Without remorse - Tom Clancy [238]
'Carry on.' College boys, the senior chief thought, avoiding the draft.
'And if I see anybody smoking out here, I'll tear him a new asshole!' the salty third-class told the new kids.
But the real action was in officers' country.
'A lot of routine stuff,' the intelligence officer told his visitors.
'We've been working on their phone systems lately,' Podulski explained. 'It makes them use radios more.'
'Clever,' Kelly noted. 'Traffic from the objective?'
'Some, and one last night was in Russian.'
'That's the indicator we want!' the Admiral said at once: There was only one reason for a Russian to be at sender green. 'I hope we get that son of a bitch!'
'Sir,' Albie promised with a smile, 'if he's there, he's got.'
Demeanors had changed again. Rested now, and close to the objective, thoughts turned away from abstract dread and back into focus on the hard facts of the matter. Confidence had returned - leavened with caution and concern, but they had trained for this. They were now thinking of the things that would go right.
The latest set of photos had come aboard, taken by an RA-5 Vigilante that had screamed low over no less than three SAM sites to cover its interest in a minor and secret place. Kelly lifted the blowups.
'Still people in the towers.'
'Guarding something,' Albie agreed.
'No changes I see,' Kelly went on. 'Only one car. No trucks... nothing much in the immediate area. Gentlemen, it looks pretty normal to me.'
'Connie will hold position forty miles off seaward. The medics cross-deck today. The command team arrives tomorrow, and the next day -' Franks looked across the table.
'I go swimming,' Kelly said.
The film cassette sat, undeveloped, in a safe in the office of a section chief of the KGB's Washington Station, in turn part of the Soviet Embassy, just a few blocks up 16th Street from the White House. Once the palatial home of George Mortimer Pullman - it had been purchased by the government of Nikolay II - it contained both the second-oldest elevator and the largest espionage operation in the city. The volume of material generated by over a hundred trained field officers meant that not all the information that came in through the door was processed locally; and Captain Yegorov was sufficiently junior that his section chief didn't deem his information worthy of inspection. The cassette finally went into a small manila envelope which was sealed with wax, then found its way into the awkward canvas bag of a diplomatic courier who boarded a flight to Paris, flying first class courtesy of Air France. At Orly, eight hours later, the courier walked to catch an Aeroflot jet to Moscow, which developed into three and a half hours of pleasant conversation with a KGB security officer who was his official escort for this part of the journey. In addition to his official duties, the courier did quite well for himself by purchasing various consumer goods on his regular trips west. The current item of choice was pantyhose, two pairs of which went to the KGB escort.
Upon arriving in Moscow and walking past customs control, the waiting car took him into the city, where the first stop was not the Foreign Ministry, but KGB Headquarters at #2 Dzerzhinskiy Square. More than half the contents of the diplomatic pouch were handed over there, which included most of the flat pantyhose packages. Two more hours allowed the courier to find his family flat, a bottle of vodka, and some needed sleep.
The cassette landed on the desk of a KGB major. The identification chit told him which of his field force had originated it, and the desk officer filled out a form of his own, then called a subordinate to convey it to the photo lab for development. The lab, while large, was also quite busy today, and he'd have to wait a day, perhaps two, his lieutenant told him on returning. The Major nodded. Yegorov was a new though promising field officer, and was starting to develop an agent with interesting legislative