"Clancy, Tom - Jack Ryan 03 - The Cardinal of the Kremlin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clancy Tom)

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"Oh! Oh, Colonel, I am so sorry," Mrs. Foley said, and she really was.
"It was long ago." He smiled. "I remember your son well from the game, a fine young man. Love your children, dear lady, for you will not always have them. If you will excuse me for a moment." Misha moved off in the direction of the rest rooms. Mrs. Foley looked to the Minister, anguish on her pretty face.
"Sir, I didn't meanЧ"
"You could not have known. Misha lost his sons a few years apart, then his wife. I met her when I was a very young manЧlovely girl, a dancer with the Kirov Ballet. So sad, but we Russians are accustomed to great sadnesses. Enough of that. What team does your son play for?" Marshal Yazov's interest in hockey was amplified by the pretty young face.
Misha found the rest room after a minute. Americans and Russians were sent to different ones, of course, and Colonel Filitov was alone in what had been the private water closet of a prince, or perhaps a czar's mistress. He washed his hands and looked in the gilt-edged mirror. He had but one thought: Again. Another mission. Colonel Filitov sighed and tidied ihimself up. A minute later he was back out in the arena. \ "Excuse me," Ryan said. Turning around, he'd bumped Jinto an elderly gentleman in uniform. Golovko said something [in Russian that Ryan didn't catch. The officer said something [to Jack that sounded polite, and walked over, Ryan saw, to jthe Defense Minister.
I "Who's that?" Jack asked his Russian companion. . "The Colonel is personal aide to the Minister," Golovko Хreplied.
|. "Little old for a colonel, isn't he?" [ "He is a war hero. We do not force all such men to retire." I "I guess that's fair enough," Jack commented, and turned aback to hear about this part of the room. After they had [exhausted the St. George Hall, Golovko led Jack into the Adjacent St. Vladimir Hall. He expressed the hope that he and Ryan would next meet here. St. Vladimir Hall, he explained, was set aside for the signing of treaties. The two intelligence officers toasted one another on that.
The party broke up after midnight. Ryan got into the seventh limousine. Nobody talked on the ride back to the em-
bassy. Everyone was feeling the alcohol, and you didn t taiK] in cars, not in Moscow. Cars were too easy to bug. Two men fell asleep, and Ryan came close enough himself. What kept him awake was the knowledge that they'd fly out in another five hours, and if he was going to have to do that, he might as well keep tired enough to sleep on the plane, a skill he had only recently acquired. He changed his clothes and went down to the embassy's canteen for coffee. It would be enough to keep himself going for a few hours while he made his own
notes.
Things had gone amazingly well these past four days. Almost too well. Jack told himself that averages are made up of times when things went well and times they went poorly. A draft treaty was on the table. Like all draft treaties of late, it was intended by the Soviets to be more a negotiating too! than a negotiating document. Its details were already in the press, and already certain members of Congress were saying on the floor how fair a deal it wasЧand why don't we jusl
agree to it?
Why not, indeed? Jack wondered with an ironic smile. Ver-ifiability. That was one reason. The other . . . was there another? Good question. Why had they changed their stance so much? There was evidence that General Secretary Nar-monov wanted to reduce his military expenditures, but de| spite all the public perceptions to the contrary, nuclear arm| were not the place you did that. Nukes were cheap for what they did; they were a very cost-effective way of killing people. While a nuclear warhead and its missile were expensive gad] gets, they were far cheaper than the equivalent destructive? power in tanks and artillery. Did Narmonov genuinely want to reduce the threat of nuclear war? But that threat didn't come from the weapons; as always it came from the politician! and their mistakes. Was it all a symbol? Symbols, Jack re| minded himself, were far easier for Narmonov to produo than substance. If a symbol, at whom was it aimed?
Narmonov had charm, and powerЧthe sort of viscera presence that came with his post, but even more from hi personality. What sort of man was this? What was he after' Ryan snorted. That wasn't his department. Another CU team was examining Narmonov's political vulnerability righl here in Moscow. His far easier job was to figure out th<
technical side. Far easier, perhaps, but he didn't yet know the answer to his own questions.
Golovko was already back at his office, making his own notes in a painful longhand. Ryan, he wrote, would uneasily support the draft proposal. Since Ryan had the ear of the Director, that probably meant that CIA would, too. The intelligence officer set down his pen and rubbed his eyes for a moment. Waking up with a hangover was bad enough, but having to stay awake long enough to welcome it with the sunrise was above and beyond the duty of a Soviet officer. He wondered why his government had made the offer in the first place, and why the Americans seemed so eager. Even Ryan, who should have known better. What did the Americans have in mind? Who was outmaneuvering whom?
Now there was a question.
