Debt of Honor

'Whoever was on the phone called me 'Yevgeniy.' He's waiting downstairs, he says.'

'What did he sound like?' Clark asked.

'Russian, right accent, right syntax.' The toilet stopped running, and they couldn't speak anymore for a while.

Shit, Clark thought, looking in the mirror for an answer, but finding only two very confused faces. Well. The intelligence officer started washing up and thinking over possibilities. Think. If it had been the Japanese police, would they have bothered to…? No. Not likely. Everyone regarded spies as dangerous in addition to being loathsome, a curious legacy of James Bond movies. Intelligence officers were about as likely to start a firefight as they were to sprout wings and fly. Their most important physical skills were running and hiding, but nobody ever seemed to grasp that, and if the local cops were on to them, then…then he would have awakened to a pistol in his face. And he hadn't, had he? Okay. No immediate danger. Probably.

Chavez watched in no small amazement as Clark took his time washing his hands and face, shaving carefully, and brushing his teeth before he relinquished the bathroom. He even smiled when he was done, because that expression was necessary to the tone of his voice.

'Yevgeniy Pavlovich, we must appear kulturny for our friend, no? It's been so many months.' Five minutes later they were out the door.

Acting skills are no less important to intelligence officers than to those who work the legitimate theater, for like the stage, in the spy business there are rarely opportunities for retakes. Major Boris Il'ych Scherenko was the deputy rezident of RVS Station Tokyo, awakened four hours earlier by a seemingly innocuous call from the embassy. Covered as Cultural Attache, he'd most recently been busy arranging the final details for a tour of Japan by the St. Petersburg Ballet. For fifteen years an officer of the First Chief (Foreign) Directorate of the KGB, he now fulfilled the same function for his newer and smaller agency. His job was even more important now, Scherenko thought. Since his nation was far less able to deal with external threats, it needed good intelligence more than ever. Perhaps that was the reason for this lunacy. Or maybe the people in Moscow had gone completely mad.

There was no telling. At least the tea was good.

Awaiting him in the embassy had been an enciphered message from Moscow Center-that hadn't changed— with names and detailed descriptions. It made identification easy. Easier than understanding the orders he had.

'Vanya!' Scherenko nearly ran over, seizing the older man's hand for a hearty handshake, but forgoing the kiss that Russians are known for. That was partly to avoid offending Japanese sensibilities and partly because the American might slug him, passionless people that they were. Madness or not, it was a moment to savor. These were two senior CIA officers, and tweaking their noses in public was not without its humor. 'It's been so long!'

The younger one, Scherenko saw, was doing his best to conceal his feelings, but not quite well enough. KGB/RVS didn't know anything about him. But his agency did know the name John Clark. It was only a name and a cursory description that could have fit a Caucasian male of any nationality. One hundred eighty-five to one hundred ninety centimeters. Ninety kilos. Dark hair. Fit. To that Scherenko added, blue eyes, a firm grip. Steady nerve.

Very steady nerve, the Major thought.

'Indeed it has. How is your family, my friend?'

Add excellent Russian to that, Scherenko thought, catching the accent of St. Petersburg. As he cataloged the physical characteristics of the American, he saw two sets of eyes, one blue, one black, doing the same to him. 'Natalia misses you. Come! I am hungry! Breakfast!' He led the other two back to his corner booth.

'CLARK, JOHN (none?)', the thin file in Moscow was headed. A name so nondescript that other cover names were unknown and perhaps never assigned. Field officer, paramilitary type, believed to perform special covert functions. More than two (2) Intelligence Stars for courage and/or proficiency in field operations. Brief stint as a Security and Protective Officer, during which time no one had troubled himself to get a photo, Scherenko thought. Typical. Staring at him across the table now, he saw a man relaxed and at ease with the old friend he'd met for the first time perhaps as much as two minutes earlier. Well, he'd always known that CIA had good people working for them.

'We can talk here,' Scherenko said more quietly, sticking to Russian.

'Is that so…?'

'Scherenko, Boris Il'ych, Major, deputy rezident,' he said, finally introducing himself. Next he nodded to each of his guests. 'You are John Clark—and Domingo Chavez.'

'And this is the fucking Twilight Zone,' Ding muttered.

' 'Plum blossoms bloom, and pleasure women buy new scarves in a brothel room.' Not exactly Pushkin, is it? Not even Pasternak. Arrogant little barbarians.' He'd been in Japan for three years. He'd arrived expecting to find a pleasant, interesting place to do business. He'd come to dislike many aspects of Japanese culture, mainly the assumed local superiority to everything else in the world, particularly offensive to a Russian who felt exactly the same way.

'Would you like to tell us what this is all about, Comrade Major?' Clark asked.

Scherenko spoke calmly now. The humor of the event was now behind them all, not that the Americans had ever appreciated it. 'Your Maria Patricia Foleyeva placed a call to our Sergey Nikolayevich Golovko, asking for our assistance. I know that you are running another officer here in Tokyo, but not his name. I am further instructed to tell you, Comrade Klerk, that your wife and daughters are fine. Your younger daughter made the dean's list at her university again, and is now a good candidate for admission to medical school. If you require further proof of my bona-fides, I'm afraid I cannot help you.' The Major noted a thin expression of pleasure on the younger man's face and wondered what that was all about.

Well, that settles that, John thought. Almost. 'Well, Boris, you sure as hell know how to get a man's attention. Now, maybe you can tell us what the hell is going on.'

'We didn't see it either,' Scherenko began, going over all the high points. It turned out that his data was somewhat better than what Clark had gotten from Chet Nomuri, but did not include quite everything. Intelligence was like that. You never had the full picture, and the parts left out were always important.

'How do you know we can operate safely?'

'You know that I cannot—'

'Boris Il'ych, my life is in your hands. You know I have a wife and two daughters. My life is important to me, and to them,' John said reasonably, making himself appear all the more formidable to the pro across the table. It wasn't about fear. John knew that he was a capable field spook, and Scherenko gave the same impression. 'Trust' was a concept both central to and alien from intelligence operations. You had to trust your people, and yet you could never trust them all the way in a business where dualisms were a way of life.

'Your cover works better for you than you think. The Japanese think that you are Russians. Because of that, they will not trouble you. We can see to that,' the deputy rezident told them confidently.

'For how long?' Clark asked rather astutely, Scherenko thought.

'Yes, there is always that question, isn't there?'

'How do we communicate?' John asked.

'I understand that you require a high-quality telephone circuit.' He handed a card under the table. 'All of Tokyo is now fiberoptic. We have several similar lines to Moscow. Your special communications gear is being flown there as we speak. I understand it is excellent. I would like to see it,' Boris said with a raised eyebrow.

'It's just a ROM chip, man,' Chavez told him. 'I couldn't even tell you which one it is.'

'Clever,' Scherenko thought.

'How serious are they?' the younger man asked him.

'They appear to have moved a total of three divisions to the Marianas. Their navy has attacked yours.' Scherenko gave what details he knew. 'I should tell you that our estimate is that you will face great difficulties in taking your islands back.'

'How great? 'Clark asked.

The Russian shrugged, not without sympathy. 'Moscow believes it unlikely. Your capabilities are almost as puny as ours have become.'

And that's why this is happening, Clark decided on the spot. That was why he had a new friend in a foreign land. He'd told Chavez, practically on their first meeting, a quote