But for damned sure, the Lord God didn’t approve of murder, and it was now Jack’s mission to stop one from happening, if that was possible. Certainly he wasn’t one to stand by and ignore it. A priest would have to limit himself to persuasion or, at most, passive interference. Ryan knew that if he saw a criminal drawing a bead on the Pope—or, for that matter, anyone else—and he had a gun in his hand, he wouldn’t hesitate more than a split second to interrupt the act with a pistol bullet of his own. Maybe that was just how he was made up, maybe it was the things he’d learned from his dad, maybe it was his training in the Green Machine, but for whatever reason, the use of physical force would not make him faint away—at least not until after he’d done the act. There were a few people in hell to prove that fact. And so Jack started the mental preparation for what he’d have to do, maybe, if the Bad Guys were in town and he saw them. Then it hit him that he wouldn’t even have to answer for it—not with diplomatic status. The State Department had the right to withdraw his protection under the Vienna Convention, but, no, not in a case like this they wouldn’t. So whatever he did could be a freebie, and that wasn’t so bad a deal, was it?
The Sharps took him out for dinner—just a neighborhood place, but the food was brilliant, renewed proof that the best Italian restaurants are often the little mom-and-pop places. Evidently, the Sharps ate there often, the staff was so friendly to them.
“Tom, what the hell are we going to do?” Jack asked openly, figuring that Annie had to know what he did for a living.
“Churchill called it KBO—keep buggering on.” He shrugged. “We do the best we can, Jack.”
“I suppose I’d feel a hell of a lot better with a platoon of Marines to back my play.”
“As would I, my boy, but one does the best one can with what one has.”
“Tommy,” Mrs. Sharp said. “What exactly are you two talking about?”
“Can’t say, my dear.”
“But you are CIA,” she said next, looking at Jack.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ryan confirmed. “Before that, I taught history at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, and before that I traded stocks, and before that I was a Marine.”
“Sir John, you’re the one who—”
“And I’ll never live it down, either.” Why the hell, Jack wondered, hadn’t he just kept his wife and daughter behind that tree on the Mall in London and let Sean Miller do his thing? Cathy would have gotten some pictures and that would have helped with the police, after all. No good—or dumb—deed ever went unpunished, he supposed. “And you can stop the Sir John stuff. I do not own a horse or a steel shirt.” And his only sword was the Mameluke that the Marine Corps gave to its officers upon graduation at Quantico.
“Jack, a knight is ceremonially one who will take up arms in protection of the sovereign. You’ve done that twice, if memory serves. You are, therefore, entitled to the honorific,” Sharp pointed out.
“You guys never forget, do you?”
“Not something like that, Sir John. Courage under fire is one of the things worth remembering.”
“Especially in nightmares, but in those the gun never works, and, yeah, sometimes I have them,” Jack admitted, for the first time in his life. “What are we doing tomorrow, Tom?”
“I have embassy work in the morning. Why don’t you scout the area some more, and I can join you for lunch.”
“Fair enough. Meet where?”
“Just inside the Basilica, to the right, is Michelangelo’s Pieta. Just there at one fifteen exactly.”
“Fair enough,” Jack agreed.
“SO, WHERE IS RYAN?” the Rabbit asked.
“Rome,” Alan Kingshot answered. “He’s looking into what you told us.” All of this day had been occupied with uncovering what he knew of KGB operations in the UK. It turned out to be quite a lot, enough that the three-man Security Service team had positively drooled as they took their notes. Ryan had been wrong, Kingshot thought over dinner. This fellow wasn’t a gold mine. No, he was Kimberly, and the diamonds just spilled out from his mouth. Zaitzev was relaxing a little more, enjoying his status. As well he might, Alan thought. Like the man who’d invented the computer chip, this Rabbit was set for life, all the carrots he could eat, and men with guns would protect his hole in the ground against all bears.
The Bunny, as he thought of her, had discovered Western cartoons today. She especially liked “Roadrunner,” immediately noting the similarity to the Russian “Hey, Wait a Minute,” and laughing through every one of them.
Irina, on the other hand, was rediscovering her love for the piano, playing the big Bosendorfer in the home’s music room, making mistakes but learning from them, and starting to recover her former skills, to the admiring looks of Mrs. Thompson, who’d never learned to play herself, but who’d found reams of sheet music in the house for Mrs. Zaitzev to try her hand at.
This family, Kingshot thought, will do well in the West. The child was a child. The father had tons of good information. The mother would breathe free and play her music to her heart’s content. They would wear their newfound freedom like a loose and comfortable garment. They were, to use the Russian word, kulturniy, or cultured people, fit representatives of the rich culture which had long predated communism. Good to know that not all defectors were alcoholic ruffians.
“LIKE A CANARY on amphetamines, Basil says,” Moore told his senior people in the den of his home. “He says this guy will give us more information than we can easily use.”
“Oh, yeah? Try us,” Ritter thought out loud.
“Indeed, Bob. When do we get him over here?” Admiral Greer asked.
“Basil asked for two more days to get him over. Say, Thursday afternoon. I’m having the Air Force send a VC-137 over. Might as well do it first class,” the Judge observed generously. It wasn’t his money, after all. “Basil’s alerted his people in Rome, by the way, just in case KGB is running fast on their operation to whack the Pope.”
“They’re not that efficient,” Ritter said with some confidence.
“I’d be careful about that, Bob,” the DDI thought out loud. “Yuriy Vladimirovich isn’t noted for his patience.” Greer was not the first man to make that observation.
“I know, but their system grinds slower than ours.”
“What about the Bulgarians?” Moore asked. “They think the shooter is a guy named Strokov, Boris Strokov. He’s probably the guy who killed Georgiy Markov on Westminster Bridge. Experienced assassin, Basil thinks.”
“It figures they’d use the Bulgars,” Ritter observed. “They’re the Eastern Bloc’s Murder Incorporated, but they’re still communists, and they’re chess players, not high-noon types. But we still haven’t figured out how to warn the Vatican. Can we talk to the Nuncio about this?”
They’d all had a little time to think through that question, and now it was time to face it again. The Papal Nuncio was the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States, Giovanni Cardinal Sabatino. Sabatino was a longtime member of the Pope’s own diplomatic service and was well regarded by the State Department’s career foreign-service officers, both for his sagacity and his discretion.
“Can we do it in such a way as not to compromise the source?” Greer wondered.
“We can say some Bulgarian talked too much—”
“Pick that fictional source carefully, Judge,” Ritter warned. “Remember, the DS has that special subunit. It reports directly to their Politburo, and they don’t write much down, according to what sources we have over there. Kinda like the commie version of Albert Anastasia. This Strokov guy is one of them, or so we have heard.”
“We could say their party chairman talked to a mistress. He has a few,” Greer suggested. The Director of Intelligence had all manner of information on the intimate habits of world leaders, and the Bulgarian party boss was a man of the people in the most immediate of senses. Of course, if this ever leaked, life might get difficult for the women in question, but adultery had its price, and the Bulgarian chairman was such a copious drinker that he might not remember to whom he’d (never) said what would be attributed to him. That might serve to salve their consciences a little. “Sounds plausible,” Ritter opined. “When could we see the Nuncio?” Moore asked. “Middle of the week, maybe?” Ritter suggested again. They all had a full week before them. The Judge would be on The Hill doing budget business until Wednesday morning.
“Where?” They couldn’t bring him here, after all. The churchman wouldn’t come. Too much potential unpleasantness if anyone noticed. And Judge Moore couldn’t go to the Nuncio. His face, also, was too well known by the Washington establishment.