“Does our friend Mr. Clark require any more guidance from us?” Werner asked.
“Hey, he’s on our side, remember?”
“He’s a good guy, yes. Hell, Dan, I met with him while they were setting Rainbow up, and I let him have one of our best troops in Timmy Noonan, and I’ll grant you he’s done a great job-three of them so far. But he’s not one of us, Dan. He doesn’t think like a cop, but if he wants better intel, that’s what he has to do. Tell him that, will ya?”
“I will, Gus,” Murray promised. Then they moved on to other things.
“So what are we supposed to do?” Stanley asked. “Shoot the bloody guns out of their hands? That only happens in the cinema, John.”
“Weber did exactly that, remember?”
“Yes, and that was against policy, and we damned well can’t encourage it,” Alistair replied.
“Come on, Al, if we want better intelligence information, we have to capture some alive, don’t we?”
“Fine, if possible, which it rarely will be, John. Blood rarely.”
“I know,” Rainbow Six conceded. “But can we at least get the boys to think about it?”
“It’s possible, but to make that sort of decision on the fly is difficult at best.”
“We need the intel, Al,” Clark persisted.
“True, but not at the cost of death or injury to one of our men.”
“All things in life are a compromise of some sort,” Rainbow Six observed. “Would you like to have some hard intelligence information on these people?”
“Of course, but-”
“‘But,’ my ass. If we need it, let’s figure a way to get it,” Clark persisted.
“We’re not police constables, John. That is not part of our mission.”
“Then we’re going to change the mission. If it becomes possible to take a subject alive, then we’ll give it a try. You can always shoot’em in the head if it’s not. The guy Homer took with that gut shot. We could have taken him alive, Al. He wasn’t a direct threat to anyone. Okay, he deserved it, and he was standing out in the open with a weapon, and our training said kill, and sure enough, Johnston took the shot, and decided to make a statement of his own because he wanted to-but it would have been just as easy to take out his kneecap, in which case we’d have somebody to talk to now, and maybe he would have sung like most of them do, and then maybe we’d know something we’d sure as hell like to know now, wouldn’t we?”
“Quite so, John,” Stanley conceded. Arguing with Clark wasn’t easy. He’d come to Rainbow with the reputation of a CIA knuckle dragger, but that’s not what he was at all, the Brit reminded himself.
“We just don’t know enough, and I don’t like not knowing enough about the environment. I think Ding’s right. Somebody’s setting these bastards loose. If we can figure out a little about that, then maybe we can locate the guy and have the local cops put the bag on him wherever he is, and then maybe we can have a friendly little chat and maybe the ultimate result will be fewer incidents to go out and take risks on.” The ultimate goal of Rainbow was an odd one, after all: to train for missions that rarely-if ever-came, to be the fire department in a town with no fires.
“Very well, John. We should talk with Peter and Domingo about it first of all, I think.”
“Tomorrow morning, then.” Clark stood from his desk. “How about a beer at the club?”
“Dmitriy Arkadeyevich, I haven’t seen you in quite some time,” the man said.
“Four years,” Popov confirmed. They were in London, at a pub three blocks from the Russian Embassy. He’d taken the train here just on the off chance that one of his former colleagues might show up, and so one had, I van Petrovich Kirilenko. Ivan Petrovich had been a rising star, a few years younger than Popov, a skilled field officer who’d made full colonel at the age of thirty-eight. Now, he was probably
“You are the rezident for Station London now?”
“I am not allowed to say such things, Dmitriy.” Kirilenko smiled and nodded even so. He’d come very far and very fast in a downsized agency of the Russian government, and was doubtless still actively pursuing political and other intelligence, or rather, had a goodly staff of people to do it for him. Russia was worried about NATO expansion; the alliance once so threatening to the Soviet Union was now advancing eastward toward his country’s borders, and some in Moscow worried, as they were paid to worry, that this could be the precursor to an attack on the Motherland. Kirilenko knew this was rubbish, as did Popov, but even so he was paid to make sure of it. and the new rezident was doing his job as instructed. “So, what are you doing now?”
“I am not permitted to say.” Which was the obvious reply. It could mean anything, but in the context of their former organization, it meant that Popov was still a player of some sort. What sort, Kirilenko didn’t know, though lied heard that Dmitriy Arkadeyevich had been RIF’d from the organization. That had been a surprise to him.
Popov still enjoyed an excellent service reputation as a field spook. “I am living between worlds now, Vanya. I work for a commercial business, but I perform other duties as well,” he allowed. The truth was so often a useful tool, in the service of lies.
“You did not appear here by accident,” Kirilenko pointed out.
“True. I hoped to see a colleague here.” The pub was too close to the Embassy on Palace Green, Kensington, for serious work, but it was a comfortable place, for casual meets, and besides, Kirilenko believed his status as rezident to be entirely secret. Showing up in a place like this enhanced that. No real spook, everybody knew, would take the chance. “I need some help with something.”
“What might that be?” the intelligence officer asked, over a sip of bitter.
“A report on a CIA officer who is probably known to us.”
“The name?”
“John Clark.”
“Why?”
“He is now, I believe, the leader of a black operation based here in England. I would like to offer the information I have on the man in return for whatever information you might have. I can perhaps add a few things to that dossier. I believe my information will be of interest,” Popov concluded mildly. In context, it was a large promise.
“John Clark,” Kirilenko repeated. “I will see what I can do for you. You have my number?”
Popov slipped a piece of paper on the bar unseen. “Here is my number. No. Do You have a card?”
“Certainly.” The Russian pocketed the scrap of paper and pulled out his wallet and handed the card over. I. P. Kirilenko, it said, Third Secretary, Russian Embassy, London. 0181-567-9008, with -9009 as the fax number. Popov pocketed the card. “Well, I must get back. Good to see you, Dmitriy.” The rezident set his glass down and walked out onto the street.
“Get the picture?” one “Five” man said to the other on the way out the door, about forty seconds behind their surveillance target.
“Well not good enough for the National Portrait Gallery, but . . .” The problem with covert cameras was that the lenses were too small to make a really good photo. They were usually good enough for identification purposes, however, and he’d gotten eleven exposures, which. combined with computer-enhancement, should be entirely adequate. Kirilenko, they knew, thought his cover to be adequate. He didn’t and couldn’t know that “Five,” once called MI5, and now officially called the Security Service. had its own source inside the Russian Embassy. The Great Game was still ongoing in London and elsewhere, new world order or not. They hadn’t caught Kirilenko in a compromising act yet, but he was the rezident, after all, and therefore not given to such action. But you tracked such people anyway, because you knew who they were, and sooner or later, you got something on them, or from them. Like the chap he’d just had a beer with. Not a regular for this pub-they knew who they were. No name. Just some photos that would be compared with the library of photos at “Five’s” new headquarters building, Thames House, right on the river near Lambeth Bridge.
Popov stepped outside, turned left, and walked past Kensington Palace to catch a cab to the train station. Now, if only Kirilenko could get him something of use. He should be able to. He’d offered something juicy in return.
CHAPTER 19
SEARCHING
Three of the winos died that day, all from internal bleeds in the upper GI. Killgore went down to check them. Two had died in the same hour, the third five hours later, and the morphine had helped them expire either unconscious or in a painless, merciful stupor. That left five out of the original ten, and none of them would see the end of the week. Shiva was every bit as deadly as they’d hoped, and, it would seem, just as communicable as Maggie had promised. Finally, the delivery system worked. That was proven by Mary Bannister, Subject F4, who’d just moved into the treatment center with the onset of frank symptoms. So, the Shiva Project was fully successful to this point. Everything was nominal to the test parameters and the experimental predictions.