Red Rabbit Part 24

"He's dead, maybe in a very unpleasant way. There's a story that once they loaded a guy into a crematorium alive and then turned on the gas-and they made a film of it, pour encourager les autres, as Voltaire put it."

"n.o.body does that anymore!" Cathy objected immediately.

"There's a guy at Langley who claims to have seen the film. The poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d's name was Popov, a GRU officer who worked for us. His bosses were very displeased with him."

"You're serious?" Cathy persisted.

"As a heart attack. Supposedly, they used to show the film to people in the GRU Academy as a warning about not crossing the line-it strikes me as bad psychology but, like I said, I've met a guy who says he saw the film. Anyway, that's one of the reasons we try to protect our sources."

"That's a little hard to believe."

"Oh, really? You mean, like a surgeon breaking for lunch and having a beer?"

"Well . . . yes."

"It's an imperfect world we live in, babe." He'd let things go. She'd have all weekend to think things over, and he'd get some work done on his Halsey book.

BACK IN MOSCOW, fingers were flying. How u gonna tell Lan[gley], she asked.

N[ot] sure, he replied.

Cour[ier], she suggested. This could be re[ally] hot.

Ed nodded agreement. Rit [ter] will be exci[ted].

D[amn] st[raight], she agreed. Want m[e] 2 han[dle] the me[et]? she asked.

Y [our] Ru[ssian] is pre[etty] g[ood], he agreed.

This time she nodded. She spoke an elegant literary Russian reserved to the well-educated over here, Ed knew. The average Soviet couldn't believe that a foreigner spoke his language that well. When walking the street or conversing with a shop clerk, she never let that skill slip, instead stumbling over complex phrases. To do otherwise would have been noticed at once, and so avoiding it was an important part of her cover, even more than her blond hair and American mannerisms. It would finger her immediately to their new agent.

When? she asked next.

Iv[an] sez tom[orrow]. Up 4 it? he responded.

She patted his hip and gave a cute, playful smile, which translated to bet your a.s.s.

Foley loved his wife as fully as a man could, and part of that was his respect for her love of the game they both played. Paramount Central Casting could not have given him a better wife. They'd be making love tonight. The rule in boxing might be no s.e.x before a fight, but for Mary Pat the rule was the reverse, and if the microphones in the walls noticed, well, f.u.c.k 'em, the Chief of Station Moscow thought, with a sly smile of his own.

"WHEN DO YOU leave, Bob?" Greer asked the DDO.

"Sunday. ANA to Tokyo, and from there on to Seoul."

"Better you than me. I hate those long flights," the DDI observed.

"Well, you try to sleep about half the way," and Ritter was good at that. He had a conference scheduled with the KCIA, to go over things on both North Korea and the Chinese, both of which he was worried about-as were the Koreans. "Nothing much happening in my shop at the moment, anyway."

"Smart of you to skip town while we have the President chewing my backside about the Pope," Judge Moore thought aloud.

"Well, I'm sorry about that, Arthur," Ritter retorted, with an ironic smile. "Mike Bostock will be handling things in my absence." Both senior executives knew and liked Bostock, a career field spook and an expert on the Soviets and the Central Europeans. He was a little too much of a cowboy to be trusted on The Hill, though, which everyone thought was a pity. Cowboys had their uses-like Mary Pat Foley, for example.

"Still nothing out of the Politburo meeting?"

"Not yet, Arthur. Maybe they just talked about routine stuff. You know, they don't always sit there and plan the next nuclear war."

"No." Greer chuckled. "They think we're always doing that. Jesus, they're a paranoid bunch."

"Remember what Henry said: 'Even paranoids have enemies.' And that is our job," Ritter reminded them.

"Still ruminating over your MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH plan, Robert?"

"Nothing specific yet. The in-house people I've talked to about it-d.a.m.n it, Arthur, you tell our people to think outside of the box, and what do they do? They build a better box!"

"We don't have many entrepreneur types here, remember. Government agency. Pay caps. Tends to militate against creative thinking. That's what we're for," Judge Moore pointed out. "How do we change that?"

"We have a few people from the real world. h.e.l.l, I've got one on my team-he doesn't know how to think inside the box."

"Ryan?" Ritter asked.

"That's one of them," Jim Greer confirmed with a nod.

"He's not one of us," the DDO observed at once.

"Bob, you can't have it both ways," the DDI shot back. "Either you want a guy who thinks like one of our bureaucrats, or a guy who thinks creatively. Ryan knows the rules, he's an ex-Marine who even knows how to think on his feet, and pretty soon he's going to be a star a.n.a.lyst." Greer paused. "He's about the best young officer I've seen in a few years, and what your beef with him is, Robert, I do not understand."

"Basil likes him," Moore added to the conversation, "and Basil's a hard man to fool."

