Rainbow Six

CHAPTER 34

As happens in all aspects of life, things settled into a routine. Chavez and his people spent most of their time with Colonel Wilkerson's people, mainly sitting in the reaction force center and watching the games on television, but also wandering to the various venues, supposedly to eyeball security matters up close, but in reality to see the various competitive events even closer. Sometimes they even wandered onto the event field by virtue of their go anywhere passes. The Aussies, Ding learned, were ferociously dedicated sports fans, and wonderfully hospitable. In his off-duty time, he picked a neighborhood pub to hang out in, where the beer was good and the atmosphere friendly. On learning that he was an American, his "mates" would often as not buy a beer for him and ask questions while watching. sports events on the wall-hung televisions. About the only thing he didn't like was the cigarette smoke, for the Australian culture had not yet totally condemned the vice, but no place was perfect.

Each morning he and his people worked out with Colonel Wilkerson and his men, and they found that in this Olympic competition there was little difference between Australian and American special-operations troopers. One morning they went off to the Olympic pistol range, borrowing Olympic-style handguns.22 automatics that seemed like toys compared to the:45s the Rainbow soldiers ordinarily packed-then saw that the target and scoring systems were very difficult indeed, if not especially related to combat shooting in the real world. For all his practice and expertise, Chavez decided that with luck he could have made the team from Mali. Certainly not the American or Russian teams, whose shooters were utterly inhuman in their ability to punch holes in the skinny silhouette targets that flipped full-face and sideways on computer-controlled hangers. But these paper targets didn't shoot back, he told himself, and that did make something of a difference. Besides, success in his form of shooting was to make a real person dead, not to hit a quarter-sized target on a black paper target card. That made a difference, too, Ding and Mike Pierce thought aloud with their Aussie counterparts. What they did could never be an Olympic sport, unless somebody brought back the gladiatorial games of Rome, and that wouldn't be happening. Besides, what they did for their living wasn't a sport at all, was it? Neither was it a form of mass entertainment in the kinder and gentler modern world. Part of Chavez admitted that he wondered what the games in classical Rome's Flavian Amphitheater had been like to watch, but it wasn't something he could say aloud, lest people take him for an utter barbarian. Hail, Caesar! We who are about to die salute you! It wasn't exactly the Super Bowl, was it? And so, "Major" Domingo Chavez, along with sergeants Mike Pierce, Homer Johnston, and George Tomlinson, and Special Agent Tim Noonan, got to watch the games for free, sometimes with "official" jackets to give them the cover of anonymity.

The same was true, rather more distantly, of Dmitriy Popov, who stayed in his room to watch the Olympics on TV. He found the games a distraction from the questions that were running their own laps inside his brain. The Russian national team, naturally enough his favorite, was doing well, though the Australians were making a fine showing as hosts, especially in swimming, which seemed to be their national passion. The problem was in the vastly different time zones. When Popov was watching events live, it was necessarily an ungodly hour in Kansas, which made him somewhat bleary-eyed for his morning horseback rides with Maclean and Killgore - those had become a very pleasant morning diversion.

This morning was like the previous ten, with a cool westerly breeze, the rising orange sun casting strange but lovely light on the waving fields of grass and wheat. Buttermilk now recognized him, and awarded the Russian with oddly endearing signs of affection, which he in turn rewarded with sugar cubes or, as today, an apple taken from the morning breakfast buffet, which the mare crunched down rapidly from his hand. He had learned to saddle his own horse, which he now did quickly, leading Buttermilk outside to join the others and mounting up in the corral.

"Morning, Dmitriy," Maclean said.

"Good morning, Kirk," Popov replied pleasantly. In another few minutes, they were riding off, to the south this time, toward one of the wheat fields, at a rather more rapid pace than his first such ride.

"So, what's it like to be an intelligence agent?" Killgore asked, half a mile from the barn.

"We are called intelligence officers, actually," Popov said to correct the first Hollywood-generated misimpression. "Truthfully, it is mainly boring work. You spend much of your time waiting for a meeting, or filling out forms for submission to your headquarters, or the rezidentura. There is some danger-but only of being arrested, not shot. It has become a civilized business. Captured intelligence officers are exchanged, usually after a brief period of imprisonment. That never happened to me, of course. I was well trained." And lucky, he didn't add.

"So, no James Bond stuff, you never killed anybody, nothing like that?" Kirk Maclean asked.

"Good heavens, no," Popov replied, with a laugh. "You have others do that sort of thing for you, surrogates, when you need it done. And that is quite rare."

"How rare?"

"Today? Almost never I should think. At KGB, our job was to get information and pass it upwards to our government-more like reporters, like your Associated Press, than anything else. And much of the information we gathered was from open sources, newspapers, magazines, television. Your CNN is perhaps the best, most used source of information in the world."

"But what sort of information did you gather?"

