Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [176]
"Anything about what we talked about?" the communications officer asked, lingering for a moment.
"Doesn't look like it," Foley replied. "Got you a little torqued?"
"Ed, getting secure stuff in and out is my only job, y'know?"
"Look at it from my side, Mike. If they tumble to me, I'm as useless as tits on a boarhog. Not to mention the guys who get killed because of it."
"Yeah, I hear you." Russell paused. "I just can't believe they can crack my systems, Ed. Like you said, you'd be losing people left and right."
"I want to agree with you, but we can't be too careful, can we?"
"Roger that, man. I catch anybody dicking around in my shop, they won't live long enough to talk to the FBI," he promised darkly.
"Don't get too carried away."
"Ed, when I was in Vietnam, nonsecure signals got soldiers killed. That's as important as things get, y'know?"
"If I hear anything, I'll make sure you know about it, Mike."
"Okay." Russell headed out, not quite trailing smoke out of his ears.
Foley organized his message traffic—it was addressed to the Chief of Station, of course, not to anyone's name—and started reading through it. There was still concern about KGB and the Pope, but, aside from the Rabbit, he had nothing new to report, and it was only hope that told him the Flopsy had anything to report on that subject. A lot of interest in last week's Politburo meeting, but for that he'd have to wait for his sources to report in. Questions about Leonid Brezhnev's health, but while they knew the names of his physicians—a whole team of them—none of them talked to CIA directly. You could see the picture on TV and know that Leonid Ilyich wasn't going to be running the marathon in the next Olympics. But people like that could linger for years, good news and bad news. Brezhnev wasn't going to be doing anything new and different, but, as he became increasingly irrational, there was no telling what dumbass things he might try—damned sure he wasn't going to be pulling out of Afghanistan. He didn't care a rap about the lives of young Russian soldiers, not when he heard Death's footsteps approaching his own door. The succession was of interest to CIA, but it was fairly settled that Yuriy Vladimirovich Andropov would be the next guy at the seat at the head of the table, absent a sudden death or a major foot put wrong in a political sense. Andropov was too canny a political operator for that, however. No, he was the current czarevich, and that was that. Hopefully, he wouldn't be too vigorous—and he wouldn't if the stories about his liver disease were true. Every time Foley saw him on Russian TV, he looked for the yellow tinge on his skin that announced that particular ailment—but makeup could hide that, if they used makeup on their political chieftains… Hmm, how to check that? he wondered. Something to send back to the Science and Technology Directorate at Langley, maybe.
* * *
ZAITZEV TOOK HIS SEAT, after relieving Kolya Dobrik, and looked over his message traffic. He decided to memorize as much as possible, and so he took a little longer than usual forwarding the messages to their end-recipients. There was one from Agent CASSIUS again, routed for political-intelligence people upstairs, and also at the U.S.-Canada Institute, where the academicians read the tea leaves for The Centre as a backup. There was one from NEPTUNE, requesting money for the agent who was giving KGB such good communications intelligence. NEPTUNE suggested the sea, didn't it? Zaitzev searched his memory for previous signals from that source. Wasn't it mainly about the American navy? And he was the reason he worried about American signals security. Surely KGB was paying him a huge amount of money, hundreds of