Jack Ryan 2 - Patriot Games (14 page)

The car turned left onto Westminster Bridge. Jack hadn't known exactly where the hospital was, just that it was close to a railway station and close enough to Westminster to hear Big Ben toll the hours. He looked up at the gothic stonework. “You know, besides the research I wanted to do, I actually wanted to see part of your country, sir. Not much time left for that.”

“Jack, do you really think that we will let you return to America without experiencing British hospitality?” The Duke was greatly amused. “We are quite proud of our hospitals, of course, but tourists don't come here to see those. Some small arrangements have been made.”

“Oh.”

Ryan had to think a moment to figure where they were, but the maps he'd studied before coming over came back to him. It was called Birdcage Walk -- he was only three hundred yards from where he'd been shot . . . there was the lake that Sally liked. He could see Buckingham Palace past the head of the security officer in the left front seat. Knowing that he was going there was one thing, but now the building loomed in front of him and the emotional impact started to take hold.

They entered the Palace grounds at the northeast gate. Jack hadn't seen the Palace before except from a distance. The perimeter security didn't seem all that impressive, but the Palace's hollow-square design hid nearly everything from outside view. There could easily be a company of armed troops inside -- and who could tell? More likely civilian police, Ryan knew, backed up by a lot of electronic hardware. But there would be some surprises hidden away, too. After the scares in the past, and this latest incident, he imagined that this place was as secure as the White House -- or even better, given greater space in and around the buildings.

It was too dark to make out many details, but the Rolls pulled through an archway into the building's courtyard, then under a canopy, where a sentry snapped to present-arms in the crisp three-count movement the Brits used. As the car stopped, a footman in livery pulled the door open.

Getting out was the reverse of getting in. Ryan turned counterclockwise, stepped out backwards, and pulled his arm out behind. The footman grabbed his arm to help. Jack didn't want the help, but this wasn't a good time to object.

“You'll need a little practice on that,” the Duke observed.

“I think you're right, sir.” Jack followed him to the door, where another servant did his duty.

“Tell me. Jack -- the first time we visited you, you seemed far more intimidated by the presence of the Queen than of me. Why is that?”

“Well, sir, you used to be a naval officer, right?”

“Of course.” The Duke turned and looked rather curious.

Ryan grinned. “Sir, I work at Annapolis. The Academy crawls with naval officers, and remember I used to be a Marine. If I let myself get intimidated by every swabbie who crossed my path, the Corps would come and take my sword back.”

“You cheeky bugger!” They both had a laugh.

Ryan had expected to be impressed by the Palace. Even so, it was all he could manage to keep from being overwhelmed. Half the world had once been run from this house, and in addition to what the Royal Family had acquired over the centuries had come gifts from all over the world. Everywhere he looked the wide corridors were decorated with too many masterpieces of painting and sculpture to count. The walls were mainly covered with ivory-colored silk brocaded with gold thread. The carpets, of course, were imperial scarlet over marble or parquet hardwood. The money manager that Jack had once been tried to calculate the value of it all. He overloaded after about ten seconds. The paintings alone were so valuable that any attempt to sell them off would distort the world market in fine art. The gilt frames alone . . . Ryan shook his head, wishing he had the time to examine every painting. You could live here five years and not have time to appreciate it all. He almost fell behind, but managed to control his gawking and kept pace with the older man. Ryan's discomfiture was growing. To the Duke this was home -- perhaps one so large as to be something of a nuisance, but nonetheless home, routine. The Rubens masterpieces on the wall were part of the scenery, as familiar to him as the photographs of wife and kids on any man's office desk. To Ryan the impact of where he was, an impact made all the more crushing by the trappings of wealth and power, made him want to shrink away to nothingness. It was one thing to take his chance on the street -- the Marines, after all, had prepared and trained him for that -- but . . . this.

Get off it, Jack, he told himself. They're a royal family, but they're not your royal family. This didn't work. They were a royal family. That was enough to lacerate most of his ego.

“Here we are,” the Duke said after turning right through an open door. “This is the Music Room.”