"Mainly diplomatic or political intelligence, trying to discern intentions. Others went after technical intelligence-how fast an airplane flies or how far a cannon shoots-but that was never my specialty area, you see. I was what you call here a people person. I met with various people and delivered messages and such, then brought the answers back to my station."

"What kind of people?"

Popov wondered about how he should answer, and decided on the truth: "Terrorists, that was what you would call them."

"Oh? Like which ones?"

"Mainly European, but some in the Middle East as well. I have language skills, and I can speak easily with people from various lands."

"Was it hard?" Dr. Killgore asked.

"Not really. We had similar political beliefs, and my country provided them with weapons, training, access to some facilities in the Eastern Bloc. I was as much a travel agent as anything else, and occasionally I would suggest targets for them to attack-as payment for our assistance. you see."

"Did you give them money?" Maclean this time.

"Yes, but not much money. The Soviet Union had only limited hard-currency reserves, and we never paid our agents very much. At least I did not," Popov said.

"So, you sent terrorists out on missions to kill people?" This was from Killgore.

Popov nodded. "Yes. That was often my job. That was," he added. "why Dr. Brightling hired me."

"Oh?" Maclean asked.

Dmitriy wondered how far he could take this one. "Yes. he asked me to do similar things for Horizon Corporation."

"You're the guy who ramrodded the stuff in Europe?"

"I contacted various people and made suggestions which they carried out, yes, and so, yes, I do have some blood on my second hands, I suppose, but one cannot take such matters too seriously, can one? It is business, and it has been my business for some time."

"Well, that's a good thing for you,Dmitriy. That's why you're here," Maclean told him. "John is pretty loyal to his people. You must have done okay."

Popov shrugged. "Perhaps so. He never told me why he wanted these things done, but I gather it was to help his friend Henriksen get the consulting contract for the Sydney- Olympics that I've been watching on TV."

"That's right," Killgore confirmed. "That was very important to us." Might as well watch, the epidemiologist thought, they'll be the last ones.

"But why?"

They hesitated at the direct question. The physician and the engineer looked at each other. Then Killgore spoke.

"Dmitriy, what do you think of the environment?"

"What do you mean? Out here? It is beautiful. You've taught me much with these morning rides, my friends," the Russian answered, choosing his words carefully. "The sky and the air, and the beautiful fields of grass and wheat. I have never appreciated how beautiful the world can be. I suppose that's because I grew up in Moscow." Which had been a hideously filthy city, but they didn't know that.

"Yeah, well, it's not all this way."

"I know that, John. In Russia-well, the State didn't care as you Americans do. They nearly killed all life in the Caspian Sea-where caviar comes from-from chemical poisoning. And there is a place just east of the Urals where our original atomic-bomb research created a wasteland. I haven't seen it, but I have heard of it. The highway signs there tell you to drive very fast to be through the zone of dangerous radiation as quickly as possible."

"Yeah, well, if we're not careful, we might just kill the whole planet," Maclean observed next.

"That would be a crime, like the Hitlerites," Popov said next. "It is nekulturny, the work of uncivilized barbarians. In my room, the tapes and the magazines make this clear."

"What do you think of killing people, Dmitriy?" Killgore asked then.

"That depends on who they are. There are many people who deserve to die for one reason or another. But Western culture has this strange notion that taking life is almost always wrong-you Americans cannot even kill your criminals, murderers and such, without jumping through hoops, as you say here. I find that very curious."

"What about crimes against Nature?" Killgore said, staring off into the distance.

"I do not understand."

"Well, things that hurt the whole planet, killing off whole living species, polluting the land and the sea. What about that?"

"Kirk, that is also a barbaric act, and it should be punished severely. But how do you identify the criminals? Is it the industrialist who gives the order and makes the profit from it? Or is it the worker who takes his wages and does what he is told?"

"What did they say at Nuremberg?" Killgore said next.

"The war-crimes trial, you mean? It was decided that following orders is not a defense." Not a concept he'd been taught to consider in the KGB Academy, where he'd learned that the State Was Always Right.

"Right," the epidemiologist agreed. "But you know. nobody ever went after Harry Truman for bombing Hiroshima."

Because he won, you fool, Popov didn't reply. "Do you ask if this was a crime? No, it was not, because he ended a greater evil, and the sacrifice of those people was necessary to restore the peace."

"What about saving the planet?"

"I do not understand."

"If the planet was dying, what would one have to do-what would be right to do, to save it?"

This discussion had all the ideological and philosophical purity of a classroom discussion of the Marxist dialectic at Moscow State University-and about as much relevance to the real world. Kill the whole planet? That was not possible. A full-blown nuclear war, yes, maybe that could have such an effect, but that was no longer possible. The world had changed, and America was the nation that had made it happen. Didn't these two druids see the wonder of that? More than once, the world had been close to loosing nuclear weapons, but today that was a thing of the past.

