Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [125]
So, again, he got to wait, but sleep didn't come. Tomorrow he would not be a very happy comrade. He could feel the hangover coming already, like an earthquake trapped and contained inside his skull…
* * *
"HOW'D IT GO, SIMON?" Ryan asked.
"It could have been worse. The PM didn't rip my head off. I told her that we only have what we have, and Basil backed me up. She wants more. She said that in my presence."
"No surprise. Ever hear of a president who wanted less information, buddy?"
"Not recently," Harding admitted. Ryan saw the stress bleeding off his workmate. Damned sure he'd have a beer at the pub before heading home. The Brit analyst loaded his pipe and lit it, taking a long pull.
"If it makes you feel any better, Langley doesn't have any more than you guys do."
"I know. She asked, and that's what Basil said. Evidently, he talked to your Judge Moore before driving over."
"So we're all ignorant together."
"Bloody comforting," Simon Harding snorted.
It was far past going-home time. Ryan had waited to see what Simon would say about the meeting at 10 Downing Street, because Ryan was also here to gather intelligence on the Brits. They would understand, because that was the game they all played. He checked his watch.
"Well, I've got to boogie on home. See you tomorrow."
"Sleep well," Harding said, as Ryan headed out the door. Jack was reasonably sure that Simon would not. He knew what Harding made, as a mid-level civil servant, and it wasn't quite enough for this stressful a day. But, he told himself out on the street, that's Life in the Big City.
* * *
"WHAT DID YOU tell your people, Bob?" Judge Moore asked.
"Just what you told me, Arthur. The President wants to know. No feedback yet. Tell the Boss he's going to have to be patient."
"I said that. He was not overly pleased," the DCI responded.
"Well, Judge, I can't stop the rain from falling. We don't have power over a lot of things, and time is one of them. He's a big boy; he can understand that, can't he?"
"Yes, Robert, but he likes to get what he needs. He's worried about His Holiness, now that the Pope has kicked over the anthill—"
"Well, we think he has. The Russians might be smart enough to work through diplomatic channels and tell him to cool down and let things work out, and—"
"Bob, that wouldn't work," Admiral Greer put in. "He's not the sort of guy you can warn off with lawyer talk, is he?"
"No," Ritter admitted. This Pope was not a man to compromise on issues of great importance. He'd seen himself through all manner of unpleasantness, from Hitler's Nazis to Stalin's NKVD, and he'd kept his church together by circling the wagons, like settlers against Indian attacks in those old Western movies. He hadn't managed to keep his church alive in Poland by giving in on important issues, had he? And, by holding his ground, he'd maintained enough moral and political strength to threaten the other of the world's superpowers. No, this guy wasn't going to fold under pressure.
Most men feared death and ruin. This one didn't. The Russians would never understand why, but they would understand the respect it earned him. It was becoming clear to Bob Ritter and the other senior intelligence officers in this room that the one single response that would make sense to the Politburo was an attack on the Pope. And the Politburo had met today, though what they had discussed and concluded were frustratingly unknown.
"Bob, do we have any assets who can find out what they talked about in the Kremlin today?"
"We have a few, and they will be alerted in the next two days—or, if they come up with something important, they can decide to get the information on their own hook. If they become aware of something this hot, you'd expect them to figure it out on their own and get a packet of information out to their handlers," Ritter told the DCI. "Hey, Arthur, I don't like waiting and not knowing any more than you do, but we have to let this thing take its course. You know the dangers of a balls-to-the-wall alert to our