The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

'What makes you believe that?' the First Deputy Chairman asked.
'Sergey, you're a professional intelligence officer. There's no way you can
personally approve the actions of undisciplined criminals. I feel the same way,
of course, but in my case it's personal.' Ryan leaned back with a hard look. He
would always remember Sean Miller and the other members of the Ulster Liberation
Army who'd made two earnest attempts to kill Jack Ryan and his family. Only
three weeks earlier, after years exhausting every legal opportunity, after three
writs to the Supreme Court, after demonstrations and appeals to the Governor of
Maryland and the President of the United States for executive clemency, Miller
and his colleagues had, one by one, walked into the gas chamber in Baltimore,
and been carried out half an hour later, quite dead. And may God have mercy on
their souls, Ryan thought. If God has a strong enough stomach. One chapter in
his life was now closed for good.
'And the recent incident . . . ?'
'The Indians? That merely illustrates my case. Those "revolutionaries" were
dealing drugs to make money. They're going to turn on you, the people you used
to fund. In a few years, they're going to be more of a problem for you than they
ever were for us.' That was entirely correct, of course, and both men knew it.
The terrorist drug connection was something the Soviets were starting to worry
about. Free enterprise was starting most rapidly of all in Russia's criminal
sector. That was as troubling to Ryan as to Golovko. 'What do you say?'
Golovko inclined his head to the side. 'I will discuss it with the Chairman. He
will approve.'
'Remember what I said over in Moscow a couple of years back? Who needs diplomats
to handle negotiations when you have real people to settle things?'
'I expected a quote from Kipling or something similarly poetic,' the Russian
observed dryly. 'So, how do you deal with your Congress?'
Jack chuckled. 'Short version is, you tell them the truth. I
'I needed to fly eleven thousand kilometers to hear you say that?'
'You select a handful of people in your parliament you can trust to keep their
mouths shut, and whom the rest of parliament trust to be completely honest –
that's the hard part – and you brief them into everything they need to know. You
have to set up ground rules – '
'Ground rules?'
'A baseball term, Sergey. It means the special rules that apply to a specific
playing field.'
Golovko's eyes lit up. 'Ah, yes, that is a useful term.'
'Everyone has to agree on the rules, and you may never, ever break them.' Ryan
paused. He was talking like a college lecturer again, and it wasn't fair to
speak that way to a fellow professional.
Golovko frowned. That was the hard part, of course: never, ever breaking the
rules. The intelligence business wasn't often that cut and dried. And conspiracy
was part of the Russian soul.
'It's worked for us,' Ryan added.
Or has it? Ryan wondered. Sergey knows if it has or not . . . well, he knows
some things that I don't. He could tell me if we've had major leaks on The Hill
since Peter Henderson . . . but at the same time he knows that we've penetrated