"I have never considered that question, my friends."

"We have," Maclean responded. "Dmitriy, there are people and forces at work today that could easily kill off everything here. Somebody has to stop that from happening, but how do you do it?"

"You do not mean simply political action, do you?" the former KGB spook observed.

"No, it's too late for that, and not enough people would listen anyway." Killgore turned his horse to the right and the others followed. "I'm afraid you have to take more drastic measures."

"What's that? Kill the whole world population?" Dmitriy Arkadeyevich asked, with hidden humor. But the reply to the rhetorical question was the same look in two sets of eyes. The look didn't make his blood go cold, but it did get his brain moving off in a new and unexpected direction. These were fascisti. Worse than that, fascisti with an ethos in which they believed. But were they willing to take action on their beliefs? Could anyone take action like that? Even the worst of the Stalinists-no, they'd never been madmen, just political romantics.

Just then an aircraft's noise disturbed the morning. It was one of Horizon's fleet of G's, lifting off from the complex's runway, climbing up and turning right, looping around to the east-for New York, probably, to bring more of the "project" people in? Probably. The complex was about 80 percent full now, Popov reflected. The rate of arrivals had slowed, but people were still coming, most by private car. The cafeteria was almost full at lunch and dinnertime, and the lights burned late in the laboratory and other work buildings. But what were those people doing?

Horizon Corporation, Popov reminded himself, was a biotech company, specializing in medicines and medical treatments, Killgore was a physician, and Maclean an engineer specializing in environmental matters. Both were druids, both nature-worshipers, the new kind of paganism spawned in the West. John Brightling seemed to be one as well, judging by that conversation they'd had in New York. That, then, was the ethos of these people and their company. Dmitriy thought about the printed matter in his room. Humans were a parasitic species doing more harm than good to the earth, and these two had just talked about sentencing the harmful people to death-then made it clear that they thought of everyone as harmful. What were they going to do, kill everyone? What rubbish. The door leading to the answer had opened further. His brain was moving far more quickly than Buttermilk was, but still not fast enough.

They rode in silence for a few minutes. Then a shadow crossed the ground, and Popov looked up.

"What is that?"

"Red-tail hawk," Maclean answered, after a look. "Cruising for some breakfast."

As they watched, the raptor climbed to five hundred feet or so, then spread his wings to ride the thermal air currents, his head down, examining the surface of the land for an unwary rodent through his impossibly sharp eyes. By unspoken consent the three men stopped their horses to watch. It took several minutes and then it was both beautiful and terrible to behold. The hawk folded its wings back and dropped rapidly, then flapped to accelerate like a feathered bullet, then spread its wings wide, nosing up, its yellow talons leading the descent now

"Yes!" Maclean hooted.

Like a child stomping on an anthill, the hawk used its talons to kill its prey, twisting and crushing, then, holding the limp tubular body in them, flapped laboriously into the sky, heading off to the north to its nest or home, or whatever you called it, Popov thought. The prairie dog it killed had enjoyed no chance, Dmitriy thought, but nature was like that, as were people. No soldier willingly gave his foe a fair chance on any battlefield. It was neither safe nor intelligent to do so. You struck with total fury and as little warning as possible, the better to take his life quickly and easily-and safely-and if he lacked the wit to protect himself properly, well, that was his problem, not yours. In the case of the hawk, it had swooped down from above and down-sun, not even its shadow warning the prairie dog sitting at the entrance to its home, and killed without pity. The hawk had to eat, he supposed. Perhaps it had young to feed, or maybe it was just hunting for its own needs. In either case, the prairie dog hung limp in its claws, like an empty brown sock, soon to be ripped apart and eaten by its killer.

"Damn, I love watching that," Maclean said.

"It is cruel, but beautiful," Popov said.

"Mother Nature is like that, pal. Cruel but beautiful." Killgore watched the hawk vanish in the distance. "That was something to see."

"I have to capture one and train it," Maclean announced. "Train it to kill off my fist."

"Are the prairie dogs endangered?"

"No, no way," Killgore answered. "Predators can control their numbers, but never entirely eliminate them. Nature maintains a balance."

"How do men fit into that balance?" Popov asked.

"They don't," Kirk Maclean answered. "People just screw it up, 'cuz they're too dumb to see what works and what doesn't. And they don't care about the harm they do. That's the problem."

"And what is the solution?" Dmitriy asked. Killgore turned to look him right in the eyes.

"Why, we are."

"Ed, the cover name must be one he's used for a long time," Clark argued. "The IRA guys hadn't seen him in years, but that's the name they knew him by."

"Makes sense," Ed Foley had to admit over the phone. "So, you really want to talk to him, eh?"

"Well, it's no big thing, Ed. He just turned people loose to kill my wife, daughter, and grandson, you know? And they did kill two of my men. Now, do I have permission to contact him or not?" Rainbow Six demanded from his desk.

