Red Rabbit Part 58

"I'm going to call Basil and have the Rabbit flown here as soon as the Air Force can get a plane ready. If Ryan's available-they ought to be flying him back from Rome right now, if I know Basil-I want him on the aircraft, too."

"Why?" Ritter asked.

"So he can brief us-maybe the President, too-on his threat a.n.a.lysis prior to the event."

"Christ, Arthur." Greer nearly exploded. "They told us about the threat four, five days ago."

"But we wanted to interview the guy ourselves," Moore acknowledged. "I know, James, I know."

RYAN FOLLOWED MICK KING off the airliner. At the bottom of the steps was somebody who had to be from Century House. Ryan saw that the man was staring right at him.

"Dr. Ryan, could you come with me, please? We'll have a man get your bags," the fellow promised.

"Where now?"

"We have a helicopter to take you to RAF Mildenhall, and-"

"My a.s.s. I don't do helicopters since one nearly killed me. How far is it?"

"An hour and a half's drive."

"Good. Get a car," Jack ordered. Then he turned. "Thanks for the try, guys." Sparrow, King, and the rest shook his hand. They had indeed all tried, even though no one would ever know about their effort. Then Jack wondered what Tom Sharp would be doing with Strokov, and decided that Mick King was right. He really didn't want to know.

RAF MILDENHALL is just north of Cambridge, the home of one of the world's great universities, and Ryan's driver was in another Jaguar, and didn't much care about whatever speed limits there were on British roads. When they pulled past the RAF Ground Defense Regiment's security troops, the car didn't go to the aircraft waiting there on the ramp, but rather to a low building that looked like-and was-a VIP terminal. There, a man handed Ryan a telex that took about twenty seconds to read and resulted in a muttered "Great." Then Jack found a phone and called home.

"Jack?" his wife said when she recognized his voice. "Where the h.e.l.l are you?" She must have been exercised. Cathy Ryan didn't ordinarily talk like that.

"I'm at RAF Mildenhall. I have to fly back to Washington."

"Why?"

"Let me ask you this, honey: How good are Italian doctors?"

"You mean-the Pope?"

"Yep." She couldn't see his tired but curt nod.

"Every country has good surgeons-Jack, what's going on? Were you there?"

"Cath, I was about forty feet away, but I can't tell you any more than that, and you can't repeat it to anybody, okay?"

"Okay," she replied, with wonder and frustration in her voice. "When will you be home?"

"Probably in a couple of days. I have to talk to some people at headquarters, and they'll probably send me right back. Sorry, babe. Business. So, how good are the docs in Italy?"

"I'd feel better if Jack Cammer was working on him, but they have to have some good ones. Every big city does. The University of Padua is about the oldest medical school in the world. Their ophthalmologists are about as good as we are at Hopkins. For general surgery, they must have some good people, but the guy I know best for this is Jack." John Michael Cammer was Chairman of Hopkins' Department of Surgery, holder of the prestigious Halstead Chair, and one h.e.l.l of a good man with a knife. Cathy knew him well. Jack had met him once or twice at fund-raisers and been impressed by his demeanor, but wasn't a physician and couldn't evaluate the man's professional abilities. "It's fairly straightforward to treat a gunshot wound, mostly. Unless the liver or spleen is. .h.i.t. The real problem is bleeding. Jack, it's like when Sally got hurt in the car with me. If you get him there fast, and if the surgeon knows his stuff, you have a good chance of surviving-unless the spleen's ruptured or the liver is badly lacerated. I saw the TV coverage. His heart wasn't hit-wrong angle. I'd say better than even money he'll recover. He's not a young man, and that won't help, but a really good surgical team can do miracles if they get to him fast enough." She didn't talk about the nasty variables of trauma surgery. Bullets could ricochet off ribs and go in the most unpredictable directions. They could fragment and do damage in widely separated places. Fundamentally, you couldn't diagnose, much less treat, a bullet wound from five seconds of TV tape. So the odds on the Pope's survival were better than even money, but a lot of 51 horses had beaten the chalk horse and won the Kentucky Derby.

"Thanks, babe. I'll probably be able to tell you more when I get home. Hug the kids for me, okay?"

"You sound tired," she said.

"I am tired, babe. It's been a busy couple of days." And it wasn't going to get any quieter. "Bye for now."

"I love you, Jack," she reminded him.

"I love you, too, babe. Thanks for saying that."

Ryan waited more than an hour for the Zaitzev family. So the offer of a helicopter would have just enabled him to wait here longer-fairly typical of the U.S. military. Ryan sat on a comfortable couch and drifted off to sleep for perhaps half an hour.

The Rabbits arrived by car. A USAF sergeant shook Jack awake and pointed him to the waiting KC-135. It was essentially a windowless Boeing 707, also equipped to refuel other aircraft. The lack of windows didn't help his att.i.tude very much, but orders were orders, and he climbed up the steps and found a plush leather seat just forward of the wing box. The aircraft had hardly lifted off the ground when Oleg fell into the seat beside his own.

