The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [79]
Punching numbers into a keypad was about as much fun as running naked in a garden of cactus. Jack was the sort to need intellectual stimulation, and while some men might find that in investigative accounting, he was not one of them.
"Bored, eh?" Tony Wills asked.
"Mightily," Jack confirmed.
"Well, that's the reality of gathering and processing intelligence information. Even when it's exciting, it's pretty dull. Well, unless you're really on the scent of a particularly elusive fox. Then it can be kinda fun, though it's not like watching your subject out in the field. I've never done that."
"Neither did Dad," Jack observed.
"Depends on which stories you read. Your pop occasionally found his way to the sharp end. I don't imagine he liked it much. He ever talk about it?"
"Not ever. Not even once. I don't even think Mom knows much about that. Well, except the submarine thing, but most of what I know about that comes from books and stuff. I asked Dad once, and all he said was, 'You believe everything you see in the papers?' Even when that Russian guy, Gerasimov, got on TV, all Dad did was grunt."
"The word on him at Langley was that he was a king spook. Kept all the secrets like he was supposed to. But he mostly worked up in the Seventh Floor. I never made it that high myself."
"Maybe you can tell me something."
"Like what?"
"Gerasimov, Nikolay Borissovich Gerasimov. Was he really the head of KGB? Did my dad really drag his ass out of Moscow?"
Wills hesitated for a moment, but there was no avoiding it. "Yeah. He was the KGB chairman, and, yes, your dad did arrange his defection."
"No shit? How the hell did Dad arrange that one?"
"That is a very long story and you are not cleared for it."
"Then why did he rat Dad out?"
"Because he was an unwilling defector. Your father forced him to bug out. He wanted to get even after your dad became President. But, you know, Nikolay Borissovich sang-maybe not like a canary, but he sang anyway. He's in the Witness Protection Program right now. They still bring him in every so often to get him to sing some more. The people you bag, they never give you everything all at once, and so you go back to there periodically. It makes them feel important-enough that they sing some more, usually. He's still not a happy camper. He can't go home. They'd shoot his ass. The Russians have never been real forgiving on state treason. Well, neither are we. So, he lives here with federal protection. Last I heard, he took up golf. His daughter got married to some old-money aristocrat asshole in Virginia. She's a real American now, but her dad will die an unhappy man. He wanted to take the Soviet Union over, by which I mean he really wanted that job, but your father screwed that one up for all time, and Nick still carries the grudge."
"I'll be damned."
"Anything new with Sali?" Wills asked, bringing things back to reality.
"There's some little stuff. You know, fifty thousand here, eighty thousand there-pounds, not dollars. Into accounts I don't know much about. He goes through anywhere from two to eight thousand pounds a week in what he probably considers petty cash."
"Where does that cash originate?" Wills asked.
"Not entirely clear, Tony. I figure he skims some off his family account, maybe two percent that he can write off as expenses. Not quite enough to alert his father that's he stealing from Mom and Pop. I wonder how they'd react to that?" Jack speculated.
"They wouldn't cut his hand off, but they could do something worse-cut his money off. You see this guy working for a living?"
"You mean real work?" Jack had himself a brief laugh. "Somehow I don't see that happening. He's been on the gravy train too long to like driving spikes into the ties. I've been to London a lot. Hard to figure how a working stiff survives there."
Wills began humming. " 'How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they seen Paree?' "
Jack flushed. "Look, Tony, yeah, I know I grew up rich, but Dad always made sure I had a summer