The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

he was sure that bringing this one off would be a snap. He helped Ding with the
trash bags and left the aircraft in time to catch a dinner. On the way out to
his car, he passed a note to a CIA officer from Station Mexico.
***
'God damn it!' Ryan swore. 'This came in through State?'
'Correct, sir. Director Cabot's orders to use a fax line. He wanted to save
transcription time.'
'Didn't Sam Yamata bother to explain about date-lines and time-zones?'
' 'Fraid not.'
There was no sense swearing further at the man from the Japan Department. Ryan
read through the pages again. 'Well, what do you think?'
'I think the Prime Minister is walking into an ambush.'
'Isn't that too damned bad?' Ryan observed, 'Messenger this down to the White
House. The President's going to want it PDQ.'
'Right.' The man left. Ryan dialed up operations next. 'How's Clark doing?' Jack
asked, without preamble.
'Okay, he says. He's ready to make the plant. The monitor aircraft are all
standing by. We know of no changes in the PM's schedule.'
'Thanks.'
'How long are you going to be in?'
Jack looked outside. The snow had already started. 'Maybe all night.'
It was developing into a big one. The eastbound coldweather storm from the
Midwest was linking into a low-pressure area coming up the coast. The really big
snow storms in the D.C. area always came in from the south, and the National
Weather Service was saying six-to-eight inches. That prediction was up from
two-to-four only a few hours earlier. He could leave work right now, then try to
fight his way back in the morning, or he could stay. Staying, unfortunately,
looked like the best option.
***
Golovko was also in his office, though the time in Moscow was eight hours ahead
of Washington. That fact did not contribute to Sergey's humor, which was poor.
'Well?' he asked the man from the communications-intelligence watch staff.
'We got lucky. This document was sent by facsimile printer from the U.S. Embassy
Tokyo to Washington.' He handed the sheet over.
The slick thermal paper was covered mainly with gibberish, some discrete but
disordered letters, and even more black-and-white hash from the random noise,
but perhaps as much as twenty percent was legible English, including two
complete sentences and one full paragraph.
'Well?' Golovko asked again.
'When I delivered it to the Japanese section for comment, they handed me this.'
Another document was passed. 'I've marked the paragraph.'
Golovko read the Russian-language paragraph, then compared it to the English
'It's a fucking translation. How was our document sent in?'
'By embassy courier. It wasn't transmitted because two of the crypto machines in
Tokyo were being repaired, and the Rezident decided it was unimportant enough to
wait. It ended up in the embassy bag. So, they are not reading our ciphers, but
they got this anyway.'