"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.