Red Rabbit

nutritious though it might be. So even the Soviet state trusted some people, despite the fact that “trust” was a concept as divorced from its way of collective thinking as a man is from Mars. And he was such a man. Well, one result of that irony was the cute green shirt his little daughter wore. He set a few books on the kitchen chair and hoisted Svetlana there so that she could eat her dinner. Svetlana’s hands were a little small for the zinc-aluminum tableware, but at least it wasn’t too heavy for her to use. He still had to butter her bread for her. It was good to be able to afford real butter.

“I saw something nice at the special store on the way home,” Irina observed as women do over dinner, to catch their husbands in a good mood. The cabbage was especially good today, and the ham was Polish. So she’d shopped today at the “closed” store, all right. She’d gotten into the habit only nine months before, and now she wondered aloud how she’d ever lived without it.

“What’s that?” Oleg asked, sipping his Georgian tea.

“Brassieres, Swedish ones.”

Oleg smiled. Those of Soviet manufacture always seemed to be designed for peasant girls who suckled calves instead of children—far too big for a woman of his wife’s more human proportions. “How much?” he asked without looking up.

“Only seventeen rubles each.”

Seventeen certificate rubles, he didn’t correct her. A certificate ruble had actual value. You could, theoretically, even exchange it for a foreign “hard” currency, as opposed to the valueless paper that they used to pay the average factory worker, whose value was entirely theoretical… like everything else in his country, when you got down to it.

“What color?”

“White.” Perhaps the special store had black or red ones, but it was a rare Soviet woman who would wear such things. People were very conservative in their habits here.

With dinner finished, Oleg left the kitchen to his wife and took his little girl into the living room and the TV set. The TV news announced that the harvest was under way, as it was every year, with the heroic laborers on the collective farms bringing in the first crop of summer wheat in the northern areas, where they had to grow and harvest it quickly. A fine crop, the TV said. Good, Oleg thought, no bread shortages this winter…probably. You could never really be sure about what was said on the TV. Next, some complaining coverage of the American nuclear weapons being deployed in the NATO countries, despite the reasonable Soviet requests that the West forgo such unnecessary, destabilizing, and provocative actions. Zaitzev knew that the Soviet SS-20s were going into place elsewhere, and they, of course, were in no way destabilizing. The big show on TV tonight was We Serve the Soviet Union, about military operations, fine young Soviet men serving their country. Today would be rare coverage of men doing their “international duty” in Afghanistan. The Soviet media didn’t often cover that, and Oleg was curious as to what they’d show. There were occasional discussions over lunch at work about the war in Afghanistan. He tended to listen rather than talk, because he’d been excused from military service, something he didn’t regret one little bit. He’d heard too many stories about the casual brutality in the infantry units, and besides, the uniforms were not attractive to wear. His rarely worn KGB uniform was bad enough. Still, pictures told stories that mere words did not, and he had the keen eye for detail that his job required.

“You know, every year they harvest wheat in Kansas, and it never makes the NBC Nightly News,” Ed Foley said to his wife.

“I suppose feeding themselves is a major accomplishment,” Mary Pat observed. “How’s the office?”

“Small.” Then he waved his hands in such a way as to say that nothing interesting had happened.

Soon she’d have to drive their car around to check for alert signals. They were working Agent CARDINAL here in Moscow, and he was their most important assignment. The colonel knew that he’d have new handlers here. Setting that arrangement up would be touchy, but Mary Pat was accustomed to handling the touchy ones.

Chapter 4. Introductions

It was five in the evening in London, and noon in Langley, when Ryan lit up his secure phone to call home. He’d have to get used to the time zones. Like a lot of people, he found that his creative times of day tended to divide themselves into two parts. Mornings were best for digesting information, but later afternoons were better for contemplation. Admiral Greer tended to be the same way, and so Jack would find himself disconnected from his boss’s work routine, which wasn’t good. He also had to get used to the mechanics of handling documents. He’d been in government service long enough to know that it would never be as easy as he expected, nor as simple as it ought to be.

“Greer,” a voice said, after the secure link was established.

“Ryan here, sir.”

“How’s England, Jack?”

“Haven’t seen it rain yet. Cathy starts her new job tomorrow morning.”

“How’s Basil?”

“I can’t complain about the hospitality, sir.”

“Where are you now?”

“Century House. They gave me an office on the top floor with a guy in their Russian section.”

“I bet you want an STU for your home.”

“Good call, sir.” The old bastard was pretty good at reading minds.

“What else?”

“Nothing comes immediately to mind, Admiral.”

“Anything interesting yet?”

“Just settling in, sir. Their Russian section looks smart. The guy I’m working with, Simon Harding, reads the tea leaves pretty well,” Ryan said, glad that Simon was off at the moment. Of course, maybe the phone was bugged… nah… not for a Knight Commander of the Victorian Order… or would they?

“Kids okay?”

“Yes, sir. Sally’s trying to figure out the local TV.”

“Kids adapt pretty well.”

Better than adults do. “I’ll let you know, Admiral.”

“The Hopkins document ought to be on your desk tomorrow.”

“Thanks. I think they’ll like it. Bernie said some interesting things. This other thing with the Pope…”

“What are our cousins saying?”

“They’re concerned. So am I. I think His Holiness has rattled their cage pretty hard, and I think Ivan’s going to notice.”

“What’s Basil saying?”

“Not much. I do not know what assets they have on site. I imagine they’re waiting to see what they can find out.” Jack paused. “Anything from our end?”

“Not yet” was the terse reply. It was a step up from nothing I can talk to you about. Does Admiral Greer really trust me now? Jack wondered. Sure, Greer liked him, but did he really trust him to be a good analyst? Perhaps this London sojourn was, if not boot camp, then maybe a second trip through the Basic School. That was where the Marine Corps made sure that young men with lieutenant’s bars really had the right stuff to lead Marines in the field. It was reputed to be the hardest school in the Corps. It hadn’t been especially easy for Ryan, but he had graduated at the top of his class. Maybe he’d just been lucky…? He hadn’t served long enough to find out, courtesy of a broken CH-46 over the island of Crete, an event that still visited him in the occasional nightmare.

Fortunately, his gunnery sergeant and a navy corpsman had stabilized him, but Jack still got a chill even thinking about helicopters. “Tell me what you think, Jack.”

“If my job were to keep the Pope alive, I’d be a little nervous. The Russians can play rough when they want