Jack Ryan 3 - Red Rabbit (85 page)

“You bet, Tommy.” Ryan left the room and took a deep breath. Mick King and the rest were waiting out there for him. Someone at Sharp's official residence had packed his bags, and there was an embassy minibus waiting to take them all to the airport. There, a British Airways Boeing 737 was waiting, and they caught it just in time, all with first-class tickets. Ryan was next to King for the flight.

“What the hell,” Jack asked, “are we going to do with him?”

“Strokov? Good question,” Mick replied. “Are you sure you want to know the answer?”

MASQUED BALL

ON THE TWO-HOUR FLIGHT back to Heathrow, Ryan availed himself of three miniatures of single-malt scotch, mainly because it was the only hard stuff they had. Somehow, his fear of flying receded into the background—it helped that the flight was so smooth that the aircraft might as well have been sitting still on the ground, but Ryan also had a head full of other thoughts.

“What went wrong, Mick?” Ryan asked over the Alps.

“What went wrong was that our friend Strokov wasn't planning to do the assassination himself. He got someone else to do the actual shooting.”

“Then why was he carrying a pistol with a silencer on the front end?”

“You want a guess? I'd wager he was hoping to kill the assassin himself and then blend into the crowd and make his escape. You can't read everyone's mind, Jack,” King added.

“So, we failed,” Ryan concluded.

“Perhaps. It depends on where the bullets went. John said there was one hit in the body, one perhaps in the hand or arm, and one other that might have gone wild, or at worst was a peripheral strike. So, whether the man survives or not is up to whatever surgeon is working on him now.” King shrugged. “Out of our hands, my friend.”

“Fuck,” Ryan breathed quietly.

“Did you do your best, Sir John?”

That snapped his head around. “Yes—I mean, of course. We all did.”

“And that is all a man can do, isn't it? Jack, I've been in the field for, what? Twelve years. Sometimes things go according to plan. Sometimes they do not. Given the information we had and the manpower we were able to deploy, I don't see how we could have done any better. You're an analyst, aren't you?”

“Correct.”

“Well, for a desk boffin, you acquitted yourself well, and now you know a good deal more about field operations. There are no guarantees in this line of work.” King took another swallow of his drink. “I can't say that I like it, either. I lost an agent in Moscow two years ago. He was a young captain in the Soviet army. Seemed a decent sort. Wife and a young son. They shot him, of course. Lord only knows what happened to his family. Maybe she's in a labor camp, or maybe in some godforsaken town in Siberia, for all I know. You never find that out, you know. Nameless, faceless victims, but victims still.”

“THE PRESIDENT IS PISSED,” Moore told his senior executives, his right ear still burning from a conversation ten minutes before.

“That bad?” Greer asked.

“That bad,” the DCI confirmed. “He wants to know who did it and why, and he'd prefer to know before lunch.”

“That's not possible,” Ritter said.

“There's the phone, Bob. You call him and tell him that,” the Judge suggested. None of them had ever seen the President angry. It was, for the most part, something people tried to avoid.

“So, Jack was right?” Greer offered.

“He might have made a good guess. But he didn't stop it from happening, either,” Ritter observed.

“Well, it gives you something to say, Arthur,” Greer said, with a little hope in his voice.

“Maybe so. I wonder how good Italian doctors are.”

“What do we know?” Greer asked. “Anything?”

“One serious bullet wound in the chest. The President ought to be able to identify with that,” Moore thought out loud. “Two other hits, but not serious ones.”

“So, call Charlie Weathers up at Harvard and ask him what the likely prognosis is.” This was from Ritter.

“The President's already talked to the meatball surgeons at Walter Reed. They're hopeful but noncommittal.”

“I'm sure they all say, 'If I was on it, it'd be okay.' ” Greer had experience with military doctors. Fighter pilots were shrinking violets next to battlefield surgeons.

“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 analysis 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 ass. 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 hell 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 hell 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 hit. 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 5—1 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 attitude 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 Embassy. 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—hell, 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 Goderenko 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 pissed, 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 embassy. 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 assassination 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?”