Red Rabbit Part 52

"Truly," Kingshot confirmed. "But the Irish are quite good as well. I do love my Guinness, though it's better in Dublin than in London."

"Why waste the good stuff on you guys?" Jack asked.

"Once a b.l.o.o.d.y Irishman, always a b.l.o.o.d.y Irishman," Kingshot observed.

"So, Oleg," Ryan asked, lighting up an after-dinner smoke, "is there anything different we ought to be doing-to make you comfortable, I mean?"

"I have no complaints, but I expect CIA will not give me so fine a house as this one."

"Oleg, I am a millionaire and don't live in a house this nice," Ryan confirmed with a laugh. "But your home in America will be more comfortable than your apartment in Moscow."

"Will I get car?"

"Sure."

"Wait how long?" Zaitzev asked.

"Wait for what? To buy a car?"

Zaitzev nodded.

"Oleg, you can pick from any of hundreds of car dealers.h.i.+ps, pick the car you like, pay for it, and drive it home-we usually let our wives pick the color," Jack added.

The Rabbit was incredulous. "So easy?"

"Yep. I used to drive a Volkswagen Rabbit, but I kinda like the Jaguar now. I might get one when I get home. Nice engine. Cathy likes it, but she might go back to a Porsche. She's been driving them since she was a teenager. Of course, it's not real practical with two kids," Ryan added hopefully. He didn't like the German two-seater that much. Mercedes seemed to him a much safer design.

"And buy house, also easy?"

"Depends. If you buy a new house, yes, it's pretty easy. To buy a house that somebody already owns, first you have to meet the owner and make an offer, but the Agency will probably help you with that."

"Where will we live?"

"Anywhere you want." After we pick your brain clean, Ryan didn't add. "There's a saying in America: 'It's a free country.' It's also a big country. You can find a place you like and move there. A lot of defectors live in the Was.h.i.+ngton area. I don't know why. I don't much like it. The summers can be miserable."

"Beastly hot," Kingshot agreed. "And the humidity is awful."

"You think it's bad there, try Florida," Jack suggested. "But a lot of people love it down there."

"And travel from one part to another, no papers?" Zaitzev asked.

For a KGB puke, this guy doesn't know s.h.i.+t, Jack thought. "No papers," Ryan a.s.sured him. "We'll get you an American Express card to make that easy." Then he had to explain credit cards to the Rabbit. It took ten minutes, it was so alien a concept to a Soviet citizen. By the end, Zaitzev's head was visibly swimming.

"You do have to pay the bill at the end of the month," Kingshot warned him. "Some people forget that, and they can get into serious financial trouble as a result."

C WAS IN HIS Belgravia townhouse, sipping some Louis XIII brandy and chatting with a friend. Sir George Hendley was a colleague of thirty years' standing. By profession a solicitor, he'd worked closely with the British government for most of his life, often consulting quietly with the Security Service and the Foreign Office. He had a "Most Secret" clearance, plus one into compartmented information. He'd been a confidant of several prime ministers over the years, and was considered as reliable as the Queen herself. He thought it just came along with the Winchester school tie.

"The Pope, eh?"

"Yes, George," Charleston confirmed. "The PM wants us to look into protecting the man. Trouble is, I haven't a clue at the moment. We can't contact the Vatican directly about it."

"Quite so, Basil. One can trust their loyalty, but not their politics. Tell me, how good do you suppose their own intelligence service is?"

"I'd have to say it's top-drawer in many areas. What better confidant than a priest, after all, and what better way to transfer information than inside the confessional? Plus all the other techniques that one can use. Their political intelligence is probably as good as ours-perhaps even better. I would imagine they know everything that happens in Poland, for example. And Eastern Europe probably has few secrets from them as well. One cannot underestimate their ability to call on a man's highest loyalty, after all. We've kept an ear on their communications for decades."

"Is that so?" Hendley asked.

"Oh, yes. During World War Two, they were very valuable to us. There was a German cardinal in the Vatican back then, chap named Mansdorf-odd, isn't it? Sounds like a Jewish name. First name Dieter, archbishop of Mannheim, then promoted to the Vatican diplomatic service. Traveled a lot. Kept us posted on the inner secrets of the n.a.z.i Party from 1938 through to the end of the war. He didn't much care for Hitler, you see."

"And their communications?"

"Mansdorf actually gave us his own cipher book to copy. They changed it after the war, of course, and so we got little more in the way of their private mail later on, but they never changed their cipher system, and the chaps at GCHQ have occasional success listening in. Good man, Dieter Cardinal Mansdorf. Never got recognized for his service, of course. Died in 'fifty-nine, I think."

