The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [152]
"Well, our friends going to get laid tonight," he told his Russian colleague.
"She is pretty," Provalov agreed. "Twenty-three, you think?"
"Thereabouts, maybe a little younger. Nice hooters."
"Hooters?" the Russian asked.
"Tits, Oleg, tits," the FBI agent clarified. "That Chinamans a spook. See any coverage on him around?"
"No one I know," the lieutenant replied. "Perhaps he is not known to be an intelligence officer."
"Yeah, sure, your counterintelligence people have all retired to Sochi, right? Hell, guy, they trail me every so often."
"That means I am one of your agents, then?" Provalov asked.
A chuckle. "Let me know if you want to defect, Oleg Gregoriyevich."
"The Chinese in the light blue suit?"
"Thats the one. Short, about five-four, one fifty-five, pudgy, short hair, about forty-five or so."
Provalov translated that to about 163 centimeters and seventy kilos, and made a mental note as he turned to look at the face, about thirty meters away. He looked entirely ordinary, as most spies did. With that done, he headed back to the mens room to make a phone call to his agents outside.
And that pretty much ended the evening. Koniev/Suvorov left the restaurant about twenty minutes later with the girl on his arm, and drove straight back to his apartment. One of the men whod stayed behind walked with the Chinese to his car, which had diplomatic plates. Notes were written down, and the cops all headed home after an overtime day, wondering what theyd turned up and how important it might be.
CHAPTER 20 —Diplomacy
"Well?" Rutledge took his notes back from Secretary Adler.
"It looks okay, Cliff, assuming that you can deliver the message in an appropriate way SecState told his subordinate.
"Process is something I understand." Then he paused. "The President wants this message delivered in unequivocal terms, correct?"
Secretary Adler nodded. "Yep."
"You know, Scott, Ive never really landed on people this hard before."
"Ever want to?"
"The Israelis a few times. South Africa," he added thoughtfully.
"But never the Chinese or Japanese?"
"Scott, Ive never been a trade guy before, remember?" But he was this time, because the mission to Beijing was supposed to be high-profile, requiring a higher-level diplomat instead of someone of mere ambassadorial rank. The Chinese knew this already. In their case negotiations would be handled publicly by their Foreign Minister, though they would actually be run by a lesser-ranked diplomat who was a foreign-trade specialist, and who had experienced a good run of luck dealing with America. Secretary Adler, with President Ryans permission, was slowly leaking to the press that the times and the rules might have changed a little bit. He worried that Cliff Rutledge wasnt exactly the right guy to deliver the message, but Cliff was the on-deck batter.
"How are you working out with this Gant guy from Treasury?"
"If he were a diplomat, wed be at war with the whole damned world, but I suppose he does know numbers and computers, probably," Rutledge allowed, not troubling to hide his distaste for the Chicago-born Jew with his nouveau-riche ways. That Rutledge had been of modest origins himself was long forgotten. A Harvard education and a diplomatic passport help one forget such distasteful things as having grown up in a row house, eating leftovers.
"Remember that Winston likes him, and Ryan likes Winston, okay?" Adler warned his subordinate gently. He decided not to concern himself with Cliffs WASP-ish anti-Semitism. Life was too short for trivialities, and Rutledge knew that his career rested