"What happened?" Zaitzev demanded.

"We caught Strokov. I got him myself, and he had a gun in his hand," Ryan reported. "But there was another shooter."

"Strokov? You arrested him?"

"Not exactly an arrest, but he decided to come with me to the British Emba.s.sy. SIS has him now."

"I hope they kill the zvoloch," Zaitzev snarled.

Ryan didn't reply, wondering if that might actually happen. Did the Brits play that rough? He had committed rather a nasty murder on their soil-h.e.l.l, within sight of Century House.

"The Pope, will he live?" the Rabbit asked. Ryan was surprised to see his degree of interest. Maybe the guy was a real conscience defector after all.

"I don't know, Oleg. I called my wife-she's a surgeon. She says that it's better than a fifty-fifty chance that he will survive."

"That is something," Zaitzev thought out loud.

"WELL?" Andropov asked.

Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy stood a little more erect. "Comrade Chairman, we know little at this point. Strokov's man took the shot, as you know, and he hit his target in a deadly area. Strokov was unable to eliminate him as planned, for reasons unknown. Our Rome rezidentura is working carefully to discover what happened. Colonel G.o.derenko is taking personal charge. We will know more when Colonel Strokov flies back to Sofia. He is scheduled to be on the regular flight at nineteen hours. So, to this point it appears we have had a partial success."

"There is no such thing as a partial success, Colonel!" Andropov pointed out heatedly.

"Comrade Chairman, I told you weeks ago that this was a possibility. You will recall that. And even if this priest survives, he will not be going back to Poland anytime soon, will he?"

"I suppose not," Yuriy Vladimirovich grumbled.

"And that was the real mission, wasn't it?"

"Da," the Chairman admitted.

"No signals as yet?"

"No, Comrade Chairman. We've had to break in a new watch officer in Communications, and-"

"What is that?"

"Major Zaitzev, Oleg Ivanovich, he and his family died in a hotel fire in Budapest. He had been our communicator for mission six-six-six."

"Why was I not informed of this?"

"Comrade Chairman," Rozhdestvenskiy soothed, "it was fully investigated. The bodies have been returned to Moscow and were duly buried. They all died of smoke inhalation. The autopsy procedures were viewed in person by a Soviet physician."

"You are sure of this, Colonel?"

"I can get the official report to you if you wish," Rozhdestvenskiy said with confidence. "I have read it myself."

Andropov shook it off. "Very well. Keep me informed on whatever comes in. And I want to be notified at once of the condition of this troublesome Pole."

"By your order, Comrade Chairman." Rozhdestvenskiy made his way out while the Chairman went back to other business. Brezhnev's health had taken a definite downturn. Very soon Andropov would have to step away from KGB in order to protect his ascension to the head seat at the table, and that was the main item on his plate at the moment. And, besides, Rozhdestvenskiy was right. This Polish priest would not be a problem for months, even if he survived, and that was sufficient to the moment.

"WELL, ARTHUR?" Ritter asked.

"He's calmed down a little bit. I told him about Operation BEATRIX. I told him that we and the Brits had people right there. He wants to meet the Rabbit we just got out, personally. So, he's still pretty p.i.s.sed, but at least it's not at us," Moore reported on his arrival back from the White House.

"The Brits have this Strokov guy in custody," Greer let the DCI know. Word had just come in from London. "Would you believe Ryan's the guy who put the bag on him? The Brits have him now at their Rome emba.s.sy. Basil's trying to decide what to do with him. Best bet, Strokov ran the operation and enlisted this Turkish thug to do the shooting. The Brits say they caught him with a silenced pistol in his hand. The thinking is that his job was to take the shooter out, like that Mafia hit in New York a while back, to put big-league deniability on the a.s.sa.s.sination attempt."

"Your boy captured him?" the DCI asked in some surprise.

"He was there with a team of experienced British field spooks, and maybe his Marine training helped," Ritter allowed. "So, James, your fair-haired boy gets another attaboy."

Don't bite your tongue off when you sign the Letter of Commendation, Robert, Greer managed not to say. "Where are they all now?"

"Halfway home, probably. The Air Force is flying them over," Ritter told them. "ETA at Andrews is about eleven-forty, they told me."

THERE WERE WINDOWS in the front office, Ryan found out, and the flight crew was friendly enough. He was even able to talk a little about baseball. The Orioles had just one more game to win to finish the Phillies off, he was pleased and surprised to learn. The flight crew didn't even hint at asking why they were driving him back to America. They'd done it too many times and, besides, they never got good answers anyway. Aft, the Rabbit Family was sound asleep, a feat Ryan had not yet managed to accomplish.

"How long?" he asked the pilot.

"Well, that's Labrador there." He pointed. "Call it three hours more, and we'll be feet-dry almost all the way. Why don't you get some sleep, sir?"

"I don't sleep in the air," Jack admitted.

"Don't feel too bad, sir. Neither do we," the copilot told him. And that was good news, on reflection, Jack thought.

