The Bear and the Dragon

“Ivan Sergeyevich,” Golovko said in greeting. Handshakes were exchanged, and the guests conducted inside. Mrs. Golovko, a physician, was nowhere in evidence. Golovko first of all served vodka, and directed them to seats.

“You said you had a message for me.” The language for this meeting was to be English, John saw.

“Here it is.” Clark handed the pages across.

“Spasiba.” Sergey Nikolay’ch sat back in his chair and started to read.

He would have been a fine poker player, John thought. His face changed not at all through the first two pages. Then he looked up.

“Who decided that I needed to see this?” he asked.

“The President,” Clark answered.

“Your Ryan is a good comrade, Vanya, and an honorable man.” Golovko paused. “I see you have improved your human-intelligence capabilities at Langley.”

“That’s probably a good supposition, but I know nothing of the source here, Chairman Golovko,” Clark answered.

“This is, as you say, hot.”

“It is all of that,” John agreed, watching him turn another page.

“Son of a bitch!” Golovko observed, finally showing some emotion.

“Yeah, that’s about what I said,” Chavez entered the conversation.

“They are well-informed. This does not surprise me. I am sure they have ample espionage assets in Russia,” Golovko observed, with anger creeping into his voice. “But this is-this is naked aggression they discuss.”

Clark nodded. “Yep, that’s what it appears to be.”

“This is genuine information?” Golovko asked.

“I’m just the mailman, Chairman,” Clark replied. “I vouch for nothing here.”

“Ryan is too good a comrade to play agent provocateur. This is madness.” And Golovko was telling his guests that he had no good intelligence assets in the Chinese Politburo, which actually surprised John. It wasn’t often that CIA caught the Russians short at anything. Golovko looked up. “We once had a source for such information, but no longer.”

“I’ve never worked in that part of the world, Chairman, except long ago when I was in the Navy.” And the Chinese part of that, he didn’t explain, was mainly getting drunk and laid in Taipei.

“I’ve traveled to Beijing several times in a diplomatic capacity, not recently. I cannot say that I’ve ever really understood those people.” Golovko finished reading the document and set it down. “I can keep this?”

“Yes, sir,” Clark replied.

“Why does Ryan give us this?”

“I’m just the delivery boy, Sergey Nikolay’ch, but I should think the motive is in the message. America does not wish to see Russia hurt.”

“Decent of you. What concessions will you require?”

“None that I am aware of.”

“You know,” Chavez observed, “sometimes you just want to be a good neighbor.”

“At this level of statecraft?” Golovko asked skeptically.

“Why not? It does not serve American interests to see Russia crippled and robbed. How big are these mineral finds, anyway?” John asked.

“Immense,” Golovko replied. “I’m not surprised you’ve learned of them. Our efforts at secrecy were not serious. The oil field is one to rival the Saudi reserves, and the gold mine is very rich indeed. Potentially, these finds could save our economy, could make us a truly wealthy nation and a fit partner for America.”

“Then you know why Jack sent this over. It’s a better world for both of us if Russia prospers.”

“Truly?” Golovko was a bright man, but he’d grown up in a world in which both America and Russia had often wished each other dead. Such thoughts died hard, even in so agile a mind as his.

“Truly,” John confirmed. “Russia is a great nation, and you are great people. You are fit partners for us.” He didn’t add that, this way, America wouldn’t have to worry about bailing them out. Now they’d have the wherewithal to see to their own enrichment, and America needed only offer expertise and advice about how to enter the capitalist world with both feet, and open eyes.

“This from the man who helped arrange the defection of the KGB chairman?” Golovko asked.

“Sergey, as we say at home, that was business, not personal. I don’t have a hard-on for Russians, and you wouldn’t kill an American just for entertainment purposes, would you?”

Indignation: “Of course not. That would be nekulturniy.”

“It is the same with us, Chairman.”

“Hey, man,” Chavez added. “From when I was a teenager, I was trained to kill your people, back when I was an Eleven-Bravo carrying a rifle, but, guess what, we’re not enemies anymore, are we? And if we’re not enemies, then we can be friends. You helped us out with Japan and Iran, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but we saw that we were the ultimate target of both conflicts, and it was in our national interest.”

“And perhaps the Chinese have us as their ultimate target. Then this is in our interest. They probably don’t like us any more than they like you.”

Golovko nodded. “Yes, one thing I do know about them is their sense of racial superiority.”

“Dangerous way for people to think, man. Racism means your enemies are just insects to be swatted,” Chavez concluded, impressing Clark with the mixture of East LA accent and master‘s-degree analysis of the situation at hand. “Even Karl Marx didn’t say that he was better than anybody else ’cuz of his skin color, did he?”

“But Mao did,” Golovko added.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Ding went on. “I read his Little Red Book in graduate school. He didn’t want to be just a political leader. Hell, he wanted to be God. Let his ego get in the way of his brain-not an uncommon affliction for people who take countries over, is it?”

“Lenin was not such a man, but Stalin was,” Golovko observed. “So, then Ivan Emmetovich is a friend of Russia. What shall I do with this?”

“That’s up to you, pal,” Clark told him.

“I must speak to my president. Yours comes to Poland tomorrow, doesn’t he?”

“I think so.”

“I must make some phone calls. Thank you for coming, my friends. Perhaps another time I will be able to entertain you properly.”

“Fair enough.” Clark stood and tossed off the end of his drink. More handshakes, and they left the way they’d come.

“Christ, John, what happens now?” Ding asked, as they drove back out.

“I suppose everybody tries to beat some sense into the Chinese.”

“Will it work?”

A shrug and arched eyebrows: “News at eleven, Domingo.”

Packing for a trip isn’t easy, even with a staff to do it all for you. This was particularly true for SURGEON, who was not only concerned about what she wore in public while abroad, but was also the Supreme Authority on her husband’s clothes, a status which her husband tolerated rather than entirely approved. Jack Ryan was still in the Oval Office trying to do business that couldn’t wait-actually it mostly could, but there were fictions in government that had to be honored-and also waiting for the phone to ring.

“Arnie?”

“Yeah, Jack?”

“Tell the Air Force to have another G go over to Warsaw in case Scott has to fly to Moscow on the sly.”

“Not a bad idea. They’ll probably park it at some air force base or something.” Van Damm went off to make the phone call.

“Anything else, Ellen?” Ryan asked his secretary.

“Need one?”

“Yeah, before Cathy and I wing off into the sunset.” Actually, they were heading east, but Mrs. Sumter understood. She handed Ryan his last cigarette of the day.