Read Online Jack Ryan 4 - The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy - Free Book Online Page B

    
    
     Nancy
    
    
    's chagrin, Greer liked to make his own coffee with a
    
    
     West Bend
    
    
     drip machine on the credenza behind his desk, where he could just turn around to reach it. Ryan poured himself a cup—actually a navy-style handleless mug. It was traditional navy coffee, brewed strong, with a pinch of salt.
    “You hungry, Jack?” Greer pulled a pastry box from a desk drawer. “I got some sticky buns here.”
    “Why, thanks, sir. I didn't eat much on the plane.” Ryan took one, along with a paper napkin.
    “Still don't like to fly?” Greer was amused.
    Ryan sat down in the chair opposite his boss. “I suppose I ought to be getting used to it. I like the Concorde better than the wide-bodies. You only have to be terrified half as long.”
    “How's the family?”
    “Fine, thank you, sir. Sally's in first grade—loves it. And little Jack is toddling around the house. These buns are pretty good.”
    “New bakery just opened up a few blocks from my place. I pass it on the way in every morning.” The admiral sat upright in his chair. “So, what brings you over today?”
    “Photographs of the new Soviet missile boat, Red October,” Ryan said casually between sips.
    “Oh, and what do our British cousins want in return?” Greer asked suspiciously.
    “They want a peek at Barry Somers' new enhancement gadgets. Not the machines themselves—at first—just the finished product. I think it's a fair bargain, sir.” Ryan knew the CIA didn't have any shots of the new sub. The operations directorate did not have a man at the building yard at
    
    
     Severodvinsk
    
    
     or a reliable man at the Polyarnyy submarine base. Worse, the rows of “boat barns” built to shelter the missile submarines, modeled on World War II German submarine pens, made satellite photography impossible. “We have ten frames, low obliques, five each bow and stem, and one from each perspective is undeveloped so that Somers can work on them fresh. We are not committed, sir, but I told Sir Basil that you'd think it over.”
    The admiral grunted. Sir Basil Charleston, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service, was a master of the quid pro quo, occasionally offering to share sources with his wealthier cousins and a month later asking for something in return. The intelligence game was often like a primitive marketplace. “To use die new system, Jack, we need the camera used to take the shots.”
    “I know.” Ryan pulled the camera from his coat pocket. “It's a modified Kodak disk camera. Sir Basil says it's the coining thing in spy cameras, nice and flat. This one, he says, was hidden in a tobacco pouch.”
    “How did you know that—that we need the camera?”
    “You mean how Somers uses lasers to—”
    “Ryan!” Greer snapped. “How much do you know?”
    “Relax, sir. Remember back in February, I was over to discuss those new SS-20 sites on the Chinese border? Somers was here, and you asked me to drive him out to the airport. On the way out he started babbling about this great new idea he was heading west to work on. He talked about it all the way to Dulles. From what little I understood, I gather that he shoots laser beams through the camera lenses to make a mathematical model of the lens. From that, I suppose, he can take the exposed negative, break down the image into the—original incoming light beams, I guess, then use a computer to run that through a computer-generated theoretical lens to make a perfect picture. I probably have it wrong.” Ryan could tell from Greer's face that he didn't.
    “Somers talks too goddamned much.”
    “I told him that, sir. But once the guy gets started, how the hell do you shut him up?”
    “And what do the Brits know?” Greer asked.
    “Your guess is as good as mine, sir. Sir Basil asked me about it, and I told him that he was asking the wrong guy—I mean, my degrees are in economics and history, not physics. I told him we needed the camera—but he already knew that. Took it