“Do you know such people?” Henriksen asked pointedly.
“Yes, I can probably identify some. I met many in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, where they trained with other ‘progressive elements.’ And I have traveled to Ireland on occasion to deliver messages and money to support their activities. Those operations tied up large segments of the British Army, you see, and were, therefore, worthy of Soviet support as a distraction to a large NATO enemy.” Popov ended his discourse, looking at the other two men in the room. “What would you have them do?”
“It’s not so much a question of what as of how,” Bill told the Russian. “You know, when I was in the Bureau, we used to say that the IRA was composed of the best terrorists in the world, dedicated, smart, and utterly vicious.”
“I would agree with that assessment. They were superbly organized, ideologically sound, and willing to undertake nearly anything if it had a real political impact.”
“How would they view this mission?”
“What mission is that?” Dmitriy asked, and then Bill explained his basic mission concept. The Russian listened politely and thoughtfully before responding: “That would appeal to them, but the scope and the dangers are very large.”
“What would they require to cooperate?”
“Money and other support, weapons, explosives, the things they need to carry on their operations. The current faction-fighting has probably had the effect of disrupting their logistical organization. That’s doubtless how the peace faction is trying to control the continued-violence faction, simply by restricting their access to weapons. Without that, they cannot take physical action, and cannot therefore enhance their own prestige. So, if you offer them the wherewithal to conduct operations, they will listen seriously to your plan.”
“Money?”
“Money allows one to purchase things. The factions with which we would deal have probably been cut off from regular funding sources.”
“Which are?” Brightling asked.
“Drinking clubs, and what you call the ‘protection racket,’ yes?”
“That’s right,” Henriksen confirmed with a nod. “That’s how they get their money, and that source is probably well controlled by the peace factions.”
“So, then, how much do you think, Dmitriy?” John Brightling asked.
“Several million dollars, I should say, at the least, that is.”
“You’ll have to be very careful laundering it,” Bill warned their boss. “I can help.”
“Call it five million?. . .”
“That should be enough,” Popov said, after a moment’s reflection, “plus the psychological attraction of bearding the lion so close to his own den. But I can offer no promises. These people make their own decisions, for their own reasons.”
“How quickly could you arrange the meeting
“Two days, perhaps three, after I arrive in Ireland,” Popov answered. “Get your tickets,” Brightling told him decisively.
“One of them did some talking before he deployed,” Tawney said. “His name was Rene. Before he set off to Spain, he chatted with a girlfriend. She had an attack of conscience and came in on her own. The French interviewed her yesterday.”
“And?” Clark asked.
“And the purpose of the mission was to free Carlos, but he said nothing to her about their being assigned the mission by anyone. In fact he said little, though the interview did develop the name of another participant in the mission, or so our French colleagues think. They’re running that name down now. The woman in question-well, he and she had been friends, lovers, for some time, and evidently he confided in her. She came to the police on her own because of the dead Dutch child. The Paris papers have made a big show of that, and it evidently troubled her conscience. She told the police that she tried to talk him out of the job-not sure that I believe that-and that he told her that he’d think about it. Evidently he didn’t follow through on that, but the French are now wondering if someone might have opted out. They’re sweeping up the usual suspects for a chat. Perhaps they’ll turn up something,” Tawney concluded hopefully.
“That’s all?” Clark asked.
“It’s quite a lot, really,” Peter Covington observed. “It’s rather more than we had yesterday, and it allows our French friends to pursue additional leads.”
“Maybe,” Chavez allowed. “But why did they go out? Who’s turning these bastards loose?”
“Anything from the other two incidents?” Clark asked.
“Not a bloody peep,” Tawney replied. “The Germans have rattled every bush. Cars were seen going in and out of the Furchtner/Dortmund house, but she was an artist, and they might well have been buyers of her paintings. In any case, no vehicle descriptions, much less license-plate numbers. That is dead, unless someone else walks into a police station and makes a statement.”
“Known associates?” Covington asked.
“All interviewed by the BKA, with no results. Hans and Petra were never known for talking. The same was true of Model and Guttenach.” Tawney waved his hands in frustration.
“It’s out there, John,” Chavez said. “I can feel it.”
“I agree,” Covington said with a nod. “But the trick’s getting our hands on it.”
Clark frowned mightily, but he knew the drill, too, from his time in the field. You wanted information to develop, but merely wanting it never made it happen. Things like that just came to you when they decided to come. It was that simple, and that maddening, especially when you knew it was there and you knew that you needed it. With one small bit of information, Rainbow could turn some national police force loose and sweep up the person or persons they wanted and grill them over a slow fire until they got what they needed. The French or the Germans would be best-neither of them had the legal restrictions that the Americans and Brits had placed on their police forces. But that wasn’t a good way to think, and the FBI usually got people to spill their guts, even though they treated all criminals with white kid gloves. Even terrorists, once caught, usually told what they knew-well, not the Irish, John remembered. Some of those bastards wouldn’t say “boo,” not even their own names. Well, there were ways of handling that level of recalcitrance. It was just a matter of speaking to them outside of police view, putting the fear of God, and of pain, into them. That usually worked – had always worked in John Clark’s experience. But first you needed somebody to talk to. That was the hard part.
As a field officer of the CIA he’d often enough been in distant, uncomfortable places on a mission, then had the mission aborted or just as bad, postponed-because some vital bit of information had been missing or lost. He’d seen three men and one woman die for that reason, in four different places, all of them behind the Iron Curtain. Four people, all of whose faces he’d known, lost, judicially murdered by their parent countries. Their struggle against tyranny had ultimately been successful, but they hadn’t lived to see it or enjoy the fruits of their courage, and it was part of Clark’s conscience that he remembered every single one of them and because of that he’d grown to hate the people who’d had the information he’d needed but had not been able to get out in time. So it was now. Ding was right. Somebody was calling these animals out of their lairs, and he wanted that somebody. Finding him or her would give them all manner of names and telephone numbers and addresses for the European police agencies to sweep up into one big bag, and so end much of the terrorism that still hung over Europe like a cloud. And that would be a hell of a lot better than sending his troopers out into the field with loaded guns.
Popov packed his bags. He was getting quite expert at this, the Russian told himself, and had learned to pack his shirts without their coming out of the bag wrinkled, which he’d never learned as a KGB officer. Well, the shirts were more expensive now, and he’d learned to take better care of them. The suitcases, however, reflected his previous occupation, and included some special pockets and compartments in which he could keep his “alternate” travel documents. These he kept with him at all times now. Should the whole project collapse of its own weight, he wanted to be able to disappear without a trace, and his three unused sets of documents should help in that. In the final extreme, he could access his Bern bank account and disappear back into Russia, though he had other plans for his future
-but he worried that greed might be clouding his judgment. Five million dollars. If he could bank that to himself, then he’d have the resources he needed to live in comfort forever, in virtually any place of his choosing, especially if lie invested it wisely. But how could he defraud the IRA out of the money detailed to them? Well, that might easily come to him. Then his eyes closed and he asked himself about greed. Was it indeed clouding his operational judgment? Was he taking an unnecessary chance, led along by his wish to have this huge amount of money? It was hard to be objective about one’s own motivations. And it was hard to be a free man now, not just one of thousands of field officers in the Committee for State Security, having to justify every single dollar, pound, or ruble he spent to the accountants at Number 2 Dzerzhinsky Square, the most humorless people in a singularly humorless agency.