"Next time I see Jack, I'd like to let him know about RED DEATH."

"Really?" Moore asked. "It's way over his pay grade."

"Arthur, he knows economics better than anyone I have in the DI. I didn't put him in my economics section only because he's too smart to be limited that way. Bob, if you want to wreck the Soviet Union-without a war-the only way to do it is to cripple their economy. Ryan made himself a pile of money because he knows all that stuff. I'm telling you, he knows how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Maybe he can figure a way to burn down a wheat field. Anyway, what does it hurt? Your project is entirely theoretical, isn't it?"

"Well?" the DCI turned to Ritter. Greer was right, after all.

"Oh, what the h.e.l.l, okay," the DDO conceded the point. "Just so he doesn't talk about this to The Was.h.i.+ngton Post. We don't need that idea out in the open. Congress and the press would have a meltdown."

"Jack, talk to the press?" Greer asked. "Not likely. He doesn't curry favor with people, including us. He's one guy I think we can trust. The whole Russian KGB doesn't have enough hard currency to buy him off. That's more than I can say for myself," he joked.

"I'll remember you said that, James," Ritter promised, with a thin smile of his own. Such jokes were usually limited to the Seventh Floor at Langley.

A DEPARTMENT STORE was a department store anywhere in the world, and GUM was supposedly Moscow's counterpart to Macy's in New York. Theoretically, Ed Foley thought, walking in the main entrance. Just like the Soviet Union was theoretically a voluntary union of republics, and Russia theoretically had a const.i.tution that existed over and above the will of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. And there was theoretically an Easter Bunny, too, he thought, looking around.

They took the escalator to the second floor-the escalator was of the old sort, with thick wooden runners instead of the metal type which had long since taken over in the West. The fur department was over on the right, toward the back, and, on initial visual inspection, the selection there wasn't all that shabby.

Best of all, so was Ivan, wearing the same clothes that he'd worn on the metro. Maybe his best suit? Foley wondered. If so, he'd better get his a.s.s to a Western country as soon as possible.

Other than the at-best-mediocre quality of the goods here, a department store was a department store, though here the departments were semi-independent shops. But their Ivan was smart. He'd suggested a meet in a part of the place where there would certainly be high-quality goods. For millennia, Russia had been a place of cold winters, a place where even the elephants had needed fur coats, and since 25 percent of the human blood supply goes to the brain, men needed hats. The decent fur hats were called shapkas, roughly tubular fur head coverings that had little in the way of precise shape, but did serve to keep the brain from freezing. The really good ones were made out of muskrat-mink and sable went only to the most expensive specialty stores, and those were mainly limited to well-to-do women, the wives and/or mistresses of Party bosses. But the n.o.ble muskrat, a swamp creature that smelled-well, the smell was taken out of the skin somehow, lest the wearer of the hat be mistaken for a tidal wetland garbage dump-had very fine fur or hair or whatever it was, and was a good insulator. So, fine, a rat with a high R rating. But that wasn't the important part, was it?

Ed and Mary Pat could also communicate with their eyes, though the bandwidth was pretty narrow. The time of day helped. The winter hats had just been stocked in the store, and the fall weather didn't have people racing to buy new ones yet. There was just one guy in a brown jacket, and Mary Pat moved in that direction, after shooing her husband away, as though to buy him something as a semi-surprise.

The man was shopping, just as she was, and he was in the hat department. He's not a dummy, whoever he is, she thought.

"Excuse me," she said in Russian.

"Yes?" His head turned. Mary Pat checked him out; he was in his early thirties, but looked older than that, as life in Russia tended to age people more rapidly, even more rapidly than New York City. Brown hair, brown eyes-rather smart-looking in the eyes. That was good.

"I am shopping for a winter hat for my husband, as you suggested," she added in her very best Russian, "on the metro."

He didn't expect it to be a girl, Mrs. Foley saw at once. He blinked hard and looked at her, trying to square the perfect Russian with the fact that she had to be an American.

"On the metro?"

"That's right. My husband thought it better that I should meet you, rather than he. So . . ." She lifted a hat and riffled the fur, then turned to her new friend, as though asking his opinion. "So, what do you wish of us?"

"What do you mean?" he blurted back at her.

"You have approached an American and requested a meeting. Do you want to a.s.sist me in buying a hat for my husband?" she asked very quietly indeed.

"You are CIA?" he asked, his thought now back under semicontrol.

"My husband and I work for the American government, yes. And you work for KGB."

"Yes," he replied, "in communications, Central Communications."

"Indeed?" She turned back to the gable and lifted another shapka. Holy s.h.i.+t, she thought, but was he telling the truth, or did he just want a cheap ticket to New York?

"Really? How can I be sure of that?"

