Red Rabbit

have been done already. Agreed, gentlemen?” he asked, and got nods from around the table, except from the American.

“What if we’re missing something?” Ryan wondered.

“That is a possibility,” Sharp admitted, “but it’s a possibility we have to both live with and discount. We have only the information we have, and we must design our plan around that.”

“Not much choice for us, is it, Sir John?” Sparrow asked. “We have only what we have.”

“True,” Ryan admitted, rather miserably. There had come the sudden thought that other things might be happening as well. What if there were a diversion? What if somebody tossed firecrackers—to draw eyes toward the noise and away from the real action? That, he suddenly thought, was a real possibility.

Damn.

* * *

“What’s this about Ryan?” Ritter asked, storming into Judge Moore’s office.

“Basil thought that since BEATRIX was a CIA operation from the get-go, why not send one of our officers down there to take a look at things? I don’t see that it can hurt anything,” Moore told his DDO.

“Who the hell does Ryan think he’s working for?”

“Bob, why don’t you just settle down? What the hell can he do to hurt things?”

“Damn it, Arthur—”

“Settle down, Robert,” Moore shot back in the voice of a judge used to having his own way on everything from the weather on down.

“Arthur,” Ritter said, calming down a whisker, “it’s not a place for him.”

“I see no reason to object, Bob. None of us think anything’s going to happen anyway, do we?”

“Well… no, I suppose not,” the DDO admitted.

“So he’s just broadening his horizons, and from what he learns, he’ll be a better analyst, won’t he?”

“Maybe so, but I don’t like having some desk-sitter playing field spook. He isn’t trained for this.”

“Bob, he used to be a Marine,” Moore reminded him. And the U.S. Marine Corps had its own cachet, independent of the CIA. “He’s not going to wet his pants on us, is he?”

“I suppose not.”

“And all he’s going to do is look around at nothing happening, and the exposure to some field officers will not do his education any harm, will it?”

“They’re Brits, not our guys,” Ritter objected weakly.

“The same guys who brought the Rabbit out for us.”

“Okay, Arthur, I’ll give you this one.”

“Bob, you throw a hell of a conniption fit, but why not use them for something important?”

“Yes, Judge, but the DO is my shop to run. You want me to get Rick Nolfi into this?”

“You think it’s necessary?”

Ritter shook his head. “No, I expect not.”

“Then we let the Brits run this mini-op and keep it cool here at Langley until we can interview the Rabbit and quantify the threat to the Pope, all right?”

“Yes, Arthur.” And the Deputy Director (Operations) of the Central Intelligence Agency headed back to his office.

* * *

Dinner went well. The Brits made good company, especially when the talk turned to non-mission-related things. All were married. Three had kids, with one expecting his first shortly.

“You have two, as I recall?” Mick King asked Jack.

“Yeah, and number two arrived on a busy night.”

“Too bloody right!” Ray Stones, one of the new arrivals, agreed with a laugh. “How did the missus take it?”

“Not too bad after Little Jack arrived, but the rest of the evening was subpar.”

“I believe it,” King observed.

“So, who told us that the Bulgarians want to kill the Pope?” Sparrow asked.

“It’s KGB that wants his ass,” Jack replied. “We just got a defector out. He’s in a safe house, and he’s singing like the girl in Aida. This is the most important thing so far. “

“Reliable information?” King inquired.

“We think it’s gold-plated and copper-bottomed, yeah. Sir Basil has bought into it. That’s why he flew you guys down,” Jack let them know, in case they hadn’t already figured that one out. “I’ve met the Rabbit myself, and I think he’s the real deal.”

“CIA operation?” This was Sharp.

Jack nodded. “Correct. We had an operational problem, and you guys were kind enough to help us out. I’m not cleared to say much more, sorry.”

They all understood. They didn’t want their asses exposed by loose talk about a black operation.

“This must go to Andropov himself—the Pope’s giving them trouble in Poland, is it?”

“It would seem so. Maybe he has command of more divisions than they appreciate.”

“Even so, this seems a little extreme—how will the world see the assassination of His Holiness?” King wondered aloud.

“Evidently, they fear that less than a total political collapse in Poland, Mick,” Stones thought out loud. “And they’re afraid that he might be able to bring that about. The sword and the spirit, as Napoleon said, Mick. The spirit always wins in the end.”

“Yes, I reckon so, and here we are at the epicenter of the world of the spirit.”

“My first time here,” Stones said. “It is bloody impressive. I must bring the family down here sometime.”

“They do know their food and wine,” Sparrow observed, going through his veal. “What about the local police?”

“Rather good, actually,” Sharp told him. “Pity we can’t enlist their assistance. They know the territory—it is their patch, after all.”

But these guys are the pros from Dover, Ryan thought, with some degree of hope. Just that there weren’t enough of them. “Tom, you talk to London about the radios?”

“Ah, yes, Jack. They’re sending us ten. Earpieces and lapel microphones to speak into. Sideband, rather like what the army use. I don’t know if they’re encrypted, but fairly secure in any case, and we’ll use proper radio discipline. So at least we’ll be able to communicate clearly. We’ll practice with them tomorrow afternoon.”

“And Wednesday?”

“We’ll arrive about nine in the morning, pick our individual surveillance areas, and mill about while the crowd arrives.”

“This isn’t what they trained me for in the Corps,” Ryan thought aloud.

“Sir John,” Mick King responded, “this isn’t what they trained any of us for. Yes, we are all experienced intelligence officers, but this really is a job for someone in the protective services, like the police constables who guard Her Majesty and the PM or your Secret Service chaps. Hell of a way to earn a living, this is.”

“Yes, Mick, I expect we’ll all appreciate them a little more after this lot,” Ray Stones observed, to general agreement around the table.

“John.” Ryan turned to Sparrow. “You’ve got the most important job, spotting this motherfucker for the rest of us.”

“Lovely,” Sparrow replied. “All I have to do is examine five-thousand-plus faces for the one that might or might not be there. Lovely,” the spook repeated.

“What will you be using?”

“I have three Nikon cameras and a good assortment of lenses. I think tomorrow I might buy some seven-by- fifty binoculars also. I just hope I can find a good perch to scan from. The height of the parapet worries me. There’s a dead space extending out from the base of the columns about thirty yards or so that I can’t see at all. That limits what I can do, lads.”

“Not much choice,” Jack thought out loud. “You can’t see shit from ground level.”