RYAN WAS WATCHING TV, trying to get used to the British sitcoms. He’d grown to like British humor—they’d invented Benny Hill, after all. That guy had to be mentally disabled to do some of the things he did—but the regular series TV took a little getting used to. The signals were just different, and though he spoke English as well as any American, the nuances here—exaggerated, of course, on TV—had a subtle dimension that occasionally slipped by him. But not his wife, Jack observed. His wife was laughing hard enough to gag, and at things he barely comprehended. Then came the trilling note of his STU in his upstairs den. He trotted upstairs to get it. It wouldn’t be a wrong number. Whoever had set his number up—British Telecom, a semiprivate corporation that did exactly what the government told it to do—would have chosen a number so far off the numerical trail that only an infant could dial his secure phone by mistake.
“Ryan,” he said, after his phone mated up with the one at the other end.
“Jack, Greer here. How’s Sunday evening in Jolly Old England?”
“It rained today. I didn’t get to cut the grass,” Ryan reported. He didn’t mind much. He hated cutting grass, having learned as a child that however much you sliced it down, the goddamned stuff just grew back in a few days to look scraggly again.
“Well, here the Orioles are leading the White Sox five-two after six innings. I think your team looks good for the pennant.”
“Who in the National League?”
“If I had to bet, I’d say the Phillies all the way, my boy.”
“I got a buck says you’re wrong, sir. My O’s look good from here.” Which isn’t there, damn it. Since losing the Colts, he’d transferred his loyalty to baseball. The game was more interesting, tactically speaking, though lacking the manly combat of NFL football. “So, what’s happening in Washington on a Sunday afternoon, sir?”
“Just wanted to give you a heads-up. There’s a signal on its way to London that’s going to involve you. New tasking. It’ll take maybe three or four days.”
“Okay.” It perked his interest, but he’d have to see what it was before he got overly excited about it. Probably some new analysis that they wanted him for. Those were usually economics, because the Admiral liked his way of working through the numbers games. “Important?”
“Well, we’re interested in what you can do with it” was all the DDI wanted to say.
This guy must teach foxes how to outsmart dogs and horses. Good thing he wasn’t a Brit. The local aristocracy would shoot him for ruining their steeplechases, Ryan told himself. “Okay, sir, I’ll be looking for it. I don’t suppose you can give me a play-by-play?” he asked with a little hope in his voice.
“That new shortstop—Ripken, is it?—just doubled down the left-field line, drove in run number six, one out, bottom of the seventh.”
“Thank you for that, sir. It beats Fawlty Towers.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s what they call a comedy over here, Admiral. It’s funny if you can understand it.”
“Brief me in next time I come over,” the DDI suggested.
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Family okay?”
“We’re all just fine, sir, thank you for asking.”
“Okay. Have a good one. See ya.”
“What was that?” Cathy asked in the living room.
“The boss. He’s sending me something to work on.”
“What exactly?” She never stopped trying.
“He didn’t say, just a heads-up that I have something new to play with.”
“And he didn’t tell you what it was?”
“The Admiral likes his surprises.”
“Hmph” was her response.
THE COURIER SETTLED into his first-class seat. The package in his carry-on bag was tucked under the seat in front, and he had a collection of magazines to read. Since he was covert, not an official diplomatic courier, he could pretend to be a real person, a disguise that he’d shed at Heathrow’s Terminal Four immigration desk, there to catch an embassy car for the ride into Grosvenor Square. Mainly he looked forward to a nice pub and some Brit beer before he flew back home in a day and a half. It was a waste of talent and training for the newly hatched field officer, but everyone had to pay his dues, and this, for a guy fresh out of The Farm, was just that. He consoled himself with the thought that whatever it was, it had to be a little bit important. Sure, Wilbur. If it were all that important, he’d be on the Concorde.
ED FOLEY WAS sleeping the sleep of the just. The next day, he’d find an excuse to head over to the British Embassy and have a sit-down with Nigel and plan the operation. If that went well, he’d wear his reddest tie and take the message from Oleg Ivan’ch, set up the next face-to-face and go for ward with the operation. Who is it, he wondered, who the KGB is trying to kill? The Pope? Bob Ritter had his knickers in a twist over that. Or somebody else? The KGB had a very direct way of dealing with people it didn’t like. CIA did not. They hadn’t actually killed anyone since the fifties, when President Eisenhower had used CIA—actually quite skillfully—as an alternative to employing uniformed troops in an overt fashion. But that skill hadn’t been conveyed to the Kennedy Administration, which had screwed up nearly everything it touched. Too many James Bond books, probably. Everything in fiction was simpler than the real world, even fiction written by a former field spook. In the real world, zipping your zipper could be hard.
But he was planning a fairly complex operation and telling himself that it wasn’t all that complex. Was he making a mistake? Foley’s mind wandered while the rest of his consciousness slept. Even asleep, he kept going over and over things. In his dreams, he saw rabbits running around a green field while foxes and bears watched. The predators didn’t move on them, perhaps because they were too fast and/or too close to their rabbit holes for them to waste a chase. But what happened when the rabbits got too far away from their holes? Then the foxes could catch them, and the bears could move in to swallow them whole… And his job was to protect the little bunnies, wasn’t it?
Even so, in his dream the foxes and bears just watched while he, the eagle, circled high and looked down. He, the eagle, had sworn off rabbits, though a fox might be a nice morsel to rip apart, if his talons got it properly, just behind the head to snap the neck, and leave him for the bear to eat, because bears didn’t really care whom they ate. No, Mr. Bear didn’t care one little bit. He was just a big old bear, and his belly was always empty. He’d even eat an eagle if he got the chance, but the eagle was too swift and too smart, wasn’t he? Only so long as he kept his eyes open, the noble eagle told himself; he had great abilities and fine sight, but even he had to be careful. And so the eagle soared aloft, riding the thermals and watching. He couldn’t enter the fray, exactly. At most, he could swoop down and warn the cute little bunnies that there was danger about, but the bunnies were proverbially dumb bunnies, munching their grass and not looking around as much as they ought to. That was his job, the noble eagle told himself, to use his superb eyesight to make sure he knew everything he needed to know. The bunny’s job was to run when he needed to run, and with help from the eagle, to run to a different field, one without foxes and bears around it, so that he could be free to raise more cute little bunnies and live happily ever after, like Beatrix Potter’s little Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail.
Foley rolled over, and the dream ended, the eagle watching for danger, and the rabbits eating their grass, and the foxes and bears a good way off, just watching but not moving, because they didn’t know which bunny would stray too far from its safe little hole.
THE ALARM CLOCK’S deliberately annoying buzz caused Foley’s eyes to snap open, and he rolled over to switch it off. Then he jerked himself out of bed and into the bathroom. He suddenly missed his house in Virginia. It had more than one bathroom—two and a half, in fact, which allowed some degree of flexibility should an emergency occur. Little Eddie got up when summoned, then almost immediately sat on the floor in front of the TV set and called out “Worker-womannnn!” when the exercise show came on. That generated a smile from his mom and dad. Even the KGB guys on the other end of the bug wires probably had a little chuckle at that.