Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [191]
"Honey, I am an analyst, not a field officer, remember? That sort of thing is not my job. For that matter, I don't think field spooks carry guns very much anyway. Too hard to explain away if somebody notices."
"But—"
"James Bond is in the movies, babe, not real life."
Ryan returned his attention to the TV. ITV was doing a repeat of Danger—UXB, and again Jack found himself wondering if Brian would survive his job of defusing unexploded bombs and then marry Suzy when he returned to civilian life. EOD, now there was a miserable job, but, if you made a mistake, at least it wouldn't hurt for very long.
* * *
"HEARD ANYTHING FROM BOB?" Greer asked just before six in the evening.
Judge Moore stood up from his expensive swivel chair and stretched.
Too much time sitting down, and not enough moving around. Back in Texas, he had a small ranch—called that because he owned three quarter horses; you couldn't be a prominent citizen in Texas unless you owned a horse or two—and three or four times a week, he'd saddle Aztec up and ride around for an hour or so, mainly to get his head clear, to allow himself to think outside his office. That was how he tended to get his best thinking done. Maybe, Moore thought, that's why he felt so goddamned unproductive here. An office just wasn't a very good place for thinking, but every executive in the world pretended it was. Christ knew why. That's what he needed at Langley—his own stable. There was plenty of room on the Langley campus—a good five times what he had in Texas. But if he ever did that, the stories would spread around the world: The American DCI liked to ride horses with his black Stetson hat—that went along with the horse—and probably a Colt .45 on his hip—that was optional—and that just wouldn't look good to the TV crews that would sooner or later appear at the perimeter fence with their minicams. And so, for reasons of personal vanity, he had to deny himself the chance to do some good creative thinking. It was totally asinine, the former judge told himself, to allow such considerations to affect the way he did his work. Over in England, Basil could chase foxes on the back of a nice hunter-thoroughbred, and would anyone over there care? Hell, no. He'd be admired for it, or at worst thought a tiny bit eccentric, in a country where eccentricity was an admirable quality. But in the Land of the Free, men were enslaved by customs imposed on them by news reporters and elected officials who screwed their secretaries. Well, there was no rule that the world had to make sense, was there?
"Nothing important. Just a cable that said his meetings with our Korean friends were going well," Moore reported.
"You know, those people scare me a little," Greer observed. He didn't have to explain why. The KCIA occasionally had its field personnel deal a little too directly with employees of the other Korean government. The rules were a little different over there. The ongoing state of war between North and South was still a very real thing and, in time of war, some people lost their lives. CIA hadn't done such things in almost thirty years. Asian people hadn't adopted Western ideas of the value of human life. Maybe because their countries were just too crowded. Maybe because they have different religious beliefs. Maybe a lot of things, but for whatever reason they were just a little different in the operational parameters they felt free to work within—or without.
"They're our best eye on North Korea and China, James," Moore reminded him. "And they are very faithful allies."
"I know, Arthur." It was nice to hear things about the People's Republic of China once in a while. Penetrating that country was one of CIA's most frustrating tasks. "I just wish they weren't so cavalier about murder."
"They operate within fairly strict rules, and both sides seem to play by them."
And on both sides, killings had to be authorized at a very high level. Not that this would matter all that much to the corpse in question. "Wet" operations interfered with the main mission, which was gathering information. That