Loose Cannon: The Tom Kelly Novels (3 page)

The Secretary of State blinked. Follett bulled onward, saying, “Ah, the Professor believes he is being persecuted by, well, aliens . . . And he appears to believe that we in the West will be better able to protect him from them.”

The civilian hooted and slapped his thigh. “Say, that’s
great
!”
he roared. “And I suppose you want me to set up a Little Green Man Patrol in State? Jesus, that’s great! Chuckie”—he prodded his embarrassed aide in the ribs—“how’d you like to head up the National Space Patrol?”

“I assure you, Mr. Secretary,” the DIA chief said stiffly, “that we would not have developed this mission—even to the present extent—were we not. . . . Well, our agent assures us that Professor Vlasov was entirely lucid during lengthy discussions of nuclear physics. He may well have cracked under the strain of his work or of life within a police state—but he has not become stupid as a result; nor has he lost his expertise.”

The uniformed men stiffened when the Secretary stood up, but the politician was walking toward the duplicate nose cone rather than the door. “All right,” the civilian said, “I can see that. Does he speak English?”

“Ah—” Follett said.

Rear Admiral Wayne cleared his throat and replied, “No Sir, he does not, though we gather he may be able to parse his own way through technical material. His French is fluent—his mother was a Breton—and it was in French that our agent contacted the Professor.”

That was more than Follett had wanted the Joint Chiefs—or the State Department, for that matter—to know about their agent, a Vietnamese physicist named Hoang Tanh. The Secretary, at least, ignored the slip. “Well, if he can’t talk to them directly,” the civilian said, “we can make sure the story we give the media is
our
story and not his own. All right.” The Secretary’s fingers traced the sharp edges of the blocks which simulated the plutonium core. His nails left a hint of a line across the lead oxide. With the unhurried certainty of a record changer cocking, he turned to the general again. “All right,” he repeated, “what
do
you want from State, Follett?”

Brigadier General Redstone took over as planned. “Sir,” he said, a mental heel click though his feet remained splayed on the concrete floor. “Mr. Secretary, you’ll appreciate that however bad Professor, ah . . . the Professor may want to get out of Russia, it’s flat out impossible for a scientist like that to do it. Some Jew doctor, sure, if he’s willing to sweat for a couple years. But, ah, Vlasov, they
know
he’s worth more to us than he is to them. They’ve
got
his math already. Any hint that he plans a bunk and
zip!
He gets it where the chicken got the axe.”

General Redstone had the intense glare of a preacher warming to his subject. He cocked his upper body forward, bringing his face a few inches closer to that of the Secretary of State. The civilian edged backward reflexively. “Now, the Professor
will
be getting out from behind the Iron Curtain in a couple weeks,” Redstone continued, “a conference in Algiers. That’s his chance and our chance—and it’s the only chance we’re going to get. If Vlasov’s as crazy as the reports say—” Follett and the admiral winced, but Redstone plowed on obliviously—“then the Sovs aren’t going to leave him loose very long, even if they don’t know we’ve contacted him.”

“The conference on nuclear power?” said the Secretary’s aide, speaking almost for the first time that evening. “The one in Algeria? We’re boycotting it because it threatens still wider proliferation of nuclear weapons in the non-advanced world.”

“That’s right,” agreed the soldier, “and there you’ve put your finger on the fucking rub. On both of them, I ought to say.”

You ought to have said something else entirely, thought Follett; but the Secretary appeared to have been caught up in Redstone’s enthusiasm, so the DIA chief did not interrupt. Not the sort of candor you ran into a lot in Foggy Bottom, he supposed. Or the Pentagon, come to think.

“Because the Algerians are just as red as the Chinks and the Russkies,” the brigadier was continuing, “what with them and the Libyans carrying on a war against us in the Western Sahara—”

Here Follett had to interrupt. “Against our ally, the King of Morocco,” he corrected.

“Right,” Redstone went on. “That’s the sort of people we’d be dealing with. They’ll take our dollars for natural gas quick enough, but they’re not about to help a top scientist escape from one of their Communist buddies. And the other thing is”—Redstone paused to take a deep breath, fixing the Secretary with his eyes during the pause—“we don’t have a delegation to the goddam conference to plant a team in. The Canadians do, but they won’t play ball—all that new flap with
their
security force scared them shitless.”

