“Timing, sir?”
“Three days should be about right,” Sir Basil thought out loud.
“Right.” Kingshot left the room.
C thought for a moment and decided it was time to warn the American. He punched another button on his phone. This took only a minute and a half.
“Yes, sir,” Ryan said, entering his office.
“Your trip to Budapest, three days from today—perhaps four, but more likely three.”
“Where do I leave from?”
“There’s a morning British Airways flight from Heathrow. You can leave from here, or just take a taxi from Victoria Station. You’ll be accompanied on the flight by one of our people, and met in Budapest by Andy Hudson, he’s our Chief of Station there. Good man. Runs a good little station.”
“Yes, sir,” Ryan said, not knowing what the hell else to say in preparation for his first field mission as a spook. Then it was time for a question. “What, exactly, is going to happen, sir?”
“I’m not sure yet, but Andy has good connections with local smugglers. I would expect him to arrange a crossing into Yugoslavia, and then home from there by commercial aircraft.”
Great. More fucking airplanes, Ryan thought. Couldn’t we take the train? But ex-Marines weren’t supposed to show fear. “Okay, I guess that works.”
“You may speak with our Rabbit—discreetly,” Charleston warned. “And then you’ll be allowed to sit in on our initial debriefing out in Somerset. Finally, I rather expect you’ll be one of the chaps to escort him back to the States, probably on U.S. Air Force transport out of RAF Bentwaters.”
Better and better, Jack thought. His hatred for flying was something he’d have to get over, and intellectually he knew that sooner or later he’d do it. It was just that he hadn’t quite gotten over it yet. Well, at least he wouldn’t be flying anywhere in a CH-46 with a fluky transmission. He drew the line there.
“My total time away from home?” And sleeping apart from my wife, Ryan thought.
“Four days, perhaps as many as seven. It depends on how things work out in Budapest,” C replied. “That is difficult to predict.”
NONE OF THEM had ever eaten at sixty miles per hour. The adventure for their little girl just got better and better. Dinner was adequate. The beef was about average for the Soviet Union, and so they could not be disappointed by it, along with potatoes and greens, and, of course, a carafe of vodka, one of the better brands, to erase the pain of travel. They were heading into the setting sun, now in country used exclusively for farming. Irina leaned across the table to cut the zaichik’s meat for her, watching their little angel eat her dinner, like the big girl she proclaimed herself to be, along with a glass of cold milk.
“So, looking forward to the trip now, my dear?” Oleg asked his wife.
“Yes, especially the shopping.” Of course.
Part of Oleg Ivan’ch was calm—in fact, the calmest he’d been in weeks. It was really happening. His treason—part of his consciousness thought of it that way—was under way. How many of his countrymen, he wondered—indeed, how many of his coworkers at The Centre—would take the chance if they had the courage to do so? You couldn’t know. He lived in a country and worked at an office where everyone concealed their inner thoughts. And at KGB, even the Russian custom of sanctifying especially close friendships by speaking things that could put you in prison, trusting that a true friend would never denounce you—no, a KGB officer didn’t do such things. KGB was founded on the dichotomous balance of loyalty and betrayal. Loyalty to the state and its principles, and betrayal of any who violated them. But since he didn’t believe in those principles anymore, he had turned to treason to save his soul.
And now the treason was under way. If the Second Chief Directorate knew of his plans, they would have been mad to allow him on this train. He could leave it at any intermediate stop—or just jump off the train when it slowed, approaching some preplanned point—and escape to Western hands, which could be waiting anywhere for him. No, he was safe, at least as long as he was on this train. And so he could be calm for now, and he’d let the days come as they would and see what happened. He kept telling himself that he was doing the right thing, and from that knowledge came his feeling, however illusory, of personal safety. If there were a God, surely He would protect a man on the run from evil.
