“What’s that?” Foley asked.
“He likes to say that international relations is largely composed of one nation fucking another.”
It was enough to make Foley laugh, five thousand miles and eight time zones away. “Well, our Chinese friends are sure playing rough.”
“How good is the information?”
“It’s Holy Writ, John. Take it to the bank,” Ed assured his distant field officer.
We have some source in Beijing, Clark didn’t observe aloud. “Okay, Ed. If they come to me, I’ll let you know. We cooperate, I presume.”
“Fully,” the DCI assured him. “We’re allies now. Didn’t you see CNN?”
“I thought it was the Sci-Fi Channel.”
“You ain’t the only one. Have a good one, John.”
“You, too, Ed. Bye.” Clark thumbed the end button and went on just to himself: “Holy jumpin’ Jesus.” Then he restarted the car and headed off to his rendezvous with Domingo Chavez.
Ding was at the bar that RAINBOW had adopted during its stay in the Moscow area. The boys congregated in a large corner booth, where they complained about the local beer, but appreciated the clear alcohol preferred by the natives.
“Hey, Mr. C,” Chavez said in greeting.
“Just got a call from Ed on my portable.”
“And?”
“And John Chinaman is planning to start a little war with our hosts, and that’s the good news,” Clark added.
“What the fuck is the bad news?” Chavez asked, with no small incredulity in his voice.
“Their Ministry of State Security just put a contract out on Eduard Petrovich,” John went on.
“Are they fuckin’ crazy?” the other CIA officer asked the booth.
“Well, starting a war in Siberia isn’t exactly a rational act. Ed let us in because he thinks the locals might want our help soon. Supposedly they know the local contact for the ChiComms. You have to figure a hot takedown’s going to evolve from this, and we’ve been training their troopies. I figure we might be invited in to watch, but they probably won’t want us to assist.”
“Agreed.”
That’s when General Kirillin came in, with a sergeant at his side. The sergeant stood by the door with his overcoat unbuttoned and his right hand close to the opening. The senior officer spotted Clark and came directly over.
“I don’t have your cell-phone number.”
“What do you want us for today, General?” Clark asked.
“I need for you to come with me. We have to see Chairman Golovko.”
“Do you mind if Domingo comes along?”
“That is fine,” Kirillin replied.
“I’ve talked to Washington recently. How much do you know?” Clark asked his Russian friend.
“Much, but not all. That’s why we need to see Golovko.” Kirillin waved them to the door, where his sergeant was doing his best Doberman imitation.
“Something happening?” Eddie Price asked. No one was guarding his expression, and Price knew how to read faces.
“Tell you when we get back,” Chavez told him. The staff car waiting outside had a chase car with four men in it, and the sergeant/bodyguard accompanying the general was one of the few enlisted men who’d been let into the cross-training that RAINBOW had been running. The Russians, they knew, were coming along very well. It didn’t hurt to draw people hand-selected from an already elite unit.
The cars moved through Moscow traffic with less than the usual regard for traffic and safety laws, then pulled into the main gate at #2 Dzerzhinskiy Square. The elevator was held for them, and they made the top floor in a hurry.
“Thank you for coming so quickly. I assume you’ve spoken with Langley,” Golovko observed.
Clark held up his cell phone.
“The encryption unit is so small?”
“Progress, Chairman,” Clark observed. “I’m told this intelligence information is to be taken seriously.”
“Foleyeva has a fine source in Beijing. I’ve seen some of the ‘take’ from him. It would appear, first, that a deliberate attempt was made on my life, and now another is planned for President Grushavoy. I’ve already notified him. His security people are fully alerted. The Chinese lead agent in Moscow has been identified and is under surveillance. When he receives his instructions, we will arrest him. But we do not know who his contacts are. We assume they are former Spetsnaz people loyal to him, criminals, of course, doing special work for the underworld we’ve grown up here.”
That made sense, John thought. “Some people will do anything for money, Sergey Nikolay’ch. How can we help you?”
“Foley has instructed you to assist? Good of him. Given the nature of how the intelligence came to us, an American observer seems appropriate. For the takedown, we will use police, with cover from General Kirillin’s people. As RAINBOW commander, this will be your task.”
Clark nodded. It wasn’t all that demanding. “Fair enough.”
“We’ll keep you safe,” the general assured him.
“And you expect the Chinese to launch a war on Russia?”
“Within the week,” Golovko nodded.
“The oil and the gold?” Chavez asked.
“So it would seem.”
“Well, that’s life in the big city,” Ding observed.
“We will make them regret this barbaric act,” Kirillin told everyone present.
“That remains to be seen,” Golovko cautioned. He knew what Bondarenko was saying to Stavka.
“And with you guys in NATO, we’re coming to help out?” Clark asked.
“Your President Ryan is a true comrade,” the Russian agreed.
“That means RAINBOW, too, then,” John thought aloud. “We’re all NATO troopers.”
“Ain’t never fought in a real war before,” Chavez thought aloud. But now he was a simulated major, and he might just get drafted into this one. His life insurance, he remembered, was fully paid up.
“It’s not exactly fun, Domingo,” Clark assured him. And I’m getting a little old for this shit.
The Chinese embassy was under continuous and expert surveillance by a large team of officers from the Russian Federal Security Service. Almost all of them were formerly of the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate. Reconstituted under a new agency’s aegis, they performed the same function as the FBI’s Intelligence Division, and they gave away little to their American counterparts. No fewer than twenty of them were assigned to this task. They comprised all physical types, male and female, prosperous- and impoverished-looking, middle-aged and old—but no really young ones, because this case was too important for inexperienced officers. The vehicles assigned to the task included everything from dump trucks to motorbikes, and every mobile group had at least one radio, of types so advanced that the Russian Army didn’t have them yet.
Kong Deshi emerged from the PRC embassy at seven-forty. He walked to the nearest Metro station and took the escalator down. This was entirely routine. At the same time, another minor consular officer left and headed in a different direction, but the FSS officers didn’t know to watch him. He walked three blocks to the second lamppost on a busy street and, passing it, he pulled a strip of white paper tape from his coat pocket and stuck it vertically on the metal post. Then he walked on to a restaurant and had dinner alone, having fulfilled a mission whose purpose he didn’t know. He was the flagman for the MSS in the embassy, but was not a trained intelligence officer.
Third Secretary Kong rode the train for the proper number of stops and got off, with four FSS officers in trail, another one waiting in the station, and two more at the top of the long escalator to the surface. Along the way, he purchased a newspaper from one of the kiosks on the street. Twice he stopped, once to light a cigarette and the other time to look around as if lost and trying to get his bearings. Both efforts, of course, were to spot a tail, but the FSS people were too numerous, some too near, and the close ones studiously, but not too studiously, looking elsewhere. The truth of the matter, as known to the FBI and the British Security Service as well, is that once a contact is identified, he is as naked and helpless as a newborn in the jungle, as long as those shadowing him are not total fools. These KGB-trained professionals were anything but fools. The only thing they didn’t know was the identity of the flagman, but that, as usual, was something you might never get. The problem there was that you never knew how quickly to get the dead-drop that was about to be made.
The other problem for the control agent, Kong Deshi, was that once the location of the dead-drop was identified, it was as easily watched as the single cloud in an otherwise clear sky. The size of the surveillance troop was just to make sure there wasn’t another drop. And there wasn’t. Kong sat down on the expected bench. Here he violated fieldcraft by acting as though he could read a newspaper in the diminishing light, but as there was a streetlamp close by, it wouldn’t tip off the casual onlooker.