CHAPTER 23

Opinions

"Jack, you look bloody awful." Sir Basil Charleston observed.

"If one more person tells me that, I'm going to waste him."

"Bad flight?"

"Bumpy as hell all the way across. Didn't sleep much." As the even darker than usual circles under his eyes proclaimed.

"Well, we'll see if lunch helps."

"It is a pretty day." Ryan noted as they walked up Westminster Bridge Road towards Parliament. It was a rare early-winter English day with a blue, cloudless sky. A brisk wind swept down the Thames, but Ryan didn't mind. He had on a heavy coat and a scarf around his neck, and the frigid blast on his face woke him up. "Trouble at the office, Bas?"

"Found a bug, a bloody bug, two floors down from my office! The whole building's being swept."

"Things are tough all over. KGB?"

"Not sure." Charleston said as they crossed the bridge. Trouble with the facade, you see, bloody thing began crumbling - same as happened to Scotland Yard a few years ago. The workers replacing it found an unexplained wire, and followed it Our Russian friends have not cut back on their activities, and there are other services as well. See anything like that in your shop?"

"No. It helps that we're more isolated than Century House." Jack meant that the British Secret Intelligence Service was in so densely populated an area - there was a nearby apartment block, for example - that a very low-power bug could get data out. That was less likely at the Agency's Langley headquarters, which sat alone on a large wooded campus. In addition to that, the newer construction had allowed installation of elaborate protections against internal radio sources. "You should do what we've done and install waveguides."

"That would cost a bloody fortune, which we do not have at the moment."

"What the hell, it gives us a chance to take a walk. If anyone can bug us out here, we've already lost."

"It never ends, does it? We win the Cold War, but it never, ever ends."

"Which Greek was it? The one whose personal hell was rolling a big rock up a hill, and every time he got it there the son-of-a-bitch rolled down the other side."

"Sisyphus - Tantalus, perhaps? Long time since I bade farewell to Oxford, Sir John. In either case, you're right. Get to the top of one hill and all you see is another damned hill." They continued walking down the embankment, away from Parliament, but towards lunch. Meetings like this one had rules. You couldn't get down to business until after the small talk and a pregnant pause. In this case, there were some off-season American tourists snapping pictures. Charleston and Ryan walked around to avoid them.

"We have a problem, Bas."

"What's that?" Charleston said, without turning. Behind them were three security officers. Two more preceded them.

Jack didn't turn either. "We have a guy inside the Kremlin. Spends some time with Narmonov. Says Andrey Il'ych is worried about a military/KGB coup. Says that they might renege on the strategic-arms treaty. Also says that some tactical nuclear devices may be missing from their inventories in Germany."