“Russell. Want to come down to my office for a minute?”
“On the way,” the Station Chief replied. Four minutes. “What is it, Mike?” he asked, coming through the door.
Russell held up the ring binder. “Only three copies of this. Us, Langley, and Fort Meade. You want secure, my man, you got secure. Just try to keep the messages short, okay? This shit can really jack up my blood pressure.”
“Okay, Mike. Shame there isn’t a better way of doing that.”
“Maybe someday. Ought to be a way to do it with a computer—you know, put the pad on a floppy disk. Maybe I’ll write to Fort Meade about it,” Russell thought. “This stuff can make you cross-eyed.”
Better you than me, Foley couldn’t say. “Okay, I’ll have something for you later today.”
“Right.” Russell nodded. He didn’t have to add that it would also be enciphered on his KH-7 and then super-encrypted with the pad. He hoped that Ivan would intercept the signal and give his cryptanalysts the document to work on. Thinking about those bastards going nuts over one of his signals was one of the things he liked to smile about. Fine, give their world-class math aces this stuff to fool with.
But there was no telling. If KGB had managed, for example, to plant a bug in the building, it would be powered not by an internal battery, but rather by microwave emanations from Our Lady of the Microchips across the street. He had two permanent staff people who roamed the embassy, searching for unexplained RF signals. Every so often, they found one and dug the bug out, but the last of those had been twenty months before. Now they said that the embassy was fully swept and fully clean. But nobody believed that. Ivan was just too clever. Russell wondered how Foley kept his identity a secret, but that was not his problem. Keeping the comms secure was hard enough.
BACK IN HIS OFFICE, Foley drafted his next signal to Langley, trying to keep it as short as possible to make it easy for Russell. It would surely open some eyes on the Seventh Floor. He hoped that the Brits hadn’t gotten word on the idea to Washington yet. That would be seen as a major impropriety, and senior officials everywhere got their noses out of joint on trivial crap like that. But with some things you just didn’t have time to run it through channels, and as a senior Station Chief, it was expected that he would show some initiative once in a while.
And along with initiative, maybe a little panache.
Foley checked his watch. He was wearing his reddest tie, and he was an hour and a half from taking the metro home, and the Rabbit needed to see him and the flag signal. A little voice was telling Foley to get BEATRIX moving as fast as practicable. Whether it was danger to the Rabbit or something else, he couldn’t tell, but Foley was one to trust his instincts.
CHAPTER 21:
VACATION
IT WASN’T EASY, really, to make sure one took the right subway train. Both the Rabbit and Foley were using the inhuman efficiency of what had to be the only aspect of Soviet life that actually functioned properly, and the remarkable thing was that the trains ran on a schedule that was as regular and predictable as the setting of the sun, just far more frequent. Foley got his dispatch into Mike Russell’s hands, then put his raincoat on and walked out the embassy front door at exactly the right moment, walked at exactly the usual pace, and got to the subway platform at exactly the right time, then turned to verify it with the clock that hung on the ceiling of the station. Yeah, he’d done it again. The train pulled in, just as the previous train pulled out, and Foley walked aboard the usual car, turning to see… yes, the Rabbit was there. Foley unfolded his paper. His unbuttoned raincoat hung loosely on his shoulders.
Zaitzev was actually surprised to see the red tie, but he could hardly complain. As usual, he inched his way in the proper direction.
It was almost routine now, the COS thought. He felt the hand surreptitiously enter his pocket and withdraw. Then his acute senses felt the man take a step away. Hopefully, there would be little more of this. It was safe for Foley, but decidedly unsafe for the Rabbit, however skillful he might have become at this exercise. The presence of others on this subway car—some faces he recognized from repetition—could well represent people of the Second Chief Directorate. There could be intermittent surveillance on him, using a bunch of different officers. That would be a sensible tactic for the opposition to use, on and off, to diminish the chance that he’d spot them.
In due course, as before, the train arrived at the appointed stop, and Foley walked off. In a few more weeks, he’d have to put the lining in his coat, and maybe even wear the shapka Mary Pat had bought him. He had to start thinking about what would happen after they got the Rabbit out. If BEATRIX worked all the way, he’d have to maintain his cover activities for a time—or maybe switch to driving to the embassy, a change in routine that the Russians would not note as unusual. He was an American, after all, and Americans were famous for driving everywhere. The metro was getting tedious. Too crowded, often with people who didn’t know what a shower was for. The things he did for his country, Foley thought. No, he corrected himself, the things he did against his country’s enemies. That was what made it worthwhile. Giving the big of Bear a bellyache—maybe even stomach cancer, he mused, walking to his apartment.
“YES, ALAN?” Charleston asked, looking up from his desk.
“This is a major operation, I take it?” Kingshot asked.
“Major in its objective, yes,” the Director General confirmed. “As routine as possible in its operation. We only have three people in Budapest, and it would not be overly brilliant to fly in a goon squad.”
“Anyone else going?”
“Jack Ryan, the American,” Sir Basil said.
“He’s no field officer,” Kingshot objected immediately.
“It’s fundamentally an American operation, Alan. They reasonably requested that one of their people go along to observe. In return, we’ll have a day or two to debrief their Rabbit at a safe house of our choosing. He will doubtless have a good deal of useful information, and we’ll get the first chance to speak with him.”
“Well, I hope this Ryan fellow doesn’t queer the pitch for us.”
“Alan, he’s shown himself to be fairly levelheaded in time of trouble, hasn’t he?” Sir Basil asked, reasonable as ever.
“Must be his Marine training,” Kingshot observed with dark generosity.
“And he’s very clever, Alan. He’s been giving us excellent work on his analysis project.”
“If you say so, sir. To get the three bodies, I need to get some help from Special Branch, and then spend time on my knees hoping for something dreadful to happen.”
“What are you thinking?”
Kingshot explained his nascent operational concept. It was really the only way to make something like this happen. And, as Sir Basil had observed earlier in the day, it was as grisly as an autopsy.
“How likely is such a thing to happen?” Basil asked.
“I need to talk with the police to answer that one.”
“Who’s your contact there?”
“Chief Superintendent Patrick Nolan. You’ve met him.”
Charleston closed his eyes for a moment. “The huge chap, arrests rugby forwards for light exercise?”
“That’s Nolan. They call him ‘Tiny’ on the force. I think he eats barbells with his porridge. Am I free to discuss this Operation BEATRIX with him?”
“Just in terms of our needs, Alan.”
“Very good, sir,” Kingshot agreed, and left the room.
“YOU WANT WHAT?” Nolan asked over a pint in a pub a block from New Scotland Yard, just after four in the afternoon.
“You heard me, Tiny,” Kingshot said. He lit a cigarette to fit in with the rest of the bar’s patrons.
“Well, I must say I’ve heard a lot of strange things in my time with the Yard, but never that.” Nolan was a good six-four and two hundred thirty pounds, very little of it fat. He spent at least an hour, three times a week, in the Yard’s exercise room. He rarely carried a handgun on duty. He’d never needed one to help a felon see the futility of resistance. “Can you say what this is for?” he asked.
“Sorry, not allowed to. All I can say is that’s it’s a matter of some importance.”
A long pull on his beer. “Well, you know that we do not keep such things in cold storage, even in the Black Museum.”
“I was thinking a traffic smash. They happen all the time, don’t they?”