Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 7-12 (343 page)

It was the book that had attracted Mark’s attention, of course. The brown-smudge story was in its poorly written preface. Foster was a believer, but not a screwball. His house had electricity and phone service. Mark saw his high-end Gateway computer on the floor next to his desk. Even satellite TV, plus the usual Chevy pickup truck with a gun-rack in the back window . . . and a diesel-powered backhoe. So, maybe he believed, but he wasn’t too crazy about it. That was good, Mark thought. He just had to be crazy enough. Foster was. Killing the fish-and-game cop was proof of that.

Foster returned the friendly stare. He’d met guys like this during his time in Exxon. A suit, but a clever one, the kind who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. Molecular biochemistry. They hadn’t had that major at the Colorado School of Mines, but Foster also subscribed to
Science News,
and knew what it was all about. A meddler with life . . . but, strangely, one who understood about the deer and elk. Well, the world was a complex place. Just then, his visitor saw the Lucite block on the coffee table. Mark picked it up.

“What’s this?”

Foster grinned over his drink. “What’s it look like?”

“Well, it’s either iron pyrite or it’s—”

“Ain’t iron. I do know my rocks, sir.”

“Gold? Where from?”

“Found it in my stream, ’bout three hundred yards over yonder.” Foster pointed.

“That’s a fair-sized nugget.”

“Five and a half ounces. About two thousand dollars. You know, people—white people—been living right on this ranch on this spot for over a hundred years, but nobody ever saw that in the creek. One day I’ll have to back-track up, see if it’s a good formation. Ought to be, that’s quartz on the bottom of the big one. Quartz-and-gold formations tend to be pretty rich, ’cuz of the way the stuff bubbled up from the earth’s core. This area’s fairly volcanic, all the hot springs and stuff,” he reminded his guest. “We even get the occasional earth tremor.”

“So, you might own your own gold mine?”

A good laugh. “Yep. Ironic, ain’t it? I paid the going rate for grazing land—not even that much ’cuz o’ the hills. The last guy to ranch around here bitched that his cattle lost every pound they gained grazin’ by climbing up to where the grass was.”

“How rich?”

A shrug. “No tellin’, but if I showed that to some guys I went to school with, well, some folks would invest ten or twenty million finding out. Like I said, it’s a quartz formation. People gamble big-time on those. Price of gold is depressed, but if it comes out of the ground pretty pure—well, it’s a shitload more valuable than coal, y’know?”

“So, why don’t you? . . .”

“ ’Cuz I don’t need it, and it’s an ugly process to watch. Worse ’n drilling oil, even. You can pretty much clean that up. But a mine—no way. Never goes away. The tailing don’t go away. The arsenic gets into the ground water and takes forever to leach out. Anyway, it’s a pretty coupla rocks in the plastic, and if I ever need the money, well, I know what to do.”

“How often you check the creek?”

“When I fish—brown trout here, see?” He pointed to a big one hanging on the log wall. “Every third or fourth time, I find another one. Actually, I figure the deposit must have been uncovered fairly recently, else folks would have spotted it a long time ago. Hell, maybe I should track it down, see where it starts, but I’d just be tempting myself. Why bother?” Foster concluded. “I might have a weak moment and go against my principles. Anyway, not like it’s gonna run away, is it?”

Mark grunted. “Guess not. Got any more of these?”

“Sure.” Foster rose and pulled open a desk drawer. He tossed a leather pouch over. Mark caught it, surprised by the weight, almost ten pounds. He pulled the drawstring and extracted a nugget. About the size of a half-dollar, half gold, half quartz, all the more beautiful for the imperfection.

“You married?” Foster asked.

“Yeah. Wife, two kids.”

“Keep it, then. Make a pendant out of it, give it to her for her birthday or something.”

“I can’t do that. This is worth a couple of thousand dollars.”

Foster waved his hand. “Shit, just takin’ up space in my desk. Why not make somebody happy with it? ’Sides, you understand, Mark. I think you really do.”

Yep, Mark thought, this was a recruit. “What if I told you there was a way to make that brown smudge go away? . . .”

A quizzical look. “You talking about some organism to eat it or something?”

