05 The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy

Author:Tom Clancy [Clancy, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Yes, Mr. President?” Judge Moore answered the phone with his own tense look. Decision time?

“That thing we talked about in here the other day …”

“Yes, sir.” Moore looked at the phone. Aside from the handset that he held, the “secure” phone system was a three-foot cube, cunningly hidden in his desk. It took words, broke them into digital bits, scrambled them beyond recognition, and sent them out to another similar box which put them back together. One interesting sidelight of this was that it made for very clear conversations, since the encoding system eliminated all the random noise on the line.

“You may go ahead. We can’t—well, I decided last night that we can’t just leave him.” This had to be his first call of the morning, and the emotional content came through, too. Moore wondered if he’d lost sleep over the life of the faceless agent. Probably he had. The President was that sort of man. He was also the sort, Moore knew, to stick with a decision once made. Pelt would try to change it all day, but the President was getting it out at eight in the morning and would have to stick with it.

“Thank you, Mr. President. I’ll set things in motion.” Moore had Bob Ritter in his office two minutes later:

“The CARDINAL extraction is a ‘go’!”

“Makes me glad I voted for the man,” Ritter said as he smacked one hand into the other. “Ten days from now we’ll have him in a nice safehouse. Jesus, the debrief’ll take years!” Then came the sober pause. “It’s a shame to lose his services, but we owe it to him. Besides, Mary Pat has recruited a couple of real live ones for us. She made the film pass last night. No details, but I gather that it was a hairy one.”

“She always was a little too—”

“More than a little, Arthur, but all field officers have some cowboy in them.” The two Texas natives shared a look. “Even the ones from New York.”

“Some team. With those genes, you gotta wonder what their kids’ll be like,” Moore observed with a chuckle. “Bob, you got your wish. Run with it.”

“Yes, sir.” Ritter went off to send his message, then informed Admiral Greer.

The telex went via satellite and arrived in Moscow only fifteen minutes later: TRAVEL ORDERS APPROVED. KEEP ALL RECEIPTS FOR ROUTINE REIMBURSEMENT.

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