“I was asleep, and they didn’t make videos of the operations—but you know, Cathy would probably be interested in seeing all three of them.”
“Three?”
“Yeah, two when I was in the Marines. They stabilized me on the ship, then flew me to Bethesda for the rest of it—I was asleep practically the whole time, thank God, but the neurosurgeons there weren’t quite good enough, and that left me with a bad back. Then, when Cathy and I were dating—no, we were engaged then—my back blew up again over dinner in Little Italy, and she took me into Hopkins and had Sam Rosen take a look at me. Sam fixed it all up. Good guy, and a hell of a doc. You know, sometimes it’s nice to be married to a doctor. She knows some of the best people in the world.” Ryan took a big bite of turkey and baguette. It was better than the burgers in the CIA cafeteria. “Anyway, that’s the short version of a three-year adventure that started with a broke helicopter on Crete. It ended up with me being married, so I guess it all worked out okay.”
Harding filled his pipe out of a leather pouch and lit it. “So, how’s your report coming on Soviet management and practices?”
Jack set his beer down. “It’s amazing how screwed up they are, especially when you compare their internal documents with the hard data we learn when our guys get hands-on with their gear. What they call quality control, we call a dog’s breakfast. At Langley, I saw some stuff on their fighter planes that the Air Force got, mainly through the Israelis. The goddamned parts don’t fit together! They can’t even cut aluminum sheets into regular shapes. I mean, a high-school kid in shop class would have to do better or flunk out of school. We know they have competent engineers, especially the guys who work in theoretical stuff, but their manufacturing practices are so primitive that you’d expect better from third-graders.”
“Not in all areas, Jack,” Harding cautioned.
“And not all the Pacific Ocean’s blue, Simon. There are islands and volcanoes, sure. I know that. But the rule is the ocean is blue, and the rule in the Soviet Union is shitty work. The problem is that their economic system doesn’t reward people for doing good work. There’s a saying in economics: ‘Bad money drives out good.’ That means poor performance will take over if good performance isn’t recognized. Well, over there, mainly it isn’t, and for their economy it’s like cancer. What happens in one place gradually carries over to the whole system.”
“There are some things at which they are very good indeed,” Harding persisted.
“Simon, the Bolshoi Ballet isn’t going to attack into West Germany. Neither is their Olympic team,” Jack retorted. “Their military may be competently led at the higher levels, but their equipment is crummy, and the middle-level management is practically nonexistent. Without my gunnery sergeant and my squad leaders, I could not have used my platoon of Marines efficiently, but the Red Army doesn’t have sergeants as we understand them. They have competent officers—and, again, some of their theoretical people are world- class—and their soldiers are probably patriotic Russians and all that, but without proper training at the tactical level, they’re like a beautiful car with flat tires. The engine might turn over and the paint job might shine, but the car isn’t going anywhere.”
Harding took a few contemplative puffs. “Then what are we worried about?”
Jack shrugged. “There’s a hell of a lot of them, and quantity does have a quality all its own. If we go forward with our defense buildup, however, we can stop anything they try. A Russian tank regiment is just a collection of targets if we have the right equipment and our guys are properly trained and led. Anyway, that’s what my report is probably going to say.”
“It’s a little early for a conclusion,” Simon told his new American friend. Ryan hadn’t yet learned how a bureaucracy was supposed to work.
“Simon, I used to make my money in trading. You succeed in that business by seeing things a little faster than the next guy, and that means you don’t wait until you have every last little crumb of information. I can see where this information is pointing me. It’s bad over there, and it’s getting worse. Their military is a distillation of what is good and bad in their society. Look at how badly they’re doing in Afghanistan. I haven’t seen your data, but I’ve seen what they have at Langley, and it isn’t pretty. Their military is performing very poorly in that rockpile.”
“I think they will ultimately succeed.”