In his seventh-floor office atop CIA Headquarters, Director of Central Intelligence Edward Foley uncharacteristically wavered. If he let Clark do it, and Clark got what he wanted, reciprocity rules would then apply. Sergey Nikolay'ch would someday call CIA and request information of a delicate nature, and he, Foley, would have to provide it, else the veneer of amity within the international intelligence community would crumble away. But Foley could not predict what the Russians would ask about, and both sides were still spying on each other, and so the friendly rules of modern life in the spook business both did and did not apply. You pretended that they did, but you remembered and acted as though they did not. Such contacts were rare, and Golovko had been very helpful twice in real-world operations. And he'd never requested a return favor, perhaps because the operations had been of direct or indirect benefit to his own country. But Sergey wasn't one to forget a debt and-

"I know what you're thinking, Ed, but I've lost people because of this guy, and I want his ass, and Sergey can help us identify the fuck."

"What if he's still inside?" Foley temporized.

"Do you believe that?" Clark snorted.

"Well, no, I think we're past that."

"So do I, Ed. So, if he's a friend, let's ask him a friendly question. Maybe we'll get a friendly answer. The quid pro quo on this could be to let Russian special-operations people train a few weeks with us. That's a price I'm willing to pay.

It was ultimately a futile exercise to argue with John, who'd been the training officer to him and his wife, Mary Pat, now Deputy Director (Operations). "Okay, John, it's approved. Who handles the contact?"

"I have his number," Clark assured the DCI.

"Then call it, John. Approved," the DCI concluded, not without reluctance. "Anything else?"

"No, sir, and thank you. How are Mary Pat and the kids?"

"They're fine. How's your grandson?"

"Not too bad at all. Patsy is doing fine, and Sandy's taken over the job with JC."

"JC?"

"John Conor Chavez," Clark clarified.

That was a complex name, Foley thought, without saying so. "Well, okay. Go ahead, John. See ya."

"Thanks, Ed. Bye." Clark switched buttons on his phone. "Bill, we got approval."

"Excellent," Tawney replied. "When will you call?"

"How's right now grab you?"

"Set things up properly," Tawney warned.

"Fear not." Clark killed that line and punched another button. That one activated a cassette-tape recorder before lie punched yet another and dialed Moscow.

"Six-Six-Zero," a female voice answered in Russian.

"I need to speak personally with Sergey Nikolayevich. Please tell him that this is Ivan Timofeyevich calling," Clark said in his most literate Russian.

"Da, " the secretary replied, wondering how this person had gotten the Chairman's direct line.

"Clark!" a man's voice boomed onto the line. "You are well there in England?" And already it started. The Chairman of the reconfigured Russian foreign-intelligence service wanted him to know that he knew where he was and what he was doing, and it wouldn't do to ask how he'd found out.

"I find the climate agreeable, Chairman Golovko."

"This new unit you head has been rather busy. The attack on your wife and daughter-they are well?"

"It was rather unpleasant, but yes, thank you, they are quite well." The conversation was in Russian, a language Clark spoke like a native of Leningrad-St. Petersburg, John corrected himself. That was another old habit that died hard. "And I am now a grandfather."

"Indeed, Vanya? Congratulations! That is splendid news. I was not pleased to learn of the attack on you," Golovko went on sincerely. Russians have always been very sentimental people, especially where small children are concerned.

"Neither was I," Clark said next. "But it worked out, as we say. I captured one of the bastards myself."

"That I did not know, Vanya," the Chairman went on - lying or not, John couldn't tell. "So, what is the purpose of your call?"

"I need your assistance with a name."

"What name is that?"

"It is a cover identity: Serov, losef Andreyevich. The officer in question-former officer, I should think-works with progressive elements in the West. We have reason to believe he has instigated operations in which people were killed, including the attack on my people here in Hereford."

"We had nothing at all to do with that, Vanya," Golovko said at once, in a very serious voice.

"I lave no reason to think that you did, Sergey, but a man with this name, and identified as a Russian national, handed over money and drugs to the Irish terrorists. He was known to the Irishmen from years of experience, including in the Bekaa Valley. So, I think he was KGB at one time. I also have a physical description," Clark said, and gave it.

"'Serov,' you said. That's an odd-"

"Da. I know that."

"This is important to you?"

"Sergey, in addition to killing two of my people, this operation threatened my wife and daughter directly. Yes, my friend, this is very important to me."

In Moscow, Golovko wondered about that. He knew Clark, having met him eighteen months before. A field officer of unusual talent and amazing luck, John Clark had been a dangerous enemy, a quintessential professional intelligence officer, along with his younger colleague, Domingo Estebanovich Chavez, if he remembered right. And Golovko knew that his daughter was married to this Chavez boy-he'd just found that out, in fact. Someone had given that information to Kirilenko in London, though he couldn't remember who.

