The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [258]
Adler really was a good SecState, Ryan thought. His job was to look for simple and safe ways out of problems, and he worked damned hard at it.
"Okay, suggestions?"
"I have Carl Hitch lay a note on them. We demand a statement of apology for this fuckup."
"And if they tell us to shove it?"
"Then we pull Rutledge and Hitch back for 'consultations,' and let them simmer for a while."
"The note, Scott?"
"Yes, Mr. President."
"Write it on asbestos paper and sign it in blood," Jack told him coldly.
"Yes, sir," SecState acknowledged, and the line went dead.
It was a lot later in the day in Moscow when Pavel Yefremov and Oleg Provalov came into Sergey Golovko's office.
"I'm sorry I couldn't have you in sooner," the SVR chairman told his guests. "We've been busy with problems—the Chinese and that shooting in Beijing." He'd been looking into it just like every other person in the world.
"Then you have another problem with them, Comrade Chairman."
"Oh?"
Yefremov handed over the decrypt. Golovko took it, thanking the man with his accustomed good manners, then settled back in his chair and started reading. In less than five seconds, his eyes widened.
"This is not possible," his voice whispered.
"Perhaps so, but it is difficult to explain otherwise."
"I was the target?"
"So it would appear," Provalov answered.
"But why?"
"That we do not know," Yefremov said, "and probably nobody in the city of Moscow knows. If the order was given through a Chinese intelligence officer, the order originated in Beijing, and the man who forwarded it probably doesn't know the reasoning behind it. Moreover, the operation is set up to be somewhat deniable, since we cannot even prove that this man is an intelligence officer, and not an assistant or what the Americans call a 'stringer.' In fact, their man was identified for us by an American," the FSS officer concluded.
Golovko's eyes came up. "How the hell did that happen?"
Provalov explained. "A Chinese intelligence officer in Moscow is unlikely to be concerned by the presence of an American national, whereas any Russian citizen is a potential counter-intelligence officer.
Mishka was there and offered to help, and I permitted it. Which leads me to a question."
"What do you tell this American?" Golovko asked for him.
The lieutenant nodded. "Yes, Comrade Chairman. He knows a good deal about the murder investigation because I confided in him and he offered some helpful suggestions. He is a gifted police investigator. And he is no fool. When he asks how this case is going, what can I say?"
Golovko's initial response was as predictable as it was automatic: Say nothing. But he restrained himself. If Provalov said nothing, then the American would have to be a fool not to see the lie, and, as he said, the American was no fool. On the other hand, did it serve Golovko's—or Russia's—purposes for America to know that his life was in danger? That question was deep and confusing. While he pondered it, he'd have his bodyguard come in. He beeped his secretary.
"Yes, Comrade Chairman," Major Shelepin said, coming in the door.
"Something new for you to worry about, Anatoliy Ivan'ch," Golovko told him. It was more than that. The first sentence turned Shelepin pale.
It started in America with the unions. These affiliations of working people, which had lost power in the preceding decades, were in their way the most conservative organizations in America, for the simple reason that their loss of power had made them mindful of the importance of what power they retained. To hold on to that, they resisted any change that threatened the smallest entitlement of their humblest member.
China had long been a bete noir for the labor movement, for the simple reason that Chinese workers made less in a day than American union automobile workers made during their morning coffee break. That tilted the playing field in favor of the Asians,