The American shook his head. ‘No, a lawyer.’
‘My father is a professor of history at Moscow State University. We have a dacha, and in the winter when I was little, I could ski in the woods. I love the silence. All you can hear is the – how you say, swish? Swish of the skis in the snow. Nothing else. Like a blanket on the earth, no noise, just silence.’
‘If you go up early, the mountains can be like that. You pick a day right after the snow ends, not much wind.’
Kolya smiled. ‘Like flying, isn’t it? Flying in a single-seat aircraft, a fair day with a few white clouds.’ He leaned forward with a crafty look. ‘Tell me, do you ever turn your radio off for a few minutes, just to be alone?’
‘They let you do that?’ Zacharias asked.
Grishanov chuckled, shaking his head. ‘No, but I do it anyway.’
‘Good for you,’ Robin said with a smile of his own, remembering what it was like. He thought of one particular afternoon, flying out of Mountain Home Air Force Base one February day in 1964.
‘It is how God must feel, yes? All alone. You can ignore the noise of the engine. For me it just goes away after a few minutes. Is it the same for you?’
‘Yeah; if your helmet fits right.’
‘That is the real reason I fly,’ Grishanov lied. ‘All the other rubbish, the paperwork, and the mechanical things, and the lectures, they are the price. To be up there, all alone, just like when I was a boy skiing in the woods – but better. You can see so far on a clear winter day.’ He handed Zacharias the flask again. ‘Do you suppose these little savages understand that?’
‘Probably not.’ He wavered for a moment. Well, he’d already had one. Another couldn’t hurt, could it? Zacharias took another swallow.
‘What I do, Robin, I hold the stick just in my fingertips, like this.’ He demonstrated with the top of the flask. ‘I close my eyes for a moment, and when I open them, the world is different. Then I am not part of the world anymore. I am something else – an angel, perhaps,’ he said with good humor. ‘Then I possess the sky as I would like to possess a woman, but it is never quite the same. The best feelings are supposed to be alone, I think.’
This guy really understands, doesn’t he? He really understands flying. ‘You a poet or something?’
‘I love poetry. I do not have the talent to make it, but that does not prevent me from reading it, and memorizing it, feeling what the poet tells me to feel,’ Grishanov said quietly, actually meaning what he said as he watched the American’s eyes lose focus, becoming dreamy. ‘We are much alike, my friend.’
‘What’s the story on Ju-Ju?’ Tucker asked.
‘Looks like a ripoff. He got careless. One of yours, eh?’ Charon said.
‘Yeah, he moved a lot for us.’
‘Who did it?’ They were in the Main Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, hidden in some rows, an ideal place, really. Hard to approach without being spotted, and impossible to bug. Even though a quiet place, there were just too many of the little alcoves.
‘No telling, Henry. Ryan and Douglas were there, and it didn’t look to me like they had much. Hey, you going to get that worked up over one pusher?’
‘You know better than that, but it puts a little dent in things. Never had one of mine wasted before.’
‘You know better than that, Henry.’ Charon flipped through some pages. ‘It’s a high-risk business. Somebody wanted a little cash, maybe some drugs, too, maybe break into the business quick? Look for a new pusher selling your stuff, maybe. Hell, as good as they were on the hit, maybe you could reach an understanding with ’em.’
‘I have enough dealers. And making peace like that is bad for business. How they do ’em?’
‘Very professional. Two in the head each. Douglas was talking like it was a mob hit.’
Tucker turned his head. ‘Oh?’
Charon spoke calmly, his back to the man. ‘Henry, this wasn’t the outfit. Tony isn’t going to do anything like that, is he?’
‘Probably not.’ But Eddie might.
‘I need something,’ Charon said next.
‘What?’
‘A dealer. What did you expect, a tip on the second at Pimlico?’
