"What kind of shape is Station Rome in?" Greer asked Ritter.
"The Chief of Station is Rick Nolfi. Good guy, but he retires in three months. Rome's his sunset post. He asked for it. His wife, Anne, likes Italy. Six officers there, mainly working on NATO stuff-two pretty experienced, four rookies," Ritter reported. "But before we get them alerted we need to think this threat through, and a little Presidential guidance won't hurt. The problem is, how the hell do we tell people about this in such a way as not to compromise the source? Guys," Ritter pointed out, "if we went to all the trouble of concealing the defection, it doesn't make much sense to broadcast the information we get from him out to the four winds, y'know?"
"That is the problem," Moore was forced to agree.
"The Pope doubtless has a protective detail," Ritter went on. "But they can't have the same latitude that the Secret Service does, can they? And we don't know how secure they are."
Its the old story, Ryan was saying at the same time in Manchester. "If we use the information too freely, we compromise the source and lose all of its utility. But if we don't use it for fear of compromising it, then we might as well not have the fucking source to begin with." Jack finished off his wine and poured another glass. "There's a book on this, you know."
"What's that?"
"Double-Edged Secrets. A guy named Jasper Holmes wrote it. He was a U.S. Navy crippie in World War Two, worked signals intelligence in FRUPAC with Joe Rochefort and his bunch. It's a pretty good book on how the intelligence business works down where the rubber meets the road."
Kingshot made a mental note to look that book up. Zaitzev was out on the lawn-a very plush one-with his wife and daughter at the moment. Mrs. Thompson wanted to take them all shopping. They had to have their private time-their bedroom suite was thoroughly bugged, of course, complete to a white-noise filter in the bathroom-and keeping the wife and kid happy was crucial to the entire operation.
"Well, Jack, whatever the opposition has planned, it will take time for them to set it up. The bureaucracies over there are even more moribund than ours, you know."
"KGB, too, Al?" Ryan wondered. "I think that's the one part of their system that actually works, and Yuriy Andropov isn't known for his patience, is he? Hell, he was their ambassador in Budapest in 1956, remember? The Russians worked pretty decisively back then, didn't they?"
"That was a serious political threat to their entire system," Kingshot pointed out.
"And the Pope isn't?" Ryan fired back.
"You have me there," the field spook admitted.
"Wednesday. That's what Dan told me. He's all the way in the open every Wednesday. Okay, the Pope can appear at that porch he uses to give blessings and stuff, and a halfway good man with a rifle can pop him doing that, but a man with a rifle is too visible to even a casual observer, and a rifle says 'military' to people, and 'military' says 'government' to everybody. But those probably aren't scheduled very far in advance-at least they're irregular, but every damned Wednesday afternoon he hops in his jeep and parades around the Piazza San Pietro right in the middle of the assembled multitude, Al, and that's pistol range." Ryan sat back in his chair and took another sip of the French white.
"I am not sure I'd want to fire a pistol at that close a range."
"Al, once upon a time they got a guy to do Leon Trotsky with an ice axe-engagement range maybe two feet," Ryan reminded him. "Sure, different situation now, but since when have the Russians been reticent about risking their troops-and this will be that Bulgarian bastard, remember? Your guy called him an expert killer. It's amazing what a real expert can do. I saw a gunnery sergeant at Quantico-that guy could write his name with a forty-five at fifty feet. I watched him do it once." Ryan had never really mastered the big Colt automatic, but that gunny sure as hell had.
"You're probably being overly concerned."
"Maybe," Jack admitted. "But I'd feel a hell of a lot better if His Holiness wore a Kevlar jacket under his vestments." He wouldn't, of course. People like that didn't scare the way civilians did. It wasn't the sense of invincibility that some professional soldiers had. It was just that to them death wasn't something to be afraid of. Any really observant Catholic was supposed to feel that way, but Jack wasn't one of those. Not quite.
"As a practical matter, what can one do? Look for one face in a crowd, and who's to say it's the right face?" Kingshot asked. "Who's to say Strokov hasn't hired someone else to do the actual shooting? I can see myself shooting someone, but not in a crowd."
"So, you use a suppressed weapon, a big can-type silencer. Cut down the noise, and you remove a lot of the danger of being identified. All the eyes are going to be on the target, remember, not looking sideways into the crowd."
"True," Al conceded.
"You know, it's too damned easy to find reasons to do nothing. Didn't Dr. Johnson say that doing nothing is in every man's power?" Ryan asked forlornly. "That's what we're doing, Al, finding reasons not to do anything. Can we let the guy die? Can we just sit here and drink our wine and let the Russians kill the man?"
"No, Jack, but we cannot go off like a loose hand grenade, either. Field operations have to be planned. You need professionals to think things through in a professional way. There are many things professionals can do, but first they have orders to do them."
But that was being decided elsewhere.
"Prime minister, we have reason to believe that the KGB has an operation under way to assassinate the Pope of Rome," C reported. He'd come over on short notice, interrupting her afternoon political business.
"Really?" she asked Sir Basil in dry reply. She was used to hearing the strangest of things from her Intelligence Chief, and had cultivated the habit of not responding too violently to them. "What is the source for that information?"
"I told you several days ago about Operation BEATRIX. Well, we and the Americans have got him out successfully. We even managed to do it in such a way that the Sovs think him dead. The defector is in a safe house outside Manchester right now," C told his chief of government.
"Have we told the Americans?"
Basil nodded. "Yes, Prime Minister. He's their fox, after all. We'll let him fly to America next week, but I discussed the case briefly earlier today with Judge Arthur Moore, their Director of Central Intelligence. I expect he'll brief the President in early next week."
"What action do you suppose they will take?" she asked next.
"Difficult to say, ma'am. It's a rather dicey proposition, actually. The defector-his name is Oleg-is a most important asset, and we must work very hard to protect his identity, and also knowledge of the fact that he is now on our side of the Curtain. Exactly how we might warn the Vatican of the potential danger is a complex issue, to say the least."
"This is a real operation the Soviets have under way?" the PM asked again. It was rather a lot to swallow, even for them, who she believed capable of almost anything.
"It appears so, yes," Sir Basil confirmed. "But we do not know the priority, and, of course, we know nothing of the schedule."
"I see." The Prime Minister fell quiet for a moment. "Our relations with the Vatican are cordial but not especially close." That fact went all the way back to Henry VIII, though the Roman Catholic Church had gradually come to letting bygones be bygones over the intervening centuries.
"Regrettably, that is so," C agreed.
"I see," she said again, and thought some more before speaking again. When she leaned forward, she spoke with dignity and force. "Sir Basil, it is not the policy of Her Majesty's Government to stand idly by while a friendly Chief of State is murdered by our adversaries. You are directed to look into any possible action that might forestall this eventuality."