Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [183]
"Interesting," Foley thought aloud. Fascinating, he thought inside.
"You know, the Moscow State Orchestra opens up beginning of next month. They have a new conductor, guy named Anatoliy Sheymov. Haven't heard him yet, but he's supposed to be pretty good. I can get you tickets easy. Ivan likes to show off to us foreigners, and they really are world-class."
"Thanks, Mike, I'll think about it. Later, man." Foley took his leave.
And he smiled all the way back to his office.
* * *
"BLOODY HELL," Sir Basil observed, reading over the newest cable from Moscow. "What bloody genius came up with this idea?" he asked the air. Oh, he saw. The American officer, Edward Foley. How the hell will he make this come about? the Director General wondered.
He'd been about to leave for lunch at Westminster Palace across the river, and he couldn't break that one off. Well, it would be something to ruminate over with his roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
* * *
"LUCKY ME," Ryan observed, back in his office.
"Jack, it will be less dangerous than crossing the street"—which could be a lively exercise in London.
"I can take care of myself, Simon," Ryan reminded his workmate. "But if I screw up, somebody else takes the fall."
"You'll not be responsible for any of that. You'll just be there to observe. I don't know Andy Hudson myself, but he has an excellent professional reputation."
"Great," Ryan commented. "Lunchtime, Simon, and I feel like a beer."
"Duke of Clarence all right?"
"Isn't that the guy who drowned in a barrel of malmsey wine?"
"Worse ways to go, Sir John," Harding observed.
"What is malmsey anyway?"
"Strong and sweet, rather like a Madeira. It now comes from those islands, in fact."
One more piece of trivia learned, Ryan thought, going to get his coat.
* * *
IN MOSCOW, Zaitzev checked his personnel file. He'd accrued twelve days of vacation time. He and his family hadn't gotten a time slot at Sochi the previous summer—the KGB quota had been filled in July and August—and so they had gone without. It was easier to schedule a vacation with a preschool child, as in any other country—you got to run away from town whenever you wished. Svetlana was in state-provided day care, but missing a few days of blocks and crayons was a lot easier to arrange than a week or two of state primary school, which was frowned upon.
* * *
UPSTAIRS, Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy was going over the latest message from Colonel Bubovoy in Sofia, just brought in by courier. So the Bulgarian premier had agreed to Moscow's request with a decent lack of annoying questions. The Bulgars knew their place. The chief of state of a supposedly sovereign nation knew how to take his orders from a field-grade officer of Russia's Committee for State Security. Which was just as it should be, the colonel thought. And now Colonel Strokov of the Dirzhavna Sugurnost would be out picking his shooter, undoubtedly a Turk, and Operation -666 could go forward. He would report this to Chairman Andropov later in the day.
* * *
"THREE HUMAN BODIES?" Alan Kingshot asked in considerable surprise. He was Sir Basil's most senior field officer, a very experienced operator who'd worked the streets of every major European city, first as a "legal" officer and later as a headquarters troubleshooter, in his thirty-seven years of service to Queen and Country. "Some sort of switch, is it?"
"Yes. The chap who suggested it is a fan of MINCEMEAT, I imagine," Basil responded.
Operation MINCEMEAT was a World War II legend. It had been designed to give Germany the impression that the next major Allied operation would not be the planned Operation HUSKY, the invasion of Sicily, and so it had been decided to suggest to German intelligence that Corsica was the