Debt of Honor

decide. But it had to pass through three separate legal procedures before a jury could decide, and then any defense lawyer with half a brain could say that a fair trial was impossible anyway after C-SPAN had done its level best to tell the whole world every bit of evidence, tainting everything, and denying Kealty his constitutional right to a fair and impartial trial before disinterested jurors. That ruling was likely enough in a Federal district court trial, and even more so on appeal—and would gain the victims nothing. And what if the bastard actually was, technically speaking, innocent of a crime? An open zipper, distasteful though it was, did not constitute a crime. And neither he nor the country needed the distraction. Roger Durling buzzed his secretary.

'Yes, Mr. President?'

'Get me the Attorney General.'

He'd been wrong, Durling thought. Sure, he could interfere with a criminal investigation. He had to. And it was easy. Damn.

26—Catch-up

'He really said that?' Ed Foley leaned forward. It was easier for Mary Pat to grasp it than for her husband.

'Sure enough, and it's all on his honor as a spy,' Jack confirmed, quoting the Russian's words.

'I always did like his sense of humor,' the DDO said, getting her first laugh of the day, and probably the last. 'He's studied us so hard that he's more American than Russian.'

Oh, Jack thought, that's it. That explained Ed. The opposite was true of him. A Soviet specialist for nearly all of his career, he was more Russian than American. The realization occasioned his own smile.

'Thoughts?' the National Security Advisor asked.

'Jack, it gives them the ID of the only three humint assets we have on the ground over there. Bad joss, man,' Edward Foley said.

'That's a consideration,' Mary Patricia Foley agreed. 'But there's another consideration. Those three assets are cut off. Unless we can communicate with them, they might as well not be there. Jack, how serious is this situation?'

'We are for all practical purposes at war, MP.' Jack had already relayed the gist of the meeting with the Ambassador, including his parting comment.

She nodded. 'Okay, they're giving a war. Are we going to come?'

'I don't know,' Ryan admitted. 'We have dead people out there. We have U.S. territory with another flag flying over it right now. But our ability to respond effectively is severely compromised—and we have this little problem at home. Tomorrow the markets and the banking system are going to have to come to terms with some very unpleasant realities.'

'Interesting coincidence,' Ed noted. He was too old a hand in the intelligence business to believe in coincidences. 'What's going to happen with that stuff, Jack? You know a lot about it.'

'I don't have a clue, guys. It's going to be bad, but how bad, and how it's going to be bad…nobody's been here before. I suppose the good news is that things can't fall further. The bad news is the mentality that goes with the situation will be like a person trapped in a burning building. You may be safe where you are, but you can't get out, either.'

'What agencies are looking into things?' Ed Foley asked.

'Just about all of them. The Bureau's the lead agency. It has the most available investigators. The SEC is better suited to it, but they don't have the troops for something this big.'

'Jack, in a period of less than twenty-four hours, somebody leaked the news on the Vice President'—he was in the Oval Office right now, they all knew—'the market went in the crapper, and we had the attack on Pacific Fleet, and you just told us the most harmful thing to us is this economic thing. If I were you, sir—'

'I see your point,' Ryan said, cutting Ed off a moment too soon for a complete picture. He made a few notes, wondering how the hell he'd be able to prove anything, as complex as the market situation was. 'Is anybody that smart?'

'Lots of smart people in the world, Jack. Not all of them like us.' It was very much like talking with Sergey Nikolay'ch, Ryan thought, and like Golovko, Ed Foley was an experienced pro for whom paranoia was always a way of life and often a tangible reality. 'But we have something immediate to consider here.'

'These are three good officers,' Mary Pat said, taking the ball from her husband. 'Nomuri's been doing a fine job sliding himself into their society, taking his time, developing a good network of contacts. Clark and Chavez are as good a team of operators as we have. They have good cover identities and they ought to be pretty safe.'

'Except for one thing,' Jack added.

'What's that?' Ed Foley asked, cutting his wife off.

'The PSID knows they're working.'

'Golovko?' Mary Pat asked. Jack nodded soberly. 'That son of a bitch,' she went on. 'You know, they still are the best in the world.' Which was not an altogether pleasant admission from the Deputy Director (Operations) of the Central Intelligence Agency.

'Don't tell me they have the head of Japanese counterintel under their control?' her husband inquired delicately.

'Why not, honey? They do it to everybody else.' Which was true. 'You know, sometimes I think we ought to hire some of their people just to give lessons.' She paused for a second. 'We don't have a choice.'

'Sergey didn't actually come out and say that, but I don't know how else he could have known. No,' Jack agreed with the DDO, 'we don't really have any choice at all.'

Even Ed saw that now, which was not the same as liking it. 'What's the quid on this one?'

'They want everything we get out of THISTLE. They're a little concerned about this situation. They were caught by surprise, too, Sergey tells me.'

'But they have another network operating there. He told you that, too,' MP observed. 'And it has to be a good one, too.'

'Giving them the 'take' from THISTLE in return for not being hassled is one thing—and a pretty big thing. This goes too far. Did you think this one all the way through, Jack? It means that they'll actually be running our people for us.' Ed didn't like that one at all, but on a moment's additional consideration, it was plain that he didn't see an alternative either.

'Interesting circumstances, but Sergey says he was caught with his drawers down. Go figure.' Ryan shrugged, wondering yet again how it was possible for three of the best-informed intelligence professionals in his country not to be able to understand what was going on.

'A lie on his part?' Ed wondered. 'On the face of it, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.'

'Neither does lying,' Mary Pat said. 'Oh, I love these matryoshka puzzles. Okay, at least we know there are things we don't know yet. That means we have a lot of things to find out, the quicker the better. If we let RVS run our people…it's risky, Jack, but—damn, I don't see that we have a choice.'

'I tell him yes?' Jack asked. He had to get the President's approval, too, but that would be easier than getting theirs.

The Foleys traded a look and nodded.

An oceangoing commercial tug was located by a helicopter fifty miles from the Enterprise formation, and in a remarkable set of circumstances, the frigate Gary took custody of the barge and dispatched the tug to the carrier, where she could relieve the Aegis cruiser, and, by the way, increase Big-E's speed of advance to nine knots. The tug's skipper contemplated the magnitude of the fee he'd gained under the Lloyd's Open Form salvage contract, which the carrier's CO had signed and ferried back by helicopter. The typical court award was 10 to 15 percent of the value of the property salved. A carrier, an air wing, and six thousand people, the tugboat crew thought. What was 10 percent of three billion dollars? Maybe they'd be generous and settle for five.

It was a mixture of the simple and the complex, as always. There were now P-3C Orion patrol aircraft