Red Rabbit

“I can’t confirm your suspicion,” Harding cautioned, “but no, none of our sources have given us anything, not even that the Warsaw Letter has arrived in Moscow, though we know it must have.”

“So, we don’t know jack shit?”

Simon nodded soberly. “Correct.”

“Amazing how often that happens.”

“It’s just a part of the job, Jack.”

“And the PM has her panties in a wad?”

Harding hadn’t heard that Americanism before, and it caused him to blink twice. “So it would seem.”

“So, what are we supposed to tell her? She damned sure doesn’t want to hear that we don’t know.”

“No, our political leaders do not like to hear that sort of thing.”

Neither do ours, Ryan admitted to himself. “So, how good is Basil at a song-and- dance number?”

“Quite good, actually. In this case, he can say that your chaps do not have very much, either.”

“Ask other NATO services?”

Harding shook his head. “No. It might leak out to the opposition—first, that we’re interested, and second, that we don’t know enough.”

“How good are our friends?”

“Depends. The French SDECE occasionally turns good information, but they do not like to share. Neither do our Israeli friends. The Germans are thoroughly compromised. That Markus Wolf chap in East Germany is a bloody genius at this business—perhaps the best in the world, and under Soviet control. The Italians have some talented people, but they, too, have problems with penetration. You know, the best service on the continent might well be the Vatican itself. But if Ivan is doing anything at the moment, he’s covering it nicely. Ivan is quite good at that, you know.”

“So I’ve heard,” Ryan agreed. “When does Basil have to go to Downing Street?”

“After lunch—three this afternoon, I understand.”

“And what will we be able to give him?”

“Not very much, I’m afraid—worse, Basil might want me with him.”

Ryan grunted. “That ought to be fun. Met her before?”

“No, but the PM has seen my analyses. Bas says she wants to meet me.” He shuddered. “It’d be much better if I had something substantive to tell her.”

“Well, let’s see if we can come up with a threat analysis, okay?” Jack sat down. “What exactly do we know?”

Harding handed a sheaf of documents across. Ryan leaned back in his chair to pick through them.

“You got the Warsaw Letter from a Polish source, right?”

Harding hesitated, but it was clear he had to answer this one: “That is correct.”

“So nothing from Moscow itself?” Jack asked.

He shook his head. “No. We know the letter was forwarded to Moscow, but that’s all.”

“We’re really in the dark, then. You might want to have a beer before you go across the river.”

Harding looked up from his notes. “Why, thank you, Jack. I really needed to hear that bit of encouragement.”

They were silent for a moment.

“I work better on a computer,” Ryan said. “How hard is it to get one in here?”

“Not easy. They have to be tempest-checked to make sure someone outside the building cannot read the keystrokes electronically. You can call administration about it.”

But not today, Ryan didn’t say aloud. He’d learned that the bureaucracy at Century House was at least as bad as the one at Langley, and after a few years of working in the private sector, it could drive him to distraction. Okay, he’d try to come up with some ideas to save Simon from getting a new asshole installed in his guts. The Prime Minister was a lady, but in terms of demands, Father Tim at Georgetown had nothing on her.

* * *

Oleg Ivan’ch got back from lunch at the KGB cafeteria and faced facts. Very soon, he would have to decide what to say to his American, and how to say it.

If he was a regular embassy employee, he would have passed the first note along to the CIA chief in the embassy—there had to be one, he knew, an American rezident whose job it was to spy on the Soviet Union, just as Russians spied on everyone in the world. The big question was whether they were spying on him. Could he have been “doubled” by the Second Chief Directorate, whose reputation would frighten the devil in hell himself? Or could this ostensible American have been a Russian bearing a “false-flag”?

So, first of all, Oleg had to make damned sure he was dealing with the real thing. How to do that…?

Then it came to him. Yes, he thought. That was something KGB could never bring off. That would ensure that he was dealing with someone able to do what he needed done. No one could fake that. In celebration, Zaitzev lit up another cigarette and went back into the morning dispatches from the Washington rezidentura.

* * *

It was hard to like Tony Prince. The New York Times correspondent in Moscow was well-regarded by the Russians, and, as far as Ed Foley was concerned, that spoke to a weakness in his character.

“So, how do you like the new job, Ed?” Prince asked.

“Still settling in. Dealing with the Russian press is kind of interesting. They’re predictable, but unpredictably so.”

“How can people be unpredictably predictable?” the Times correspondent inquired, with a crooked smile.

“Well, Tony, you know what they’re going to say, just not how they’re going to ask it.” And half of them are spooks or at least stringers, anyway, in case you haven’t noticed.

Prince affected a laugh. He felt himself to be the intellectual superior.

Foley had failed as a general-beat reporter in New York, whereas Prince had parlayed his political savvy to one of the top jobs in American journalism. He had some good contacts in the Soviet government, and he cultivated them assiduously, frequently sympathizing with them over the boorish, nekulturniy behavior of the current regime in Washington, which he occasionally tried to explain to his Russian friends, often pointing out that he hadn’t voted for this damned actor, and neither had anyone in his New York office.

“Have you met the new guy, Alexandrov, yet?”

“No, but one of my contacts knows him, says he’s a reasonable sort, talks like he’s in favor of peaceful coexistence. More liberal than Suslov. I hear he’s pretty sick.”

“I’ve heard that, too, but I’m not sure what’s wrong with him.”

“He’s diabetic, didn’t you hear? That’s why the Baltimore docs came over to work on his eyes. Diabetic retinopathy,” Prince explained, speaking the word slowly so that Foley could comprehend it.

“I’ll have to ask the embassy doc what that means,” Foley observed, making an obvious note on his pad. “So, this Alexandrov guy is more liberal, you think?”

“Liberal” was a word that meant “good guy” to Prince.

“Well, I haven’t met him myself, but that’s what my sources think. They also think that when Suslov departs from this life, Mikhail Yevgeniyevich will take his place.”

“Really? I’ll have to drop that on the ambassador.”

“And the Station Chief?”

“You know who that is? I don’t,” Foley said.

An eye roll. “Ron Fielding. Hell, everybody knows that.”

“No, he isn’t,” Ed protested as sharply as his acting talent allowed. “He’s the senior consular officer, not a spook.”

Prince smiled, thinking, You never could figure things out, could you? His Russian