Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [103]
"I'm home, honey," Ed Foley announced, taking out the paper only after the door was closed. He was reasonably certain that there were no cameras in the apartment—even American technology wasn't that far along yet, and he'd seen enough of Moscow to be unimpressed with their technical capabilities. His fingers unfolded the paper, and then he stopped cold in his tracks.
"What's for dinner?" he called out.
"Come and see, Ed." Mary Pat's voice came from the kitchen.
Hamburgers were sizzling on the stove. Mashed potatoes and gravy, plus baked beans, your basic American working-class dinner. But the bread was Russian, and that wasn't bad. Little Eddie was in front of the TV, watching a Transformers tape, which would keep him occupied for the next twenty minutes.
"Anything interesting happen today?" Mary Pat asked from the stove. She turned for her kiss, and her husband replied with their personal code phrase for the unusual.
"Not a thing, baby." That piqued her interest enough that when he held up the sheet of paper, she took it, and her eyes went wide.
It wasn't so much the handwritten message as the printed header: STATE SECURITY OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION.
Damn. His wife's lips mouthed the word.
The Moscow COS nodded thoughtfully.
"Can you watch the burgers, honey? I have to get something."
Ed took the spatula and flipped one over. His wife was back quickly, holding a kelly green tie.
CHAPTER 11
HAND JIVE
OF COURSE, there was little to be done at the moment. Dinner was served and eaten, and Eddie went back to his VCR and cartoon tapes. Four-year-olds were easy to please, even in Moscow. His parents got down to business. Years ago, they'd seen The Miracle Worker on TV, in which Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft) taught Helen Keller (Patty Duke) the use of the manual alphabet, and they'd decided it was a useful skill to learn as a means of communicating not quickly but quietly and with their own shorthand.
W[ell], what do [yo]u think? Ed asked Mary.
This could b[e] pretty h[ot], his wife replied.
Y[ep].
Ed, this guy works in MERCURY, th[eir] version anyway! Wow!
More likely he just has access to their mess[age] forms, the Chief of Station cautioned slowly. But I'll wear the green tie and take the same subway train for the next w[eek] or so.
FAB, his wife agreed, which was shorthand for Fuckin' A, Bubba!
Hope it isn't a trap or a false-flag, Ed observed.
Part of the terr[itory], h[oney], MP responded. The thought of being burned didn't frighten her, though she didn't want to suffer the embarrassment. She looked for opportunities more than her husband did—he worried more. But, strangely, not this time. If the Russians had "made" him as the Chief of Station or even just as a field spook—not likely, Ed thought—they'd be total idiots to burn him like this, not this fast and not this amateurishly. Unless they were trying to make some sort of political point, and he couldn't see the logic of that—and the KBG was as coldly logical as Mr. Spock ever was on planet Vulcan. Even the FBI wouldn't play this loose a game. So this opportunity had to be real, unless KGB was shaking down every embassy employee it could, just to see what might fall off the tree. Possible, but damned unlikely, and therefore worth the gamble, Foley judged. He'd wear the green tie and see what happened, and be damned careful to check all the faces on the subway car.
Tell L[angley]? Mary asked next.
He just shook his head. 2 early 4 that.
She nodded agreement. Next, Mary Pat mimed riding a horse. That meant that there was a chase and they were really in the game, finally. It was as though she were afraid that her skills were going stale. Damned little chance of that, her husband thought.