Jack Ryan 5 - The Cardinal of the Kremlin Read Online Free PDF

destructive? power in tanks and artillery. Did Narmonov genuinely want to reduce the threat of nuclear war? But that threat didn't come from the weapons; as always it came from the politician! and their mistakes. Was it all a symbol? Symbols, Jack reminded himself, were far easier for Narmonov to produce than substance. If a symbol, at whom was it aimed?
    Narmonov had charm, and power—the sort of viscera presence that came with his post, but even more from hi personality. What sort of man was this? What was he after? Ryan snorted. That wasn't his department. Another CU team was examining Narmonov's political vulnerability right here in
    
    
     Moscow
    
    
    . His far easier job was to figure out the technical side. Far easier, perhaps, but he didn't yet know the answer to his own questions.
     
    Golovko was already back at his office, making his own notes in a painful longhand. Ryan, he wrote, would uneasily support the draft proposal. Since Ryan had the ear of the Director, that probably meant that CIA would, too. The intelligence officer set down his pen and rubbed his eyes for a moment. Waking up with a hangover was bad enough, but having to stay awake long enough to welcome it with the sunrise was above and beyond the duty of a Soviet officer. He wondered why his government had made the offer in the first place, and why the Americans seemed so eager. Even Ryan, who should have known better. What did the Americans have in mind? Who was outmaneuvering whom?
    Now there was a question.
    He turned back to Ryan, his assignment of the previous evening. Well along for a man of his years, the equivalent of a colonel in the KGB or GRU and only thirty-five. What had he done to rise so quickly? Golovko shrugged. Probably connected, a fact of life as important in
    
    
     Washington
    
    
     as in
    
    
     Moscow
    
    
    . He had courage—the business with the terrorists almost five years before. He was also a family man, something Russians respected more than their American counterparts would have believed—it implied stability, and that in turn implied predictability. Most of all, Golovko thought, Ryan was a thinker. Why, then, was he not opposed to a pact that would benefit the
    
     Soviet Union
    
     more than it benefited
    
    
     America
    
    
    ? Is our evaluation incorrect? he wrote. Do the Americans know something we do not? That was a question, or better still: Did Ryan know something that Golovko did not? The Colonel frowned, then reminded himself what he knew that Ryan did not. That drew a half-smile. It was all part of the grand game. The grandest game there was.
     
    “You must have walked all night.”
    The Archer nodded gravely and set down the sack that had bowed his shoulders for five days. It was almost as heavy as the one Abdul had packed. The younger man was near collapse, the CIA officer saw. Both men found pillows to sit on.
    “Have something to drink.” The officer's name was Emilio Ortiz. His ancestry was sufficiently muddled that he could have passed for a native of any Caucasian nation. Also thirty years of age, he was of medium height and build, with swimmer's muscles, which was how he'd won a scholarship to USC, where he'd won a degree in languages. Ortiz had a rare gift in this area. With two weeks' exposure to a language, a dialect, an accent, he could pass for a native anywhere in the world. He was also a man of compassion, respectful of the ways of the people with whom he worked. This mean that the drink he offered was not—could not be—alcoholic It was apple juice. Ortiz watched him drink it with all the delicacy of a wine connoisseur sampling new
    
    
    
     bordeaux
    
    
    
    .
    “Allah's blessings upon this house,” the Archer said when he finished the first glass. That he had waited until drinking the apple juice was as close as the man ever came to making a joke. Ortiz saw the fatigue written on the man's face, though he displayed it no other way. Unlike his young porter, the Archer seemed