Jack Ryan 5 - The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy Read Free Book Online Page A

guarding . . .” Ryan said.
    There were thirteen buildings inside the fence. In an area perhaps the size of two football fields—which had also been leveled—were ten holes, in two groups. One was a group of six arranged hexagonally, each hole about thirty feet across. The second group of four was arrayed in a diamond pattern and the holes were slightly smaller, perhaps twenty-five feet. In each hole was a concrete pillar about fifteen feet across planted in bedrock, and every hole was at least forty feet deep—you couldn't tell from the picture on the screen. At each pillar was a metal dome. They appeared to be made crescent-shaped segments.
    “They unfold. I wonder what's in them?” Graham asked rhetorically. There were two hundred people at Langley who knew of
    
    
     Dushanbe
    
    
    , and every one wanted to know what was under those metal domes. They'd been in place for only few months.
    “Admiral,” Jack said, “I need to kick open a new compartment.”       
    “Which one?”      
    “Tea Clipper.”
    “You're not asking much!” Greer snorted. “I'm not cleared for that.”
    Ryan leaned back in his chair. “Admiral, if what they’re doing in
    
    
     Dushanbe
    
    
     is the same thing we're doing with Tea Clipper, we sure as hell ought to know. Goddammit, how are we supposed to know what to look for if we're not told what one of these places looks like!”
    “I've been saying that for quite a while.” The DDI chuckled. “SDIO won't like it. The Judge will have to go to the President for that.”          
    “So he goes to the President. What if the activity here is connected with the arms proposal they just made?”
    “Do you think it is?”        
    “Who can say?” Jack asked. “It's a coincidence. They worry me.”
    “Okay, I'll talk to the Director.”
    Ryan drove home two hours later. He drove his Jaguar XJS out onto the
    
    
     George Washington Parkway
    
    
    . It was one of the many happy memories from his tour of duty in
    
    
     England
    
    
    . He loved the silky-smooth feeling of the twelve-cylinder engine enough that he'd put his venerable old Rabbit into semi-retirement. As he always tried to do, Ryan set his
    
    
     Washington
    
    
     business aside. He worked the car up through its five gears and concentrated on his driving.
     
    “Well, James?” the Director of Central Intelligence asked.
    “Ryan thinks the new activity at Bach and Mozart may be related to the arms situation. I think he might be correct. He wants into Tea Clipper. I said you'd have to go to the President.” Admiral Greer smiled.
    “Okay, I'll get him a written note. It'll make General Parks happier, anyway. They have a full-up test scheduled for the end of the week. I'll set it up for Jack to see it.” Judge Moore smiled sleepily. “What do you think?”
    “I think he's right:
    
    
     Dushanbe
    
    
     and Tea Clipper are essentially the same project. There are a lot of coarse similarities, too many to be a pure coincidence. We ought to upgrade our assessment.”
    “Okay.”
    
    
     Moore
    
    
     turned away to look out the windows. The world is going to change again. It may take ten or more years, but it's going to change. Ten years from now it won't be my problem,
    
    
     Moore
    
    
     told himself. But it sure as hell will be Ryan's problem. “I'll have him flown out there tomorrow. And maybe we'll get lucky on
    
    
     Dushanbe
    
    
    . Foley got word to C
    ARDINAL
     that we're very interested in the place.”
    “C
    ARDINAL
    ? Good.”
    “But if something happens ...”
    Greer nodded. “Christ, I hope he's careful,” the DDI said.
     
    Ever since the death of Dmitri Fedorovich, it has not been he same at the Defense Ministry, Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov wrote into his diary left-handed. An early riser, he sat at a hundred-year-old oak desk that his wife had bought or him shortly before she'd died, almost—what was it? Thirty years, Misha told himself. Thirty years