But if it were a Russian, a former chekist no less, who was stirring up the terrorist pot, well, that was not good news for his country. Should he cooperate? the Chairman asked himself. What was the upside and what might be the downside? If he agreed now, he'd have to follow through on it, else CIA and other Western services might not cooperate with him. Was it in his country's interest? Was it in his institution's interest?

"I will see what I can do, Vanya, but I can make no promises," Clark heard. Okay, that meant he was thinking about it at least.

"I would deem it a personal favor, Sergey Nikolay'ch.'"

"I understand. Allow me to see what information I can find."

"Very well. Good day, my friend."

"Dosvidaniya. "

Clark punched out the tape and put it in his desk drawer. "Okay, pal, let's see if you can deliver."

The computer system in the Russian intelligence service was not as advanced as its Western counterparts, but the technical differences were mainly lost on human users. whose brains moved at slower speed than even the most backward computer. Golovko had learned to make use of it because he didn't always like to have people doing things for him, and in a minute he had a screenful of data tracked down by the cover name. POPOV, DMITRIY ARKADEYEVICH, the screen read, giving service number, date of birth, and time of employment. He'd retired as a colonel near the end of the first big RIF that had cut the former KGB by nearly a third. Good evaluations by his superiors, Golovko saw, but he'd specialized in a field in which the agency no longer had great interest. Virtually everyone in that sub-department had been terminated, pensioned off in a land where pensions could feed one for perhaps as much as five days out of a month. Well, there wasn't much he could do about that, Golovko told himself. It was hard enough to get enough funding out of the Duma to keep his downsized agency operating, despite the fact that the downsized nation needed it more than ever before… and this Clark had performed two services that had benefited his nation, Golovko reminded himself-in addition, of course, to previous actions that had caused the Soviet Union no small harm… but again, those acts had helped elevate himself to the chairmanship of his agency.

Yes, he had to help. It would be a good bargaining chip to acquire for later requests to be made of the Americans. Moreover, Clark had dealt honorably with him, Sergey reminded himself, and it was distantly troubling to him that a former KGB officer had helped attack the man's family-attacks on non-combatants were forbidden in the intelligence business. Oh, occasionally the wife of a CIA officer might have been slightly roughed up in the old days of the East-West Cold War, but serious harm? Never. In addition to being nekulturny, it would only have started vendettas that would only have interfered with the conduct of real business, the gathering of information. From the 1950s on, the business of intelligence had become a civilized, predictable one. Predictability was always the one thing the Russians had wanted from the West, and that had to go both ways. Clark was predictable.

With that decision made, Golovko printed up the information on his screen.

"So?" Clark asked Bill Tawney.

"The Swiss were a little slow. It turns out that the account number Grady gave us was real enough-"

"Was?" John said, thinking that he could hear the bad news "but" coming.

"Well, actually it's still an active account. It began with about six million U.S.dollars deposited, then several hundred thousand withdrawn-and then, the very day of the attack at the hospital, all but a hundred thousand was withdrawn and redeposited elsewhere, another account in yet another bank."

"Where?"

"They say they cannot tell us."

"Oh, well, you tell their fucking Justice Minister that the next time he needs our help, we'll fuckin' let the terrorists kill off their citizens!" Clark snarled.

"They do have laws, John," Tawney pointed out. "What if this chap had an attorney do the transfer? The attorney-client privilege applies, and no country can break that barrier. The Swiss do have laws that govern funds thought to have been generated by criminal means, but we have no proof of that, do we? I suppose we could gin something up to get around the law, but that will take time, old man."

"Shit," Clark observed. Then he thought for a second. "The Russian?"

Tawney nodded sagely. "Yes, that makes sense, doesn't it? He set them up a numbered account, and when they were taken out, he still had the necessary numbers, didn't he?"

"Fuck, so he sets them up and rips them off."

"Quite," Tawney observed. "Grady said six million dollars in the hospital, and the Swiss confirm that number. He needs a few hundred thousand to purchase the trucks and other vehicles they used-we have records on that from the police investigation-and left the rest in place, and then this Russian chap decided they have no further use of the funds. Well, why not?" the intelligence officer asked. "Russians are notoriously greedy people, you know."

"The Russian giveth, and the Russian taketh away. He gave them the intel on us, too."

"I would not wager against that, John," Tawney agreed.

"Okay, let's back up some," John proposed, putting his temper back in its box. "This Russian appears, gives them intelligence information on us, funds the operation from somewhere-sure as hell not Russia, because, A, they have no reason to undertake such an operation and, B, they don't have that much money to toss around. First question: where did the money-"

"And the drugs, John. Don't forget that."

"Okay, and the drugs-come from?"

