Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [197]
* * *
"WELL, DIDN'T YOU see anything worth getting?" her husband asked, out in their used Mercedes 280.
"No, nothing really worthwhile. Maybe we should try a trip up to Helsinki to get some winter stuff," she suggested. "You know, take the train, like. Ought to be fun to do it that way. Eddie should like it."
The Station Chief's eyebrow went up. Probably better to take the train, he thought. Doesn't look rushed or forced. Carry lots of suitcases, half of them empty to bring back all the shit you'll buy there with your Comecon rubles, Ed Foley thought. Except you don't come back… and if Langley and London get their shit together, maybe we can make it a real home-run ball…
"Home, honey?" Foley asked. Wouldn't it be a hoot if KGB didn't have their home and car bugged, and they were doing all this secret-agent crap for no reason at all? he thought idly. Well, at worst, it was good practice, wasn't it?
"Yeah, we've done enough for one day."
* * *
"BLOODY HELL," Basil Charleston breathed. He lifted his phone and punched three buttons.
"Yes, sir?" Kingshot asked, coming into the room.
"This." C handed the dispatch across.
"Shit," Kingshot breathed.
Sir Basil managed a smile. "It's always the obvious, simple things, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir. Even so, does make one feel rather thick," he admitted. "A house fire. Works better than what we originally thought."
"Well, something to remember. How many house fires do we have in London, Alan?"
"Sir Basil, I have not a clue," the most senior field spook in the SIS admitted. "But find out I shall."
"Get this to your friend Nolan as well."
"Tomorrow morning, sir," Kingshot promised. "At least it improves our chances. Are CIA working on this as well?"
"Yes."
* * *
AS WAS THE FBI. Director Emil Jacobs had heard his share of oddball requests from the folks on "the other side of the river," as CIA was sometimes called in official Washington. But this was positively gruesome. He lifted his phone and punched his direct line to the DCI.
"There's a good reason for this, I presume, Arthur?" he asked without preamble.
"Not over the phone, Emil, but yes."
"Three Caucasians, one male in his early thirties, one female same age, and a little girl age three or four," Jacobs said, reading it off the hand-delivered note from Langley. "My field agents will think the Director's slipped a major gear, Arthur. We'd probably be better off asking local police forces for assistance—"
"But—"
"Yes, I know, it would leak too quickly. Okay, I can send a message to all my SACs and have them check their morning papers, but it won't be easy to keep something like this from leaking out. "
"Emil, I understand that. We're trying to get help from the Brits on this as well. Not the sort of thing you can just whistle up, I know. All I can say is that it's very important, Emil."
"You due on The Hill anytime soon?"
"House Intelligence Committee tomorrow at ten. Budget stuff," Moore explained. Congress was always going after that information, and Moore always had to defend his agency from people on The Hill, who would just as soon cut CIA off at the ankles—so that they could complain about "intelligence failures" later on, of course.
"Okay, can you stop off here on the way? I gotta hear this cock-and-bull story," Jacobs announced.
"Eight-forty or so?"
"Works for me, Arthur."
"See you then," Moore promised.
Director Jacobs replaced his phone, wondering what could be so goddamned important as to request the Federal Bureau of Investigation to play grave robber.
* * *
ON THE METRO HOME, after buying his little zaichik a white parka with red and green flowers on it, Zaitzev thought over his strategy. When would he tell Irina about their impromptu vacation? If he sprang it on her as a surprise, there would be one sort of problem—Irina would worry about her accounting job at GUM, but the office was, by her account, so loosely run that they'd hardly notice a missing body. But if he did give her too much warning, there would