Mark looked up. “No, not exactly . . .” How much could he tell him now? He’d have to be very careful. It was only their first meeting.

“Getting the aircraft is your business. Where to fly it, that we can help with,” Popov assured his host.

“Where?” the host asked.

“The key is to become lost to air-traffic-control radar and also to travel far enough that fighter aircraft cannot track you, as you know. Then if you can land in a friendly place, and dispose of the flight crew upon reaching your destination, repainting the aircraft is no great task. It can be destroyed later, even dismantled for sale of the important parts, the engines and such. They can easily disappear into the international black market, with the change of a few identity plates,” Popov explained. “This has happened more than once, as you know. Western intelligence and police agencies do not advertise the fact, of course.”

“The world is awash with radar systems,” the host objected.

“True,” Popov conceded, “but air-traffic radars do not see aircraft. They see the return signals from aircraft radar transponders. Only military radars see the aircraft themselves, and what African country has a proper air-defense network? Also, with the addition of a simple jammer to the aircraft’s radio systems, you can further reduce the ability of anyone to track you. Your escape is not a problem,
if
you get as far as an international airport, my friend. That,” he reminded them, “is the difficult part. Once you disappear over Africa—well, that is your choice then. Your country of destination can be selected for ideological purity or for a monetary exchange. Your choice. I recommend the former, but the latter is possible,” Popov concluded. Africa was not yet a hotbed of international law and integrity, but it did have hundreds of airports capable of servicing jetliners.

“A pity about Ernst,” the host said quietly.

“Ernst was a fool!” his lady friend countered with an angry gesture. “He should have robbed a smaller bank. All the way in the middle of Bern. He was trying to make a statement,” Petra Dortmund sneered. Popov had known her only by reputation until today. She might have been pretty, even beautiful, once, but now her once-blond hair was dyed brown, and her thin face was severe, the cheeks sunken and hollow, the eyes rimmed in dark circles. She was almost unrecognizable, which explained why European police hadn’t snatched her up yet, along with her longtime lover, Hans Fürchtner.

Fürchtner had gone the other way. He was a good thirty kilos overweight, his thick dark hair had either fallen out or been shaved, and the beard was gone. He looked like a banker now, fat and happy, no longer the driven, serious, committed communist he’d been in the ’70s and ’80s—at least not visibly so. They lived in a decent house in the mountains south of Munich. What neighbors they had thought them to be artists—both of them painted, a hobby unknown to their country’s police. They even sold the occasional work in small galleries, which was enough to feed them, though not to maintain their lifestyle.

They must have missed the safe houses in the old DDR and Czechoslovakia, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought. Just get off the aircraft and get taken away by car to comfortable if not quite lavish quarters, leave there to shop in the “special” stores maintained for the local Party elite, get visited frequently by serious, quiet intelligence officers who would feed them information with which to plan their next operation. Fürchtner and Dortmund had accomplished several decent operations, the best being the kidnapping and interrogation of an American sergeant who serviced nuclear artillery shells—this mission had been assigned them by the Soviet GRU. Much had been learned from that, most of it still useful, as the sergeant had been an expert on the American PAL—permissible action link—safety systems. His body had later been discovered in the snowy mid-winter mountains of southern Bavaria, apparently the result of a nasty traffic accident. Or so GRU thought, based on the reports of its agents within the NATO high command.

“So, what is it that you want to learn?” she asked.

“Electronic access codes to the international trading system.”

“So, you, too, are a common thief now?” Hans asked, before Petra could sneer.

“A very uncommon thief, my sponsor is. If we are to restore a socialist,
progressive
alternative to capitalism, we need both funding and to instill a certain lack of confidence in the capitalist nervous system, do we not?” Popov paused for a second. “You know who I am. You know where I worked. Do you think I have forgotten my Motherland? Do you think I have forsaken my beliefs? My father fought at Stalingrad and Kursk. He knew what it was to be pushed back, to suffer defeat—and yet not give up, ever!” Popov said heatedly. “Why do you think I risk my life here? The counterrevolutionaries in Moscow would not look kindly upon my mission . . . but they are not the only political force in Mother Russia!”

“Ahhh,” Petra Dortmund observed. Her face turned serious. “So, you think all is not lost?”