SIR BASIL CHARLESTON was having his own meeting with his Chief of Government at the moment. Neither in America nor in the U.K. did reporters write stories about when and why the chiefs of the various intelligence services met with their political masters.

"So, tell me about this Strokov fellow," she ordered.

"Not a very pleasant chap," C replied. "We reckon he was there to kill the actual shooter. He had a suppressed weapon to eliminate the noise. So, it would appear that the idea was to kill His Holiness and leave a dead a.s.sa.s.sin behind. Dead men still tell no tales, you see, Prime Minister. But perhaps this one will, after all. The Italian police must be chatting with him right now, I would imagine. He is a Turkish national, and I'll wager he had a criminal record, and/or experience in smuggling things into Bulgaria."

"So, it was the Russians who were behind this?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am. That seems virtually certain. Tom Sharp is talking to Strokov in Rome. We'll see how loyal he is to his masters."

"What will we do with him?" the PM asked. The answer was in the form of another question that she would have to answer. She did.

IT DID NOT occur to Strokov that when Sharp invoked the names of Aleksey Nikolay'ch Rozhdestvenskiy and Ilya Fedorovich Bubovoy, his own fate was sealed. He was merely dumbfounded that the British Secret Intelligence Service had the KGB so thoroughly penetrated. Sharp saw no reason to disabuse him of that notion. Shocked beyond his capacity to react intelligently, Strokov forgot all of his training and started singing. His duet with Sharp lasted two and a half hours, all of it on tape.

RYAN WAS MORE on autopilot than the Boeing was before it touched down at Runway Zero-One Right at Andrews Air Force Base. He'd been on the go for what? Twenty-two hours? Something like that. Something more easily done as a Marine second lieutenant (age twenty-two) than as a married father of two (age thirty-two) who'd had a fairly stressful day. He was also feeling his liquor somewhat.

There were two cars waiting at the bottom of the steps-Andrews had yet to install a jetway. He and Zaitzev took the first. Mrs. Rabbit and the Bunny took the second. Two minutes after that, they were on Suitland Parkway, heading into D.C. Ryan drew the task of explaining what they were pa.s.sing along the way. Unlike his arrival in England, Zaitzev was not under the impression that this might be a maskirovka. And the detour past the Capitol Building ended whatever lingering suspicions he might have had. George Lucas on his best day could not have faked this scenery. The cars crossed the Potomac and went north of the George Washington Parkway, finally taking the marked exit to Langley.

"So, this is the home of the Main Enemy," the Rabbit said.

"I just think of it as the place I used to work."

"Used to?"

"Didn't you know? I'm stationed back in England now," Jack told him.

The whole debriefing team was under the canopy by the main entrance. Ryan knew only one of them, Mark Radner, a Russian scholar from Dartmouth who got called down for some special work-one of the people who liked working for CIA, but not full-time. Ryan was now able to understand that. When the car stopped, he got out first and went to James Greer.

"You've had a busy couple of days, my boy."

"Tell me about it, Admiral."

"How was it in Rome?"

"First, tell me about the Pope," Jack shot back.

"He came through surgery okay. He's critical, but we asked Charlie Weathers up at Harvard about that, and he said not to worry. People that age who come through surgery are always cla.s.sified as being in critical condition-probably just a way to drive the bill up. Unless something unusual crops up, he'll probably be fine. Charlie says they grow good cutters in Rome. His Holiness ought to be home in three to four weeks, Charlie says. They won't rush it with a guy his age."

"Thank G.o.d. Sir, when I had that Strokov b.a.s.t.a.r.d I thought we'd done it, y'know? Then when I heard the shots-Jesus, what a moment that was, Admiral."

Greer nodded. "I can imagine. But the good guys won this one. Oh, your Orioles took the series from Philly. Game just ended twenty minutes ago. That new shortstop you have, Ripken, looks to me like he's going places."

"Ryan." Judge Moore came over next. "Well done, son." Another handshake.

"Thank you, Director."

"Nice going, Ryan," Ritter said next. "Sure you wouldn't like to try our training course at the Farm?" The handshake was surprisingly cordial. Ritter must have had a drink or two in the office, Jack surmised.

"Sir, right now, I'd be just as happy to go back to teaching history."

"It's more fun to make it, boy. Remember that."

The party moved inside, past the memorial on the right-side wall to the dead officers, many of whose names were still secret, then left to the executive elevator. The Rabbit family went its own way. There were hotellike accommodations for VIP visitors and back-from-overseas field officers on the sixth floor, and evidently the CIA was bedding them down there. Jack followed the senior executives to the Judge's office.

"How good is our new Rabbit?" Moore asked.

"Well, sure as h.e.l.l he gave us good information on the Pope, Judge," Ryan answered in considerable surprise. "And the Brits sound pretty happy with what he's told them about that Agent MINISTER. I'm kinda curious who this Ca.s.sIUS guy is."

"And NEPTUNE," Greer added. The Navy needed secure communications to survive in the modern world, and James Greer still had blue suits in his closet.

"Any other thoughts?" This was Moore again.