Without remorse - Tom Clancy [296]
'Who the hell are you?' the black one asked.
'You must be Burt. Don't do anything dumb.'
'How you know my name?' Burt demanded as Phil took his place on the deck.
Kelly pointed at the other white one, directing him next to his friend.
'I know lots of things,' Kelly said, moving towards Burt now. Then he saw the sleeping girl in the corner. 'Who's she?'
'Look, asshole!' The .45 went level with his face, an arm's length away.
'What was that?' Kelly asked in a conversational voice. 'Down on the deck, now.' Burt complied at once. The girl, he saw, was sleeping. He'd let that continue for the moment. His first task was to search them for weapons. Two had small handguns. One had a useless little knife.
'Hey, who are you? Maybe we can talk,' Burt suggested.
'We're going to do that. Tell me about the drugs,' Kelly started off.
It was ten in the morning in Moscow when Voloshin's dispatch emerged from the decoding department. A senior member of the KGB's First Chief Directorate, he had a pipeline into any number of senior officers, one of whom was an academician in Service I, an American specialist who was advising the senior KGB leadership and the Foreign Ministry on this new development that the American media called detente. This man, who didn't hold a paramilitary rank within the KGB hierarchy, was probably the best person to get fast action, though an information copy of the dispatch had also gone to the Deputy Chairman with oversight duties for Voloshin's Directorate. Typically, the message was short and to the point. The Academician was appalled. The reduction of tension between the two superpowers, in the midst of a shooting war for one of them, was little short of miraculous, and coming as it did in parallel with the American approach to China, it could well signal a new era in relations. So he had said to the Politburo in a lengthy briefing only two weeks earlier. The public revelation that a Soviet officer had been involved in something like this - it was madness. What cretin at GRU had thought this one up? Assuming it really was true, which was something he had to check. For that he called the Deputy Chairman.
'Yevgeniy Leonidovich? I have an urgent dispatch from Washington.'
'As do I, Vanya. Your recommendations?'
'If the American claims are true, I urge immediate action. Public knowledge of such idiocy could be ruinous. Could you confirm that this is indeed under way?'
'Da. And then ... Foreign Ministry?'
'I agree. The military would take too long. Will they listen?'
'Our fraternal socialist allies? They'll listen to a shipment of rockets. They've been screaming for them for weeks,' the Deputy Chairman replied.
How typical, the Academician thought, in order to save American lives we will send weapons to take тоrе of them, and the Americans will understand. Such madness. If there was ever an illustration as to why detente was necessary, this was it. How could two great countries manage their affairs when both were involved, directly or not, in the affairs of minor countries? Such a worthless distraction from important matters.
'I urge speed, Yevgeniy Leonidovich,' the Academician repeated. Though far outranked by the Deputy Chairman, they'd been classmates, years earlier, and their careers had crossed many times.
'I agree completely, Vanya. I'll be back to you this afternoon.'
It was a miracle, Zacharias thought, looking around. He hadn't seen the outside of his cell in months, and just to smell the air, warm and humid as it was, seemed a gift from God, but that wasn't it. He counted the others, eighteen other men in the single line, men like himself, all within the same five-year age bracket, and in the fading light of dusk he saw faces. There was the one he'd seen so long before, a Navy guy by the look of him. They exchanged a look and thin smiles as all the men did what Robin was doing. If only the guards would let them talk, but the first attempt had earned one of their number a slap. Even so, for the moment just seeing their faces was enough. To not be alone any longer, to know