Red Rabbit

—none interested in us,” Hudson added. “The average Hungarian would probably rather catch gonorrhea than go inside. Hard to tell you how detested the Soviets are in this country. The locals will take their money and perhaps even shake hands after the money is exchanged, but not much more than that. They remember 1956 here, Jack.”

The hotel struck Ryan as something from what H. L. Mencken had called the gilded age—champagne ambition on a beer budget.

“I’ve stayed in better,” Jack observed. It wasn’t the Plaza in New York or London’s Savoy.

“Our Russian friends probably have not.”

Damn. If we get them to America, they’re going to be in hog heaven, Jack thought at once.

“Let’s go inside. There’s a rather nice bar,” Hudson told him.

And so there was, off to the right and down some steps, almost like a New York City disco bar, though not quite as noisy. The band wasn’t there yet, just some records playing, and not too loudly. The music, Jack noted, was American. How odd. Hudson ordered a couple glasses of Tokaji.

Ryan sipped his. It wasn’t bad.

“It’s bottled in California, too, I think. Your chaps call it Tokay, the national drink of Hungary. It’s an acquired taste, but better than grappa.”

Ryan chuckled. “I know. That’s Italian for ‘lighter fluid.’ My uncle Mario used to love it. De gustibus, as they say.” He looked around. There was nobody within twenty feet. “Can we talk?”

“Better just to look about. I’ll come here tonight. This bar closes after midnight, and I need to see what the staff is like. Our Rabbit is in Room 307. Third floor, corner. Easy access via the fire stairs. Three entrances, front and either side. If, as I expect, there’s only a single clerk at the desk, it’s just a matter of distracting him to get our packages up and the Rabbit family out.”

“Packages up?”

Hudson turned. “Didn’t they tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

Bloody hell, Hudson thought, they never get the necessary information out to everyone who needs it. Never changes.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he told Ryan.

Uh-oh, Ryan thought at once. Something was up that he wouldn’t like. Sure as hell. Maybe he should have brought his Browning with him. Oh, shit. He finished his drink and went looking for the men’s room. The symbology helped. The room had not been recently scrubbed, and it was a good thing he didn’t need to sit down. He emerged to find Andy waiting for him, and followed him back outside. Soon they were back in his car.

“Okay, can we discuss that little problem now?” Jack asked.

“Later,” Hudson told him. It just made Ryan worry a little more.

* * *

The packages were just arriving at the airport—three rather large boxes with diplomatic stickers on them— and an official from the embassy was at the ramp to make sure they weren’t tampered with. Someone had made sure to put them in identifying boxes from an electronics company—the German company Siemens, in this case— thus making it seem that they were coding machines or something else bulky and sensitive. They were duly loaded in the embassy’s own light truck and driven downtown with nothing more than curiosity in their wake. The presence of an embassy officer had prevented their being x-rayed, and that was important. That might have damaged the microchips inside, of course, the customs people at the airport thought, and so made up their official report to the Belugyminiszterium. Soon it would be reported to everyone interested, including the KGB, that the U.K. Budapest Embassy had taken on some new encryption gear. The information would be duly filed and forgotten.

* * *

“Enjoy your tour?” Hudson asked, back in his office.

“Beats doing a real audit. Okay, Andy,” Ryan shot back. “You want to walk me through this?”

“The idea comes from your people. We’re to get the Rabbit family out in such a way that KGB think them dead, and hence not defectors who will cooperate with the West. To that end, we have three bodies to put into the hotel room after we get Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail out.”

“Okay, that’s right,” Ryan said. “Simon told me about it. Then what?”

“Then we torch the room. The three bodies are victims of domestic fires. They ought to have arrived today.”

All Ryan could still feel was a visceral disgust. His face showed it.

“This is not always a tidy business, Sir John,” the SIS COS informed his guest.

“Christ, Andy! Where are the bodies from?”

“Does that matter to anyone?”

A long breath. “No, I suppose not.” Ryan shook his head. “Then what?”

“We drive them south. We’ll meet with an agent of mine, Istvan Kovacs, a professional smuggler who is being well paid to get us over the border into Yugoslavia. From there into Dalmatia. Quite a few of my countrymen like to get some sun there. We put the Rabbit family aboard a commercial airliner to take them—and you—back to England, and the operation is concluded to everyone’s satisfaction.”

“Okay.” What else can I say? Jack thought. “When?”

“Two or three days, I think.”

“Are you going to be packing?” he wondered next.

“A pistol, you mean?”

“Not a slingshot,” Ryan clarified.

Hudson just shook his head. “Not really very useful things, guns. If we run into trouble, there will be trained soldiers with automatic rifles, and a pistol is useless to anyone, except to cause the opposition to fire at us with rather a higher probability of hitting us. No, should that happen, you’re better off talking your way out of it, using the diplomatic papers. We already have British passports for the Rabbits.” He lifted a large envelope from his desk drawer. “Mr. Rabbit reportedly speaks good English. That should suffice.”

“It’s all thought through, eh?” Ryan wasn’t sure if it seemed that way to him or not.

“It’s what they pay me for, Sir John.”

And I don’t have standing to criticize, Ryan realized. “Okay, you’re the pro here. I’m just a fucking tourist.”

“Tom Trent reported in.” There was a message on Hudson’s desk. “He did not see any coverage on the Rabbit family. So the operation looks entirely unremarkable to this point. I would say things are going very well indeed.” Except for the frozen burned bodies in the embassy basement, he didn’t add. “Seeing them this morning helped. They look entirely ordinary, and that helps. At least we’re not trying to smuggle Grace Kelly out of the country. People like that get noticed, but women like Mrs. Rabbit do not.”

“Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail…” Ryan whispered.

“Just a matter of moving them to a different hutch.”

“You say so, man,” Ryan responded dubiously. This guy just lived a different sort of life from his own. Cathy cut up people’s eyeballs for a living, and that would have made Jack faint dead away like a broad confronting a rattlesnake in the bathtub. Just a different way of earning a living. It sure as hell wasn’t his.

* * *

Tom Trent watched them take the long walk from the hotel to the local zoo, which was always a good place for children. The male lion and tiger were both quite magnificent, and the elephant house—built in a drunken Arabian pastel style—housed several adequate pachyderms. With an ice cream cone bought for the little girl, the tourist part of the day came to its end. The Rabbit family walked back to the hotel, with the father carrying the sleeping child for the last half kilometer or so. This was the hardest part for Trent, for whom staying invisible on a square mile of cobblestone landing field taxed even his professional skills, but the Rabbit family was not all that attentive, and on getting back to the Astoria, he ducked into a men’s room to switch his reversible coat to change at least his outward colors. Half an hour later, the Zaitzevs walked out again, but turned immediately to enter the people’s restaurant just next door. The food there was wholesome if not especially exciting and, more to the point, quite inexpensive. As he watched, they piled their plates high with the local cuisine and sat down to devour it. They