The Bear and the Dragon

So, what did you develop last night?' Reilly asked. He’d be late to his embassy office, but his gut told him that things were breaking loose in the RPG Case-that was how he thought of it-and Director Murray had a personal interest in the case, because the President did, and that made it more important than the routine bullshit on Reilly’s desk.

“Our Chinese friend-the one in the men’s room, that is-is the Third Secretary at their mission. Our friends across town at SVR have suspected that he is a member of their Ministry for State Security. He’s not regarded as a particularly bright diplomat by the Foreign Ministry-ours, that is.”

“That’s how you cover a spook,” Reilly agreed. “A dumb cookie-pusher. Okay, so he’s a player.”

“I agree, Mishka,” Provalov said. “Now, it would be nice to know who passed what to whom.”

“Oleg Gregoriyevich”-Reilly liked the semiformal Russian form of address-“if I’d been standing right there and staring, I might not have been able to tell.” That was the problem dealing with real professionals. They were as good at that maneuver as a Vegas dealer was with a deck of Bicycles. You needed a good lens and a slow-motion camera to be sure, and that was a little bulky for work in the field. But they’d just proved, to their satisfaction at least, that both men were active in the spook business, and that was a break in the case any way you sliced it. “ID the girl?”

“Yelena Ivanova Dimitrova.” Provalov handed the folder across. “Just a whore, but, of course, a very expensive one.”

Reilly flipped it open and scanned the notes. Known prostitute specializing in foreigners. The photo of her was unusually flattering.

“You came in early this morning?” Reilly asked. He must have, to have all this work done already.

“Before six,” Oleg confirmed. The case was becoming more exciting for him as well. “In any case, Klementi Ivan’ch kept her all night. She left his apartment and caught a taxi home at seven-forty this morning. She looked happy and satisfied, according to my people.”

That was good for a chuckle. She didn’t leave her trick until after Oleg hit the office? That must have affected his attitude somewhat, Reilly thought, with an inward grin. It sure as hell would have affected his. “Well, good for our subject. I expect he won’t be getting too much of that in a few months,” the FBI agent thought aloud, hoping it would make his Russian colleague a little happier about life.

“One can hope,” Provalov agreed coldly. “I have four men watching his apartment. If he leaves and appears to be heading away for a while, I will try to get a team into his apartment to plant some electronic surveillance.”

“They know how to be careful?” Reilly asked. If this Suvorov mutt was as trained as they thought, he’d leave telltales in his apartment that could make breaking in dicey.

“They are KGB-trained also. One of them helped catch a French intelligence officer back in the old times. Now, I have a question for you,” the Russian cop said.

“Shoot.”

“What do you know of a special counterterrorist group based in England?”

“The ‘Men of Black,’ you mean?”

Provalov nodded. “Yes. Do you know anything about them?”

Reilly knew he had to watch his words, even though he knew damned little. “Really, I don’t know anything more than what I’ve seen in the papers. It’s some sort of multinational NATO group, part military and part police, I think. They had a good run of luck last year. Why do you ask?”

“A request from on high, because I know you. I’ve been told that they are coming to Moscow to assist in training our people-Spetsnaz groups with similar tasks,” Oleg explained.

“Really? Well, I’ve never been in the muscle end of the Bureau, just in a local SWAT team once. Gus Werner probably knows a lot about them. Gus runs the new CounterTerrorism Division at Headquarters. Before that, Gus ran HRT and had a field command-a field division, that is, a big-city field office. I’ve met him once, just to say hello. Gus has a very good service rep.”

“Rep?”

“Reputation, Oleg. He’s well regarded by the field agents. But like I said, that’s the muscle end of the Bureau. I’ve always been with the chess players.”

“Investigations, you mean.”

Reilly nodded. “That’s right. It’s what the FBI is supposed to be all about, but the outfit’s mutated a bit over the years.” The American paused. “So, you’re covering this Suvorov/Koniev guy real tight?” Reilly asked, to recenter the discussion.

“My men have orders to be discreet, but yes, we will keep a close eye on him, as you say.”

“You know, if he really is working with the Chinese spooks … do you think they might want to kill that Golovko guy?”

“I do not know, but we must regard that as a real possibility.”

Reilly nodded, thinking this would make an interesting report to send to Washington, and maybe discuss with the CIA station chief as well.

I want the files for everyone who ever worked with him,“' Sergey Nikolay‘ch ordered. ”And I want you to get me his personal file.'

“Yes, Comrade Chairman,” Major Shelepin replied, with a bob of the head.

The morning briefing, delivered by a colonel of the militia, had pleased neither the SVR Chairman nor his principal bodyguard. In this case, for a change, the legendarily slow Russian bureaucracy had been circumvented, and the information fast-tracked to those interested in it. That included the man whose life might have been spared accidentally after all.

“And we will set up a special-action group to work with this Provalov child.”

“Of course, Comrade Chairman.”

It was strange, Sergey Nikolay’ch thought, how rapidly the world could change. He vividly remembered the morning of the murder-it was not the sort of thing a man could forget. But after the first few days of shock and attendant fear, he’d allowed himself to relax, to believe that this Avseyenko had been the real target of an underworld rub out-an archaic American term he liked-and that his own life had never been directly threatened. With the acceptance of that belief, the entire thing had become like driving past an ordinary traffic accident. Even if some unfortunate motorist had been killed there at the side of the road, you just dismissed it as an irrelevance, because that sort of thing couldn’t happen to you in your own expensive official car, not with Anatoliy driving. But now he’d begun to wonder if perhaps his life had been spared by accident. Such things were not supposed to occur-there shouldn’t have been any need for them.

Now he was more frightened than he’d been that bright Moscow morning, looking down from his window at the smoking wreck on the pavement. It meant that he might be in danger still, and he dreaded that prospect as much as the next man.

Worse still, his hunter might well be one of his own, a former KGB officer with connections to Spetsnaz, and if he were in contact with the Chinese …

… But why would the Chinese wish to end his life? For that matter, why would the Chinese wish to perform any such crime in a foreign land? It was beyond imprudent.

None of this made any sense, but as a career intelligence officer, Golovko had long since shed the illusion that the world was supposed to make sense. What he did know was that he needed more information, and at least he was in a very good place to seek it out. If he wasn’t as powerful as he might once have been, he was still powerful enough for his own purposes, Golovko told himself.

Probably.

He didn’t try to come to the ministry very often. It was just a routine security measure, but a sensible one. Once you recruited an agent, you didn’t want to hang out with him or her for fear of compromise. That was one of the things they taught you at The Farm. If you compromised one of your agents, you might have trouble sleeping at night, because CIA was usually active in countries where the Miranda warning was delivered by a gun or knife or fist, or something just as bad-as unpleasant as a police state could make it, and that, the instructors had told his