Red Rabbit

it. The Second Directorate people were numerous—supposedly, half of KGB’s personnel were in there—and they were smart, professional spooks with all sorts of resources, and the patience of a vulture circling over the Arizona desert, sniffing the air for the smell of a dead jackrabbit, then homing in to feast on the carcass.

But KGB was more dangerous than a vulture. A vulture didn’t actively hunt. Ed Foley could never be sure if he had a shadow as he traveled around Moscow. Oh, sure, he might spot one, but that could just be a deliberate effort to put a clumsy—or an exceedingly clever—officer on his tail to see if he’d try to shake him. All intelligence officers were trained in surveillance and countersurveillance, and the techniques were both universally valid and universally recognized, and so Foley never used them. Not ever. Not even once. It was too dangerous to be clever in this game, because you could never be clever enough. There were other countermoves to use when necessary, like the preplanned brush-pass known to every spook in the world, but very difficult to spot even so, because of its very simplicity. No, when that failed, it was usually because your agent got rattled. It was a lot harder to be an agent than a field officer. Foley had diplomatic cover. The Russians could have movie film of him buggering Andropov’s pet goat and not be able to do a thing about it. He was technically a diplomat, and protected by the Vienna Convention, which made his person inviolable—even in time of war, though things got a little dicier then. But that, Foley judged, was not a problem. He’d be fried like everyone else in Moscow then, and so would not be lonely in whatever afterlife spies inhabited.

He wrenched his mind away from the irrelevancies, entertaining though they might be. It came down to one thing: Would his friend Ivan take the next step, or would he just fade back into the woodwork, taking satisfaction that he’d managed to make the U.S. Embassy dance to his tune one cool Moscow morning? To find that out, you had to turn over the cards. Would it be blackjack, or just a pair of fours?

That’s why you got into this business, Ed, Foley reminded himself—the thrill of the chase. It sure as hell was a thrill, even if the game disappeared into the mists of the forest. It was more fun skinning the bear than smelling it.

Why was this guy doing what he was doing? Money? Ideology? Conscience? Ego? Those were the classic reasons, as summarized by the acronym MICE. Some spies just wanted the mayonnaise jar full of one-hundred- dollar bills. Some came to believe in the politics of the foreign countries they served with the religious fervor of the newly converted. Some were troubled because their Motherland was doing something they couldn’t abide. Some just knew they were better men than their bosses, and this was a way to get even with the sons-of-bitches.

Historically, ideological spies were the most productive. Men would put their lives on the betting line for their beliefs—which was why religious wars were so bloody. Foley preferred the monetarily motivated. They were always rational, and they’d take chances, because the bigger the risk, the greater their reward. Ego-driven agents were touchy and troublesome. Revenge was never a pretty motive for doing anything, and those people were usually unstable. Conscience was almost as good as ideology. At least they were driven by a principle of sorts. The truth of the matter was that CIA paid its agents well, just out of the spirit of fair play if nothing else, and besides, it didn’t hurt to have that word out on the street. Knowing that you’d be properly compensated made for one hell of a tiebreaker for those who had trouble making up their minds. Whatever your baseline motivation, being paid was always attractive. The ideological needed to eat, too. So did the conscience-driven. And the ego types saw that living well was indeed a pretty good form of revenge.

Which one are you, Ivan? Foley wondered. What is driving you to betray your country? The Russians were a ferociously patriotic people. When Stephen Decatur said, “Our country, right or wrong,” he could well have been speaking as a Russian citizen. But the country was so badly run—tragically so. Russia had to be the world’s unluckiest nation—first too large to be governed efficiently; then taken over by the hopelessly inept Romanovs; and then, when even they couldn’t hold back the vitality of their nation, dropped screaming into the bloody maw of the First World War, suffering such huge casualties that Vladimir Ilyich lyanov—Lenin—had been able to take over and set in place a political regime calculated to do destruction to itself; then handing the wounded country over to the most vicious psychopath since Caligula, in the person of Josef Stalin. The accumulation of that sort of abuse was beginning to shake the faith of the people here…

Your mind sure is wandering, Foley, the Chief of Station told himself. Another half hour. He’d leave the embassy on time and catch the metro, with his topcoat open and loose around him, and just wait and see. He headed off to the men’s room. Occasionally, his bladder got as excited as his intellect.

* * *

Across town, Zaitzev took his time. He’d be able to write on only one message blank—throwing one away in plain view was too dangerous, the burn bag could not be trusted, and he could hardly light one up in his ashtray— and so he mentally composed his message, then rethought the words, then rethought them again, and again, and again.

The process took him more than an hour in full, and then he was able to write it up surreptitiously, fold it, and tuck it into his cigarette pack.

* * *

Little Eddie slid his favorite Transformers tape into the VCR. Mary Pat watched idly, behind her son’s rapt attention on the living room floor. Then it hit her.

That’s what I am, she realized. I transform myself from ditsy blonde housewife to CIA spy. And I do it seamlessly. The thought appealed to her. She was giving the Soviet Bear a peptic ulcer, hopefully a bleeding one that wouldn’t be fixed by drinking milk and taking Rolaids. In another forty minutes, Ed will find out if his new friend really wants to play and, if he wants to play, I’ll have to work the agent. I’ll hold his hand and lead him along and take his information and send it off to Langley.

What will he give us? she wondered. Something nice and juicy? Does he work in their communications center, or does he just have access to a blank message pad? Probably a lot of those in The Centre… well, maybe, depending on their security procedures. Those would be pretty stringent. Only a very few people would be trusted with KGB signals…

And that was the worm dangling on the hook, she knew, watching a Kenworth diesel tractor turn into a two- legged robot. This Christmas, they’d have to start buying those toys. She wondered if Little Eddie would need help transforming them.

* * *

The time came. Ed would leave the embassy door exactly on time, which would be a comfort to his shadow, if any. If there was, he’d notice a green tie again, and think that the earlier one was not all that unusual—not unusual enough to be any sort of signal for an agent he might be working. Even the KGB couldn’t think every embassy employee was a spook, Foley told himself. Despite the paranoia that was pandemic in the Soviet Union, even they knew the rules of the game, and his friend from the The New York Times had probably told his own contacts that Foley was a dumb son of a bitch who hadn’t even made it as a police reporter in the Big Apple, where the busy police made that field about as difficult as watching TV on a weekend. The best possible cover for a spook was to be too dumb, and what better person to set it up for him than that arrogant ass, Anthony—never just plain Tony—Prince.

Out on the street, the air was cool with approaching autumn. Ed wondered if the Russian winter was all it was cracked up to be. If so, you could always dress for cold weather. It was heat that Foley detested, though he remembered playing stickball out on the streets, and the sprinklers on the tops of some of the fire hydrants. The innocence of youth was far behind him. A damned far way behind, the chief of station reflected, checking his watch as he entered the metro station. As before, the efficiency of the metro worked for him, and he entered the usual subway car.

* * *

There, Zaitzev thought, maneuvering that way. His American friend was doing everything exactly as before, reading his paper, his right hand on the grab rail, his raincoat hanging loose around him… and in a minute or two, he was standing next to him.

* * *

Foley’s peripheral vision was still working, The shape was there, dressed exactly as before. Okay, Ivan, make your transfer… Be careful, boy, be very careful, his mind said, knowing that this sort of thing was going to be too dangerous to sustain. No, they’d have to set up a dead-drop somewhere convenient. But first they’d have to do a meet, and he’d let Mary Pat handle that one for him, probably. She just had