He turned back to Ryan, his assignment of the previous evening. Well along for a man of his years, the equivalent of a colonel in the KGB or GRU and only thirty-five. What had he done to rise so quickly? Golovko shrugged. Probably connected, a fact of life as important in Washington as in Moscow. He had courageЧthe business with the terrorists almost five years before. He was also a family man, something Russians respected more than their American counterparts would have believedЧit implied stability, and that in turn implied predictability. Most of all, Golovko thought, Ryan was a thinker. Why, then, was he not opposed to a pact that would benefit the Soviet Union more than it benefited America? Is our evaluation incorrect? he wrote. Do the Americans know something we do not? That was a question, or better still: Did Ryan know something that Golovko did not? The Colonel frowned, then reminded himself what he knew that Ryan did not. That drew a half-smile. It was all part of the grand game. The grandest game there was.
"You must have walked all night."
The Archer nodded gravely and set down the sack that had trowed his shoulders for five days. It was almost as heavy as the one Abdul had packed. The younger man was near collapse, the CIA officer saw. Both men found pillows to sit on.
"Have something to drink." The officer's name was Emilio
i-i. .V,... ЧЧЧЧ
Ortiz. His ancestry was sufficiently muddled that he couli
have passed for a native of any Caucasian nation. Also thirt
years of age, he was of medium height and build, with
swimmer's muscles, which was how he'd won a scholarship!
to USC, where he'd won a degree in languages. Ortiz had a
rare gift in this area. With two weeks' exposure to a language,
a dialect, an accent, he could pass for a native anywhere in
the world. He was also a man of compassion, respectful of
the ways of the people with whom he worked. This mean
that the drink he offered was notЧcould not beЧalcoholic
It was apple juice. Ortiz watched him drink it with all th
delicacy of a wine connoisseur sampling new bordeaux.
"Allah's blessings upon this house," the Archer said whe he finished the first glass. That he had waited until drinkinj the apple juice was as close as the man ever came to makinj a joke. Ortiz saw the fatigue written on the man's face, thouj) he displayed it no other way. Unlike his young porter, th Archer seemed invulnerable to such normal human concern It wasn't true, but Ortiz understood how the force that drov him could suppress his humanity.
The two men were dressed almost identically. Ortiz coi sidered the Archer's clothing and wondered at the ironic sin ilarity with the Apache Indians of America and Mexico. On of his ancestors had been an officer under Terrazas when t Mexican Army had finally crushed Victorio in the Tres Q tillos Mountains. The Afghans, too, wore rough trousers und their loincloths. They, too, tended to be small, agile fighteto; And they, too, treated captives as noisy amusements for the knives. He looked at the Archer's knife and wondered h* it was used. Ortiz decided he didn't want to know. 1 "Do you wish something to eat?" he asked. I "It can wait," the Archer replied, reaching for his pacf He and Abdul had brought out two loaded camels, but ft the important material, only his backpack would do. "I fire eight rockets. I hit six aircraft, but one had two engines an managed to escape. Of the five I destroyed, two were hel copters, and three were bombing-fighters. The first helicopt we killed was the new kind of twenty-four you told us aboi You were correct. It did have some new equipment. Here
some of it." It was ironic, Ortiz thought, that the most sensitive equij
ment in military aircraft would survive treatment guaranteed to kill its crew. As he watched, the Archer revealed six green :ircuit boards for the laser-designator that was now standard ;quipment on the Mi-24. The U.S. Army Captain who'd stayed in the shadows and kept his mouth shut to this point now :ame forward to examine them. His hands fairly trembled as tie reached for the items.
"You have the laser, too?" the Captain asked in accented Pashtu.
"It was badly damaged, but, yes." The Archer turned. Abdul was snoring. He nearly smiled until he remembered that he had a son also.
For his part, Ortiz was saddened. To have a partisan with the Archer's education under his control was rare enough. He'd probably been a skilled teacher but he could never teach igain. He could never go back to what he'd been. War had :hanged the Archer's life as fully and certainly as death. Such i goddamned waste.
"The new rockets?" the Archer asked.
"I can give you ten. A slightly improved model, with an additional five-hundred-meter range. And some more smoke rockets, too."
The Archer nodded gravely, and the corners of his mouth moved in what, in different times, might have been the beginnings of a smile.
"Perhaps now I can go after their transports. The smoke rockets work very well, my friend. Every time, they push the nvaders close to me. They have not yet learned about that :actic."
Not a trick, Ortiz noted. He called it a tactic. He wants to >o after transports now, he wants to kill a hundred Russians it a time. Jesus, what have we made of this man? The CIA rfficer shook his head. That wasn't his concern.
"You are weary, my friend. Rest. We can eat later. Please lonor my house by sleeping here."
"It is true," the Archer acknowledged. He was asleep within wo minutes.