Executive orders - Tom Clancy [316]
And this never leaked? It was pretty amazing to a man who'd spent years extracting facts from the government, like a dentist with an unwilling patient.
Ryan knows how to hush things up. Another photo. That's a body bag. The person inside was a Russian crewman. Ryan killed him-shot him with a pistol. That's how he got his first Intelligence Star. I guess he figured we couldn't risk having him tell-well, isn't too hard to figure, is it?
Murder?
No. The CIA man wasn't willing to go that far. The official story is that it was a real shoot-out, that other people got hurt also. That's how the documents read in the file, but
Yeah. You have to wonder, don't you? Donner nodded, staring down at the photos. Could this possibly be faked?
Possibly, yes, he admitted. But it's not. The other people in the photo: Admiral Dan Foster, he was Chief of Naval Operations back then. This one is Commander Bartolomeo Mancuso. Back then he commanded USS Dallas. He was transferred to Red October to facilitate the defection. He's still on active duty, by the way, an admiral now. He commands all the submarines in the Pacific. And that one is Captain Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius of the Soviet navy. He was the captain of Red October. They're all still alive. Ramius lives in Jacksonville, Florida, now. He works at the Navy's base at Mayport under the name Mark Ramsey. Consulting contract, he explained. The usual thing. Got a big stipend from the government, too, but God knows he earned it.
Donner noted the details, and he recognized one of the extraneous faces. Sure as hell this wasn't faked. There were rules for that, too. If somebody lied to a reporter, it wasn't all that hard to make sure the right people found out who had broken the law-worse yet, that person became a target, and the media was in its way a crueler prosecutor than anyone in the Justice Department could ever hope to be. The court system, after all, required due process of law.
Okay,- the journalist said. The first set of photos went back in their folder. Another folder appeared, and from it a photograph.
Recognize this guy?
He was-wait a minute. Gera-something. He was-
Nikolay Gerasimov. He was chairman of the old KGB.
Killed in a plane crash back in-
Another photo went down. The subject was older, grayer, and looking far more prosperous. This picture was taken in Winchester, Virginia, two years ago. Ryan went to Moscow, covered as a technical adviser to the START talks. He got Gerasimov to defect. Nobody's exactly sure how. His wife and daughter got out, too. That op was run directly out of Judge Moore's office. Ryan worked that way a lot. He was never really part of the system. Ryan knows-well, look, in fairness to the guy, he's one hell of a spook, okay? He supposedly worked directly for Jim Greer as part of the DI, not the DO. A cover within a cover. Ryan's never made an operational mistake that I know of, and that's some record. Not too many others can claim that, but one reason for it is he's one ruthless son of a bitch. Effective, yes, but ruthless. He cut through all the bureaucracy whenever he wanted. He does it his way every time, and if you get in his way-well, there's one dead Russian we buried off the Red October, and a whole Alfa crew off the Carolinas, to keep that op a secret. This one, I'm not sure. Nothing in the file, but the file has a lot of blanks. How the wife and daughter got out, it's not in the file. All I have for that are rumors, and they're pretty thin.
Damn, I wish I'd had this a few hours ago.
Rolled you, did he? This question came from Ed Kealty over a speaker phone.
I know the problem, the CIA official said. Ryan is slick. I mean, slick. He's skated