Patriot games - Tom Clancy [47]
"If you'll excuse me for a moment. Jack, I must be off. Back in a few minutes."
Thanks a lot, Ryan thought as he nodded politely. Now what do I do?
"Good evening, Sir John," said a man in the uniform of a vice admiral of the Royal Navy. Ryan tried not to let his relief show. Of course, he'd been handed off to another custodian. He realized belatedly that lots of people came here for the first time. Some would need a little support while they got used to the idea of being in a palace, and there would be a procedure to take care of them. Jack took a closer look at the man's face as they shook hands. There was something familiar about it. "I'm Basil Charleston."
Aha! "Good evening, sir." His first week at Langley he'd seen the man, and his CIA escort had casually noted that this was "B.C." or just "C," the chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service, once known as MI-6. What are you doing here?
"You must be thirsty." Another man arrived with a glass of champagne. "Hello. I'm Bill Holmes."
"You gentlemen work together?" Ryan sipped at the bubbling wine.
"Judge Moore told me you were a clever chap," Charleston observed.
"Excuse me? Judge who?"
"Nicely done, Doctor Ryan," Holmes smiled as he finished off his glass. "I understand that you used to play football-the American kind, that is. You were on the junior varsity team, weren't you?"
"Varsity and junior varsity, but only in high school. I wasn't big enough for college ball," Ryan said, trying to mask his uneasiness. "Junior Varsity" was the project name under which he'd been called in to consult with CIA.
"And you wouldn't happen to know anything about the chap who wrote Agents and Agencies?" Charleston smiled. Jack went rigid.
"Admiral, I cannot talk about that without-"
"Copy number sixteen is sitting on my desk. The good judge told me to tell you that you were free to talk about the 'smoking word-processor.' "
Ryan let out a breath. The phrase must have come originally from James Greer. When Jack had made the Canary Trap proposal to the Deputy Director, Intelligence, Admiral James Greer had made a joke about it, using those words. Ryan was free to talk. Probably. His CIA security briefing had not exactly covered this situation.
"Excuse me, sir. Nobody ever told me that I was free to talk about that."
Charleston went from jovial to serious for a moment. "Don't apologize, lad. One is supposed to take matters of classification seriously. That paper you wrote was an excellent bit of detective work. One of our problems, as someone doubtless told you, is that we take in so much information now that the real problem is making sense of it all. Not easy to wade through all the muck and find the gleaming nugget. For the first time in the business, your report was first-rate. What I didn't know about was this thing the Judge called the Canary Trap. He said you could explain it better than he." Charleston waved for another glass. A footman, or some sort of servant, came over with a tray. "You know who I am, of course."
"Yes, Admiral. I saw you last July at the Agency. You were getting out of the executive elevator on the seventh floor when I was coming out of the DDI's office, and somebody told me who you were."
"Good. Now you know that all of this remains in the family. What the devil is this Canary Trap?"
"Well, you know about all the problems CIA has with leaks. When I was finishing off the first draft of the report, I came up with an idea to make each one unique."
"They've been doing that for years," Holmes noted. "All one must do is misplace a comma here and there. Easiest thing in the world. If the newspeople are foolish enough to print a photograph of the document, we can identify the leak."
"Yes, sir, and the reporters who publish the leaks know that, too. They've learned not to show photographs of the documents they get from their sources, haven't they?" Ryan answered. "What I came up with was a new twist on that. Agents and Agencies has four sections. Each section has a summary