quickly.

He’s embarrassed by all this, John thought, thanking the man for his opin-

ion.

“What was that all about?” Chavez asked quietly from behind his cam-

era.

“Russkiy,” “Klerk” replied sharply.

“Da, tovarisch.”

“Follow me,” “Ivan Sergeyevich” said next, entering the crowd. There

was something else odd, he thought, something he wasn’t quite getting. Ten

meters into the crowd, it was clear. The people at the periphery of the mob

were supervisory. The inside was composed of blue-collar workers, more

casually dressed, people with less dignity to lose. Here the mood was differ-

ent. The looks he got were angrier, and though they became more polite

when he identified himself as a non-American, the suspicion was real, and

the answers to his questions, when he got answers, were less circumspect

than he’d received before.

In due course the people moved off, guided by their senior leadership and

shepherded by police to another place, one that had a stage prepared. That

was where things changed.

Hiroshi Goto took his time, making them wait a long time even for an

environment in which patience was a thoroughly inculcated virtue. He

walked to the podium with dignity, noting the presence of his official entou-

rage, arrayed in seats on the back of the stage. The TV cameras were already

in place, and it was just a matter of waiting for the crowd to pack in tight. But

he waited longer than that, standing there, staring at them, with his inaction

forcing them to pack in tighter, and the additional time merely added to the

tension.

Clark could feel it now. Perhaps the strangeness of the event was inevita-

ble. These were highly civilized people, members of a society so ordered as

to seem alien, whose gentle manners and generous hospitality contrasted

starkly with their suspicion of foreigners. Clark’s fear Mailed as a distant

whisper, a warning that something was changing, though his (rained powers

of observation caught nothing at all beyond the usual bullshit of politicians