Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [126]
"Where's the company located?" Jack asked.
"Someplace in California."
"Then it's an American product, Cathy."
"But not all the parts are," his wife pointed out.
"Look, the law allows for special exceptions to be made for uniquely valuable things that—"
"The government's going to make the rules, right?"
"True," Jack conceded. "Wait a minute. You told me their docs—"
"I never said they were dumb, just that they need to think more creatively. You know," she added, "just like the government does."
"I told the President this wasn't all that great an idea. He says the law will be in full force just a few months."
"I'll believe that when I see it."
13—Winds and Tides
"I've never seen anything like this."
"But your country made thousands of them," the PR director objected.
"That is true," Klerk agreed, "but the factories were not open to the public, and not even to Soviet journalists."
Chavez was doing the photography work, and was putting on quite a show, John Clark noted without a smile, dancing around the workers in their white coveralls and hard hats, turning, twisting, squatting, his Nikon pressed against his face, changing rolls every few minutes, and along the way getting a few hundred frames of the missile production line. They were SS-19 missile bodies, sure as hell. Clark knew the specifications, and had seen enough photos at Langley to know what they looked like—and enough to spot some local modifications. On the Russian models the exterior was usually green. Everything the Soviet Union had built for military use had to be camouflaged, even missiles inside of transport containers sitting in the bottom of concrete silos were the same pea-soup green that they liked to paint on tanks. But not these. The paint had weight, and there was no point in expending fuel to drive the few kilograms of paint to suborbital speed, and so these missile bodies were bright, shiny steel. The fittings and joints looked far more refined than he would have expected on a Russian production line.
"You've modified our original design, haven't you?"
"Correct." The PR guy smiled. "The basic design was excellent. Our engineers were very impressed, but we have different standards, and better materials. You have a good eye, Mr. Klerk. Not too long ago an American NASA engineer made the same observation." The man paused. "What sort of Russian name is Klerk?"
"It's not Russian," Clark said, continuing to scribble his notes. "My grandfather was English, a Communist. His name was Clark. In the 19208 he came to Russia to be part of the new experiment." An embarrassed grin. "I suppose he's disappointed, wherever he is."
"And your colleague?"
"Chekov? He's from the Crimea. The Tartar blood really shows, doesn't it? So how many of these will you build?"
Chavez was at the top end of the missile body at the end of the line. A few of the assembly workers were casting annoyed glances his way, and he took that to mean that he was doing his job of imitating an intrusive, pain-in-the-ass journalist right. Aside from that the job was pretty easy. The assembly bay of the factory was brightly lit to assist the workers in their tasks, and though he'd used his light meter for show, the camera's own monitoring chip told him that he had all the illumination he needed. This Nikon F-20 was one badass camera. Ding switched rolls. He was using ASA-64 color slide film—Fuji film, of course—because it had better color saturation, whatever that meant.
In due course, Mr. C shook hands with the factory representative and they all headed toward the door. Chavez—Chekov—twisted the lens off the camera body and stowed everything away in his bag. Friendly smiles and bows sent them on their way. Ding slid a CD into the player and turned the sound way up. It made conversation difficult, but John was always a stickler for the rules. And he was right. There was no knowing if someone might have bugged their rental car. Chavez leaned his head over to the right so that he wouldn't have to scream his question.
"John, is it always