The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [146]
"I presume you will go yourself. Whom will you take to Moscow with you?"
"Ding and Team-2. Ding and I have been there before. Weve both met Sergey Nikolaych. At least this way he doesnt see all that many new faces."
"Yes, and your Russian, as I recall, is first-rate."
"The language school at Monterey is pretty good," John said, with a nod.
"How long do you expect to be gone?"
Clark looked back down at the fax and thought it over for a few seconds. "Oh, not more than … three weeks," he said aloud. "Their Spetsnaz people arent bad. Well set up a training group for them, and after a while, we can probably invite them here, cant we?"
Stanley didnt have to point out that the SAS in particular, and the British Ministry of Defense in general, would have a conniption fit over that one, but in the end theyd have to go along with it. It was called diplomacy, and its principles set policy for most of the governments in the world, whether they liked it or not.
"I suppose well have to, John," Stanley said, already hearing the screams, shouts, and moans from the rest of the camp, and Whitehall.
Clark lifted his phone and hit the button for his secretary, Helen Montgomery. "Helen, could you please call Ding and ask him to come over? Thank you."
"His Russian is also good, as I recall."
"We had some good teachers. But his accent is a little southern."
"And yours?"
"Leningrad—well, St. Petersburg now, I guess. Al, do you believe all the changes?"
Stanley took a seat. "John, it is all rather mad, even today, and its been well over ten years since they took down the red flag over the Spaskiy gate."
Clark nodded. "I remember when I saw it on TV, man. Flipped me out."
"Hey, John," a familiar voice called from the door. "Hi, Al."
"Come in and take a seat, my boy."
Chavez, simulated major in the SAS, hesitated at the "my boy" part. Whenever John talked that way, something unusual was about to happen. But it could have been worse. "Kid" was usually the precursor to danger, and now that he was a husband and a father, Domingo no longer went too far out of his way to look for trouble. He walked to Clarks desk and took the offered sheets of paper.
"Moscow?" he asked.
"Looks like our Commander-in-Chief has approved it."
"Super," Chavez observed. "Well, its been a while since we met Mr. Golovko. I suppose the vodkas still good."
"Its one of the things they do well," John agreed.
"And they want us to teach them to do some other things?"
"Looks that way."
"Take the wives with us?"
"No." Clark shook his head. "This ones all business."
"When?"
"Have to work that out. Probably a week or so."
"Fair enough."
"Hows the little guy?"
A grin. "Still crawling. Last night he started pulling himself up, standing, like. Imagine hell start walking in a few days".
"Domingo, you spend the first year getting them to walk and talk. The next twenty years you spend getting them to sit down and shut up," Clark warned.
"Hey, pop, the little guy sleeps all the way through the night, and he wakes up with a smile. Damned sight better than I can say for myself, yknow?" Which made sense. When Domingo woke up, all he had to look forward to was the usual exercises and a five-mile run, which was both strenuous and, after a while, boring.
Clark had to nod at that. It was one of the great mysteries of life, how infants always woke up in a good mood. He wondered where, in the course of years, one lost that.
"The whole team?" Chavez asked.
"Yeah, probably. Including BIG BIRD," RAINBOW SIX added.
"Did he clean your clock today, too?" Ding asked.
"Next time I shoot against that son of a bitch, I want it right after the morning run, when hes a little shaky," Clark said crossly. He just didnt like to lose at much of anything, and certainly not something so much a part of his identity as shooting a handgun.
"Mr. C, Ettore just isnt human. With the MP, hes good, but not spectacular, but with that