He hadn’t seen much of Mr. Clark, He spent a lot of time aft in the engine room, where the ship’s fitness center was—a treadmill jammed between two machine tools. The crew was already murmuring that he didn’t talk very much. He just smiled and nodded and went on his way. One of the chiefs noted the tattoo on Clark’s forearm and was whispering some stuff about the meaning of the red seal, specifically that it stood for the real SEALs. Dallas had never had one of those aboard, though other boats had, and the stories, told quietly except for the occasional “no shit!” interruptions, had circulated throughout the submarine community but nowhere else. If there was anything submariners knew how to do, it was keeping secrets.
Jones stood and walked aft. He figured he’d taught enough lessons for one day, and his status as a civilian technical representative allowed him to wander about at will. He note that Dallas was taking her own sweet time, heading east at nine knots. A look at the chart told him where they were, and the way the navigator was tapping his pencil on it told him how much farther they’d be going. Jones started to do some serious thinking as he went below for a Coke. He’d come back for a really tense one after all.
“Yes, Mr. President?” Judge Moore answered the phone! with his own tense look. Decision time?
“That thing we talked about in here the other day . . .”
“Yes, sir.” Moore looked at the phone. Aside from the handset that he held, the “secure” phone system was a three-foot cube, cunningly hidden in his desk. It took words, broke them into digital bits, scrambled them beyond recognition, and sent them out to another similar box which put them back together. One interesting sidelight of this was that it made for very clear conversations, since the encoding system eliminated all the random noise on the line.
“You may go ahead. We can’t—well, I decided last night that we can’t just leave him.” This had to be his first call of the morning, and the emotional content came through, too. Moore wondered if he’d lost sleep over the life of the faceless agent. Probably he had. The President was that sort of man, He was also the sort, Moore knew, to stick with a decision once made. Pelt would try to change it all day, but the President was getting it out at eight in the morning and would have to stick with it.
“Thank you, Mr. President. I’ll set things in motion.” Moore had Bob Ritter in his office two minutes later:
“The CARDINAL extraction is a ‘go’!”
“Makes me glad I voted for the man,” Ritter said as he smacked one hand into the other. “Ten days from now we’ll have him in a nice safehouse. Jesus, the debrief’ll take years!” Then came the sober pause. “It’s a shame to lose his services, but we owe it to him. Besides, Mary Pat has recruited a couple of real live ones for us. She made the film pass last night. No details, but I gather that it was a hairy one.”
“She always was a little too—”
“More than a little, Arthur, but all field officers have some cowboy in them.” The two Texas natives shared a look. “Even the ones from New York.”
“Some team. With those genes, you gotta wonder what their kids’ll be like,” Moore observed with a chuckle. “Bob, you got your wish. Run with it.”
“Yes, sir.” Ritter went off to send his message, then informed Admiral Greer.
The telex went via satellite and arrived in Moscow only fifteen minutes later: TRAVEL ORDERS APPROVED. KEEP ALL RECEIPTS FOR ROUTINE REIMBURSEMENT.
Ed Foley took the decrypted message into his office. So, whatever desk-sitter got cold feet on us found his socks after all, he thought. Thank God.
Only one more transfer to go! We’ll pass the message at the same time, and Misha’ll catch a flight to Leningrad, then just follow the plan. One good thing about CARDINAL was that he’d practiced his escape routine at least once a year. His old tank outfit was now assigned to the Leningrad Military District, and the Russians understood that kind of sentiment. Misha had also seen to it over the years that his regiment was the first to get new equipment and to train in new tactics. After his death, it would be designated the Filitov Guards—or at least that’s what the Soviet Army was planning to do. It was too bad, Foley thought, that they’d have to change that plan. On the other hand, maybe CIA would make some other sort of memorial to the man . . .
But there was still that one more transfer to make, and it would not be an easy one. One step at a time, he told himself. First we have to alert him.
Half an hour later, a nondescript embassy staffer left the building. At a certain time he’d be standing at a certain place. The “signal” was picked up by someone else who was not likely to be shadowed by “Two.” This person did something else. He didn’t know the reason, only where and how the mark was to be made. He found that very frustrating. Spy work was supposed to be exciting, wasn’t it?
“There’s our friend.” Vatutin was riding in the car, wanting to see for himself that things were going properly. Filitov entered his car, and the driver took him off. Vatutin’s car followed for half a kilometer, then turned off as a second car took over, racing over to a parallel street to keep pace.
He kept track of events by radio. The transmissions were crisp and businesslike as the six cars rotated on and off surveillance, generally with one ahead of the target vehicle and one behind. Filitov’s car stopped at a grocery store that catered to senior Defense Ministry officials. Vatutin had a man inside—Filitov was known to stop there two or three times per week—to see what he bought and whom he talked to.
He could tell that things were going perfectly, as was not unexpected once he’d explained to everybody on the case that the Chairman had personal interest in this one. Vatutin’s driver raced ahead of their quarry, depositing the Colonel across the street from Filitov’s apartment building. Vatutin walked inside and went up to the apartment that they had taken over.
“Good timing,” the senior officer said as Vatutin came in the door.
The “Two” man looked discreetly out the window and saw Filitov’s car come to a halt. The trailing car motored past without a pause as the Army Colonel walked into the building.
“Subject just entered the building,” a communications specialist said. Inside, a woman with a string-bag full of apples would get on the elevator with Filitov. Up on Filitov’s floor, two people who looked young enough to be teenagers would stroll past the elevator as he got out, continuing down the corridor with overly loud whispers of undying love. The surveillance mikes caught the end of that as Filitov opened the door.
“Got him,” the cameraman said.
“Let’s keep away from the windows,” Vatutin said unnecessarily. The men with binoculars stood well back from them, and so long as the lights in the apartment were left off—the bulbs had been removed from the fixtures—no one could tell that the rooms were occupied.
One thing they liked about the man was his aversion to pulling down the shades. They followed him into the bedroom, where they watched him change into casual clothes and slippers. He returned to the kitchen and fixed himself a simple meal. They watched him tear the foil top off a half-liter bottle of vodka. The man was sitting and staring out the window.
“An old, lonely man,” one officer observed. “Do you suppose that’s what did it?”
“One way or another, we’ll find out.”
Why is it that the State can betray us? Misha asked Corporal Romanov two hours later.
Because we are soldiers, I suppose. Misha noted that the corporal was avoiding the question, and the issue. Did he know what his Captain was trying to ask?
But if we betray the State . . . ?
Then we die, Comrade Captain. That is simple enough. We earn the hatred and contempt of the peasants and workers, and we die. Romanov stared across time into his officer’s eyes. The corporal now had his own question. He lacked the will to ask it, but his eyes seemed to proclaim: What have you done, my Captain?
Across the street, the man on the recording equipment noted sobbing, and wondered what caused it.
“What’re you doing, honey?” Ed Foley asked, and the microphones heard.
“Starting to make lists for when we leave. So many things to remember, I’d better start now.”
Foley bent over her shoulder. She had a pad and a pencil, but she was writing on a plastic sheet with a marker pen. It was the sort of arrangement that hung on many refrigerators, and could be wiped clean with a swipe of a damp cloth.