“Ah, Red,” Follett said, “I don’t think the Secretary is—”

“Oh, right, right,” the brigadier said. “Well, if it weren’t for the agent who made the touch to begin with, we still wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance of extracting the Professor. But he’s there in place. And if you can keep the lid on at the UN—and the White House—if there’s a flap, we’ll get Vlasov out.”

The civilian gave Redstone a scowl of dawning concern. “What sort of flap?” he demanded. “You don’t have some wild-hare notion about going in with a battalion of Marines, do you?”

“Huh?” said Redstone. “Oh, hell, no. Not Marines—”

“Let me take over here, General,” Follett said loudly. Brigadier General Redstone had wanted to use elements of the 82nd Airborne Division for the snatch; Follett was sure that he was about to blurt that fact. To anyone outside the military community, that would have appeared to be a distinction without a difference.

“Mr. Secretary,” Follett continued, “we will—our agents will be operating in what must for the purpose be considered a hostile country. And Professor Vlasov, despite his desire to flee to freedom, will be escorted by KGB personnel who will stop at nothing to prevent him from doing so. It may well be necessary to take”—the general drew a deep breath; his Air Force background permitted him to be queasy when discussing murder from less than 40,000 feet up—“direct action to save the Professor’s life. Furthermore, while the operation will be under the control of a DIA operative, the—heavy work—will be carried out by local agents. It is simply a fact of life that one cannot expect perfect . . . discretion from, ah, freedom fighters in a situation of this sort.”

The Secretary of State turned away with a look of distaste. “You mean,” he said, “that it’s going to be World War III in downtown Algiers if you go ahead with this.”

“No, Mr. Secretary,” said Rear Admiral Wayne. “It’s going to be World War III if we don’t go ahead with this. And we’re going to lose.”

The civilian grimaced, but he did not respond at once. Finally he said, “General Follett, isn’t the Central Intelligence Agency better suited to carry out this, ah, program with a minimum of, of publicity?”

Follett sucked in his gut again. “Sir,” he said, “without a contact agent to keep Professor Vlasov informed of the plans, there would be absolutely no way of achieving his successful defection. Only we in the Defense Intelligence Agency have such an agent—or could have one in the time available.”

“Well, you could tell the CIA about your prize agent, couldn’t you?” the Secretary snapped. “Does he only talk Army jargon or something?”

“Sir,” Follett said, standing as if he were about to salute the flag, “the Central Intelligence Agency is not responsible for the safety of our agent.
We
are. This is a man who has trusted us, who has provided valuable intelligence for many years out of his love of free society. I’m sorry, sir, I cannot permit him to be compromised by divulging his identity to parties who would throw away his life without hesitation if it suited their purposes.”

“We can handle this, Mr. Secretary,” added General Redstone. “Remember, it was us and not those state-department rejects at Langley who bribed the Russky to defect with his MiG-25.”

“Jesus,” said the Secretary of State. He was staring out the observation window at the melted target. “All right,” he said, turning. “General Follett, you have my support for this project—”

“Project Skyripper,” Redstone interrupted unhelpfully with a grin.

“My support for this project,” the Secretary repeated, “let the chips fall where they may. And yes, I’ll take care of the President. . . . But Genera”—he scowled at the trio of uniforms—“all of you! You’d better get him out. If you’ve made me a party to another Bay of Pigs, believe me—you won’t have careers. You won’t have heads.”

The Secretary spun on his heel. “Come on, Chuckie,” he snapped, “we’re getting out of here. And I only pray I shouldn’t have left an hour ago.”

The door banged behind the two men from State.

“Well, that’s settled,” said Follett in relief.

“Whether it was or not, I think we had to go ahead with the operation,” said Rear Admiral Wayne somberly. “You know how much I dislike the methods we have to use on this one, but the alternative is”—he shook his head—“just what the Secretary said it was. Surrender to the Russians now. I just hope that this man Kelly doesn’t let us down.”

General Redstone was rubbing his hands together. “Tom Kelly?” he said. “Oh, he’ll come through. And what a punch in the eye for those bastards down in Langley!”

I

“Mr. Kelly?” called the lieutenant in dress greens. “Mr. Kelly? Over here—I’m here to pick you up.”