"Easier to track the drugs, perhaps. The Garda say that the cocaine was medical quality, which means that it came from a drug company. Cocaine is closely controlled in every nation in the world. Ten pounds is a large quantity, enough to fill a fairly large suitcase-cocaine is about as dense as tobacco. So the bulk of the shipment would be the equivalent of ten pounds of cigarettes. Say the size of a large suitcase. That's a bloody large quantity of drugs, John, and it would leave a gap in someone's controlled and guarded warehouse, wherever it might be."

"You're thinking it all originated in America?" Clark asked.

"For a starting point, yes. The world's largest pharmaceutical houses are there and here in Britain. I can get our chaps started checking out Distillers, Limited, and the others for missing cocaine. I expect your American DEA can attempt to do the same."

"I'll call the FBI about that," Clark said at once. "So, Bill, what do we know?"

"We will assume that Grady and O'Neil were telling us the truth about this Serov chap. We have a former-presumably former-KGB officer who instigated the Hereford attack. Essentially he hired them to do it, like mercenaries, with a payment of cash and drugs. When the attack failed, he simply confiscated the money for his own ends, and on that I still presume that he kept it for himself. The Russian will not have such private means-well, I suppose it could be the Russian Mafia, all those former KGB chaps who are now discovering free enterprise, but I see no reason why they should target us. We here at Rainbow are not a threat to them in any way, are we?"

"No," Clark agreed.

"So, we have a large quantity of drugs and six million American dollars, delivered by a Russian. I am assuming for the moment that the operation originated in America, because of the drugs and the quantity of the money."

"Why?"

"I cannot justify that, John. Perhaps it's my nose telling me that."

"How did he get to Ireland?" John asked, agreeing to trust Tawney's nose.

"We don't know that. He must have flown into Dublin-yes, I know, with such a large quantity of drugs, that is not a prudent thing to do. We need to ask our friends about that."

"Tell the cops that's important. We can get a flight number and point of origin from that."

"Quite." Tawney made a note.

"What else are we missing?"

"I'm going to have my chaps at `Six' check for the names of KGB officers who are known to have worked with terrorist groups. We have a rough physical description which may be of some use for the purposes of elimination. But I think our best hope is the ten pounds of drugs."

Clark nodded. "Okay, I'll call the Bureau on that one."

"Ten pounds, eh?"

"That's right, Dan, and doctor-quality pure. That's a real shitload of coke, man, and there ought to be a blank spot in somebody's warehouse."

"I'll call DEA and have them take a quick look," the FBI Director promised. "Anything shaking on your end?"

"We're giving the tree a kick, Dan," John told him. "For the moment we're proceeding on the assumption that the operation initiated in America." He explained on to tell Murray why this was so.

"This Russian guy, Serov, you said, former KGB, formerly a go-between for terrorists. There weren't all that many of those, and we have some information on the specialty."

"Bill's having `Six' look at it, too, and I've already kicked it around with Ed Foley. I talked to Sergey Golovko about it as well."

"You really think he'll help?" Director Murray asked.

"The worst thing he can say is no, Dan, and that's where we are already," Rainbow Six pointed out.

"True," Dan conceded. "Anything else we can do on this end?"

"If I come up with anything I'll let you know, pal."

"Okay, John. Been watching the Olympics?"

"Yeah, I actually have a team there."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, Ding Chavez and some men. The Aussies wanted us down to observe their security operations. He says they're pretty good."

"Free trip to the Olympics, not a bad gig," the FBI director observed.

"I guess so, Dan. Anyway, let us know if you turn anything, will ya?"

"You bet, John. See you later, pal."

"Yeah. Bye, Dan." Clark replaced the secure phone and leaned back in his chair, wondering what he might be missing. He was checking everything he had thought of, every loose end, hoping that somewhere someone might come up with another seemingly innocent factoid that might lead to another. He'd never quite appreciated how hard it was to be a cop investigating a major crime. The color of the damned car the bad guys drove was or could be important, and you had to remember to ask that question. too. But it was something for which he was not trained, and he had to trust the cops to do their jobs.

They were doing that. In London, the police sat Timothy O'Neil down in the usual interrogation room. Tea was offered and accepted.

It wasn't easy for O'Neil. He wanted to say nothing at all, but with the shock of the information given him by the police that could only have originated with Sean Grady, his faith and his resolve had been shaken, and as a result he had said a few things, and that was a process that once begun could not be taken back.

"This Russian chap, Serov, you told us his name was," the detective inspector began. "He flew into Ireland?"

"It's a long swim, mate," O'Neil replied as a joke.

"Yes, and a difficult drive," the police inspector agreed. "How did he fly in?"

The answer to that was silence. That was disappointing, but not unexpected.

"I can tell you something you don't know, Tim," the inspector offered, to jump-start the conversation.

"What might that be?"

"This Serov bloke set you up a numbered Swiss account for all the money he brought in. Well, we just learned from the Swiss that he cleaned it out."

