The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [342]
The pilot spoke briefly with the head mechanic. One of the big Pratt and Whitney engines was running just a hair warm. Other than that he had no beefs at all. Then the flight crew departed for a rest. Three security people took station around the outside of the aircraft. Two more paced the interior. Clark and Chavez entered, showing their passes to Mexican and Japanese officials, and went to work. Ding started in the washrooms, taking his time because he'd been told the Japanese were particular about having spotless latrines. It required only one sniff of the air inside the airplane to note that Japanese citizens were allowed to smoke. Each ashtray had to be checked, and more than half of those required emptying and cleaning. Newspapers and magazines were collected. Other cleaning staff handled the vacuuming.
Forward, Clark checked the booze locker. Half the people aboard must have arrived with hangovers, he decided. There were some serious drinkers aboard. He was also gratified to see that the technical people at Langley had guessed right on the brand of scotch that JAL liked to serve. Finally he went up to the lounge area behind the cockpit. It exactly matched the computer mock-up he'd examined for hours prior to coming down. By the time he'd finished his cleaning duties, he was sure that bringing this one off would be a snap. He helped Ding with the trash bags and left the aircraft in time to catch a dinner. On the way out to his car, he passed a note to a CIA officer from Station Mexico.
"God damn it!" Ryan swore. "This came in through State?"
"Correct, sir. Director Cabot's orders to use a fax line. He wanted to save transcription time."
"Didn't Sam Yamata bother to explain about date-lines and time-zones?"
"Fraidnot."
There was no sense swearing further at the man from the Japan Department. Ryan read through the pages again. "Well, what do you think?"
"I think the Prime Minister is walking into an ambush."
"Isn't that too damned bad?" Ryan observed. "Messenger this down to the White House. The President's going to want it PDQ."
"Right." The man left. Ryan dialed up operations next. "How's Clark doing?" Jack asked, without preamble.
"Okay, he says. He's ready to make the plant. The monitor aircraft are all standing by. We know of no changes in the PM's schedule."
"Thanks."
"How long are you going to be in?"
Jack looked outside. The snow had already started. "Maybe all night."
It was developing into a big one. The eastbound cold-weather storm from the Midwest was linking into a low-pressure area coming up the coast. The really big snow storms in the D.C. area always came in from the south, and the National Weather Service was saying six-to-eight inches. That prediction was up from two-to-four only a few hours earlier. He could leave work right now, then try to fight his way back in the morning, or he could stay. Staying, unfortunately, looked like the best option.
Golovko was also in his office, though the time in Moscow was eight hours ahead of Washington. That fact did not contribute to Sergey's humor, which was poor.
"Well?" he asked the man from the communications-intelligence watch staff.
"We got lucky. This document was sent by facsimile printer from the U.S. Embassy Tokyo to Washington." He handed the sheet over.
The slick thermal paper was covered mainly with gibberish, some discrete but disordered letters, and even more black-and-white hash from the random noise, but perhaps as much as twenty percent was legible English, including two complete sentences and one full paragraph.
"Well?" Golovko asked again.
"When I delivered it to the Japanese section for comment, they handed me this." Another document was passed. "I've marked the paragraph."
Golovko read the Russian-language paragraph, then compared it to the English - "It's a fucking translation. How was our document sent in?"
"By embassy courier. It wasn't transmitted because