“Ryan, there is nothing we can do to save the man.” Ritter turned to take out his anger on the nearest target of opportunity. “He’s dead—sure, he’s still breathing, but he’s dead all the same. A month, or two, or three from now, the announcement will be made, and we’ll confirm it through other assets, and then we’ll pry open a bottle and have a few to his memory.”
“What about Dallas?” Greer asked.
“Huh?” Ryan turned.
“You don’t need to know about that,” Ritter said, now grateful to have a target. “Give her back to the Navy.”
“Okay.” Greer nodded. “This is likely to have some serious consequences.” That earned the Admiral a baleful look from Judge Moore. He now had to go to the President.
“What about it, Ryan?”
“On the arms-control talks?” Jack shrugged. “Depends on how they handle it. They have a wide range of options, and anybody who tells you he can predict which one they’ll choose is a liar.”
“Nothing like an expert opinion,” Ritter observed.
“Sir Basil thinks Gerasimov wants to make a move on the top spot. He could conceivably use this toward that end,” Ryan said coolly, “but I think Narmonov has too much political clout now that he has that fourth man on the Politburo. He can, therefore, choose to go forward toward the agreement and show the Party how strong he is by moving forward for peace, or if he senses more political vulnerability than I see in the picture, he can consolidate his hold on the Party by trashing us as the incorrigible enemies of Socialism. If there’s a way to put a probability assessment on that choice that’s anything more than a wild-ass guess, I haven’t seen it yet.”
“Get to work on it,” Judge Moore ordered. “The President’ll want something hard enough to grab hold of before Ernie Allen starts talking about putting SDI on the table again.”
“Yes, sir.” Jack stood. “Judge, do we expect the Sovs to go public on CARDINAL’s arrest?”
“There’s a question,” Ritter said.
Ryan headed for the door and stopped again. “Wait a minute.”
“What is it?” Ritter asked.
“You said that the Ambassador delivered his protest before their Foreign Ministry said anything, right?”
“Yeah, Foley worked real fast to beat them to the punch.”
“With all due respect to Mr. Foley, nobody’s that fast,” Ryan said. “They should have had their press release already printed before they made the pickup.”
“So?” Admiral Greer asked.
Jack walked back toward the other three. “So the Foreign Minister is Narmonov’s man, isn’t he? So’s Yazov at the Defense Ministry. They didn’t know,” Ryan said. “They were as surprised as we were.”
“No chance,” Ritter snorted. “They don’t do things like that.”
“Assumption on your part, sir.” Jack stood his ground. “What evidence backs up that statement?”
Greer smiled. “None that we know of right now.”
“Damn it, James, I know he’s—”
“Keep going, Dr. Ryan,” Judge Moore said.
“If those two ministers didn’t know what was going down, it puts a different spin on this case, doesn’t it?” Jack sat on the back of a chair. “Okay, I can see cutting Yazov out— CARDINAL was his senior aide—but why cut out the Foreign Minister? This sort of thing, you want to move fast, catch the newsies with the breaking story—for damned sure you don’t want the other side to get the word out first.”
“Bob?” the DCI asked.
The Deputy Director for Operations never had liked Ryan very much—he thought that he’d come too far too fast—but, for all that, Bob Ritter was an honest man. The DDO sat back down and sipped at his coffee for a moment. “Boy may have a point. We’ll have to confirm a few details, but if they check out . . . then it’s as much a political operation as a simple ‘Two’ case.”
“James?”
The Deputy Director for Intelligence nodded agreement. “Scary.”
“We may not be talking about just losing a good source,” Ryan went on, speculating as he spoke. “KGB might be using this for political ends. What I don’t see is his power base. The Alexandrov faction has three solid members. Narmonov now has four, counting the new guy, Vaneyev—”
“Shit!” This was Ritter. “We assumed that when his daughter was picked up and let go that they either didn’t break her—hell, they say she looks okay—or her father was too important for them to—”
“Blackmail.” Now it was Judge Moore’s turn. “You were right, Bob. And Narmonov doesn’t know. You have to hand it to Gerasimov, the bastard has some beautiful moves . . . If all this is true, Narmonov is outnumbered and doesn’t know it.” He paused for a frown. “We’re speculating like a bunch of amateurs.”
