The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

'You want to work here, boy, you'd better get used to the real stuff. Grab a
seat. Sure you don't want any?'
'I'll pass, sir.'
'Okay.' Ryan poured his customary mug and sat down behind his desk. 'So, what
are you doing in this puzzle palace?'
'The short version is, looking for a job. I did my dissertation on intelligence
operations, their history and prospects. I need to see some things to finish my
work at Kennedy, then I want to find out if I can do the real thing.'
Jack nodded. That sounded familiar enough. 'Clearances?'
'TS, SAP/SAR. Those are new. I already have a "secret", because some of my work
at Kennedy involved going into some presidential archives, mainly in D.C., but
some of the stuff in Boston is still sensitive. I was even part of the team that
FOI'd a lot of stuff from the Cuban Missile Crisis.'
'Dr Nicholas Bledsoe, his work?'
'That's right.'
'I didn't buy all of Nick's conclusions, but that was a hell of a piece of
research.' Jack raised his mug in salute.
Goodley had written nearly half of that monograph, including the conclusions.
'What did you take issue with if I may ask?'
'Khrushchev's action was fundamentally irrational. I think – and the record
bears this out – that his placing the missiles there was impulsive rather than
reasoned.'
'I disagree. The paper pointed out that the principal Soviet concern was our
IRBMs in Europe, especially the ones in Turkey. It seems logical to conclude
that it was all a ploy to reach a stable situation regarding theater forces.'
'Your paper didn't report on everything,' Jack said.
'Such as?' Goodley asked, hiding his annoyance.
'Such as the intel we were getting from Penkovskiy and others. Those documents
are still classified, and will remain so for another twenty years.'
'Isn't fifty years a long time?'
'Sure is,' Ryan agreed. 'But there's a reason. Some of that information is still
– well, not exactly current, but it would reveal some tricks we don't want
revealed.'
'Isn't that just a little extreme?' Goodley asked, as dispassionately as he
could manage.
'Let's say we had Agent BANANA operating back then. Okay, he's dead now – died
of old age, say – but maybe Agent PEAR was recruited by him, and he's still
working. If the Sovs find out who BANANA was, that might give them a clue. Also
you have to think about certain methods of message-transfer. People have been
playing baseball for a hundred fifty years, but a change-up is still a
change-up. I used to think the same way you do, Ben.
You learn that most of the things that are done here are done for a reason.'
Captured by the system, Goodley thought.
'By the way, you did notice that Khrushchev's last batch of tapes pretty much
proved Nick Bledsoe wrong on some of his points – one other thing.'
'Yes?'
'Let's say that John Kennedy had hard intel in the spring of 1961, really good