"I say it is so," he replied, surprised and slightly outraged that his honesty should come into question. Did this woman think he was risking his life as a lark? "Why do you talk to me?"

"The message blanks you pa.s.sed on the metro did get my attention," she said, holding up a dark brown hat and frowning, as though it were too dark.

"Madam, I work in the Eighth Chief Directorate."

"Which department?"

"Simple communications processing. I am not part of the signals intelligence service. I am a communications officer. I transmit outgoing signals to the various rezidenturas, and when signals come to my desk from out in the field, I forward them to the proper recipients. As a result, I see many operational signals. Is that sufficient to your purpose?" He was at least playing the game properly, gesturing to the shapka and shaking his head, then pointing to another, its fur dyed a lighter brown, almost a blond color.

"I suppose it might be. What do you ask of us?"

"I have information of great importance-very great importance. In return for that information, I require pa.s.sage to the West for myself, my wife, and my daughter."

"How old is your daughter?"

"Three years and seven months. Can you deliver what I require?"

That question shot a full pint of adrenaline into her bloodstream. She'd have to make this decision almost instantly, and with that decision she was committing the whole power of CIA onto a single case. Getting three people out of the Soviet Union was not going to be a picnic.

But this guy works in MERCURY, Mary Pat realized. He'd know things a hundred well-placed agents couldn't get to. Ivan here was custodian of the Russian Crown Jewels, more valuable even than Brezhnev's b.a.l.l.s, and so- "Yes, we can get you and your family out. How soon?"

"The information I have is very time-sensitive. As soon as you can arrange. I will not reveal my information until I am in the West, but I a.s.sure you the information is a matter of great importance-it is enough to force me into this action," he added as an additional dangle.

Don't overplay your hand, Ivan, she thought. An ego-driven agent would tell them he had the launch codes for the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, when he just had his mother's recipe for borscht, and getting the b.a.s.t.a.r.d out would be a waste of resources that had to be used with the greatest care. But, against that possibility, Mary Pat had her eyes. She looked into this man's soul, and saw that whatever he was, "liar" probably wasn't among them.

"Yes, we can do this very quickly if necessary. We need to discuss place and methods. We cannot talk any longer here. I suggest a meeting place to discuss details."

"That is simple," Zaitzev replied, setting the place for the following morning.

You're in a hurry. "What name do I call you?" she finally asked.

"Oleg Ivan'ch," he answered automatically, then realized he'd spoken the truth, in a situation where dissimulation might have served him better.

"That is good. My name is Maria," she replied. "So, which shapka would you recommend?"

"For your husband? This one, certainly," Zaitzev said, handing over the dirty-blond one.

"Then I shall buy it. Thank you, comrade." She fussed over the hat briefly, then walked off, checking the price tag, 180 rubles, more than a month's pay for a Moscow worker. To effect the purchase, she handed the shapka over to one clerk, then walked to a cash register, where she paid her cash-the Soviets hadn't discovered credit cards yet-and got a receipt in return, which she handed to the first clerk, who gave her the hat back.

So, it was true-the Russians really were more inefficient than the American government. Amazing that it was possible, but seeing was believing, she told herself, clutching the brown-paper bag and finding her husband, whom she quickly walked outside.

"So, what did you buy me?"

"Something you'll like," she promised, holding up the bag, but her sparkling blue eyes said it all. Then she checked her watch. It was just 3:00 A.M. in Was.h.i.+ngton and, if they phoned this one in, it was too early. This wasn't something for the night crew, even the trusted people in MERCURY. She'd just learned that one the hard way. No, this one would get written up, encrypted, and put in the diplomatic bag. Then it was just a matter of getting approval from Langley.

THEIR CAR HAD just been swept by an emba.s.sy mechanic the previous day-everybody in the emba.s.sy did it routinely, so this didn't finger them as spooks, and the telltales on door and hood hadn't been disturbed the previous night. The Mercedes 280 also had a fairly sophisticated alarm. So Ed Foley just turned up the sound on the radiotape player. In the slot was a Bee Gees tape sure to offend anyone listening to a bug, and easily loud enough to overpower it. In her pa.s.senger seat, Mary Pat danced to the music, like a good California girl.

"Our friend needs a ride," she said, just loudly enough to be heard by her husband. "Him, wife, and daughter, age three and a half."

"When?" Ed wanted to know.

"Soon."

"How?"

"Up to us."

"He's serious?" Ed asked his wife, meaning, Worth our time?

"Think so."

You couldn't be sure, but MP had a good eye for reading people, and he was willing to wager on those cards. He nodded. "Okay."

"Any company?" she asked next.

Foley's eyes were about equally divided between the street and the mirrors. If they were being followed, it was by the Invisible Man. "Nope."

"Good." She turned the sound down some. "You know, I like it, too, Ed, but easy on the ears."