Too many of ’em are mine now, remember?’ It had been all right – better than that, really – to use Charon to eliminate the major competition, but as Tucker had consolidated his control on the local trade, he was able to target fewer and fewer independent operators for judicial elimination. That was particularly true of the majors. He had systematically picked out people with whom he had no interest in working, and the few who were left might be useful allies rather than rivals, if he could only find a way to negotiate with them.
‘If you want me to be able to protect you, Henry, then I have to be able to control investigations. For me to control the investigations, I have to land some big fish from time to time.’ Charon put the book back on the shelf. Why did he have to explain things like this to the man? .
‘When?’
‘Beginning of the week, something tasty. I want to take down something that looks nice.’
‘I’ll get back to you.’ Tucker replaced his book and walked away. Charon spent another few minutes, searching for the right book. He found it, along with the envelope that sat next to it. The police lieutenant didn’t bother counting. He knew that the amount would be right.
Greer handled the introductions.
‘Mr Clark, this is General Martin Young, and this is Robert Ritter.’
Kelly shook hands with both. The Marine was an aviator, like Maxwell and Podulski, both of whom were absent from this meeting. He hadn’t a clue who Ritter was, but he was the one who spoke first.
‘Nice analysis. Your language wasn’t exactly bureaucratic, but you hit all the high points.’
‘Sir, it’s not really all that hard to figure out. The ground assault ought to be fairly easy. You don’t have first-line troops in a place like this, and those you have are looking in, not out. Figure two guys in each tower. The MGs are going to be set to point in, right? It takes a few seconds to move them. You can use the treeline to get close enough for M-79 range.’ Kelly moved his hands around the diagram. ‘Here’s the barracks, only two doors, and I bet there’s not forty guys in there.’
‘Come in here?’ General Young tapped the southwest corner on the compound.
‘Yes, sir.’ For an airedale, the Marine caught on pretty fast. ‘The trick’s getting the initial strike team in close. You’ll use weather for that, and this time of the year that shouldn’t be real hard. Two gunships, just regular rockets and miniguns to hose these two buildings. Land the evac choppers here. It’s all over in under five minutes from when the shooting starts. That’s the land phase. I’ll leave the rest to the fliers.’
‘So you say the real key is to get the assault element in close on the ground -‘
‘No, sir. If you want to do another Song Tay, you can duplicate the whole plan, crash the chopper in the compound, the whole nine yards – but I keep hearing you want it done small.’
‘Correct,’ Ritter said. ‘Has to be small. There’s no way we can sell this as a major operation.’
‘Fewer assets, sir, and you have to use different tactics. The good news is that it’s a small objective, not all that many people to get out, not many bad guys to get in the way.’
‘But no safety factor,’ General Young said, frowning.
‘Not much of one,’ Kelly agreed. ‘Twenty-five people. Land them in this valley, they hump over this hill, get into place, do the towers, blow this gate. Then the gunships come in and hose these two buildings while the assault element hits this building here. The snakes orbit while the slicks do the pickup, and we all boogie the hell down the valley.’
‘Mr Clark, you’re an optimist,’ Greer observed, reminding Kelly of his cover name at the same time. If General Young found out that Kelly had been a mere chief, they’d never get his support, and Young had already stretched a long way for them, using up his whole year’s construction budget to build the mockup in the woods of Quantico.
‘It’s all stuff I’ve done before, Admiral.’
‘Who’s going to get the personnel?’ Ritter asked.
‘That’s being taken care of,’ James Greer assured him.
Ritter sat back, looking at the photos and diagrams. He was putting his career on the line, as was Greer and everyone else. But the alternative to doing something was doing nothing. Doing nothing meant that at least one good man, and perhaps twenty more, would never come home again. That wasn’t the real reason, though, Ritter admitted to himself. The real reason was that others had decided that the lives of those men didn’t matter, and those others might make the same decision again. That kind of thinking would someday destroy his Agency. You couldn’t recruit agents if the word got out that America didn’t protect those who worked for her. Keeping faith was more than the right thing. It was also good business.