Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [24]
"Think they lost any sleep over that incident? I do not," C assured him.
"Looks bad. They don't do much of this anymore, not that I've heard about."
"Only at home, I grant you that. But Poland is 'home' for them, well within their sphere of influence."
"But the Pope lives in Rome, and that isn't. It comes down to how scared they are, sir. Father Tim Riley at Georgetown, back when I got my doctorate, he said never to forget that wars are begun by frightened men. They fear war, but more than that, they fear what will happen if they don't start one—or take equivalent action, I suppose. So, the real questions are, as I said, how seriously they will take the threat and how serious it will appear to them. On the former, yes, I don't think this is a bluff. The Pope's character, background, and personal courage—those are not things to be doubted. So the threat is a real one. The larger question is how to evaluate the magnitude of the threat to them…"
"Go on," the Director General ordered gently.
"If they're smart enough to recognize it—yes, sir, in their position, I'd be concerned about it… maybe even a little frightened. As much as the Soviets think they're a superpower—America's equal and all that—deep down they know that their state is not really legitimate. Kissinger gave a lecture to us at Georgetown… "Jack leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment to recapture the performance. "It was something he said near the end, talking about the character of the Russian leaders. Brezhnev was showing him around some official building or other in the Kremlin, where Nixon was going to come for his last summit meeting. He was lifting cloth covers off the statuary, showing how they'd taken the time to clean everything up in preparation for the visit. Why do that, I wondered at the time. I mean, sure, they have maids and maintenance people. Why make a point of showing it to Henry? It has to be a sense of inferiority, fundamental insecurity. We keep hearing that they're ten feet tall, but I don't think so, and the more I learn about them, the less formidable I think they are. The Admiral and I have argued this one back and forth for the last couple of months. They have a large military. Their intelligence services are first-rate. They are big. Big ugly bear, like Muhammad Ali used to say, but you know, Ali beat the bear twice, didn't he?
"That's a roundabout way of saying that, yes, sir, I think this letter will scare them. Question is, scare them enough to do something?" Ryan shook his head. "Possibly yes, but we have insufficient data at this time. If they decide to push that particular button, will we know beforehand?"
Charleston had been waiting for Ryan to turn the tables on him. "One can hope so, but it's impossible to be sure."
"In the year I've been at Langley, the impression I get is that our knowledge of the target is deep but narrow in some areas, shallow and broad in others. I've yet to meet somebody who feels comfortable analyzing them—well, that's not exactly true. Some are comfortable, but their analyses are often—to me at least—unreliable. Like the stuff we get on their economy—"
"James lets you into that?" Basil was surprised.
"The Admiral sent me all around the barn the first couple of months. My first degree was economics from Boston College. I passed my CPA exam before I went away with the Marine Corps—certified public accountant. You call it something different over here. Then, after I left the Corps, I did okay in the stock-and-bond business before I finished up my doctorate and went into teaching."
"Exactly how much did you make on Wall Street?"
"While I was at Merrill Lynch? Oh, between six and seven million. A lot of that was the Chicago and North Western Railroad. My uncle Mario—my mom's brother—told me that the employees were going to buy out the stock and try to get the railroad profitable again. I