“Did you ever think the forward march of humanity would be absent of setbacks? It is true we lost our way. I saw it myself in KGB, the corruption in high places. That is what defeated us—not the West! I saw it myself as a captain, Brezhnev’s daughter—looting the Winter Palace for her wedding reception. As though she were the Grand Duchess Anastasia herself! It was my function in KGB to learn from the West, learn their plans and secrets, but our
Kameraden
learned only their corruption. Well, we have learned that lesson, in more ways than one, my friends. You are a communist or you are not. You believe or you do not. You act in accordance with those beliefs or you do not.”

“You ask us to give up much,” Hans Fürchtner pointed out.

“You will be properly provided for. My sponsor—”

“Who is that?” Petra asked.

“This you may not know,” Popov replied quietly. “You suppose that
you
take risks here? What about me? As for my sponsor, no, you may not know his identity. Operational security is paramount. You are supposed to know these things,” he reminded them. They took the mild rebuke well, as he’d expected. These two fools were true believers, as Ernst Model had been, though they were somewhat brighter and far more vicious, as that luckless American sergeant had learned, probably staring with disbelief into the still-lovely blue eyes of Petra Dortmund as she’d used the hammer on his various body parts.

“So, Iosef Andreyevich,” Hans said—they knew Popov by one of his many cover names, in this case I. A. Serov. “When do you wish us to act?”

“As quickly as possible. I will call you in a week, to see if you are indeed willing to take this mission and—”

“We are willing,” Petra assured him. “We need to make our plans.”

“Then I shall call you in a week for your schedule. I will need four days to activate my part of the operation. An additional concern, the mission depends on the placement of the American navy carrier in the Mediterranean. You may not execute the mission if it is in the western Mediterranean, because in such a case their aircraft might track your flight. We wish this mission to succeed, my friends.” Then they negotiated the price. It didn’t prove hard. Hans and Petra knew Popov from the old days and actually trusted him personally to make the delivery.

Ten minutes later, Popov shook hands and took his leave, this time driving a rented BMW south toward the Austrian border. The road was clear and smooth, the scenery beautiful, and Dmitriy Arkadeyevich wondered again about his hosts. The one bit of truth he’d given them was that his father was indeed a veteran of the Stalingrad and Kursk campaign, and had told his son much about his life as a tank commander in the Great Patriotic War. There was something odd about the Germans, he’d learned from his professional experience in the Committee for State Security. Give them a man on a horse, and they’d follow him to the death. It seemed that the Germans craved someone or something to follow. How very strange. But it served his purposes, and those of his sponsor, and if these Germans wanted to follow a red horse—a
dead
red horse, Popov reminded himself with a smile and a grunt—well, that was their misfortune. The only really innocent people involved were the bankers whom they would attempt to kidnap. But at least they wouldn’t be subjected to torture, as that black American sergeant had been. Popov doubted that Hans and Petra would get that far, though the capabilities of the Austrian police and military were largely unknown to him. He’d find out, he was sure, one way or another.

It was odd the way it worked. Team-1 was now the Go-Team, ready to depart Hereford at a moment’s notice while Chavez’s Team-2 stood down, but it was the latter that was running complex exercises while the former did little but morning PT and routine marksmanship training. Technically, they were worried about a training accident that could hurt or even cripple a team member, thus breaking up a field team at a delicate moment.

Master Chief Machinist’s Mate Miguel Chin belonged to Peter Covington’s team. A former U.S. Navy SEAL, he’d been taken from Norfolk-based SEAL Team Six for Rainbow. The son of a Latino mother and a Chinese father, he, like Chavez, had grown up in East L.A. Ding spotted him smoking a cigar outside the Team-1 building and walked over.

“Hey, Chief,” Chavez said from ten feet away.

“Master Chief,” Chin corrected. “Like being a CSM in the army, sir.”

“Name’s Ding, ’mano.”

“Mike.” Chin extended a hand. Chin’s face could have passed for damned near anything. He was an iron-pumper like Oso Vega, and his rep was of a guy who’d been around the block about a hundred times. Expert with all types of weapons, his handshake announced his further ability to tear a man’s head right off his shoulders.