Jack Ryan 5 - The Cardinal of the Kremlin Read Free Page A

    
     State
    
    
    
    
     University
    
    
    's school of physics, rubbed the rain from his eyes and straightened to ease a crick in his back. This was no way to utilize a promising young engineer, Morozov thought. Instead of playing with this surveyor's instrument, he could be building lasers in his laboratory, but he wanted full membership in the Communist Party of the
    
     Soviet Union
    
    , and wanted even more to avoid military service. The combination of his school deferment and his Komsomol work had helped mightily to this end.
    “Well?” Morozov turned to see one of the site engineers. A civil engineer, he was, who described himself as a man who knew concrete.
    “I read the position as correct, Comrade Engineer.”
    The older man stooped down to look through the sighting scope. “I agree,” the man said. “And that's the last one, the gods be praised.” Both men jumped with the sound of a distant explosion. Engineers from the Red Army obliterating yet another rocky outcropping outside of the fenced perimeter. You didn't need to be a soldier to understand what that was all about, Morozov thought to himself.
    “You have a fine touch with optical instruments. Perhaps you will become a civil engineer, too, eh? Build useful things for the State?”
    “No, Comrade. I study high-energy physics—mainly lasers.” These, too, are useful things.
    The man grunted and shook his head. “Then you might come back here, God help you.”
    “Is this—”
    “You didn't hear anything from me,” the engineer said, just a touch of firmness in his voice.
    “I understand,” Morozov replied quietly. “I suspected as much.”
    “I would be careful voicing that suspicion,” the other said conversationally as he turned to look at something.
    “This must be a fine place to watch the stars,” Morozov observed, hoping for the right response.
    “I wouldn't know,” the civil engineer replied with an insider's smile. “I've never met an astronomer.”
    Morozov smiled to himself. He'd guessed right after all. They had just plotted the position of the six points on which mirrors would be set. These were equidistant from a central point located in a building guarded by men with rifles. Such precision, he knew, had only two applications. One was astronomy, which collected light coming down. The other application involved light going up. The young engineer told himself that here was where he wanted to come. This place would change the world.
     

Jack Ryan 5 - The Cardinal of the Kremlin
           1.
     
    The Reception of
    the Party
     
     
    B
    USINESS
     was being conducted. All kinds of business. Everyone there knew it. Everyone there was part of it. Everyone there needed it. And yet everyone there was in one way or another dedicated to stopping it. For every person there in the St. George Hall of the
    
    
     Great
    
    
    
    
     Kremlin
    
    
    
    
     Palace
    
    
    , the dualism was a normal part of life.
    The participants were mainly Russian and American, and were divided into four groups.
    First, the diplomats and politicians. One could discern these easily enough from their better-than-average clothing and erect posture, the ready, robotic smiles, and careful diction that endured even after the many alcoholic toasts. They were the masters, knew it, and their demeanor proclaimed it.
    Second, the soldiers. One could not have arms negotiations without the men who controlled the arms, maintained them, tested them, pampered them, all the while telling themselves that the politicians who controlled the men would never give the order to launch. The soldiers in their uniforms stood mainly in little knots of homogeneous nationality and service branch, each clutching a half-full glass and napkin while blank, emotionless eyes swept the room as though searching for a threat on an unfamiliar battlefield. For that was precisely what it was to them, a bloodless battlefield that would define the real ones if their political masters ever lost