Tom Kelly scowled across the security barrier at the green uniform, showing more distaste than he actually felt for the man inside the cloth. Of course, he didn’t know the lieutenant from Adam; and he knew the uniform very well indeed. “In a second,” he called back in English. Moving to the side so as not to block the flow of disembarking passengers, Kelly relaxed and watched the show that Orly Airport and the Russian Embassy were combining to stage.

Six men as soft and pasty-looking as maximum-security prisoners were being passed through the magnetic detector arch. None of them had hand luggage to be fluoroscoped. It was enough of a break in routine that the women and lone gendarme in charge of the barrier were more alert than usual. That was nothing compared to the attentiveness of the four bulky men escorting the others, however.

Two of the escorts had stepped around the barrier ahead of their charges. They had displayed diplomatic passports and a note to avoid the detector. Otherwise the alarm would have clanged at the pistols they wore holstered under dark suits. The suits were in themselves so ill-fitting as to be virtually a uniform for low-ranking Russians. The escorts watched the six pale men with angry determination. In general, the passengers bustling through the barrier in either direction ignored the scene, lost in their own meetings and farewells. If the crowd seemed to be edging someone too close to the men under escort, one of the guards would interpose with as little ceremony as a linebacker going for the ball. Squawks of protest from buffeted travelers were ignored with flat-eyed disdain.

The last of the six charges passed through the arch. The steel zipper in one’s trouser fly had set off the alarm; there had been no other incident. The two escorts in the rear shouldered past the barrier in turn, waving passports without bothering to speak to or even look at the attendants.

The whole group tramped down the hallway toward the Aeroflot gates. Even a note from the Russian Ambassador would not have gotten armed men around the security check had they not been traveling on their own national airline. The charges shambled in a column of twos, with their escorts half a pace out at each corner. One of the latter gave Kelly a hard look as he passed. The American smiled back and nodded. Not a real bright thing to do, but he wasn’t a surveillance agent. The Lord knew he wasn’t that.

Tom Kelly was five-foot nine and stocky. In bad light he could have been any age; in the combination of sunlight and the fluorescents over the security barrier, he looked all of his 38 years. His face was broad and tan and deeply wrinkled. Black hair was beginning to thin over his pate. Though he was clean-shaven, an overnight growth of whiskers gave him a seedy look that his rumpled blazer did nothing to dispel. Sighing, he picked up his AWOL bag and his radio, then walked to the impatient lieutenant across the barrier.

“The general is, ah, anxious to see you, sir,” the lieutenant said. “If you don’t mind, we’ll leave your luggage to be claimed later. There’s need for haste.”

“Here, carry my clothes, then,” Kelly said, thrusting his AWOL bag at the officer. “Well, don’t look so surprised. For Christ’s sake, I was just over in Basel. Train would have made a lot more sense than buying me a ticket on Swissair.”

“Er,” said the lieutenant. “Well, we have a car and driver waiting at the front entrance.” He began striding off through the concourse, glancing back over his shoulder at Kelly. The civilian paced him, moving with an ease surprising in a man so squat. He held his short-wave receiver out in front of him nonchalantly enough to belie its twelve-pound weight.

The car was there, all right, though the driver with Spec 5 chevrons on his greens was arguing with a pair of airport security men and a gendarme. “That’s all right,” the lieutenant called in English. He tossed Kelly’s bag on the hood of the sedan and fumbled out—for Christ’s sake!—his own black passport which he waved in the policeman’s face. Must be great to work in an airport the dips use a lot, Kelly thought. He opened the door of the sedan and flipped the seat down.

The lieutenant swung back to the car, but he hesitated when he saw that Kelly was gesturing him into the back seat. “Go ahead,” the civilian said. He peered at the lieutenant’s name-plate. “Morley. I figure if I rate a chauffeured limousine”—it was an AMC Concord, olive drab, with motor pool registration numbers stenciled on the doors—“I can choose where I sit in it.”

Lieutenant Morley ducked into the back. Kelly retrieved his AWOL bag from the hood and handed it ceremoniously in to the lieutenant. Only then did he set his radio on the seat beside the driver and get in himself. “The Embassy, as fast as you can make it,” Morley muttered.

“Which is probably less fast than a local taxi would get us there,” Kelly said, watching traffic as the driver eased into the stream of vehicles. “But then, it’s still probably a lot faster than we really need to get there. Unless the Army has changed one hell of a lot in the past few years.”