The Cardinal of the Kremlin - Tom Clancy [159]
"I'll break you for that."
"Take your best shot, sweetie." Ryan turned and walked out of the room, the eyes heavy on his back. He kept going until he stared at the traffic on Massachusetts Avenue. He knew that he'd drunk too much, but the cold air started to clear his head.
"Jack?" His wife's voice.
"Yeah, babe?"
"What was that all about?"
"Can't say."
"I think it's time for you to go home."
"I think you're right. I'll get the coats." Ryan walked back inside and handed over the claim check. He heard the silence happen when he returned. He could feel the looks at his back. Jack shrugged into his overcoat and slung his wife's fur over his arm, before turning to see the eyes on him. Only one pair held any interest for him. They were there.
Misha was not an easy man to surprise, but the KGB succeeded. He'd steeled himself for torture, for the worst sort of abuse, only to be disappointed? he asked himself. That certainly wasn't the right word.
He was kept in the same cell, and so far as he could determine he was alone on this cellblock. That was probably wrong, he thought, but there was no evidence that anyone else was near him, no sounds at all, not even taps on the concrete walls. Perhaps they were too thick for that. The only "company" he had was the occasional metallic rasp of the spy hole in his cell's door. He thought that the solitude was supposed to do something to him. Filitov smiled at that. They think I'm alone. They don't know about my comrades.
There was only one possible answer: this Vatutin fellow was afraid that he might actually be innocent-but that wasn 't possible, Misha told himself. That chekist bastard had taken the film from his hand.
He was still trying to figure that one out, staring at the blank concrete wall. None of it made any sense.
But if they expected him to be afraid, they would have to live with their disappointment. Filitov had cheated death too many times. Part of him even yearned for it. Perhaps he would be reunited with his comrades. He talked to them, didn't he? Might they still be well, not exactly alive, but not exactly gone either? What was death? He'd reached the point in life where the question was an intellectual one. Sooner or later he'd find out, of course. The answer to that question had brushed past him many times, but his grasp-and its-had never quite been firm enough
The key rattled in the door, and the hinges creaked.
"You should oil that. Machinery lasts longer if you maintain it properly," he said as he stood.
The jailer didn't reply, merely waving him out of the cell. Two young guards stood with the turnkey, beardless boys of twenty or so, Misha thought, their heads tilted up with the arrogance common to the KGB. Forty years earlier and he might have done something about that, Filitov told himself. They were unarmed, after all, and he was a combat soldier for whom the taking of life was as natural as breathing. They were not effective soldiers. One look confirmed it. It was fine to be proud, but a soldier should also be wary
Was that it? he thought suddenly. Vatutin treats me with wariness despite the fact that he knows
But why?
"What does this mean?" Mancuso asked. "Kinda hard for me to tell," Clark answered. "Probably some candyass in D.C. can't make up his mind. Happens all the time."
The two signals had arrived within twelve hours of one another. The first had aborted the mission and ordered the submarine back to open waters, but the second told Dallas to remain in the western Baltic and await further orders.
"I don't like being put on hold."
"Nobody does. Captain."
"How does it affect you?" Mancuso asked.
Clark shrugged eloquently. "A lot of this is mental. Like you work up to play a ball game. Don't sweat it, Cap'n. I teach this sort of thing-when I'm not actually doing it."
"How many?"
"Can't say, but most of them went pretty well."
"Most-not all? But when they don't-"
"It gets real exciting for