It was about the size of the living/dining room in Ryan's house, the only thing he had seen thus far that could be so compared with any part of his $300,000 home on Peregrine Cliff. The ceiling was higher here, domed with gold-leaf trim. There were about thirty people, Ryan judged, and the moment they entered all conversation stopped. Everyone turned to stare at Ryan -- Jack was sure they'd seen the Duke before -- and his grotesque cast. He had a terrible urge to slink away. He needed a drink.

“If you'll excuse me for a moment. Jack, I must be off. Back in a few minutes.”

Thanks a lot, Ryan thought as he nodded politely. Now what do I do?

“Good evening, Sir John,” said a man in the uniform of a vice admiral of the Royal Navy. Ryan tried not to let his relief show. Of course, he'd been handed off to another custodian. He realized belatedly that lots of people came here for the first time. Some would need a little support while they got used to the idea of being in a palace, and there would be a procedure to take care of them. Jack took a closer look at the man's face as they shook hands. There was something familiar about it. “I'm Basil Charleston.”

Aha! “Good evening, sir.” His first week at Langley he'd seen the man, and his CIA escort had casually noted that this was “B.C.” or just “C,” the chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service, once known as MI-6. What are you doing here?

“You must be thirsty.” Another man arrived with a glass of champagne. “Hello. I'm Bill Holmes.”

“You gentlemen work together?” Ryan sipped at the bubbling wine.

“Judge Moore told me you were a clever chap,” Charleston observed.

“Excuse me? Judge who?”

“Nicely done, Doctor Ryan,” Holmes smiled as he finished off his glass. “I understand that you used to play football -- the American kind, that is. You were on the junior varsity team, weren't you?”

“Varsity and junior varsity, but only in high school. I wasn't big enough for college ball,” Ryan said, trying to mask his uneasiness. “Junior Varsity” was the project name under which he'd been called in to consult with CIA.

“And you wouldn't happen to know anything about the chap who wrote Agents and Agencies'!” Charleston smiled. Jack went rigid.

“Admiral, I cannot talk about that without --”

“Copy number sixteen is sitting on my desk. The good judge told me to tell you that you were free to talk about the 'smoking word-processor.' ”

Ryan let out a breath. The phrase must have come originally from James Greer. When Jack had made the Canary Trap proposal to the Deputy Director, Intelligence, Admiral James Greer had made a joke about it, using those words. Ryan was free to talk. Probably. His CIA security briefing had not exactly covered this situation.

“Excuse me, sir. Nobody ever told me that I was free to talk about that.”

Charleston went from jovial to serious for a moment. “Don't apologize, lad. One is supposed to take matters of classification seriously. That paper you wrote was an excellent bit of detective work. One of our problems, as someone doubtless told you, is that we take in so much information now that the real problem is making sense of it all. Not easy to wade through all the muck and find the gleaming nugget. For the first time in the business, your report was first-rate. What I didn't know about was this thing the Judge called the Canary Trap. He said you could explain it better than he.” Charleston waved for another glass. A footman, or some sort of servant, came over with a tray. “You know who I am, of course.”

“Yes, Admiral. I saw you last July at the Agency. You were getting out of the executive elevator on the seventh floor when I was coming out of the DDI's office, and somebody told me who you were.”

“Good. Now you know that all of this remains in the family. What the devil is this Canary Trap?”

“Well, you know about all the problems CIA has with leaks. When I was finishing off the first draft of the report, I came up with an idea to make each one unique.”

“They've been doing that for years,” Holmes noted. “All one must do is misplace a comma here and there. Easiest thing in the world. If the newspeople are foolish enough to print a photograph of the document, we can identify the leak.”

“Yes, sir, and the reporters who publish the leaks know that, too. They've learned not to show photographs of the documents they get from their sources, haven't they?” Ryan answered. “What I came up with was a new twist on that. 'Agents and Agencies' has four sections. Each section has a summary paragraph. Each of those is written in a fairly dramatic fashion.”

“Yes, I noticed that,” Charleston said. “Didn't read like a CIA document at all. More like one of ours. We use people to write our reports, you see, not computers. Do go on.”

