Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [260]
* * *
RYAN WAS PRETTY well potted. Maybe alcohol interacted with anxiety, he thought, taking a moment to go to the forward rest room on the airliner, and feeling better when he got back and was strapped in. He almost never took his seat belt off. The food served was just sandwiches—English ones, with their unnatural affection for a weed called watercress. What he really wanted now was a good corned beef, but the Brits didn't even know what corned beef was, thinking it the canned junk that looked like dog food to most Americans. In fact, the Brits probably fed better stuff to their dogs, as enthralled as they were with their pets. The lights passing underneath the airliner proved that they were overflying Western Europe. The Eastern part was never well lit, as he'd learned coming south from Budapest.
* * *
BUT ZAITZEV wasn't sure. What if this was a very elaborate ruse to get him to spill the beans? What if the Second Chief Directorate had staged a huge maskirovka village for his brief benefit?
"Ryan?"
Jack turned. "Yes?"
"What will I see in England when we get there?"
"I don't know what the plan is after we get to Manchester," Ryan reported.
"You are CIA?" the Rabbit asked again.
"Yes." Jack nodded.
"How can I be sure of this?"
"Well…" Ryan fished out his wallet. "Here are my driver's license, credit cards, some cash. My passport is fake, of course. I'm an American, but they fixed me up with a British one. Oh," Ryan realized, "you're worried that this is all faked?"
"How can I be sure?"
"My friend, in less than an hour, you will be certain it is not. Here—" He opened his wallet again. "This is my wife, my daughter, and our new son. My address at home—in America, that is—is here on my driver's license, 5000 Peregrine Cliff Road, Anne Arundel County, Maryland. That is right on the Chesapeake Bay. It takes me about an hour to drive from there to CIA Headquarters at Langley. My wife is an eye surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. It is world-famous. You must have heard of it."
Zaitzev just shook his head.
"Well, a couple years ago, three docs from Hopkins fixed the eyes of Mikhail Suslov. I understand he just died. His replacement, we think, will be Mikhail Yevgeniyevich Alexandrov. We know a little about him, but not enough. In fact, we don't know enough about Yuriy Vladimirovich."
"What do you not know?"
"Is he married? We've never seen a picture of his wife, if any."
"Yes, everyone knows this. His wife is Tatiana, elegant woman, my wife says she has noble features. But no children for them," Oleg concluded.
Well, there's factoid' #1 from the Rabbit, Ryan thought.
"How is it possible that you do not know this?" Zaitzev demanded.
"Oleg Ivan'ch, there are many things we do not know about the Soviet Union," Jack admitted. "Some are important, and some are not."
"Is this true?"
"Yes, it is."
Something rattled loose in Zaitzev's head. "You say your name Ryan?"
"That's right."
"Your father policeman?"
"How did you know that?" Ryan asked in some surprise.
"We have small dossier on you. Washington rezidentura do it. Your family attacked by hooligans, yes?"
"Correct." KGB is interested in me, eh? Jack thought. "Terrorists, they tried to kill me and my family. My son was born that night."
"And you join CIA after that?"
"Again, yes—officially, anyway. I've done work for the Agency for several years." Then curiosity took full hold. "What does my dossier say about me?"
"It say you are rich fool. You were officer in naval infantry, and your wife is rich and you marry her for that reason. To get more money for self."
So, even the KGB is a prisoner of its own political prejudices, Jack thought. Interesting.
"I am not poor," Jack told the Rabbit. "But I married my wife for