The Cardinal of the Kremlin - Tom Clancy [276]
"You're going back already?" the CIA officer asked the new leader.
"Of course. We're winning now," the Major said with a degree of confidence that even he did not understand.
Ortiz watched them leave at nightfall, a single file of small, ferocious warriors, led now by a trained soldier. He hoped it would make a difference.
Gerasimov and Filitov never saw each other again. The debriefings lasted for weeks, and were conducted at separate locations. Filitov was taken to Camp Peary, Virginia, where he met a spectacled U.S. Army major and told what he remembered of the Russian breakthrough in laser power. It seemed curious to the old man that this boy could be so excited about things that he'd memorized but never fully understood.
After that came the routine explanations of the second career that had joined and paralleled his first. A whole generation of field officers visited him for meals and walks, and drinking sessions that worried the doctors but which no one could deny the Cardinal. His living quarters were closely guarded, and even bugged. Those who listened to him were surprised that he occasionally spoke in his sleep.
One CIA officer who was six months from his retirement paused from reading the local paper when it happened again. He smiled at the noise in his headphones and set down the article he was reading about the President's visit to Moscow. That sad, lonely old man, he thought as he listened. Most of his friends dead, and he only sees them in his sleep. Was that why he went to work for us? The murmuring stopped, and in the quarters next door, the Cardinal's baby-sitter went back to his paper.
"Comrade Captain," Romanov said. "Yes, Corporal?" It seemed more real than most of his dreams, Misha noted. A moment later he knew why.
They were spending their honeymoon under the protection of security officers, all four days of it-which was as long as Al and Candi were willing to stay away from work. Major Gregory got the phone when it rang.
"Yeah-I mean, yes, sir," Candi heard him say. A sigh. A shake of the head in the darkness. "Not even anyplace to send flowers, is there? Can Candi and I-Oh I understand. Thanks for calling, General." She heard him replace the phone and let out another breath.
"Candi, you awake?"
"Yeah."
"Our first kid, his name's going to be Mike."
Major General Grigoriy Dalmatov's post of Defense Attaché at the Soviet Embassy in Washington carried a number of ceremonial duties that conflicted with his primary mission, intelligence gathering. He was slightly annoyed when the telephone call from the Pentagon had come, asking him to drive over to the American military headquarters-and to his great surprise, to do so in full uniform. His car dropped him off at the River entrance, and a young paratroop captain had escorted him inside, then to the office of General Ben Crofter, Chief of Staff, United States Army. "May I ask what is going on?"
"Something that we thought you should see, Grigoriy," Crofter answered cryptically. They walked across the building to the Pentagon's own helicopter pad, where to Dalmatov's astonishment they boarded a Marine helicopter of the Presidential Fleet. The Sikorsky lifted off at once, heading northwest into the Maryland hills. Twenty minutes later they were descending. Dalmatov's mind registered yet another surprise. The helicopter was landing at Camp David. A member of the Marine guard force in dress blues saluted at the foot of the stairs as they left the aircraft and escorted them into the trees. Several minutes later they came to a clearing. Dalmatov hadn't known there were birch trees here, perhaps half an acre of them, and the clearing was near a hilltop that offered a fine view of the surrounding country.
And there was a rectangular hole in the ground, exactly six feet deep. It seemed strange that there was no headstone, and that the sod had been carefully cut and set aside for replacement.
Around the scene, Dalmatov could make out more Marines in the treeline. These wore camouflage fatigues and pistol