Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [165]
"He said what?" the Chief of Station snapped.
"He said his wife—named Irina, by the way—doesn't know his plans," Mary Pat repeated.
"Son of a bitch!" her husband observed at once.
"Well, it does simplify some of our exposure. At least she can't let anything slip." His wife was always the optimist, Ed saw.
"Yeah, baby, until we try to make the exfiltration, and she decides not to go anywhere."
"He says she'll do what he says. You know, the men here like to rule the roost."
"That wouldn't work with you," the Chief of Station pointed out. For several reasons, not the least of which was that her balls were every bit as big as his.
"I'm not Russian, Eddie."
"Okay, what else did he say?"
"He doesn't trust our comms. He thinks some of our systems are compromised."
"Jesus!" He paused. "Any other good news?"
"The reason he's skipping town is that KGB wants to kill somebody who, he says, doesn't deserve to be killed."
"Did he say who?"
"Not until he breathes free air. But there is good news. His wife is a classical music buff. We need to find a good conductor in Hungary."
"Hungary?"
"I was thinking last night. Best place to get him out from. That's Jimmy Szell's station, isn't it?"
"Yeah." They both knew Szell from time at The Farm, CIA's training installation in Tidewater, Virginia, off Interstate 64, a few miles from Colonial Williamsburg. "I always thought he deserved something bigger." Ed took a second to think. "So, out of Hungary via Yugoslavia, you're thinking?"
"I always knew you were smart."
"Okay…" His eyes fixed on a blank part of the wall while his brain went to work. "Okay, we can make that work."
"Your flag signal's a red tie on the metro. Then he slips you the meeting arrangement, we do that, and the Rabbit skips out of town, along with Mrs. Rabbit and the Bunny—oh, you'll love this, he already calls his daughter zaichik."
"Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail?" Ed exercised his sense of humor.
"I like that. Call it Operation BEATRIX," she suggested. Both of them had read Mrs. Potter's Peter Rabbit as kids. Who hadn't?
"The problem's going to be getting Langley's approval. If we can't use normal comm channels, coordinating everything is going to be a major pain in the ass."
"They never told us at The Farm that this job was easy. So remember what John Clark told us. Be flexible."
"Yeah, like linguine." He let out a long breath. "With the communications limitations, it essentially means we plan it and run it out of this office, with no help from the Home Office."
"Ed, that's the way it's supposed to be anyway. All Langley does is tell us we can't do what we want to do"—which was, after all, the function of every home office in every business in the world.
"Whose comms can we trust?"
"The Rabbit says the Brits just set up a new system they can't crack—yet, anyway. Do we have any one-time pads left here?"
The COS shook his head. "Not that I know of." Foley lifted his phone and punched the right numbers. "Mike? You're in today? Want to come over here? Thanks."
Russell arrived in a couple minutes. "Hey, Ed—hello, Mary. What are you doing in the shop today?"
"Got a question."
"Okay."
"Got any one-timers left?"
"Why do you ask?"
"We just like the extra security," she replied. The studiedly casual reply didn't work.
"You telling me my systems aren't secure?" Russell asked in well-hidden alarm.
"There is reason to believe some of our encryption systems are not fully secure, Mike," Ed told the embassy Communications Officer.
"Shit," he breathed, then turned with some embarrassment. "Oh, sorry, Mary."
She smiled. "It's okay, Mike. I don't know what the word means, but I've heard it spoken before." The joke didn't quite get to Russell. The previous revelation was too earthshaking for him to see much humor at the moment.
"What can you tell me about that?"
"Not a thing, Mike," the Station Chief said.
"But you think it's solid?"
"Regrettably, yes."
"Okay, back in my safe I do have a few old pads, eight or nine years old. I never got rid of them—you just never know, y'know?"