“Each summary paragraph has six different versions, and the mixture of those paragraphs is unique to each numbered copy of the paper. There are over a thousand possible permutations, but only ninety-six numbered copies of the actual document. The reason the summary paragraphs are so -- well, lurid, I guess -- is to entice a reporter to quote them verbatim in the public media. If he quotes something from two or three of those paragraphs, we know which copy he saw and, therefore, who leaked it. They've got an even more refined version of the trap working now. You can do it by computer. You use a thesaurus program to shuffle through synonyms, and you can make every copy of the document totally unique.”

“Did they tell you if it worked?” Holmes asked.

“No, sir. I had nothing to do with the security side of the Agency.” And thank God for that.

“Oh, it worked.” Sir Basil paused for a moment. “That idea is bloody simple -- and bloody brilliant! Then there was the substantive aspect of the paper. Did they tell you that your report agreed in nearly every detail with an investigation we ran last year?”

“No, sir, they didn't. So far as I know, all the documents I worked with came from our own people.”

“Then you came up with it entirely on your own? Marvelous.”

“Did I goof up on anything?” Ryan asked the Admiral.

“You should have paid a bit more attention to that South African chap. That is more our patch, of course, and perhaps you didn't have enough information to fiddle with. We're giving him a very close look at the moment.”

Ryan finished off his glass and thought about that. There had been a good deal of information on Mr. Martens . . . What did I miss? He couldn't ask that, not now. Bad form. But he could ask --

“Aren't the South African people --”

“I'm afraid the cooperation they give us isn't quite as good now as it once was, and Erik Martens is quite a valuable chap for them. One can hardly blame them, you know. He does have a way of procuring what their military need, and that rather limits the pressure his government are willing to put on him,” Holmes pointed out. “There is also the Israeli connection to be considered. They occasionally stray from the path, but we -- SIS and CIA -- have too many common interests to rock the boat severely.” Ryan nodded. The Israeli defense establishment had orders to generate as much income as possible, and this occasionally ran contrary to the wishes of Israel's allies. I remember Martens' connections, but I must have missed something important . . . what?

“Please don't take this as criticism,” Charleston said. “For a first attempt your report was excellent. The CIA must have you back. It's one of the few Agency reports that didn't threaten to put me to sleep. If nothing else, perhaps you might teach their analysts how to write. Surely they asked if you wanted to stay on?”

“They asked, sir. I didn't think it was a very good idea for me.”

“Think again,” Sir Basil suggested gently. “This Junior Varsity idea was a good one, like the Team-B program back in the seventies. We do it also -- get some outside academics into the shop -- to take a new look at all the data that cascades in the front door. Judge Moore, your new DCI, is a genuine breath of fresh air. Splendid chap. Knows the trade quite well, but he's been away from it long enough to have some new ideas. You are one of them, Doctor Ryan. You belong in the business, lad.”

“I'm not so sure about that, sir. My degree's history and --”

“So is mine,” Bill Holmes said. “One's degree doesn't matter. In the intelligence trade we look for the right sort of mind. You appear to have it. Ah, well, we can't recruit you, can we? I would be rather disappointed if Arthur and James don't try again. Do think about it.”

I have, Ryan didn't say. He nodded thoughtfully, mulling over his own thoughts. But I like teaching history.

“The hero of the hour!” Another man joined the group.

“Good evening, Geoffrey,” Charleston said. “Doctor Ryan, this is Geoffrey Watkins of the Foreign Office.”

“Like David Ashley of the 'Home Office'?” Ryan shook the man's hand.

“Actually I spend much of my time right here,” Watkins said.

“Geoff's the liaison officer between the Foreign Office and the Royal Family. He handles briefings, dabbles in protocol, and generally makes a nuisance of himself,” Holmes explained with a smile. “How long now, Geoff?”

Watkins frowned as he thought that over. “Just over four years, I think. Seems like only last week. Nothing like the glamour one might expect. Mainly I carry the dispatch box and try to hide in corners.” Ryan smiled. He could identify with that.

“Nonsense,” Charleston objected. “One of the best minds in the Office, else they wouldn't have kept you here.”