"What?"

"The day of your operation. someone called the bank and transferred nearly all the money out. So, your Russian friend gave with one hand, and took away with the other. Here"-the inspector handed a sheet of paper across-"this is the account number, and this is the activation number to do transfers. Six million dollars, less what you chaps spent to buy the trucks and such. He transferred it out, to his own personal account, I'll wager. You chaps picked the wrong friend, Tim."

"That bloody fucking thief?" O'Neil was outraged.

"Yes, Tim, I know. You've never been one of those. But this Serov chappie is, and that's a fact, my boy."

O'Neil swore something at odds with his Catholicism. He recognized the account number, knew that Sean had written it down, and was reasonably certain that this cop wasn't lying to him about what had happened with it.

"He flew into Shannon on a private business jet. I do not know where from."

"Really?"

"Probably because of the drugs he brought in with him. They don't search plutocrats, do they? Bloody nobility, they act like."

"What kind of aircraft, do you know?"

O'Neil shook his head. "It had two engines and the tail was shaped like a T, but no, I do not know the name of the bloody thing."

"And how did he get to the meeting?"

"We had a car meet him."

"Who drove the car?" the inspector asked next.

"I will not give you names. I've told you that."

"Forgive me, Tim, but I must ask. You know that," the cop apologized. He'd worked hard winning this terrorist's confidence. "Sean trusted this Serov chap. That was evidently a mistake. The funds were transferred out two hours after your operation began. We rather suspect he was somewhere close, to watch, and when he saw how things were going, he simply robbed you. Russians are greedy buggers," the cop sympathized. His eyes didn't show his pleasure at the new information developed. The room was bugged, of course, and already the Police of the Metropolis were on the phone to Ireland.

The Irish national police force, called the Garda, had almost always cooperated with their British counterparts, and this time was no exception. The senior local Gardai drove at once to Shannon to check for flight records-as far as he was concerned, all he wanted to know was how ten pounds of illegal drugs had entered his country. That tactical mistake by the IRA had only enraged the local cops, some of whom did have their tribal sympathies with the revolutionary movement to the north. But those sympathies stopped well short of drug-trafficking, which they, like most cops in the world, regarded as the dirtiest of crimes.

The flight-operations office at Shannon had paper records of every flight that arrived or departed from the complex, and with the date, the assistant operations manager found the right sheet in under three minutes. Yes, a Gulfstream business jet had arrived early in the morning, refueled, and departed soon after. The documents showed the tail number and the names of the flight crew. More to the point, it showed that the aircraft was registered in the United States to a large charter company. From this office, the Irish police officer went to immigration/customs control, where he found that one Joseph Serov had indeed cleared customs on the morning indicated. The Gardai took a photocopy of all relevant documents back to his station, where they were faxed immediately to Garda headquarters in Dublin, and then on to London, and from there to Washington, D.C.

"Damn," Dan Murray said at his desk. "It did start here, eh?"

"Looks that way," said Chuck Baker, the assistant director in charge of the criminal division.

"Run this one down, Chuck."

"You bet, Dan. This one's getting pretty deep."

Thirty minutes later, a pair of FBI agents arrived at the office of the charter company at the Teterboro, New Jersey, airport. There they soon ascertained that the aircraft had been chartered by one Joseph Serov, who'd paid for the charter with a certified check drawn on an account at Citibank that was in his name. No, they didn't have a photo of the client. The flight crew was elsewhere on another flight, but as soon as they came back they would cooperate with the FBI, of course.

From there the agents, plus some photocopied documents, went to the bank branch where Serov kept his account, and there learned that nobody at the branch had ever met the man. His address, they found, was the same damned post-office box that had dead-ended the search for his credit card records.

By this time, the FBI had a copy of Serov's passport photo-but those were often valueless for the purposes of identification, intended more, Director Murray thought, to identify the body of a plane-crash victim than to facilitate the search for a living human being.

But the case file was growing, and for the first time Murray felt optimistic. They were gradually turning up data on this subject, and sooner or later they'd find where he'd slipped up-trained KGB officer or not-because everyone did, and once you appeared on the FBI's collective radarscope, nine thousand skilled investigators started looking, and they wouldn't stop looking until told to stop. Photo, bank account, credit card records… the next step would be to find out how the money had gotten into his account. He had to have an employer and/or sponsor, and that person or entity could be squeezed for additional information. It was now just a matter of time, and Murray thought they had all the time they needed to run this mutt down. It wasn't often that they bagged a trained spook. They were the most elusive of game, and for that reason all the more pleasing when you could hang the head of one over the mantelpiece. Terrorism and drug trafficking. This would be a juicy case to give to a United States Attorney.

"Hello," Popov said.

"Howdy," the man replied. "You're not from here."

"Dmitriy Popov," the Russian said, extending his hand.

