“Your chaps are reticent about doing so. I am less so. It’s easy enough to have an embassy functionary have a pint with some reporter and maybe drop the odd hint in the course of a conversation. One thing about reporters, they are not ungracious if you give them the odd decent story.”
“At Langley, they hate the press, Sir Basil. And I do mean hate.”
“Rather backward of them. But, then, we can exercise more control over the press here than you can in America, I suppose. Still and all, it’s not that hard to outsmart them, is it?”
“I’ve never tried. Admiral Greer says that talking to a reporter is like dancing with a rottweiler. You can’t be sure if he’s going to lick your face or rip your throat out.”
“They’re not bad dogs at all, you know. You just need to train them properly.”
Brits and their dogs, Ryan reflected. They like their pets more than their kids. He didn’t care for big dogs all that much. A Labrador like Ernie was different. Labs had a soft mouth. Sally really missed him.
“So, what’s your take on Poland, Jack?”
“I think the pot’s going to simmer until the lid slides off, and then when it boils over, there’s going to be a hell of a mess. The Poles haven’t really bought into communism all that well. Their army has chaplains, for Christ’s sake. A lot of their farmers operate on a free-agent basis, selling hams and stuff. The most popular TV show over there is Kojak, they even show it on Sunday morning to draw people away from going to church. That shows two things. The people there like American culture, and the government is still afraid of the Catholic Church. The Polish government is unstable, and they know they’re unstable. Allowing a little wiggle room is probably smart, at least in the short term, but the fundamental problem is that they operate a fundamentally unjust regime. Unjust countries are not stable, sir. However strong they appear, they’re rotten underneath.”
Charleston nodded thoughtfully. “I briefed the PM just three days ago out at Chequers, and told her much the same thing.” The Director General paused for a moment, then decided. He lifted a file folder from the pile on his desk and handed it across.
The cover read MOST SECRET. So, Jack thought, now it starts. He wondered if Basil had learned to swim by falling into the Thames, and thought everyone should learn the same way.
Flipping the cover open, he saw that this information came from a source called WREN. He was clearly Polish, and by the look of the report, well placed, and what he said—
“Damn,” Ryan observed. “This is reliable?”
“Very much so. It’s a five-five, Jack.” By that he meant that the source was rated 5 on a scale of 5 for reliability, and the importance of the information reported was graded the same way. “You’re Catholic, I think.” He knew, of course. It was just the English way of talking.
“Jesuits at high school, Boston College, and Georgetown, plus the nuns at Saint Matthew’s. I’d better be.”
“What do you think of your new Pope?”
“First non-Italian in four centuries, maybe more: That’s saying something right there. When I heard the new one was Polish, I expected it to be Cardinal Wiszynski from Warsaw—guy’s got the brains of a genius and the cunning of a fox. This guy, I didn’t know beans about, but from what I’ve read since, he’s a very solid citizen. Good parish priest, good administrator, politically very astute…” Ryan paused. He was discussing the head of his church as though he were a political candidate, and he was damned sure there was more substance to him than that. This had to be a man of deep faith, with the sort of core convictions that an earthquake couldn’t budge or crack. He’d been chosen by other such men to be the leader and spokesman for the world’s largest church, which, by the way, also happened to be Ryan’s church. He’d be a man who didn’t fear much of anything, a man for whom a bullet was his get-out-of-jail-free card, a key to God’s own presence. And he’d be a man who felt God’s presence in everything he did. He was not someone you could scare, not someone you could turn away from what he deemed the right thing.
“If he wrote this letter, Sir Basil, it’s not a bluff. When was it delivered?”
“Less than four days ago. Our chap broke a rule getting it to us so quickly, but its importance is patently clear, is it not?”
Welcome to London, Jack, Ryan thought. He’d just fallen into the soup. A big pot, like they used to boil missionaries in the cartoons.
“Okay, it’s been forwarded to Moscow, right?”
“So our chap tells us. So, Sir John, what will Ivan have to say about this?” And with that question, Sir Basil Charleston lit the fire under Jack’s personal cauldron.
“That’s a multifaceted question,” Ryan said, dodging as artfully as the situation allowed.
It wasn’t very far: “He will say something,” Charleston observed, leveling his hazel eyes at Ryan.
“Okay, they won’t like it. They will see it as a threat. The questions are how seriously they will take it and how much credence they will attach to it. Stalin might have laughed it off… or maybe not. Stalin defined paranoia, didn’t he?” Ryan paused and looked out the windows. Was that a rain cloud blowing in? “No, Stalin would have acted somehow.”
“Think so?” Charleston was evaluating him, Jack knew. This was like the orals for his doctorate at Georgetown. Father Tim Riley’s rapier wit and needlepoint questions. Sir Basil was more civilized than the acerbic priest, but this exam was not going to be an easy one.
“Leon Trotsky was no threat to him. That assassination came from a combination of paranoia and pure meanness. It was a personal thing. Stalin made enemies, and he never forgot them. But the current Soviet leadership doesn’t have the guts to do the stuff he did.”
Charleston pointed out the plate glass window toward Westminster Bridge. “My lad, the Russians had the intestinal fortitude to kill a man right on that bridge, less than five years ago—”
“And got blamed for it,” Ryan reminded his host. It had been a combination of good luck and a very smart British doctor, and it hadn’t been worth a damn in saving the poor bastard’s life. They had identified the cause of death, though, and it hadn’t resulted from a street hood.
“Think they lost any sleep over that incident? I do not,” C assured him.
“Looks bad. They don’t do much of this anymore, not that I’ve heard about.”
“Only at home, I grant you that. But Poland is ‘home’ for them, well within their sphere of influence.”
“But the Pope lives in Rome, and that isn’t. It comes down to how scared they are, sir. Father Tim Riley at Georgetown, back when I got my doctorate, he said never to forget that wars are begun by frightened men. They fear war, but more than that, they fear what will happen if they don’t start one—or take equivalent action, I suppose. So, the real questions are, as I said, how seriously they will take the threat and how serious it will appear to them. On the former, yes, I don’t think this is a bluff. The Pope’s character, background, and personal courage—those are not things to be doubted. So the threat is a real one. The larger question is how to evaluate the magnitude of the threat to them…”
“Go on,” the Director General ordered gently.
“If they’re smart enough to recognize it—yes, sir, in their position, I’d be concerned about it… maybe even a little frightened. As much as the Soviets think they’re a superpower—America’s equal and all that—deep down they know that their state is not really legitimate. Kissinger gave a lecture to us at Georgetown… “Jack leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment to recapture the performance. “It was something he said near the end, talking about the character of the Russian leaders. Brezhnev was showing him around some official building or other in the Kremlin, where Nixon was going to come for his last summit meeting. He was lifting cloth covers off the statuary, showing how they’d taken the time to clean everything up in preparation for the visit. Why do that, I wondered at the time. I mean, sure, they have maids and maintenance people. Why make a point of showing it to Henry? It has to be a sense of inferiority, fundamental insecurity. We keep hearing that they’re ten feet tall, but I don’t think so, and the more I learn about them, the less formidable I think they are. The Admiral and I have argued this one back and forth for the last couple of months. They have a large military. Their intelligence services are first-rate. They are big. Big ugly bear, like Muhammad Ali used to say, but you know, Ali beat the bear twice, didn’t he?