“Well, it makes for one hell of a scenario.” Ryan almost smiled until he reached the logical conclusion. “We may have brought down the first Soviet government in thirty years that wanted to liberalize their own country.” What will the papers make of that? Jack asked himself. And you know that it’ll get out. Something like this is too juicy to stay secret long . . .
“We know what you’ve been doing, and we know how long you’ve been doing it. Here is the evidence.” He tossed the photographs onto the table.
“Nice pictures,” Mary Pat said. “Where’s the man from my embassy?”
“We don’t have to let anyone talk with you. We can keep you here as long as we wish. Years, if necessary,” he added ominously.
“Look, mister, I’m an American, okay? My husband is a diplomat. He has diplomatic immunity and so do I. Just because you think I’m a dumb American housewife, you think you can push me around and scare me into signing that damned-fool confession that I’m some kind of idiot spy. Well, I’m not, and I won’t, and my government will protect me. So as far as I’m concerned you can take that confession and spread mustard on it and eat it. God knows the food over here is so bad you could use the fiber in your diet,” she observed. “And you’re saying that that nice old man I was taking the picture to was arrested too, eh? Well, I think you’re just crazy.”
“We know that you have met him many times.”
“Twice. I saw him at a game last year, too—no, excuse me, I met him at a diplomatic reception a few weeks ago. That’s three times, but only the hockey matters. That’s why I brought the picture. The boys on the team think he’s good luck for them—ask them, they all signed the picture, didn’t they? Both times he came, we won big games and my son scored a couple of goals. And you think he’s a spy just because he went to a junior-league hockey game? My God, you guys must think American spies are under every bed.”
She was actually enjoying herself. They treated her carefully. Nothing like a threatened pregnancy, Mary Pat told herself, as she broke yet another time-honored rule in the spy business: Don’t say anything. She jabbered on, as would any outraged private citizen—with the shield of diplomatic immunity, of course—at the rank stupidity of the Russians. She watched her interrogator closely for a reaction. If there was anything Russians hated, it was to be looked down on, and most of all by the Americans, to whom they had a terminal inferiority complex.
“I used to think the security people at the embassy were a pain,” she huffed after a moment. “Don’t do this, don’t do that, be careful taking pictures of things. I wasn’t taking a picture, I was giving him a picture! And the kids in it are Russian kids—except for Eddie.” She turned away, looking into the mirror. Mary Pat wondered if the Russians had thought that touch up themselves or if they had gotten the idea from American cop shows.
“Whoever trained that one knew his business,” Vatutin observed, looking through the mirror from the next room. “She knows we’re here but doesn’t let on. When are we turning her loose?”
“Late this afternoon,” the head of the Second Chief Directorate answered. “Holding her isn’t worth the effort. Her husband is already packing up the apartment. You should have waited a few more seconds,” the General added.
“I know.” There was no point in explaining the faulty door, lock. The KGB didn’t accept excuses, even from colonels. That was beside the point in any case, Vatutin and his boss knew. They’d caught Filitov—not quite in the act, but he was still caught. That was the objective of the case, at least so far as they were concerned. Both men knew the other parts of it, but treated them as though they didn’t exist. It was the smartest course for both.
“Where is my man!” Yazov demanded. “He is in Lefortovo Prison, of course,” Gerasimov answered. “I want to see him. At once.” The Defense Minister hadn’t even paused to take off his cap, standing there in his calf-length greatcoat, his cheeks still pink from the chilly February air—or perhaps with anger, Gerasimov thought. Maybe even with fear . . .