CIA?”
“His fault,” Chavez answered. “John spotted me and foolishly thought 1 had potential.”
“We had to clean him up and send him to school, but he’s worked out pretty well—even married my daughter.”
“He’s still getting used to having a Latino in the family, but I made him a grandfather. Our wives are back in Wales.”
“So, how did you emerge from CIA into Rainbow?”
“My fault, again,” Clark admitted. “I did a memo, and it perked to the top, and the President liked it, and he knows me, and so when they set the outfit up, they put me in charge of it. I wanted Domingo here to be part of it, too. He’s got young legs, and he shoots okay.”
“Your operations in Europe were impressive, especially at the park in Spain.”
“Not our favorite. We lost a kid there.”
“Yeah,” Ding confirmed with a tiny sip of his drink. “I was fifty yards away when that bastard killed Anna. Homer got him later on. Nice shot it was.”
“I saw him shoot two days ago. He’s superb.”
“Homer’s pretty good. Went home last fall on vacation and got himself a Dall sheep at eight hundred-plus yards up in Idaho. Hell of a trophy. He made it into the Boone and Crockett book in the top ten.”
“He should go to Siberia and hunt tiger. I could arrange that,” Kirillin offered.
“Don’t say that too loud.” Chavez chuckled. “Homer will take you up on it.”
“He should meet Pavel Petrovich Gogol,” Kirillin went on.
“Where’d I hear that name?” Clark wondered at once.
“The gold mine,” Chavez handled the answer.
“He was a sniper in the Great Patriotic War. He has two gold stars for killing Germans, and he’s killed hundreds of wolves. There aren’t many like him left.”
“Sniper on a battlefield. The hunting must get real exciting.”
“Oh, it is, Domingo. It is. We had a guy in Third SOG who was good at it, but he damned near got his ass killed half a dozen times. You know—” John Clark had a satellite beeper, and it started vibrating in his belt. He picked it up and checked the number. “Excuse me,” he said and looked for a good place. The Moscow officers’ club had a court-yard, and he headed for it.
What does this mean?” Arnie van Damm asked. The executive meeting had started with copies of the latest SORGE/SONGBIRD being passed out. Arnie was the fastest reader of the group, but not the best strategic observer.
“It doesn’t mean anything good, pal,” Ryan observed, turning to the third page.
“Ed,” Winston asked, looking up from page two. “What can you tell me about the source? This looks like the insider-trading document from hell.”
“A member of the Chinese Politburo keeps notes on his conversations with the other ministers. We have access to those notes, never mind how.”
“So, this document and the source are both genuine?”
“We think so, yes.”
“How reliable?” TRADER persisted.
The DCI decided to take a long step out on a thin limb. “About as reliable as one of your T-bills.”
“Okay, Ed, you say so.” And Winston’s head went back down. In ten seconds, he muttered, “Shit ...”
“Oh, yeah, George,” POTUS agreed. “‘Shit’ about covers it.”
“Concur, Jack,” SecState agreed.
Of those present, only Ben Goodley managed to get all the way through it without a comment. For his part, Goodley, for all the status and importance that came from his job as the President’s National Security Adviser, felt particularly junior and weak at the moment. Mainly he knew that he was far the President’s inferior in knowledge of national-security affairs, that he was in his post mainly as a high-level secretary. He was a carded National Intelligence Officer, one of whom, by law and custom, accompanied the President everywhere he went. His job was to convey information to the President. Former occupants of his corner office in the West Wing of the White House had often told their presidents what to think and what to do. But he was just an information-conveyor, and at the moment, he felt weak even in that diminished capacity.
Finally, Jack Ryan looked up with blank eyes and a vacant face. “Okay. Ed, Mary Pat, what do we have here?”
“It looks as if Secretary Winston’s predictions on the financial consequences of the Beijing Incident might be coming true.”
“They’re talking about precipitous consequences,” Scott Adler observed coolly. “Where’s Tony?”
“Secretary Bretano’s down at Fort Hood, Texas, looking at the heavy troopers at Third Corps. He gets back late tonight. If we yank him back in a hurry, people will notice,” van Damm told the