Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [266]
"CLARK, JOHN (none?)", the thin file in Moscow was headed. A name so nondescript that other cover names were unknown and perhaps never assigned. Field officer, paramilitary type, believed to perform special covert functions. More than two (2) Intelligence Stars for courage and/or proficiency in field operations. Brief stint as a Security and Protective Officer, during which time no one had troubled himself to get a photo, Scherenko thought. Typical. Staring at him across the table now, he saw a man relaxed and at ease with the old friend he'd met for the first time perhaps as much as two minutes earlier. Well, he'd always known that CIA had good people working for them.
"We can talk here," Scherenko said more quietly, sticking to Russian.
"Is that so…?"
"Scherenko, Boris Il'ych, Major, deputy rezident," he said, finally introducing himself. Next he nodded to each of his guests. "You are John Clark—and Domingo Chavez."
"And this is the fucking Twilight Zone," Ding muttered.
" 'Plum blossoms bloom, and pleasure women buy new scarves in a brothel room.' Not exactly Pushkin, is it? Not even Pasternak. Arrogant little barbarians." He'd been in Japan for three years. He'd arrived expecting to find a pleasant, interesting place to do business. He'd come to dislike many aspects of Japanese culture, mainly the assumed local superiority to everything else in the world, particularly offensive to a Russian who felt exactly the same way.
"Would you like to tell us what this is all about, Comrade Major?" Clark asked.
Scherenko spoke calmly now. The humor of the event was now behind them all, not that the Americans had ever appreciated it. "Your Maria Patricia Foleyeva placed a call to our Sergey Nikolayevich Golovko, asking for our assistance. I know that you are running another officer here in Tokyo, but not his name. I am further instructed to tell you, Comrade Klerk, that your wife and daughters are fine. Your younger daughter made the dean's list at her university again, and is now a good candidate for admission to medical school. If you require further proof of my bona-fides, I'm afraid I cannot help you." The Major noted a thin expression of pleasure on the younger man's face and wondered what that was all about.
Well, that settles that, John thought. Almost. "Well, Boris, you sure as hell know how to get a man's attention. Now, maybe you can tell us what the hell is going on."
"We didn't see it either," Scherenko began, going over all the high points. It turned out that his data was somewhat better than what Clark had gotten from Chet Nomuri, but did not include quite everything. Intelligence was like that. You never had the full picture, and the parts left out were always important.
"How do you know we can operate safely?"
"You know that I cannot—"
"Boris Il'ych, my life is in your hands. You know I have a wife and two daughters. My life is important to me, and to them," John said reasonably, making himself appear all the more formidable to the pro across the table. It wasn't about fear. John knew that he was a capable field spook, and Scherenko gave the same impression. "Trust" was a concept both central to and alien from intelligence operations. You had to trust your people, and yet you could never trust them all the way in a business where dualisms were a way of life.
"Your cover works better for you than you think. The Japanese think that you are Russians. Because of that, they will not trouble you. We can see to that," the deputy rezident told them confidently.
"For how long?" Clark asked rather astutely, Scherenko thought.
"Yes, there is always that question, isn't there?"
"How do we communicate?" John asked.
"I understand that you require a high-quality telephone circuit." He handed a card under the table. "All of Tokyo is now fiberoptic. We have several similar lines to Moscow. Your special communications gear is being flown there as we speak. I understand it is excellent.