"So how do we know that the Romans don't know about this operation already?" Not a bad question, Charleston thought, but he'd long since considered that one.

"It is being held very closely, our defector tells us. Hand-delivered messages, not going out on their machine ciphers, that sort of thing. And a bare handful of people involved. The one important name we do know is a Bulgarian field officer, Boris Strokov, colonel in the DS. We suspect he's the chap who killed Georgiy Markov just up the road from my office." Which Charleston considered an act of lese-majeste, perhaps even executed as a direct challenge to the Secret Intelligence Service. CIA and KGB had an informal covenant: Neither service ever killed in the other's capital. SIS had no such agreement with anyone, a fact that might have cost Georgiy Markov his life.

"So, you think he might be the prospective a.s.sa.s.sin?"

C waved his hands. "It's all we have, George."

"Not much," Hendley observed.

"Too thin for comfort, but it's better than nothing. We have numerous photos of this Strokov fellow. The Yard was close to arresting him when he flew out of Heathrow-for Paris, actually, and from there on to Sofia."

"Perhaps he was in a hurry to leave?" Hendley suggested.

"He's a professional, George. How many chances do such people take? In retrospect, it's rather amazing that the Yard got a line on him at all."

"So, you think he might be in Italy." A statement, not a question.

"It's a possibility, but whom can we tell?" C asked. "The Italians have criminal jurisdiction to a point. The Lateran Treaty gives them discretionary jurisdiction, subject to a Vatican veto," Charleston explained. He'd had to look into the legalities of the situation. "The Vatican has its own security service-the Swiss Guards, you know-but however good the men are, it's necessarily a thin reed, what with the restrictions imposed on them from above. And the Italian authorities cannot flood the area with their own security forces, for obvious reasons."

"So, the PM has saddled you with an impossible task."

"Yes, again, George," Sir Basil had to agree.

"So, what can you do?"

"All I can really come up with is to put some officers in the crowd and look for this Strokov fellow."

"And if they see him?"

"Ask him politely to depart the area?" Basil wondered aloud. "It would work, probably. He is a professional, and being spotted-I suppose we'd ostentatiously take photographs of him-would give him serious pause, perhaps enough to abandon the mission."

"Thin." Hendley thought of that idea.

"Yes, it is," C had to agree. But it would at least give him something to tell the Prime Minister.

"Whom to send?"

"We have a good Station Chief in Rome, Tom Sharp. He has four officers in his shop, plus we could send a few more from Century House, I suppose."

"Sounds reasonable, Basil. Why did you call me over?"

"I was hoping you'd have an idea that's eluded me, George." A final sip from the snifter. As much as he felt like some more brandy for the night, he demurred.

"One can only do what one can," Hendley sympathized.

"He's too good a man to be cut down this way-at the hands of the b.l.o.o.d.y Russians. And for what? For standing up for his own people. That sort of loyalty is supposed to be rewarded, not murdered in public."

"And the PM feels the same way."

"She is comfortable taking a stand." For which the PM was famous throughout the world.

"The Americans?" Hendley asked.

Charleston shrugged. "They haven't had a chance to speak to the defector yet. They trust us, George, but not that much."

"Well, do what you can. This KGB operation probably will not happen in the immediate future, anyway. How efficient are the Soviets, anyway?"

"We shall see" was all C had to say.

IT WAS QUIETER HERE than in his own house, despite the nearby presence of the motorway, Ryan thought, rolling out of bed at 6:50. The sink continued the eccentric British way of having two faucets, one hot and one cold, making sure that your left hand boiled while the right one froze when you washed your hands. As usual, it felt good to shave and brush and otherwise get yourself ready for the day, even if you had to start it with Taster's Choice.

Kingshot was already in the kitchen when Jack got there. Funny how people slept late on Sunday but frequently not on Sat.u.r.day.

"Message from London," Al said by way of greeting.

"What's that?"

"A question. How would you feel about a flight to Rome this afternoon?"

"What's up?"

"Sir Basil is sending some people to the Vatican to suss things out. He wants to know if you want to go. It's a CIA op, after all."

"Tell him yes," Jack said without a moment's thought. "When?" Then he realized he was being impetuous again. d.a.m.n.

"Noon flight out of Heathrow. You ought to have time to go home and change clothes."

"Car?"

"Nick will drive you over," Kingshot told him.