DINNER IN THE Ryan house was spaghetti again. Cathy had a particularly good recipe for sauce—from her mom, who didn’t have a single drop of Italian blood in her veins—and her husband loved it, especially with good Italian bread, which Cathy had found at a local bakery in downtown Chatham. No surgery tomorrow, so they had wine with dinner. Time to tell her.
“Honey, I have to travel in a few days.”
“The NATO thing?”
“‘Fraid so, babe. Looks like three or four days—maybe a little more.”
“What’s it about, can you say?”
“Nope, not allowed.”
“Spook business?”
“Yep.” He was allowed to say that.
“What’s a spook?” Sally asked.
“It’s what daddy does,” Cathy said, without thinking.
“Spook, like in the Wizzerdaboz?” Sally went on.
“What?” her father asked.
“The Cowardly Lion says he believes in spooks, remember?” Sally pointed out.
“Oh, you mean the Wizard of Oz”, It was her favorite movie so far this year.
“That’s what I said, Daddy.” How could her daddy be so stupid?
“Well, no, Daddy isn’t one of those,” Jack told his daughter.
“Then why did Mommy say so?” Sally persisted. She has the makings of a good FBI agent, Jack thought at that moment.
It was Cathy’s turn. “Sally, Mommy was just making a joke.”
“Oh.” Sally went back to work on her pisghetti. Jack gave his wife a look. They couldn’t talk about his work in front of his daughter—not ever. Kids never kept secrets for more than five minutes, did they? So, he’d learned, never say anything in front of a kid that you didn’t want on the first page of The Washington Post. Everyone on Grizedale Close thought that John Patrick Ryan worked at the U.S. Embassy and was lucky enough to be married to a surgeon. They didn’t need to know that he was an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. Too much curiosity. Too many jokes.
“Three or four days?” Cathy asked.
“That’s what they tell me. Maybe a little longer, but not too much, I think.”
“Important?” Sally had gotten her inquisitive nature from her mother, Jack figured… and maybe a little bit from himself.
“Important enough that they’re throwing my ass on an airplane, yeah.” That actually worked. Cathy knew of her husband’s hatred for air travel.
“Well, you have your Valium prescription. Want a beta-blocker, too?”
“No thanks, babe, not this time.”
“You know, if you got airsick, it would be easier to understand.” And easier to treat, she didn’t have to add.
“Babe, you were there when my back went out, remember? I have some bad memories from flying. Maybe when we go home, we can take the boat,” he added, with some hope in his voice. But, no, it wouldn’t work out that way. It never did in the real world.
“Flying is fun,” Sally protested. She definitely got that from her mother.
TRAVEL IS INEVITABLY TIRING, and so the Zaitzev family was agreeably surprised to see their beds turned out when they got back to their compartments. Irina got her daughter changed into her little yellow nightgown with flowers on what would have been the bodice. She gave her parents the usual good-night kiss and climbed onto her bed all by herself—she insisted on doing that—and slid under the covers. Instead of sleeping, she propped her head on the pillow and looked out the window at the darkened countryside passing by. Just a few lights from buildings on the collective farms but, for all that, fascinating to the little girl.
Her mother and father left the connecting door partly open, lest she have a nightmare or other sudden need to get a reassuring hug. Before going to bed, Svetlana had looked under the bed to see if there might be a hiding place for a big black bear, and she was satisfied that no such hiding place existed. Oleg and Irina opened books and gradually nodded off to the rocking of the train.
“BEATRIX IS RUNNING,” Moore told Admiral Greer. “The Rabbit and his family are on the train, probably crossing into the Ukraine right about now.”
“I hate waiting like this,” the DDI observed. It was easier for him to admit it. He’d never gone into the field on an intelligence mission. No, his job had always been at a desk, looking over important information. It was times like this that reminded him of the simple pleasures of standing watch on a ship of war—mainly submarines, in his case—where you could look at wind and wave, feel the breeze on your face and, merely by speaking a few words, change the course and speed of your ship instead of waiting to see what the ocean and distant enemy might do to you. You had the illusion there of being master of your fate.