“General, all that time in Yugoslavia didn’t help Lisle’s boys,” Boyle said from the chopper’s right seat.
“I know that,” Diggs agreed. “I’m not going to kill anybody’s career just yet,” he promised.
Boyle’s head turned to grin. “Good, sir. I’ll spread that word around.”
“What do you think of the Germans?”
“I know their boss, General Major Siegfried Model. He’s damned smart. Plays a hell of a game of cards. Be warned, General.”
“Is that a fact?” Diggs had commanded the NTC until quite recently, and had occasionally tried his luck at Las Vegas, a mere two hours up I-15 from the post.
“Sir, I know what you’re thinking. Think again,” Boyle cautioned his boss.
“Your helicopters seem to be doing well.”
“Yep, Yugoslavia was fairly decent training for us, and long as we have gas, I can train my people.”
“What about live-fire?” the commanding general of First Tanks asked.
“We haven’t done that in a while, sir, but again, the simulators are almost as good as the real thing,” Boyle replied over the intercom. “But I think you’ll want your track toads to get some in, General.” And Boyle was right on that one. Nothing substituted for live fire in an Abrams or a Bradley.
The stakeout on the park bench turned out to be lengthy and boring. First of all, of course, they’d pulled the container, opened it, and discovered that the contents were two sheets of paper, closely printed with Cyrillic characters, but encrypted. So the sheet had been photographed and sent off to the cryppies for decryption. This had not proven to be easy. In fact, it had thus far proven to be impossible, leading the officers from the Federal Security Service to conclude that the Chinese (if that was who it was) had adopted the old KGB practice of using one-time pads. These were unbreakable in theoretical terms because there was no pattern, formula, or algorithm to crack.
The rest of the time was just a matter of waiting to see who came to pick up the package.
It ended up taking days. The FSS put three cars on the case. Two of them were vans with long-lens cameras on the target. In the meanwhile, Suvorov/Koniev’s apartment was as closely watched as the Moscow Stock Exchange ticker. The subject himself had a permanent shadow of up to ten trained officers, mainly KGB trained spy-chasers instead of Provalov’s homicide investigators, but with a leavening of the latter because it was technically still their case. It would remain a homicide case until some foreign national—they hoped—picked up the package under the bench.
Since it was a park bench, people sat on it regularly. Adults reading papers, children reading comic books, teenagers holding hands, people chatting amiably, even two elderly men who met every afternoon for a game of chess played on a small magnetic board. After every such visit, the stash was checked for movement or disturbance, always without result. By the fourth day, people speculated aloud that it was all some sort of trick. This was Suvorov/Koniev’s way of seeing if he were being trailed or not. If so, he was a clever son of a bitch, the surveillance people all agreed. But they already knew that.
The break came in the late afternoon of day five, and it was the man they wanted it to be. His name was Kong Deshi, and he was a minor diplomat on the official list, age forty-six, a man of modest dimensions, and, the form card at the Foreign Ministry said, modest intellectual gifts—that was a polite way of saying he was considered a dunce. But as others had noted, that was the perfect cover for a spy, and one which wasted a lot of time for counter-intelligence people, making them trail dumb diplomats all over the world who turned out to be nothing more than just that—dumb diplomats—of which the global supply was ample. The man was walking casually with another Chinese national, who was a businessman of some sort, or so they’d thought. Sitting, they’d continued to chat, gesturing around until the second man had turned to look at something Kong had pointed at. Then Kong’s right hand had slipped rapidly and almost invisibly under the bench and retrieved the stash, possibly replacing it with another before his hand went back in his lap. Five minutes later, after a smoke, they’d both walked off, back in the direction of the nearest Metro station.
“Patience,” the head FSS officer had told his people over the radio circuit, and so they’d waited over an hour, until they were certain that there were no parked cars about keeping an eye on the dead-drop. Only then had an FSS man walked to the bench, sat down with his afternoon paper, and pulled the package. The way he flicked his cigarette away told the rest of the team that there had been a substitution.
In the laboratory, it was immediately discovered that the package had a key lock, and that got everyone’s attention. The package was x-rayed immediately and found to contain a battery and some wires, plus a semi-opaque rectangle that collectively represented a pyrotechnic device. Whatever was inside the package was therefore valuable. A skilled locksmith took twenty minutes picking the lock, and then the holder was opened to reveal a few sheets of flash paper. These were removed and photographed, to show a solid collection of Cyrillic letters—and they were all random. It was a one-time-pad key sheet, the best thing they could have hoped to find. The sheets were refolded exactly as they had been replaced in the holder, and then the thin metal container—it looked like a cheap cigarette case—was returned to the bench.
“So?” Provalov asked the Federal Security Service officer on the case.
“So, the next time our subject sends a message, we’ll be able to read it.”
“And then we’ll know,” Provalov went on.
“Perhaps. We’ll know something more than we know now. We’ll have proof that this Suvorov fellow is a spy. That I can promise you,” the counter-intelligence officer pronounced.
Provalov had to admit to himself that they were no closer to solving his murder case than they’d been two weeks before, but at least things were moving, even if the path merely led them deeper into the fog.
So, Mike?” Dan Murray asked, eight time zones away. “No nibbles yet, Director, but now it looks like we’re chasing a spook. The subject’s name is Klementi Ivan’ch Suvorov, currently living as Ivan Yurievich Koniev.” Reilly read off the address. “The trail leads to him, or at least it seems to, and we spotted him making probable contact with a Chinese diplomat.”
“And what the hell does all this mean?” FBI Director Murray wondered aloud into the secure phone.
“You got me there, Director, but it sure has turned into an interesting case.”
“You must be pretty tight with this Provalov guy.”
“He’s a good cop, and yes, sir, we get along just fine.”
That was more than Cliff Rutledge could say about his relationship with Shen Tang.
“Your news coverage of this incident was bad enough, but your President’s remarks on our domestic policy is a violation of Chinese sovereignty!” the Chinese foreign minister said almost in a shout, for the seventh time since lunch.
“Minister,” Cliff Rutledge replied. “None of this would have happened but for your policeman shooting an accredited diplomat, and that is not, strictly speaking, an entirely civilized act.”
“Our internal affairs are our internal affairs,” Shen retorted at once.
“That is so, Minister, but America has her own beliefs, and if you ask us to honor yours, then we may request that you show some respect for ours.”
“We grow weary of America’s interference with Chinese internal affairs. First you recognize our rebellious province on Taiwan. Then you encourage foreigners to interfere with our internal policies. Then you send a spy under the cover of religious beliefs to violate our laws with a diplomat from yet another country, then you photograph a Chinese policeman doing his duty, and then your President condemns us for your interference with our internal affairs. The People’s Republic will not tolerate this uncivilized activity!”
And now you’re going to demand most-favored-nation trade status, eh? Mark Gant thought in his chair. Damn, this was like a meeting with investment bankers—the pirate kind—on Wall Street.
“Minister, you call us uncivilized,” Rutledge replied. “But there is no blood on our hands. Now, we are here, as I recall, to discuss trade issues. Can we return to that agenda?”
“Mr. Rutledge, America does not have the right to dictate to the People’s Republic on one hand and to deny us our rights on the other,” Shen retorted.
“Minister, America has made no such intrusion on China’s internal affairs. If you kill a diplomat, you must expect a reaction. On the question of the Republic of China—”
“There is no Republic of China!” the PRC’s Foreign Minister nearly screamed. “They are a renegade province, and you have violated our sovereignty by recognizing them!”