"What are you going to tell Oleg?"

"The truth. It ought to make him feel more important," Al thought aloud. It was always a good thing for defectors.

RYAN AND THOMPSON left within the hour, with Jack's bags in the "boot."

"This Zaitzev chap," Nick said out on the motorway. "He seems rather an important defector."

"Bet your a.s.s, Nick. He's got all kinds of hot information between his ears. We're going to treat him like a hod full of gold bricks."

"Good of CIA to let us talk to him."

"It'd be kinda churlish not to. You guys got him out for us, and covering the defection up was pretty slick." Jack couldn't say too much more. As trusted as Nick Thompson was, Jack couldn't know how much clearance he had.

The good news was that Thompson knew what not to ask. "So, your father was a police officer?"

"Detective, yeah. Mainly homicide. Did that more than twenty years. He topped out at lieutenant. Said captains never got to do anything more than administrative stuff, and dad wasn't into that. He liked busting bad guys and sending them to the joint."

"The what?"

"Prison. The Maryland State Prison is one evil-looking structure in Baltimore, by Jones Falls. Kinda like a medieval fortress, but more forbidding. The inmates call it Frankenstein's Castle."

"Fine with me, Sir John. I've never had much sympathy for murderers."

"Dad didn't talk about them much. Didn't bring his work home. Mom didn't like hearing about it. Except once, a father killed his son over a crab cake. That's like a little hamburger made out of crab meat," Jack explained. "Dad said it seemed like a s.h.i.+tty thing to get killed over. The father-the killer-copped right out, all broken up about it. But it didn't do his son much good."

"Amazing how many murderers react that way. They gather up the rage to take a life, then afterwards they are consumed by remorse."

"Too soon old, too late smart," Jack quoted from the Old West.

"Indeed. The whole business can be so b.l.o.o.d.y sad."

"What about this Strokov guy?"

"Different color of horse, entirely," Thompson replied. "You don't see many of those. For them it's part of the job, ending a life. No motive in the usual sense, and they leave little behind in the way of physical evidence. They can be very difficult to find, but mainly we do find them. We have time on our side, and sooner or later someone talks and it gets to our ear. Most criminals talk their own way into prison," Nick explained. "But people like this Strokov fellow, they do not talk-except when he gets home and writes up his official report. But we never see those. Getting a line on him was plain luck. Mr. Markov remembered being poked by the umbrella, remembered the color suit the man was wearing. One of our constables saw him wearing the same suit and thought there was something odd about him-you know, instead of flying right home, he waited to make sure Markov died. They'd bungled two previous attempts, you see, and so they called him in because of his expertise. Good professional, Strokov. He wanted to be completely sure, and he waited to read the death notice in the newspapers. In that time, we talked to the staff at his hotel and started a.s.sembling information. The Security Service got involved, and they were helpful in some ways but not in others-and the government got involved. The government was worried about creating an international incident, and so they held us up-cost us two days, I reckon. On the first of those two days, Strokov took a taxi to Heathrow and flew off to Paris. I was on the surveillance team. Stood within fifteen feet of him. We had two detectives with cameras, shot a lot of pictures. The last was of Strokov walking down the jetway to the Boeing. Next day, the government gave us permission to detain him for questioning."

"Day late and a dollar short, eh?"

Thompson nodded. "Quite. I would have liked to put him in the dock at the Old Bailey, but that fish got away. The French shadowed him at De Gaulle International, but he never left the international terminal, never talked with anyone. The b.u.g.g.e.r showed no remorse at all. I suppose for him it was like chopping firewood," the former detective said.

"Yeah. In the movies you make your hit and have a martini, shaken not stirred. But it's different when you kill a good guy."

"All Markov ever did was broadcast over BBC World Service," Nick said, gripping the wheel a little tightly. "I imagine the people in Sofia were somewhat put out with what he said."

"The people on the other side of the Curtain aren't real big on Freedom of Speech," Ryan reminded him.

"b.l.o.o.d.y barbarians. And now this chap is planning to kill the Pope? I am not a Catholic, but he is a man of G.o.d, and he seems rather a good chap. You know, the most vicious criminal hesitates before trifling with a man of the clergy."

"Yeah, I know. Doesn't do to p.i.s.s G.o.d off. But they don't believe in G.o.d, Nick."

"Fortunate for them that I am not G.o.d."

"Yeah, it would be nice to have the power to right all the wrongs in the world. The problem is, that's what Markov's bosses think they're doing."