“You can check out most of that story. Where she lives, the family business, where the kid was born, who was there, who the doctor was.”
Holtzman checked his notes. “There's something really, really big behind all this, isn't there?”
Clark just stared at him. “All I want is a name.”
“What will you do with it?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“What will Ryan do with it?”
“He doesn't know we're here.”
“Bullshit.”
“That, Mr. Holtzman, is the truth.”
Bob Holtzman had been a reporter a very long time. He'd been lied to by experts. He'd been the target of very organized and well-planned lies, had been the instrument of political vendettas. He didn't like that part of his job, not in the least. The contempt he felt for politicians came mainly from their willingness to break any rule. Whenever a politician broke his word, told the most outrageous of lies, took money from a contributor and left the room at once to perform a service for that contributor, it was called “just politics.” That was wrong, and Holtzman knew it. There was still in him something of the idealist who had graduated from Columbia 's journalism school, and though life had made him a cynic, he was one of those few people in Washington who remembered his ideals and occasionally mourned for them.
“Assuming I can verify this story you've told, what's in it for me?”
“Maybe just satisfaction. Maybe nothing more than that. I honestly doubt there will be any more, but if there is, I'll let you know.”
“Just satisfaction?” Holtzman asked.
“Ever want to get even with a bully?” Clark asked lightly.
The reporter brushed that aside. “What do you do at the Agency?”
Clark smiled. “I'm really not supposed to talk about that.”
“Once upon a time, the story goes, a very senior Soviet official defected, right off the tarmac at Moscow airport.”
“I've heard that story. If you ever printed it…”
“Yes, it would fuck up relations, wouldn't it?” Holtzman observed.
“How long have you had it?”
“Since right before the last election. The President asked me not to run it.”
“Fowler, you mean?”
“No, the one Fowler beat.”
“And you played ball.” Clark was impressed.
“The man had a family, a wife and a daughter. Were they killed in a plane crash, like the press release said?”
“You ever going to print this?”
“I can't, not for a lot of years, but someday I'm going to do a book…”
“They got out, too,” Clark said. “You're looking at the guy who got them out of the country.”
“I don't believe in coincidences.”
“The wife's name is Maria. The daughter's name is Katryn.”
Holtzman didn't react, but he knew that only a handful of people in the Agency could possibly have known the details to that one. He'd just asked his own trick question, and gotten the right answer.
“Five years from today, I want the details of the bust-out.”
Clark was quiet for a moment. Well, if the reporter was willing to break a rule, then Clark had to play ball, too. “That's fair. Okay, you have a deal.”
“Jesus Christ, John!” Chavez said.
“The man needs a quid pro quo.”
“How many people inside know the details?”
“Of the operation? Not many. My end… if you mean all the details, maybe twenty, and only five of them are still in the Agency. Ten of them are not Agency employees.”
“Then who?”
“That would give too much away.”
“Air Force Special Ops,” Holtzman said. “Or maybe the Army, Task Force 160, those crazy guys at Fort Campbell, the ones who went into Iraq the first night—”
“You can speculate all you want, but I'm not going to say anything. I will say this, when I tell you my end, I want to know how the hell you figured out that we even had this operation.”
“People like to talk,” Holtzman said simply.
“True enough. Do we have a deal, sir?”
“If I can verify what you've told me, if I'm sure I've been lied to, yes, I will reveal the source. You have to promise that it will never get to the press.”
Jesus, this is like diplomacy, Clark reflected. “Agreed. I'll call you in two days. For what it's worth, you're the first reporter I've ever talked to.”
“So, what do you think?” Holtzman asked with a grin.
“I think I ought to stick with spooks.” John paused. “You might have been a pretty good one.”
“I am a pretty good one.”
“Just how heavy is this thing?” Russell asked.
“Seven hundred kilos.” Ghosn did the mental arithmetic. “Three quarters of a ton — your ton, that is.”
“Okay,” Russell said. “The truck'll handle that. How do we get it from the truck into my truck?” The question turned Ghosn pale.
“I had not considered that.”
“How was it loaded on?”
“The box is set on a wooden… platform?”
“You mean a pallet? They put it in with a fork-lift?”
“Yes,” Ghosn said, “that is correct.”
“You're lucky. Come on, I'll show you.” Russell led the man out into the cold. Two minutes later, he saw that one of the barns had a concrete loading dock and a rusty propane-powered forklift. The only bad news was that the dirt path leading up to it was covered with snow and frozen mud. “How delicate is the bomb?”
“Bombs can be very delicate, Marvin,” Ghosn pointed out.
Russell had a good laugh at that one. “Yeah, I guess so.”
It was fully ten hours earlier in Syria. Dr. Vladimir Moiseyevich Kaminiskiy had just started work, early as was his custom. A professor at Moscow State University, he'd been sent to Syria to teach in his specialty, which was respiratory problems. It was not a specialty to make a man an optimist. Much of what he saw in the Soviet Union and also here in Syria was lung cancer, a disease as preventable as it was lethal.
His first case of the day had been referred by a Syrian practitioner whom he admired — the man was French- trained and very thorough — and also one who only referred interesting cases.
On entering the examining room, Kaminiskiy found a fit-looking man in his early thirties. A closer look showed someone with a gray, drawn face. His first impression was, cancer, but Kaminiskiy was a careful man. It could be something else, something contagious. His examination took longer than he'd expected, necessitating several X-ray films, and some additional tests, but he was called back to the Soviet embassy before the results arrived.
It required all of Clark's patience, but he let it go almost three days, on the assumption that Holtzman didn't get right on the case. John left his house at eight-thirty in the evening and drove to a gas station. There he told the attendant to fill up the car — he hated pumping it himself — and walked over to the pay phone.
“Yeah,” Holtzman said, answering his unlisted line.
Clark didn't identify himself. “You have a chance to run the facts down?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact. Got most of 'em, anyway. Looks like you were right. Really is annoying when
