Narmonov had charm, and power—the sort of viscera presence that came with his post, but even more from hi personality. What sort of man was this? What was he after? Ryan snorted. That wasn’t his department. Another CU team was examining Narmonov’s political vulnerability right here in Moscow. His far easier job was to figure out the technical side. Far easier, perhaps, but he didn’t yet know the answer to his own questions.
Golovko was already back at his office, making his own notes in a painful longhand. Ryan, he wrote, would uneasily support the draft proposal. Since Ryan had the ear of the Director, that probably meant that CIA would, too. The intelligence officer set down his pen and rubbed his eyes for a moment. Waking up with a hangover was bad enough, but having to stay awake long enough to welcome it with the sunrise was above and beyond the duty of a Soviet officer. He wondered why his government had made the offer in the first place, and why the Americans seemed so eager. Even Ryan, who should have known better. What did the Americans have in mind? Who was outmaneuvering whom?
Now there was a question.
He turned back to Ryan, his assignment of the previous evening. Well along for a man of his years, the equivalent of a colonel in the KGB or GRU and only thirty-five. What had he done to rise so quickly? Golovko shrugged. Probably connected, a fact of life as important in Washington as in Moscow. He had courage—the business with the terrorists almost five years before. He was also a family man, something Russians respected more than their American counterparts would have believed—it implied stability, and that in turn implied predictability. Most of all, Golovko thought, Ryan was a thinker. Why, then, was he not opposed to a pact that would benefit the Soviet Union more than it benefited America? Is our evaluation incorrect? he wrote. Do the Americans know something we do not? That was a question, or better still: Did Ryan know something that Golovko did not? The Colonel frowned, then reminded himself what he knew that Ryan did not. That drew a half-smile. It was all part of the grand game. The grandest game there was.
“You must have walked all night.”
The Archer nodded gravely and set down the sack that had bowed his shoulders for five days. It was almost as heavy as the one Abdul had packed. The younger man was near collapse, the CIA officer saw. Both men found pillows to sit on.
“Have something to drink.” The officer’s name was Emilio Ortiz. His ancestry was sufficiently muddled that he could have passed for a native of any Caucasian nation. Also thirty years of age, he was of medium height and build, with swimmer’s muscles, which was how he’d won a scholarship to USC, where he’d won a degree in languages. Ortiz had a rare gift in this area. With two weeks’ exposure to a language, a dialect, an accent, he could pass for a native anywhere in the world. He was also a man of compassion, respectful of the ways of the people with whom he worked. This mean that the drink he offered was not—could not be—alcoholic It was apple juice. Ortiz watched him drink it with all the delicacy of a wine connoisseur sampling new bordeaux.
“Allah’s blessings upon this house,” the Archer said when he finished the first glass. That he had waited until drinking the apple juice was as close as the man ever came to making a joke. Ortiz saw the fatigue written on the man’s face, though he displayed it no other way. Unlike his young porter, the Archer seemed invulnerable to such normal human concern It wasn’t true, but Ortiz understood how the force that drove him could suppress his humanity.
The two men were dressed almost identically. Ortiz considered the Archer’s clothing and wondered at the ironic similarity with the Apache Indians of America and Mexico. On of his ancestors had been an officer under Terrazas when the Mexican Army had finally crushed Victorio in the Tres Castillos Mountains. The Afghans, too, wore rough trousers under their loincloths. They, too, tended to be small, agile fighters; And they, too, treated captives as noisy amusements for the knives. He looked at the Archer’s knife and wondered how it was used. Ortiz decided he didn’t want to know.
“Do you wish something to eat?” he asked.
“It can wait,” the Archer replied, reaching for his pack He and Abdul had brought out two loaded camels, but left the important material, only his backpack would do. “I fire eight rockets. I hit six aircraft, but one had two engines and managed to escape. Of the five I destroyed, two were helicopters, and three were bombing-fighters. The first helicopter we killed was the new kind of twenty-four you told us about. You were correct. It did have some new equipment. Here some of it.”
It was ironic, Ortiz thought, that the most sensitive equipment in military aircraft would survive treatment guaranteed to kill its crew. As he watched, the Archer revealed six green circuit boards for the laser-designator that was now standard equipment on the Mi-24. The U.S. Army Captain who’d stayed in the shadows and kept his mouth shut to this point now came forward to examine them. His hands fairly trembled as tie reached for the items.
“You have the laser, too?” the Captain asked in accented Pashtu.
“It was badly damaged, but, yes.” The Archer turned. Abdul was snoring. He nearly smiled until he remembered that he had a son also.
For his part, Ortiz was saddened. To have a partisan with the Archer’s education under his control was rare enough. He’d probably been a skilled teacher but he could never teach again. He could never go back to what he’d been. War had changed the Archer’s life as fully and certainly as death. Such a goddamned waste.
“The new rockets?” the Archer asked.
“I can give you ten. A slightly improved model, with an additional five-hundred-meter range. And some more smoke rockets, too.”
The Archer nodded gravely, and the corners of his mouth moved in what, in different times, might have been the beginnings of a smile.
“Perhaps now I can go after their transports. The smoke rockets work very well, my friend. Every time, they push the invaders close to me. They have not yet learned about that tactic.”
Not a trick, Ortiz noted. He called it a tactic. He wants to go after transports now, he wants to kill a hundred Russians it a time. Jesus, what have we made of this man? The CIA officer shook his head. That wasn’t his concern.
“You are weary, my friend. Rest. We can eat later. Please honor my house by sleeping here.”
“It is true,” the Archer acknowledged. He was asleep within two minutes.
Ortiz and the Captain sorted through the equipment brought to them. Included was the maintenance manual for the Mi-M’s laser equipment, and radio code sheets, in addition to other things they’d seen before. By noon he had it all fully catalogued and began making arrangements to ship it all to the embassy; from there it would be flown immediately to California for a complete evaluation.
The Air Force VC-137 lifted off right on time. It was a customized version of the venerable Boeing 707. The “V” prefix on its designation denoted that it was designed to carry VIP passengers, and the aircraft’s interior reflected this. Jack lay back on the couch and abandoned himself to the fatigue that enveloped him. Ten minutes later a hand shook his shoulder.
“The boss wants you,” another member of the team said
“Doesn’t he ever sleep?” Jack growled.
“Tell me about it.”
Ernest Allen was in the VIP-est accommodations on the aircraft, a cabin set exactly atop the wing spar with six plus swivel chairs. A coffeepot sat on the table. If he didn’t have some coffee he’d soon be incoherent. If he did, he’d be unable to go back to sleep. Well, the government wasn’t paying him to sleep. Ryan poured himself some coffee.
“Yes, sir?”
“Can we verify it?” Allen skipped the preliminaries.
“I don’t know yet,” Jack replied. “It’s not just a question of National Technical Means. Verifying the elimination of so many launchers—”
“They’re giving us limited on-site inspection,” noted a junior member of the team.
“I’m aware of that,” Jack replied. “The question is, does that really mean anything?” The other question is, why did they suddenly agree to something we’ve wanted for over thirty years . . . ?
“What?” the junior member asked.
“The Soviets have put a lot of work into their new mobile launchers. What if they have more of them than we know about? Do you think we can find a few hundred mobile missiles?”
“But we have surface-scanning radar on the new birds and—”