The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [121]
"There is an ancient legend of Pandora, a woman of mythology given a box. Though told not to open it, she foolishly did so, admitting strife and war and death into our world. Pandora despaired at her deeds until she found, remaining alone in the bottom of the nearly empty box, the spirit of hope. We have seen all too much of war and strife, but now we have finally made use of hope. It has been a long road, a bloody road, a road marked with despair, but it has always been an upward road, because hope is humanity's collective vision of what can, should, and must be, and hope has led us to this point.
"That ancient legend may have its origin in paganism, but its truth is manifest today. On this day we put war and strife and unnecessary death back into the box. We close the box on conflict, leaving in our possession hope, Pandora's last and most important gift to all humanity. This day is the fulfillment of the dream of all mankind.
"On this day, we have accepted from the hands of God the gift of peace.
"Thank you." The President smiled warmly at the cameras and made his way to his chair amid the more-than-polite applause of his peers. It was time to sign the treaty. The moment was here, and after being the last speaker, Fowler would be the first to sign. The moment came quickly, and J. Robert Fowler became a man of history.
He was not going slowly now. He pulled the blocks away, knowing as he did so that he was being reckless and wasteful, but now he knew - thought he knew - what he had in his hands.
And there it was, a ball of metal, a shining nickel-plated sphere, not corroded or damaged by its years in the Druse's garden, protected by the plastic seal of the Israeli engineers. It was not a large object, not much larger than a ball that a child might play with. Ghosn knew what he would do next. He reached his hand all the way into the sundered mass of explosives, extending his fingers to the gleaming nickel surface.
Ghosn's fingertips brushed the ball of metal. It was warm to the touch.
"Allahu akhbar!"
CHAPTER 9
Resolve
"This is interesting."
"It's a rather unique opportunity," Ryan agreed.
"How reliable - how trustworthy?" Cabot asked.
Ryan smiled at his boss. "Sir, that's always the question. You have to remember how the game works. You're never sure of anything - that is, what certainty you have generally takes years to acquire. This game only has a few rules, and nobody ever knows what the score is. In any case, this is a lot more than a defection." His name was Oleg Yurievich Lyalin - Cabot didn't know that yet - and he was a KGB 'Illegal' who operated without the shield of diplomatic immunity and whose cover was that of a representative of a Soviet industrial concern. Lyalin ran a string of agents with the code-name of THISTLE, and he was running it in Japan. "This guy is a real field-spook. He's got a better net going than the KGB Rezident in Tokyo, and his best source is right in the Japanese cabinet."
"And?"
"And he's offering us the use of his network."
"Is this as important as I'm starting to think it is ?" The DCI asked his deputy.
"Boss, we rarely get a chance like this. We've never really run ops in Japan. We lack a sufficient number of Japanese-speaking people - even here on the inside to translate their documents - and our priorities have always been elsewhere. So just establishing the necessary infrastructure to conduct ops there would take years. But the Russians have been working in Japan since before the Bolsheviks took over. The reason is historical: the Japanese and the Russkies have fought wars for a long time, and they've always regarded Japan as a strategic rival - as a result of which they placed great emphasis on operations there even before Japanese technology became so important to them.