"Foster Hunnicutt," the American said, taking it. "What do you do here?"

Popov smiled. "Here, I do nothing at all, though I am learning to ride a horse. I work directly for Dr. Brightling."

"Who-oh, the big boss of this place?"

"Yes, that is correct. And you?"

"I'm a hunter and guide," the man from Montana replied.

"Good, and you are not a vegan?"

Hunnicutt thought that was pretty good. "Not exactly. I like red meat as much as the next man. But I prefer elk to this mystery meat," he went on, looking down with some distaste for what was on his plate.

"Elk?"

"Wapiti, biggest damned deer you're ever gonna see. A good one's got maybe four, five hundred pounds of good meat in him. Nice rack, too."

"Rack?"

"The antlers, horns on the head. I'm partial to bear meat, too."

"That'll piss off a lot of the folks here," Dr. Killgore observed, working into his pasta salad.

"Look, man, hunting is the first form of conservation. If somebody don't take care of the critters, there ain't nothing to hunt. You know, like Teddy Roosevelt and Yellowstone National Park. If you want to understand game, I mean really understand them, you better be a hunter."

"No arguments here," the epidemiologist said.

"Maybe I'm not a bunny-hugger. Maybe I kill game, but, goddamnit, I eat what I kill. I don't kill things just to watch 'em die-well," he added, "not game animals anyway. But there's a lot of ignorant-ass people I wouldn't mind popping."

"That's why we're here, isn't it?" Maclean asked with a smile.

"You bet. Too many people fucking up the place with electric toothbrushes and cars and ugly-ass houses."

"I brought Foster into the Project," Mark Waterhouse replied. He'd known Maclean for years.

"All briefed in?" Killgore asked. "Yes, sir, and it's all fine with me. You know, I always wondered what it was like to be Jim Bridger or Jedediah Smith. Maybe now I can find out, give it a few years."

"About five," Maclean said, "according to our computer projections."

"Bridger? Smith?" Popov asked.

"They were Mountain Men," Hunnicutt told the Russian. "They were the first white men to see the West, and they were legends, explorers, hunters, Indian fighters."

"Yeah, it's a shame about the Indians."

"Maybe so," Hunnicutt allowed.

"When did you get in?" Maclean asked Waterhouse.

"We drove in today," Mark replied. "The place is about full up now, isn't it?" He didn't like the crowding.

"That it is," Killgore confirmed. He didn't, either. "But it's still nice outside. You ride, Mr. Hunnicutt?"

"How else does a man hunt in the West? I don't use no SUV, man."

"So, you're a hunting guide?"

"Yeah." Hunnicutt nodded. "I used to be a geologist for the oil companies, but I kissed that off along time ago. I got tired of helping to kill the planet, y'know?"

Another tree-worshiping druid, Popov thought. It wasn't especially surprising, though this one struck him as verbose and a little bombastic.

"But then," the hunter went on, "well, I figured out what was important." He explained for a few minutes about the Brown Smudge. "And I took my money and hung it up, like. Always liked hunting and stuff, and so I built me a cabin in the mountains-bought an old cattle ranch-and took to hunting full-time."

"Oh, you can do that? Hunt full-time, I mean?" Killgore asked.

"That depends. A fish-and-game cop hassled me about it… but, well, he stopped hassling me."

Popov caught a wink from Waterhouse to Killgore when this primitive said that, and in a second he knew that this Hunnicutt person had killed a police officer and gotten away with it. What sort of people did this "project" recruit?

"Anyway, we all ride in the morning. Want to join us?"

"You bet! I never turn that down."

"I have learned to enjoy it myself," Popov put in.

"Dmitriy, you must have some Cossack in you." Killgore laughed. "Anyway, Foster, show up here for breakfast a little before seven, and we can go out together."

"Deal," Hunnicutt confirmed.

Popov stood. "With your permission, the Olympic equestrian events start in ten minutes."

"Dmitriy, don't start thinking about jumping fences. You're not that good yet!" MacLclean told him.

"I can watch it done, can I not?" the Russian said, walking away.

"So, what's he do here?" Hunnicutt asked, when Popov was gone.

"Like he said, nothing here, exactly, but he helped get the Project going in one important way."

"Oh?" the hunter asked. "How's that?"

"All those terrorist incidents in Europe, remember them?"

"Yeah, the counterterror groups really worked good to shut those bastards down. Damned nice shooting, some of it. Dmitriy was part of that?"

"He got the missions started, all of 'em," Maclean said.

"Damn," Mark Waterhouse observed. "So, he helped Bill get the contract for the Olympics?"

"Yep, and without that, how the hell would we get the Shiva delivered?"

"Good man," Waterhouse decided, sipping his California Chardonnay. He'd miss it, he thought, after the Project activated. Well, there were plenty of liquor warehouses around the country. He would not outlive their stocks, he was sure.