Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [254]
"Except for one thing," Jack added.
"What's that?" Ed Foley asked, cutting his wife off.
"The PSID knows they're working."
"Golovko?" Mary Pat asked. Jack nodded soberly. "That son of a bitch," she went on. "You know, they still are the best in the world." Which was not an altogether pleasant admission from the Deputy Director (Operations) of the Central Intelligence Agency.
"Don't tell me they have the head of Japanese counterintel under their control?" her husband inquired delicately.
"Why not, honey? They do it to everybody else." Which was true. "You know, sometimes I think we ought to hire some of their people just to give lessons." She paused for a second. "We don't have a choice."
"Sergey didn't actually come out and say that, but I don't know how else he could have known. No," Jack agreed with the DDO, "we don't really have any choice at all."
Even Ed saw that now, which was not the same as liking it. "What's the quid on this one?"
"They want everything we get out of THISTLE. They're a little concerned about this situation. They were caught by surprise, too, Sergey tells me."
"But they have another network operating there. He told you that, too," MP observed. "And it has to be a good one, too."
"Giving them the 'take' from THISTLE in return for not being hassled is one thing—and a pretty big thing. This goes too far. Did you think this one all the way through, Jack? It means that they'll actually be running our people for us." Ed didn't like that one at all, but on a moment's additional consideration, it was plain that he didn't see an alternative either.
"Interesting circumstances, but Sergey says he was caught with his drawers down. Go figure." Ryan shrugged, wondering yet again how it was possible for three of the best-informed intelligence professionals in his country not to be able to understand what was going on.
"A lie on his part?" Ed wondered. "On the face of it, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense."
"Neither does lying," Mary Pat said. "Oh, I love these matryoshka puzzles. Okay, at least we know there are things we don't know yet. That means we have a lot of things to find out, the quicker the better. If we let RVS run our people…it's risky, Jack, but—damn, I don't see that we have a choice."
"I tell him yes?" Jack asked. He had to get the President's approval, too, but that would be easier than getting theirs.
The Foleys traded a look and nodded.
An oceangoing commercial tug was located by a helicopter fifty miles from the Enterprise formation, and in a remarkable set of circumstances, the frigate Gary took custody of the barge and dispatched the tug to the carrier, where she could relieve the Aegis cruiser, and, by the way, increase Big-E's speed of advance to nine knots. The tug's skipper contemplated the magnitude of the fee he'd gained under the Lloyd's Open Form salvage contract, which the carrier's CO had signed and ferried back by helicopter. The typical court award was 10 to 15 percent of the value of the property salved. A carrier, an air wing, and six thousand people, the tugboat crew thought. What was 10 percent of three billion dollars? Maybe they'd be generous and settle for five.
It was a mixture of the simple and the complex, as always. There were now P-3C Orion patrol aircraft operating out of Midway to support the retreating battle force. It had taken a full day to reactivate the facilities at the midocean atoll, possible only because there was a team of ornithologists where studying the goonies. The Orions were in turn supported by planes of the Hawaiian Air National Guard. However it had happened, the admiral who still flew his flag on the crippled aircraft carrier could look at a radar picture with four antisubmarine aircraft arrayed around his