Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [59]
"Honey, think of it as a future income source for all the docs."
"It's an awful and a dumb way to die."
"Yes, dear." Whenever Jack smoked a cigarette, there was hell to pay in the Ryan house. One more cost of being married to a doc. She was right, of course, and Jack knew it, but everyone was entitled to at least one vice. Except Cathy. If she had one, she concealed it with great skill. The train slowed to a halt, allowing them to stand and open the compartment door.
They stepped out into the arriving rush of office workers. Just like Grand Central Terminal in New York, Jack thought, but not quite as crowded. London had a lot of stations, laid out like the legs of an octopus. The platform was agreeably wide, and the rush of people politer than New York would ever be. Rush hour was rush hour everywhere, but the English city had a patina of gentility that was hard not to like. Even Cathy would soon be admiring it. Ryan led his wife to the outside, where a rank of cabs waited. He walked her to the first one in line.
"Hammersmith Hospital," he told the driver. Then he kissed his wife good-bye.
"See you tonight, Jack." She always had a smile for him.
"Have a good one, babe." And Ryan made his way to the other side of the building. Part of him hated the fact that Cathy had to work. His mom never had. His father, like all men of his generation, had figured that it was the man's job to put food on the table. Emmet Ryan had liked the fact that his son had married a physician, but his chauvinistic attitude about a woman's place had somehow or other carried over to his son despite the fact that Cathy made a lot more than Jack did, probably because ophthalmologists were more valuable to society than intelligence analysts. Or the marketplace thought so, anyway. Well, she couldn't do what he did, and he couldn't do what she did, and that was that.
At Century House, the uniformed security guard recognized him with a wave and a smile.
"Good morning, Sir John."
"Hey, Bert." Ryan slid his card into the slot. The light blinked green, and Jack transited the security gate. From there, it was just a few steps to the elevator.
Simon Harding was just arriving, too. The usual greeting: "Morning, Jack."
"Hey," Jack grunted in reply on the way to his desk. There was a manila envelope waiting for him. The cover tag said it had been messengered over from the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square. He ripped the top open to see that it was the report from Hopkins on Mikhail Suslov. Jack flipped through the pages and saw something he'd forgotten. Bernie Katz, ever the thorough doc, had evaluated Suslov's diabetes as dangerously advanced, and predicted that his longevity was going to be limited.
"Here, Simon. Says here the head commie's sicker than he looks."
"Pity," Harding observed, taking it as he fumbled with his pipe. "He's not a very nice chap, you know."
"So I've heard."
Next in Ryan's pile were the morning briefing papers. They were labeled SECRET, which meant that the contents might not be in the newspapers for a day or two. It was interesting even so, because this document occasionally gave sources, and that sometimes told you if the information was good or not. Remarkably, not all the data received by the intelligence services was very reliable. A lot of it could be classified as gossip, because even important people inside the world's government loops indulged in it. They were jealous and backbiting sons-of- bitches, like anyone else. Especially in Washington. Perhaps even more so in Moscow? He asked Harding.
"Oh, yes, very much so. Their society depends so much on status, and the backstabbing can be—well, Jack, you could say that it's their national sport. I mean, we have it here as well, of course, but over there it can be remarkably vicious. Rather like it must have been in a medieval court, I imagine—people jockeying for position every bloody day. The infighting inside their major bureaucracies must be horrific."
"And how does that affect this sort of information?"
"I often