Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [211]
Nobody's that dumb, Ryan wanted to retort, but Simon was probably right. Nothing lingered longer in a man's mind than a bad idea, and certainly Red Mike had held his bad ideas close to whatever heart had finally cashed in. But a communist's best-case scenario for after death corresponded with Ryan's worst, and if the communist was wrong, then, quite literally, there was hell to pay. Tough luck, Mishka, hope you took some sunblock with you.
"Okay, what's up for today?"
"The PM wants to know if this will have any effect on Politburo policy."
"Tell her no, it won't. In political terms, Alexandrov might as well be Suslov's twin brother. He thinks Marx is God, and Lenin is his prophet, and Stalin was mostly right, just a little too nekulturniy in his application of political theory. The rest of the Politburo doesn't really believe that stuff anymore, but they have to pretend that they do. So call Alexandrov the new conductor of the ideological symphony orchestra. They don't much like the music anymore, but they dance to it anyway, 'cause it's the only dance they know. I don't think he will affect their policy decisions a dot. I bet they listen when he talks, but they let it go in one ear and out the other; they pretend to respect him, but they really don't."
"It's a little more complex than that, but you've caught the essentials," Harding agreed. "The thing is, I have to find a way to produce ten double-spaced pages that say it."
"Yeah, in bureaucratese." Ryan had never quite mastered that language, which was one of the reasons Admiral Greer liked him so much.
"We have our procedures, Jack, and the PM—indeed, all of the Prime Ministers—like to have it in words they understand."
"The Iron Lady understands the same language as a stevedore, I bet."
"Only when she speaks those words, Sir John, not when others try to speak them to her."
"I suppose. Okay," Ryan had to concede the point. "What documents do we need?"
"We have an extensive dossier file on Alexandrov. I've already called down for it."
So this day would be occupied with creative writing, Ryan decided. It would have been more interesting to look into their economy, but instead he'd have to help do a prospective, analytical obituary for a man whom nobody had liked, and who'd probably died intestate anyway.
* * *
THE PREPARATION WAS even easier than he'd hoped. Haydock had expected the Russians to be pleased, and, sure enough, one call to his contact in the Ministry of Transportation had done the trick. At ten the next morning, he, Paul Matthews, and a Times photographer would be at the Kiev station to do a story about Soviet state rail and how it compared to British Rail, which needed some help, most Englishmen thought, especially in upper management.
Matthews probably suspected that Haydock was a "six" person, but had never let on, since the spook had been so helpful feeding stories to him. It was the usual way of creating a friendly journalist—even taught at the SIS Academy—but it was officially denied to the American CIA. The United States Congress passes the most remarkable and absurd laws to hamstring its intelligence services, the Brit thought, though he was sure the official rules were broken on a daily basis by the people in the field. He'd violated a few of the much looser rules of his own mother service. And had never been caught, of course. Just as he had never been caught working agents on the streets of Moscow…
* * *
"HI, TONY." Ed Foley extended a friendly hand to the Moscow correspondent of The New York Times. He wondered if Prince knew how much Ed despised him. But it probably went both ways. "What's happening today?"
"Looking for a statement by the Ambassador on the death of Mikhail Suslov."
Foley laughed. "How about he's glad the nasty old cocksucker is dead?"
"Can I quote you on that?" Prince held up his scribble pad.
Time to back up. "Not exactly. I have no instructions