Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [156]
"I am an American diplomat, properly accredited to your government. You will take me to my embassy immediately." Inwardly, Szell was seething. His face didn't show it, of course, but his five years in the field had just come to a screeching halt. All this over a rookie second-rate agent furnishing second-rate information about a third-rate communist air force. Goddamn it!
"First you will come with me," Andreas told him. He motioned with his pistol. "This way."
* * *
THE PAN AM 747 LANDED at Kennedy half an hour early due to favorable winds. Cox put his books back in his carry-on and stood, managing to be the first passenger off, with a little help from the stewardess. From there, it was a quick walk through customs—his canvas bag told everyone who and what he was—and from there to the next shuttle to Washington National. A total of ninety minutes later, he was in the back of a cab to the State Department at Foggy Bottom. Inside that capacious building, he opened the Diplomatic Bag and parceled out the various contents. The envelope from Foley was handed to a courier, who drove up the George Washington Parkway to Langley, where things also move fairly fast.
The message was hand-carried to MERCURY, the CIA's message center, and, once decrypted and printed up, hand-delivered to the Seventh Floor. The original was put in the burn bag, and no hard copies were kept, though an electronic one was transferred to a VHS cassette, which ended up in a slot in Sneezy.
Mike Bostock was in his office, and when he saw the envelope from Moscow, he decided that everything else could wait. It surely could, he saw at once, but when he checked his watch he knew that Bob Ritter was over eastern Ohio and heading west on an All Nippon Airlines 747. So he called Judge Moore at home, and requested that he come in to the office. Grumbling, the DCI agreed to do so, at once, also telling Bostock to call Jim Greer as well. Both lived agreeably close to CIA headquarters, and they came out of the executive elevator just eight minutes apart.
"What is it, Mike?" Moore asked on his arrival.
"From Foley. Looks like he has something interesting." Cowboy or not, Bostock was one to understate things.
"Damn," the DCI breathed. "And Bob's already gone?"
"Yes, sir, just an hour ago."
"What is it, Arthur?" Admiral Greer asked, wearing a cheap golf shirt.
"We got us a Rabbit." Moore handed the message over.
Greer took his time going over it. "This could be very interesting," he thought, after a moment's reflection.
"Yes, it could." Moore turned to the deputy of the Operations Directorate. "Mike, talk to me."
"Foley thinks it's hot. Ed's as good a field officer as anybody we have, and so's his wife. He wants to exfiltrate this guy and his family soonest. We pretty much have to go with his instincts on this one, Judge."
"Problems?"
"The question is: How do we accomplish the mission? Ordinarily, we leave that to the people in the field, unless they try to pull something crazy, but Ed and Mary are too smart for that." Bostock took a breath and looked out the floor-length windows to the Potomac Valley, out beyond the VIP parking lot. "Judge, Ed seems to think this guy has some very hot information. We can't question him on that. The obvious supposition is that the Rabbit's pretty far inside, and he wants to get the hell out of Dodge City. Adding the wife and daughter to the package is a serious complication. Again, we pretty much have to go with the instincts of our field personnel. It would be nice if we could run the guy as an agent, have him deliver information on a continuing basis, but for some reason either that isn't feasible, or Ed thinks he has what we need