Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [30]
"I'll have to show this to the President tomorrow." Moore paused for a moment's thought. His weekly meeting at the White House was set for 10:00 the following morning. "The Papal Nuncio is out of town, isn't he?" It turned out that the others didn't know. He'd have to have that one checked out.
"What would you say to him, anyway?" This was Ritter. "You have to figure that the other guys in Rome tried to talk him out of this."
"James?"
"Kinda takes us back to Nero, doesn't it? It's almost as though he's threatening the Russians with his own death… Damn, do people really think that way?"
"Forty years ago, you put your life on the line, James." Greer had served his time on fleet boats in the Second World War, and often wore a miniature of his gold dolphins on the lapel of his suit coat.
"Arthur, I took my chances, along with everybody else on the boat. I did not tell Tojo where I was in a personal letter."
"The man has some serious cojones, guys," Ritter breathed. "We have seen this sort of thing before. Dr. King never took a step back in his life, did he?"
"And I suppose the KKK was as dangerous to him as the KGB is to the Pope," Moore completed the thought. "Men of the cloth have a different way of looking at the world. It's called 'virtue,' I think." He sat forward. "Okay, when the President asks me about this—and for damned sure he will—what the hell do I tell him?"
"Our Russian friends might just decide that His Holiness has lived long enough," Ritter answered.
"That's a hell of a big and dangerous step to take," Greer objected. "Not the sort of thing a committee does."
"This committee might," the DDO told the DDI.
"There would be hell to pay, Bob. They know that. These men are chess players, not gamblers."
"This letter backs them into a corner." Ritter turned. "Judge, I think the Pope's life might be in danger."
"It's much too early to say that," Greer objected.
"Not when you remember who's running KGB. Andropov is a Party man. What loyalty he has is to that institution, damned sure not to anything we would recognize as a principle. If this frightens, or merely worries them, they will think about it. The Pope has hurled down his gauntlet at their feet, gentlemen," the Deputy Director (Operations) told the others. "They just might pick it up."
"Has any Pope ever done this?" Moore asked.
"Resign his post? Not that I can remember," Greer admitted. "I don't even know if there's a mechanism for this. I grant you it's one hell of a gesture. We have to assume he means it. I don't see this as a bluff."
"No," Judge Moore agreed. "It can't be that."
"He's loyal to his people. He has to be. He was a parish priest once upon a time. He's christened babies, officiated at weddings. He knows these people. Not as an amorphous mass—he's been there to baptize and bury them. They are his people. He probably thinks of all Poland as his own parish. Will he be loyal to them, even at the peril of his life? How can he not be?" Ritter leaned forward. "It's not just a question of personal courage. If he doesn't do it, the Catholic Church loses face. No, guys, he's serious as hell, and he isn't bluffing. Question is, what the hell can we do about it?"
"Warn the Russians off?" Moore wondered aloud.
"No chance," Ritter shot back. "You know better than that, Arthur. If they set up an operation, it'll have more cutouts than anything the Mafia's ever done. How good do you suppose security is around him?"
"Not a clue," the DCI admitted. "I know the Swiss Guards exist, with their pretty uniforms and pikes… Didn't they fight once?"
"I think so," Greer observed. "Somebody tried to kill him, and they fought a rear-guard action while he skipped town. Most of them got killed, I think."
"Now they mostly pose for pictures and tell people where the bathroom is, probably," Ritter thought out loud. "But there has to be something to what they do. The Pope is too prominent a figure not to attract the odd nutcase. The