“It’s possible,” Jack conceded, “but it’ll be an ugly win. We did a lot better in Vietnam.” He paused. “You guys have ugly memories of Afghanistan, don’t you?”
“My great-uncle was therein 1919. He said it was worse than the Battle of the Somme. Kipling did a poem that ends with an instruction to a soldier to blow his brains out rather than be captured there. I’m afraid some Russians have learned that lesson, to their sorrow.”
“Yeah, the Afghans are courageous, but not overly civilized,” Jack agreed. “But I think they’re going to win. There’s talk at home about giving them the Stinger SAM. That would neutralize the helicopters the Russians are using, and without those, Ivan’s got a problem.”
“Is the Stinger that good?”
“Never used it myself, but I’ve heard some nice things about it.”
“And the Russian SAM-seven?”
“They kind of invented the idea of a man-portable SAM, didn’t they? But we got a bunch through the Israelis in seventy-three, and our guys weren’t all that impressed. Again, Ivan had a great idea, then couldn’t execute it properly. That’s their curse, Simon.”
“Then explain KGB to me,” Harding challenged.
“Same as the Bolshoi Ballet and their ice hockey teams. They load a lot of talent and money into that agency, and they get a fair return for it—but they have a lot of spooks skip over the wall, too, don’t they?”
“True,” Simon had to concede.
“And why, Simon?” Jack asked. “Because they fill their heads with how corrupt and messed up we are, and then when their people get here and look around, it isn’t all that bad, is it? Hell, we have safe houses all over America with KGB guys in them, watching TV. Not many of them decide to go home, either. I’ve never met a defector, but I’ve read a lot of transcripts, and they all say pretty much the same thing. Our system is better than theirs, and they’re smart enough to tell the difference.”
“We have some living here as well,” Harding admitted. He didn’t want to admit that the Russians also had a few Brits—nowhere near as many, just enough to be a considerable embarrassment to Century House. “You’re a hard man to debate, Jack.”
“I just speak the truth, buddy. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”
“That’s the theory,” Harding had to admit. This Ryan fellow would never be a bureaucrat, the Brit decided, and wondered if that was a good thing or bad. The Americans took a different slant on things, and the contrast to his own organization’s take was entertaining, at least. Ryan had a lot to learn… but he also had a few things to teach, Harding realized. “How’s your book coming along?”
Ryan’s face changed. “Haven’t gotten much work done lately. I do have my computer set up. Hard to concentrate on that after a full day here—but if I don’t make the time, the thing will never get done. At heart, I’m lazy,” Ryan admitted.
“Then how did you become rich?” Harding demanded. He got a grin.
“I’m also greedy. Gertrude Stein said it, pal: ‘I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. It’s better to be rich.’ Truer words have never been spoken.”
“I must discover that for myself someday,” the British civil servant observed.
Oops, Ryan thought. Well, it wasn’t his fault, was it? Simon was smart enough to make money in the real world, but he didn’t seem to think in those terms. It made good sense to have a smart guy here in the analyst pool at Century House, even though that meant sacrificing his own well-being for his country. But that was not a bad thing, and Ryan reflected that he was doing it, too. His advantage was that he’d made his money up front and could afford to kiss this job off and go back to teaching whenever the urge struck him. It was a sort of independence that most government employees would never know… And their work probably suffered because of it, Jack thought.
ZAITZEV MADE HIS WAY out past the various security checkpoints. Some people were frisked at random by the guards to make sure that they weren’t taking anything out with them, but the checks—he’d suffered through his share of them—were too cursory to be effective, he thought. Just enough to be a nuisance, and not regular enough to be a real threat—perhaps once in thirty days—and, if you got frisked one day, you knew you were safe for at least the next five or so, because the guards knew all the faces of the people they checked out, and even here there was human contact and friendly relationships among the employees, especially at the working level—a kind of blue-collar solidarity that was in some ways surprising. As it happened, Zaitzev was allowed to pass without inspection and made his way into the capacious square, then walked to the metro station.