The Cardinal of the Kremlin - Tom Clancy [115]
"I haven't told anyone yet, but the President is concerned about Narmonov's political position again. Ernie Alien is worried that the latest change in the Soviet position indicates a weakening in Narmonov's support at home, and he's convinced the boss that this is a bad time to push on a few issues. The implication of that is, if we bring CARDINAL out, well, it might have an undesired political effect."
"If Misha gets caught, we get the same political effect," Ritter pointed out. "Not to mention the slightly deleterious effect it'll have on our man. Arthur, they are after him. They may have gotten to Vaneyev's daughter already-"
"She's back at work in GOSPLAN," the DCI said.
"Yeah, and the man at the cleaners has disappeared. They got to her and broke her," the DDO insisted. "We have to break him out once and for all. We can't leave him flapping in the breeze, Arthur. We owe this man."
"I cannot authorize the extraction without presidential approval."
Ritter came close to exploding. "Then get it! Screw the politics-in this case, screw the politics. There is a practical side to this, Arthur. If we let a man like this go down, and we don't lift a finger to protect him, the word will get out-hell, the Russians'll make a TV miniseries out of it! It will cost us more in the long term than this temporary political garbage."
"Hold it for a minute," Greer said. "If they broke this Party guy's daughter, how come she's back to work?"
"Politics?" Moore mused. "You suppose the KGB's unable to hurt this guy's family?"
"Right!" the DDO snorted. "Gerasimov's in the opposing faction, and he'd pass the opportunity to deny a Politburo seat to Narmonov's man? It smells like politics, all right, but not that kind. More likely our friend Alexandrov has the new boy in his back pocket and Narmonov doesn't know about it."
"So, you think they've broken her, but let her go and are using her as leverage on the old man?" Moore asked. "It does make sense. But there's no evidence."
"Alexandrov's too old to go after the post himself, and anyway the ideologue never seems to get the top spot-more fun to play kingmaker. Gerasimov's his fair-haired boy, though, and we know that he's got enough ambition to have himself crowned Nicholas the Third."
"Bob, you've just come up with another reason not to rock the boat right now." Greer sipped at his coffee for a moment. "I don't like the idea of leaving Filitov in place either. What are the chances that he can just lay low? I mean, the way things are set up, he might just talk his way out of anything they can bring against him."
"No, James." Ritter shook his head emphatically. "We can't have him lay low, because we need the rest of this report, don't we? If he runs the risk of getting it out despite the attention he's getting, we can't then leave him to fate. It's not right. Remember what this man's done for us over the years." Ritter argued on for several minutes, demonstrating the ferocious loyalty to his people that he'd learned as a young case officer. Though agents often had to be treated like children, encouraged, supported, and often disciplined, they became like your own children, and danger to them was something to be fought.
Judge Moore ended the discussion. "Your points are well taken, Bob, but I still have to go to the President. This isn't just a field operation anymore."
Ritter stood his ground. "We put all the assets in place."
"Agreed, but it won't be carried out until we get approval."
The weather at Faslane was miserable, but at this time of year it usually was. A thirty-knot wind was lashing the Scottish coast with snow and sleet when Dallas surfaced. Mancuso took his station atop the sail and surveyed the rocky hills on the horizon. He'd just completed a speed run, zipping across the Atlantic at an average of thirty-one knots, about as hard as he cared to push his boat for any extended period of time, not to mention his running submerged far closer to the coast than he would have preferred. Well, he was paid to follow orders, not