Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [263]
"Probably coffee for you, eh?"
"If you have any."
"Only instant," Kingshot warned.
Jack stifled his disappointment. "Better than no coffee at all."
"Eggs Benedict?" the retired woman cop asked.
"Ma'am, for that I will forgive the absence of Starbucks," Jack replied, with a smile. Then he saw the morning papers, and he thought that reality and normality had finally returned to his life. Well, almost.
"Mr. and Mrs. Thompson run this house for us," Kingshot explained. "Nick was a homicide detective with the Yard, and Emma was in administration."
"That's what my dad used to do," Ryan observed. "How did you guys get working for SIS?"
"Nick worked on the Markov case," Mrs. Thompson answered.
"And did a damned good job of it, too," Kingshot told Ryan. "He would have been a fine field officer for us."
"Bond, James Bond?" Nick Thompson said, walking into the kitchen. "I think not. Our guests are moving about. It sounds as though the little girl got them up."
"Yeah," Jack observed. "Kids will do that. So, we do the debrief here or somewhere else?"
"We were planning to do it in Somerset, but I decided last night not to drive them around too much. Why stress them out?" Kingshot asked rhetorically. "We just took title to this house last year, and it's as comfortable a place as any. The one in Somerset—near Taunton—is a touch more isolated, but these people ought not to bolt, you think?"
"If he goes home, he's one dead Rabbit," Ryan thought out loud. "He has to know that. On the plane, he was worried that we were KGB and this was all an elaborate maskirovka setup, I think. His wife did a lot of shopping in Budapest. Maybe we have somebody take her shopping around here?" the American wondered. "Then we can talk to him in comfort. His English seems okay. Do we have anybody here with good Russian?"
"My job," Kingshot told Ryan.
"First thing we want to know, why the hell did he decide to skip town?"
"Obviously, but then, what's all this lot about compromised communications?"
"Yeah." Ryan took a deep breath. "I imagine people are jumping out windows about that one."
"Too bloody right," Kingshot confirmed.
"So, Al, you've worked Moscow?"
The Brit nodded. "Twice. Good sport it was, but rather tense the whole time I was there."
"Where else?"
"Warsaw and Bucharest. I speak all the languages. Tell me, how was Andy Hudson?"
"He's a star, Al. Very smooth and confident all the way—knows his turf, good contacts. He took pretty good care of me."
"Here's your coffee, Sir John," Mrs. Thompson said, bringing his cup of Taster's Choice. The Brits were good people, and their food, Ryan thought, was wrongly maligned, but they didn't know beans about coffee, and that was that. But it was still better than tea.
The Eggs Benedict arrived shortly thereafter, and at that dish, Mrs. Thompson could have given lessons. Ryan opened his paper—it was the Times—and relaxed to get reacquainted with the world. He'd call Cathy in about an hour when he was at work. With luck, he might even see her in a couple days. In a perfect world, he'd have a copy of an American paper, or maybe the International Tribune, but the world was not yet perfect. There was no sense asking how the World Series was going. It was going to start tomorrow, wasn't it? How good were the Phillies this year? Well, as usual, you played the games to find out.
"So, how was the trip, Jack?" Kingshot asked.
"Alan, those field officers earn every nickel they make. How you deal with the constant tension, I do not understand."
"Like everything else, Jack, you get used to it. Your wife is a surgeon. The idea of cutting people open with a knife is not at all appealing to me."
Jack barked a short laugh. "Yeah, me too, pal. And she does eyeballs. Nothing important, right?"
Kingshot shuddered visibly at the thought, and Ryan reminded himself that working in Moscow, running agents—and probably arranging